1981's S.O.B is Blake Edwards' Agreeably Acerbic "Fuck You" to Hollywood

When not sadistically trying to keep his Pink Panther franchise going in violent defiance of God’s will and the even stronger will of Peter Sellers, sex and slapstick master Blake Edwards, made a series of films so personal that some of them he co-wrote with his psychiatrist (The Man Who Loved Women, a remake of Francois Truffaut’s film of the same name), some of which he financed personally and filmed in his home (That’s Life), and a whole bunch of which co-starred his real-life wife, Julie Andrews. 

The scathing 1981 show-business satire S.O.B. wasn’t financed by Edwards or co-written by his shrink, but it is damn near impossible to overlook the film’s autobiographical nature. This is most prominent in the casting of Edwards’ real-life wife Julie Andrews, the embodiment of plucky wholesomeness thanks to her iconic turn as beloved children’s character Mary Poppins, as Sally Miles, the estranged actress wife of the film’s producer in S.O.B. and the embodiment of plucky wholesomeness in the film’s universe thanks to her iconic turn as beloved children’s character Peter Pan. 

The sordid allure of S.O.B. came down to, “Is Mary Poppins really going to show her boobs?” In Night Wind, the film’s within-a-film (if you think Edwards does not make his share of fart jokes with that title, then you are clearly unfamiliar with the man and his work), it comes down to, “Is Peter Pan going to show her boobs?” S.O.B. is smarter than its disreputable central claim to fame would suggest but is a staggeringly odd, strangely vital proposition that’s smart and funny and sad and wise about show-business and its casualties and collateral damage one moment, and given over to a nonsensical car chase or shootout the next. 

The film is beguilingly strange in other ways as well. Its tone and emphasis and style are perpetually changing. Much of the film’s first act is devoted to a wild show-business orgy involving many of the film’s characters whose deep focus and slapstick gags, not to mention show-business party setting, calls to mind the bubblegum Jaques Tati shenanigans of Edwards’ slapstick classic The Party. 

The film opens with Edwards surrogate Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) in a state of suicidal despair after it becomes apparent that Night Wind, the massive musical he’s produced for his wife (which in turn is inspired by the earlier Edwards/Andrews collaboration Darling Lili), is destined to be a flop of historic proportions. Like the anti-heroes of Harold & Maude and Better Off Dead, Farmer never stops trying to kill himself in slapstick pratfalls of dubious taste but undeniable comic artistry. 

Mulligan acquits himself nicely enough, but he can’t help but feel outclassed by a supporting cast that includes William Holden as Tim Culley, the hard-living director of Night Wind, Robert Preston as Dr. Irving Finegarten, a dedicated quack with a quick wit to rival Oscar Levant’s, Robert Webber as easily spooked press agent Ben Coogan, and of course Julie Andrews, who is wonderfully game here.

Felix stops moping about in a sub-verbal suicidal haze when he comes up with an idea for saving his big-budget fiasco that sounds suspiciously like a plan to destroy it. In a frenzy of warped inspiration, Felix decides there’s no use fighting the Sodom & Gomorrah decadence of late 1970s/early 1980s California life so you might as well embody it to the Nth degree. 

A desperate Felix re-conceives Night Wind as a naughty, semi-pornographic romp featuring a topless turn from a woman legendary for her morality, chastity and virtue. Felix has a Howard Beale-style revelation about the way the world really works and devotes himself to pursuing this strategy with wild-eyed intensity and scary conviction. 

At its most ambitious, S.O.B. suggests a film-world take on the acidic, Old Testament-level damning satire of Network. Edwards’ dialogue is defiantly stylized and flashy, forever calling attention to itself and its malevolent, bitchy wit. When Edwards’ wicked words are in the mouths of old pros like Holden, Preston and Webber, the result is invariably inspired. 

S.O.B. dramatically changes tone, pacing and structure every half hour or so. The film’s last half hour is devoted, unexpectedly, to surprisingly funny and clever posthumous slapstick (that’s physical comedy abetted by a corpse) that suggests a proto-Weekend At Bernie’s, with an expired Felix Farmer taking the role of the corpse manipulated about in a way to make it appear still alive, and Holden, Preston and Webber inhabiting the Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy role of the sloshed buddies trying to give their dead pal a properly drunken Viking Funeral. 

S.O.B. finds Edwards at his best and his worst. It’s a wildly excessive film about excess, a deeply vulgar fuck you to an industry, a lifestyle and a worldview that Edwards obviously loves and hates with equal fervor, and the cynicism and opportunism that power the film industry, with its enormous, easily bruised egos. 

Like 10, which it sometimes resembles, S.O.B. is about the existential anxiety that comes with growing older and risking failure in a world and a culture that prizes youth and success above all else. It’s also a film that derives an additional resonance from the many places where the action in front of the camera reflects the behind-the-scenes drama. 

There is a wonderful moment early in the film where Holden’s hard-drinking, sexually voracious survivor tells his self-pitying friend Felix that he is a goddamned fool for trying to kill himself in obvious, clumsy and joyless ways when he himself had been pursuing a path of complete self-destruction via booze, nicotine, sex and all-around bad behavior for decades and enjoying every goddamned minute of it. It’s a miniature monologue that gets some of its dark, tricky power from the knowledge that Holden was himself a famous libertine who would die of alcohol-related causes only a few months after S.O.B.’s release. 

In the film's darkest running gag, a dead actor keels over on the beach while his loyal dog mewls mournfully, only to be consistently ignored by the pleasure-seekers frolicking on the sand. I’m afraid to report that since my wife and I are only human, we were more disturbed by the sad dog with the sorrowful cry than the corpse by his side. It wouldn’t be long before it was Holden’s body that would be found lifeless under tragic circumstances. People would begin wondering not if Hollywood had played a role in this brilliant, soulful, troubled man’s demise, but rather just how central a role it ended up playing. 

S.O.B was released roughly three decades after Sunset Boulevard and in terms of age and professional status, Holden’s character in S.O.B. is closer to Norma Desmond than the cynical up and comer he played in Wilder’s blackly comic show-business masterpiece. In S.O.B., we’re informed that throughout the sound stages of Hollywood, there was a moment of silence in honor of the previously anonymous corpse on the beach, who we learn was an award-winning actor. 

Underneath the righteous satirical anger of S.O.B. lies a profound sadness, a melancholy rooted in Hollywood lions from an earlier generation coming to terms with their professional and personal mortality, and the demands of a world that never stops changing and evolving, whether we’re ready for those changes or not. 

I wonder if, when Holden’s body was found, to the sadness and horror, if not quite shock of a show-business community long aware of his problems with alcohol, there similarly was a moment of silence throughout the film industry before these technicians, these masters of the craft, went back to shooting Boob Academy or whatever nonsense happened to be parading in front of their cameras. For as S.O.B. bitterly and wittily, if unevenly attests, nostalgia and respect for the giants of show business’ past is all well and good but there’s no escape from the unrelenting dictates of the marketplace.

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