Dir: John Schlesinger | UK Comedy
The joker in the pack of John Schlesinger’s filmography, for whom this legendary financial disaster marked a strange venture into territory better suited to Robert Altman, depicting a collection of crazies and misfits converging upon a single location to create a virtual convention of Americans at their most crass and absurd.
The town is named Ticlaw, and the mayor/preacher Kirby T. Calo also operates a hotel and tiny wildlife safari park. The town’s major draw is a water-skiing elephant named Bubbles.
When the state highway commission builds a freeway adjacent to the town, Calo slips an official $10,000 to assure an off-ramp. The ramp does not come, so the townsfolk literally paint the town pink to attract visitors.
You don’t see an elephant on water skis every and the pleasures afforded by vast sums of money being squandered in bright colour are never to be sneezed at.
Kudos to Jessica Tandy who displayed a hitherto unsuspected talent for dead pan comedy as a socially acceptable alcoholic deeply in denial. @RichardChatten