Sean Burns
Presumably the first student film to score one of its actors an Oscar nomination, 1966’s You’re a Big Boy Now was the thesis project of a UCLA grad school hotshot named Francis Ford Coppola. Not a lot of film students wind up having their homework released by a major studio, but the then-27-year-old wunderkind could never be accused of thinking small. Budgeted at an unheard-of $800,000 (but coming in at more around $1 million), Coppola’s freewheeling adaptation of David Benedictus’s 1963 novel has style and ambition to burn. It’s a wild, visually spectacular calling card in the service of material that’s honestly pretty puerile.
Few genres have aged worse than antic ‘60s sex comedies – except maybe ‘80s sex comedies – and Coppola’s ensuing six-decade career would indicate that he’s never been much for bedroom farce. In hindsight it seems clear that You’re a Big Boy Now was a shrewd calculation from a young filmmaker looking to make a name for himself in the then-nascent youth movie market. Coppola had previously helmed softcore sexploitation flicks (his official first feature was 1962’s Tonight for Sure) and worked as a jack-of-all-trades for Roger Corman, who in return let him direct the low budget 1963 chiller Dementia 13. You’re a Big Boy Now was to be his shot at the major leagues, the title itself a declaration of principles.
Benedictus’s story itself is pretty thin gruel. It’s the tale of wide-eyed innocent Bernard Chanticleer, whose overbearing parents call him Big Boy. Played without much in the way of charm by Canadian actor Peter Kastner, Bernard is a guileless little horndog who gets around on roller skates and stumbles haphazardly from one slapstick mess into the next. His uptight, rage-prone father (Rip Torn) is a curator of incunabula at the New York Public Library, allowing his son to work as an assistant there despite the kid being basically unemployable.
Much to the chagrin of his smothering mother (Geraldine Page, who was married to Torn at the time) it is decided that it’s time for Big Boy to leave the nest. His folks set him up in a New York apartment governed by a busybody landlady named Miss Thing (Julie Harris) who has installed a vicious, woman-hating rooster roaming Bernard’s floor to frighten off any female company. Bernard’s mother is hysterical regarding the possibility of her son landing in the arms of a lady – Page’s surprise Oscar nomination appears to have been out of respect for sheer physical exertion – going so far as to enclose locks of her hair with her weekly letters to Big Boy.
If you notice any odd echoes in Rip Torn’s unavoidably funny consternation with his stunted, manchild son, it’s because the actor basically reprised the role to even more blustery, profane ends some 35 years later in Tom Green’s absurdist 2001 masterpiece Freddy Got Fingered. (There are few things funnier than Rip Torn being angry with someone, especially when it’s his idiot kid. Thanks to the magic of the movies, he seemed to stay mad at his son for three-and-a-half decades.) But You’re A Big Boy Now doesn’t dwell too much on the father-son problems, instead zeroing in on the protagonist’s considerable issues with women.
Bernard is adored by Amy, played by the great Karen Black in her first real movie role. A co-worker now at the library, Amy’s had a thing for Bernard since grade school. (“But you were so ugly!” he says when remembering her, ever the smoothie.) Though he deigns to date her now, our Big Boy is still hung up on Elizabeth Hartman’s Barbara, a go-go-dancer and man-eating sociopath who toys mercilessly with his emotions. Suffice it to say, none of this plays especially palatably today. Even making allowances for the era, Bernard is not an interesting enough character to get away with it. (Black spent the 1970s being mistreated onscreen by a far more fascinating gallery of men.)
To the film’s credit, Coppola isn’t particularly interested in Bernard’s romantic travails either, instead focusing his energy on making every scene into an eye-popping, show-offy set piece. There’s one tour de force camera move through the library after another, and a pretzel factory sequence is a marvel. One standout scene finds the young man getting his tie caught in the projector gears of a nudie film booth like a perverted Charlie Chaplin. A go-go bar projects scenes from Dementia 13 over Bernard and Amy’s big date, as their first kiss takes place amid the backdrop of Times Square marquees and lighted news tickers spelling out Bernard’s innermost thoughts, saying: “Barbara… Barbara… Barbara… She’s On My Mind Even Now.”
Coppola gained control of the Times Square signage through an arrangement with New York mayor John Lindsay that also allowed him to shoot around the library’s strenuous objection to Rip Torn’s character keeping a secret stash of erotica in the venerable institution’s vault. Coppola has said he doesn’t much like the movie anymore, and it looks politically lightweight next to the ‘60s counterculture comedies that followed soon after, especially his buddy Brian De Palma’s Greetings. Yet You’re A Big Boy Now remains worth watching for the sheer visual extravagance of a young student bound for much bigger and better things.
“You’re A Big Boy Now” is streaming on the Criterion Channel.
