“Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.” – Oliver Hardy

 

The following is my entry in The Classic Quote Blogathon, hosted by The Flapper Dame on Mar. 4-6, 2016. Click on the above banner, and read bloggers’ backstories of some of the most famous quotes in movie history!

I would hazard a guess that, even for non-fans of Laurel & Hardy, there are two indelible images of Stan and Ollie that everyone seems to know about or remember. One is of the duo endlessly hauling a crated piano up a Sisyphean flight of stairs in The Music Box.

The other is of Ollie turning to Stan, usually after some Stan-created disaster, and intoning, “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.” A funny and most durable catchphrase — but where did it come from?

Laurel & Hardy biographer Randy Skretvedt believes the line might have been provided by L&H title-writer H.M. “Beanie” Walker (above), who might have unconsciously cribbed it from Gilbert & Sullivan,  who used the line in both The Mikado from 1885 and The Grand Duke from 1896.

The catchphrase was first used by Hardy in The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930). In popular culture, the catchphrase is often misquoted as “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” This misquoted version of the phrase was never uttered by Hardy in a movie. Ironically, L&H seem to have caused the misunderstanding themselves, having named another of their 1930 short subjects Another Fine Mess. 

The catchphrase became so familiar that L&H even got laughs out of variations on it. For example, in Chickens Come Home (1931), Ollie starts to say to Stan, “Well,…” But Stan finishes the thought with, “Here’s another nice mess I’ve gotten you into.” In the shorts The Fixer Uppers and Thicker Than Water (both 1935), Ollie remarks, “Well, here’s another nice kettle of fish you pickled me in!” And in the feature film Saps at Sea (1940), Ollie declares, “Well, here’s another nice bucket of suds you’ve gotten me into!”

If you’re a hard-core Laurel & Hardy buff (here, sir!), you might have wondered how many times this catchphrase has showed up in a L&H film. One enterprising website has documented the answer — indicating that the catchphrase (including its minor variations mentioned above) was used a total of 16 times. In two instances, it showed up twice in the same film, and it is even the very last line of dialogue ever spoken by Laurel & Hardy in a theatrical movie (in their final release, 1951’s infamous Utopia).

Unlike Laurel & Hardy themselves, another set of filmmakers did use the catchphrase correctly as a title, but to little avail. In 1972 came a little-seen movie comedy titled Another Nice Mess. It was produced by Tom Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, and it was written and directed by Bob Einstein (later to gain fame as stunt man “Super Dave Osborne” on cable TV). Intended as a political satire, it starred impressionist Rich Little and character actor Herb Voland playing President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew in the manner of Laurel and Hardy. Apparently, the movie had only a brief run in a few Los Angeles theaters and was never released nationally.

In 2005, a jury of over 1,500 leaders from the creative community, including film artists, critics, and historians, chose what they felt were cinema’s 100 most memorable quotes for the American Film Institute’s “100 Years…100 Movie Quotes” list. Ollie’s “Another nice mess” quote ranked at # 60.

The phrase continues to be relevant in the age of blogging. A little over a year ago, a blogger — who had recommended the use of an older Microsoft handset whose email app later became obsolete — used Ollie’s catchphrase as the headline for his blog on how he would help users restore their email system. And just three weeks ago, a blogger for LinkedIn.com felt compelled to hurl Ollie’s invective at “interventionist economists” such as Alan Greenspan.

Right up to the end of his life, Stan Laurel poo-poo’d the idea that his movies had any claims to either social commentary or immortality. One would imagine how floored he’d be that just one simple sentence from his movies has taken on such a life of its own.

*

Sources:

American Film Institute. 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes. http://www.afi.com/100Years/quotes.aspx

Hearn, John. Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/another-nice-mess-youve-gotten-me-john-hearn

StanLaurelAndOliverHardy.com. Nice Mess. http://www.stanlaurelandoliverhardy.com/nicemess.htm

Technical Meshugana. Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into! http://www.techmeshugana.com/2014/11/nice-mess-microsoft/

Turner Classic Movies. Another Nice Mess. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/739646/Another-Nice-Mess/notes.html

Wikipedia. Laurel and Hardy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_and_Hardy

 

The IN LIKE A LION, OUT LIKE A LAMB BLOGATHON is here!

The month of March is upon us, and with that our lion-to-lamb film blogathon. For the next three days, we take a look at bloggers’ memories of movies that originally got them wound up with apprehension, only to fill them with relief from moviemakers who actually knew what they were doing.

If you are one of the blogging participants, please leave the name and URL of your blog entry in the “Comments” section below, and I will appropriately link to it. Readers, simply click on the links below to read the blogathon entries — and bookmark this site, as we will provide blogathon updates at the end of each day. Enjoy!

Here’s the line-up:

Movie Movie Blog Blog – The Ref (1994)

BNoirDetour – The Big Sleep (1946)

Cinematic Scribblings – The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

Old Hollywood Films – Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948)

I Found It at the Movies – The Wild Bunch (1969)

Moon in Gemini – The Terminator (1984)

Love Letters to Old Hollywood – When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Serendipitous Anachronisms – I Bury the Living (1958)

In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood – Move Over Darling (1963)

Dell on Movies – Flipped (2010)

THE REF (1994) – Not your ordinary Christmas movie

 

The following is my entry in my In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb Blogathon, being hosted at this blog from Feb. 28-Mar. 1, 2016. Click on the above banner, and read bloggers’ accounts of how they attended certain movies with great trepidation, only to be pleasantly surprised by them!

R.I.P., Blockbuster Video.

I never thought I’d write those words. But I have to admit, if you hit that place on the right night, with someone on the floor who really knew his or her movies, it was like getting directed to a rare album selection at Tower Records that you never even knew existed.

One Saturday night, my wife and I were in Blockbuster, wanting to find a fresh comedy but at a complete loss for what to watch. We got all the way to the checkout lane with a half-baked selection, and the cashier could actually see the despair in our eyes. She asked what the problem was. When we told her, she asked, “Have you ever heard of The Ref?”

When we heard the title, my wife and I declared that we weren’t interested in any feel-good football movie. The cashier laughed and told us that the title was simply deceiving. She gave us the movie’s box to look at. Denis Leary? Kevin Spacey? Whoever heard of these guys?

The cashier smiled and assured us that, if we were in the mood for a dark comedy, we should take her word for it and rent the movie. Blessed be that cashier — we can only hope that cashier has gone on to bigger and better things in the movie world.

The movie introduces us to an on-the-rocks couple, Lloyd and Caroline Chasseur (Spacey and Judy Davis), whose bickering is so tumultuous that even their marriage counselor (B.D. Wong) can barely keep it contained. On their way home, it is the Chasseurs’ bad luck to run into Gus (Leary). Gus has tried to pull off what he thought was a simple burglary, but he barely escaped the toothsome clutches of a guard dog, and his alcoholic partner has driven off without him.

Gus holds the Chasseurs at gunpoint, tells them to drive to their home, and holds them hostage there while he tries to figure out how to bail himself out. Meanwhile, the homefront gets even more complicated when the Chasseurs’ spoiled son Jesse arrives home from boarding school.

Oh, and this all occurs on Christmas Eve, which ushers in an enjoyable subplot involving the Chasseurs’ self-absorbed family (led by the sublime Christine Baranski) and some smile-inducing nods to It’s a Wonderful Life and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (wait for it).

So many modern dark comedies are tiresome, not because they have a nasty edge to them, but because they pretend to be hostile while taking a “just kidding” approach because they fear alienating their audience. The Ref serves up its bile straight and black and is at its most delightful when it shatters audience expectations.

Gus thinks all it will take to get out of this mess is a gun and an attitude, but he ends up being the titular referee to this volcanic couple that he can’t shake. And Gus has even more to deal with when Jesse finds more of a father figure in Gus than he does in his own father.

The Ref is simply a delightful surprise all around, right down to the credits. The script is by Richard LaGravenese, who pulled off a similar black-humored miracle with his screenplay for The Fisher King. But the movie’s biggest surprise is that it was produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer! How did the masterminds behind Top Gun and Flashdance catch their breath long enough to do a dark, thoughtful character study?

Of course, if you’ve seen the sterling work of cast members Leary, Spacey, Davis, and Baranski in the past two decades, I don’t have to sell you on their work here. The Ref is like a warm-up for their greatest work to come — a very heated warm-up.

Announcing the IN LIKE A LION, OUT LIKE A LAMB BLOGATHON!

The month of March is just around the corner. So it seems appropriate for our blog to usher in the

Think of a movie that you went into or prepared to see — in any format (theater, DVD, cable, rental) — with the gravest of misgivings, only to discover that it was either not that bad or more delightful that you could have imagined. So you began with gruff expectations, only to have your heart melt by movie’s end.

We ask you to share that experience via blog. Maybe start out by explaining why you were unsure about the movie. Was your Significant Other dragging you to see what you thought was a “chick flick”? Had the movie received universally bad reviews, and you went to see it only because nothing else was available? Then give a decent summary of the plot, actors, etc., and why you ended up liking the movie.

Here are the rules:

1. Please leave me a message in the “Comments” section below that includes the name and URL of your blog, and the name of the movie you choose to write about.
2. Below are banners to advertise the blogathon. Once you have completed Step # 1, please grab a banner, display it on your blog, and link it back to this blog.
3. The blogathon will take place from Sun. Feb. 28, through Tues., Mar. 1, 2016. Once you have posted your blogathon entry on one of those dates, please post its URL in the “Comments” section so that I can link our blog back to it.

Have fun with your blog entry, and let’s make this blogathon roar! Here’s the line-up so far:

Movie Movie Blog Blog – The Ref (1994)

BNoirDetour – The Big Sleep (1946)

Cinematic Scribblings – The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

Old Hollywood Films – Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948)

I Found It at the Movies – The Wild Bunch (1969)

Moon in Gemini – The Terminator (1984)

Love Letters to Old Hollywood – When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Serendipitous Anachronisms – I Bury the Living (1958)

In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood – Move Over Darling (1963)

Dell on Movies – Flipped (2010)