A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards

Wesleyan Film

by Sam Wasson

A detailed and hilarious look at the art and life of a legendary Hollywood filmmaker

With one of the longest and most controversial careers in Hollywood history, Blake Edwards is a phoenix of movie directors, full of hubris, ambition, and raving comic chutzpah. His rambunctious filmography remains an artistic force on par with Hollywood's greatest comic Lubitsch, Sturges, Wilder. Like Wilder, Edwards's propensity for hilarity is double-helixed with pain, and in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and even The Pink Panther, we can hear him off-screen, laughing in the dark. And yet, despite those enormous successes, he was at one time considered a Hollywood villain. After his marriage to Julie Andrews, Edwards's Darling Lili nearly sunk the both of them and brought Paramount Studios to its knees. Almost overnight, Blake became an industry pariah, which ironically fortified his sense of satire, as he simultaneously fought the Hollywood tide and rode it. Employing keen visual analysis, meticulous research, and troves of interviews and production files, Sam Wasson delivers the first complete account of one of the maddest figures Hollywood has ever known.

Genres: Film

370 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

SAM WASSON is the author of the New York Times bestseller Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M .: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman and two works of film criticism. He is a visiting professor of film at Wesleyan University.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The scene by scene breakdowns of Edwards' films is what was missing from Wasson's recent The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood, which never really got around to actually looking at the film.

[Dan Lalande · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of our better showbiz biographers, Sam Wasson, tries his hand at film scholarship, concentrating on overlooked auteur Blake Edwards. Unfortunately, Wasson's palpable zeal can't compensate for his analytical amateurishness. While Edwards' leitmotifs - paternalism, deceit, gender politics -are given proper due, Wasson shows his rookie's hand by over-intellectualizing the less elliptical, namely, gag construction and photographic composition. The "splurch" is on him.

[Paul Cool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long overdue description and assessment of Blake Edwards' entire film career. Covers not only the films we all know (e.g., Pink Panther series), but the forgotten comedy gems (What Did You Do in the War Daddy) and duds (your choice here). Well researched and written. A must for fans of film comedy, especially 60s-80s. A different take on Edwards' wife, Julie Andrews

[Genevieve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply genius.

[Alex Lapides · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Blake Edwards movies, you will very much like this book. I do, so I did.