Other Titles • Kiss Me, Stupid • Küss mich, Dummkopf (1964)
Synopses for Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
1.
In 1964 director Billy Wilder was at the top of his game. Following a string of hits that had begun in 1959 with Some Like It Hot, he now intended to direct a bawdy boudoir farce in the grand tradition of the French theater. The contorted plot involves one Orville J. Spooner, an aspiring song writer (originally to be played by Peter Sellers, but replaced by Ray Walston after Sellers suffered a heart attack, which he partly blamed on Wilder), and his crazed lyricist, buddy Barney Milsap. Together they toil away in the town of Climax, Nevada, Orville working as a piano teacher and Barney pumping gas across the street. Along comes Dean Martin, playing a thinly veiled caricature of himself, who just wants to fill up his tank. Instead, the songwriting duo rig his car so he's forced to spend the night at Orville's, giving the dolts a chance to pitch their songs. But Dino also wants Orville's wife. No problem! They hire Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak), the local prostitute, to masquerade as her. Thus begin the high jinks. The film plays like an extended dirty joke that could have been told around the office water cooler in 1960. It was a colossal failure both critically and commercially, and was banned by the Catholic League of Decency, to boot. Nonetheless, the film has aged well and was ahead of its time (think of it as the grandfather of Caddyshack and the great-grandfather of There's Something About Mary). Wilder eventually renounced the film and moved on. --Kristian St. Clair
2.
In Wilder's smutty low comedy, Dean Martin has little trouble easing into the role of Dino, a womanizing pop singer with a yen for the grape. Enroute to Hollywood after a Las Vegas gig, he stops in a small Nevada town, where his arrival is considered a piece of extraordinary fortune by amateur songwriters, music teacher Orville J. Spooner (Ray Walston) and mechanic Barney Milsap (Cliff Osmond). To guarantee Dino's presence and a hearing for their songs, Barney makes a few alterations in his car, while Orville offers his house for the night. But when he learns of the singer's overwhelming need for sex, Orville gets his attractive wife Zelda (Felicia Farr) out of the house and persuades local hooker and waitress Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak) to take her place in case the singer needs special attention. Even so, when Dino makes the predicted moves on Polly, the music teacher still is overwhelmed by jealousy and throws the bewildered singer out of the house. Dino seeks refuge in a nearby bar, only to find Zelda drowning her sorrows.
3.
When world-renowned singer “Dino” (Martin in a hilarious self-parody) passes through Climax, Nevada, he doesn't count on meeting two would-be songwriters with a plan to trap him there and serenade him with their songs. But then again, they weren't counting on Dino's insatiable appetite…for wine and women! And when one of the men learns that his own wife was once president of Dino's fan club, he hires a replacement wife (Kim Novak) to help lure the carousing star into a song-buying mood!
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