Directed by Larry Moyer.
Written by Carlo and Larry Moyer with cinematography by Max Glenn music by Shel Silverstein and Teddy Vann.
The film stars Lionel Stander (Call Northside 777, narrator Blast of Silence, Once Upon a Time in the West) as Anatole. With Barbara London, Art Smith (Framed, Brute Force, Ride the Pink Horse, Body and Soul, T-Men, Caught, Manhandled, Quicksand, In a Lonely Place, The Killer That Stalked New York, and The Sound of Fury) as Doc Savartz, Wendy Barrie, Alan Ansara, and Barry Newman (Vanishing Point).
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| Cafe owner Anatole (Lionel Stander) |
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| Doc Savartz (Art Smith) |
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| Bank robber (Alan Ansara?) |
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| Anatole's gal pal Angel Barbara London ? |
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| Mason (Barry Newman) lt. |
The Story
Bank robbery gone wrong. Three men rob a downtown bank in Manhattan.
They filter in and at the designated time pull their guns.
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| Go time! |
The robbers empty out the cash draws. One of the guards starts shooting back. The robbers take off out the door and out on to the streets.
Unfortunately for them a squad car is nearby and gives chase...
Two of the bank robbers are killed trying to scale a wall. The third one wounded with a gut shot headed in a different direction and gets away with the sack of loot. $90,000 dollars.
The wounded robber Ansara gets away on a Greenwich Village bound tourist bus.
Anatole (Lionel Stander) is a cat who runs a dive Village beatnik, tourist trap, coffee house. A tourist bus is on the way. His workers are a bunch of actors he hires for the real beatnik atmo. They get get three hots and share cots with each other and their pet rat that they keep in a bird cage. (I wonder if they inherited one of dead Ralphie's pet rats from Blast Of Silence)
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| Anatole and the beats it's almost time for the tourist bus |
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| Sleeping in a basement bathtub |
Anatole heads to the basement to rouse his weed smoking crew
The tourist bus passes street artists their works against fences/walls, Washington Square, etc., etc. It pulls up
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| Tail fins |
Down at the coffee house Anatole is reading his poetry, the actors are at the tables as square john tourists filter in. The bank robber sneaks down into the basement crash pad.
The lights go down and Anatole recites one of his god awful poems, Howl it ain't.
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| Tourists |
A police detective arrives at the end of Anatole's recital. The detective uses Anatole as a sort of watchdog. The police are canvasing the neighborhood businesses asking to keep an eye out for anyone suspicious.
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| Anatole and Police Detective |
Anatole: Your're becoming a regular customer.
Police Detective: Hello Anatole.
Anatole: I know you didn't come down here for the poetry.
Police Detective: It's about the bank job.
Anatole: So?
[Lt hands Anatole a picture of the robber]
Waitress [bringing coffee looks at it]: He's not bad looking for a bank robber.
Anatole: A bank robbery is good for the Village it builds up business tourists love it.
Police Detective [taking a sip of coffee]: This coffee is the worst.\
Anatole:Whata ya expect the Waldorf-Astoria? They don't come down here for the coffee. They can get that at home. They come here to suffer makes 'em feel artistic.
Police Detective: Well anyway I would like you to keep your eyes open because I figure he's still in the Village somewhere. A lot of people come through your place especially the weird ones. If you hear anything let me know.
Anatole: Look, I have enough trouble trying to make a living down here without trying to play cops and robbers. That's your problem.
Police Detective: As a personal favor I'd like to get it over with before my vacation starts.
Anatole: OK if he comes down here and orders a cup of espresso I'll send up a smoke signal.
Police Detective: Thanks, I'll see ya.
The detective heads out to speak with other denizens of the Village. He approaches Moondog a real genuine NYC character who dressed up in a Viking outfit.
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| Moondog |
Moondog was the real deal. I actually knew Moondog. Though for me it was three years later than this film. I knew him between 1966-1970. I used to pass him on my way to school. In 1966 he stood like a medieval viking sentinel rain or shine on the Northeast corner of 6th Avenue and 54th Street in Manhattan right in front of the Warwick Hotel. My friends and I would always say "Hi Moondog."
Moondog's real name was Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999), and he was an American musician, composer, theoretician, poet and inventor of several musical instruments. He was blind from the age of 16. He often just standing silently on the sidewalk. But occasionally he played music or sold music. He was widely recognized as "the Viking of 6th Avenue."
He was no bum. He had an apartment someplace uptown and a country house upstate. He rubbed shoulders with the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini, as well as legendary jazz men Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman. This was back when he used to stand on the corner of "The Street," the 52nd Street jazz -nightclub -strip club Mecca.
He had a strong interest in Nordic mythology, and maintained an altar to Thor in his country home in Candor, NY.
BTW, some of Moondog's music was used in The Big Lebowski read more here Moondog
Back to the film......
When the tourist bus and it's passengers takes off the actors take off back to their crash pad in the basement. They find the loan surviving bank robber hiding out. They are cool with it, being anti-establishment etc., etc., they let him crash on a mattress, and bandage him up and get drug dealing pharmacist Doc Savartz played by Art Smith to give him morphine for the pain.
Art tells Mason that it doesn't look to good for the robber.
So, the beats do their various counterculture beatnik things, like crashing gallery openings to stuff their faces from the deli platters, stealing milk bottles in the early mornings from in front of apartment doors. Getting stoned. Popping pills. Showering regularly with friends, i.e. altogether at a rich old art patrons digs when they are dirty. Attending wild avant-garde loft parties, etc., etc. The film is sprinkled with candid Neo Realist sequences of real people doing their thing.
All the characters, Anatole and Angel included, while doing all this, keep checking on the robber down in the basement and the $90,000 he has. They all want a piece of it. He is sinking fast. but is functional enough to still be able to wave around his revolver.
Noirsville
Angel: It's against the law.
Anatole: The bank took it from its customers, the hood took it from the bank, we take it from the hood- that's life, the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle
Its a piece of preserved Greenwich Village Beat nostalgia that has crappy coffee house bad poetry readings, jazz music, folk music hootenannies, weed smoking joint passing sessions, belly dancers, gay couples, authentic Village weirdos and as a bonus has some real footage of Little Italy's Feast of San Genaro Festival. Watchable 5-6/10
Won the Golden Gate Award in San Francisco for Best Director in 1963.
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