I happened to come across
The Sorrow and The Pity at Netflix a couple of weeks ago. I always had wanted to see it because Alvy Singer, Woody Allen's character in
Annie Hall is always talking about what a great movie it is. So I watch it. (It is a great film) I then decide to pull out my old chestnut VHS copy and re-watch
Annie Hall for about the 100th time because I hadn't seen it in a while and wanted to see just what was said about
TSATP. As I watched
Annie Hall, I noticed the woman that is all in white at the L.A. party, the one with the VPL's (a term Alvy's smarmy friend uses to describe her visible pantie lines, which he finds sexy) I wondered many times "Who was this beautiful woman?" The credits told me Laurie Bird. This time, I decided to investigate and searched her out on imdb. In
Annie Hall, she plays the girlfriend of Paul Simon's character, Tony Lacey and in fact was the real life girlfriend of Paul Simon, then sadly read that she had committed suicide in 1979. I noticed she had only been in two other movies,
Cockfighter and
Two-Lane Blacktop.
Amazingly I have realized, the day of the night I watched The Sorrow and the Pity, friends had dropped off a movie for me to watch. They had watched it and were not impressed, telling me "the movie was about nothing" but knowing I watch anything they brought it over. They said the title to me, but because of their general malaise about the film and between other general banter, the tape got set on a shelf and forgot, until last night!
I was in between Netflix mailings, I remembered the tape and needed something to watch. I picked it up and surprisingly it was Two-Lane Blacktop! Kooky huh? I loved it. Laurie Bird is fantastic as the drifter girl. A great road picture about cars and the people who fixate about them and fix them. It stars James Taylor and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. They both did an ok job.
I put Cockfighter on my Netflix list today to finish out my Laurie Bird suite. Sweet!
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