Safari, So Good

Yesterday I passed the Safari Inn in Burbank for the 47,000th time, and recalled watching "True Romance" last week, where it is featured prominently. Then I remembered it in the 90's TV show "Buddy Faro" with Dennis Farina, whose catch phrase, "I feel like a hundred bucks!", our household still frequently uses. Then I remembered it from a bunch of other things, and thought, "Safari Inn, so many people in showbiz start to show their age after fifty years, but not you. What's your secret -- a little Botox around the pool, a tuck in the ice machine, a chemical peel on the maid cart? Lookin' good."

Kick Your Cares Down The Stairs

What famous motel chain got its name from a movie? No, not the "White Men Can't Jump Lodge." From the 1942 film starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, it's "Holiday Inn."

The story goes that when motel founder Kemmons Wilson was planning his chain in 1952, architect Eddie Bluestein named the place after the Crosby/Astaire vehicle as a joke, and the handle stuck. Other movies from the same year were "The Mummy's Tomb," "The Corpse Vanishes," and "Bambi," so he chose well.

"Holiday Inn" is a terrific picture, about a singer and a dancer who start a swinging joint that's only open on holidays. This allows for lots of Irving Berlin musical numbers based around Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July, and so on, with an unfortunate blackface segment for Lincoln's birthday (he freed the slaves, get it?). Of course, the most famous piece of all is saved for the song "White Christmas." What, you thought the song "White Christmas" debuted in the film "White Christmas?" That's just silly.

Here's a great video review of "Holiday Inn" -- with clips -- from the New York Times.

It's Not Technically "Lying," But...

When you look at the poster for "Pink Motel" (1982), then consider the fact that the film stars Phyllis Diller and Slim Pickens, you realize you have just stumbled upon the widest poster-to-stars gulf in the history of cinema.

A River Runs Through (Under) It

Believe it or not, the Sundowner Motel in Caldwell, ID, has a small river running underneath it:

















This photo is part of a whole Flickr gallery on the Sundowner, made as part of a location scout for a film called "Unicorns: The Movie." Anything combining mythical beasts with roadside lodging gets our movie dollars.

Beauty Falls

One poster screamed, "Niagara and Marilyn Monroe: The two most electrifying sights in the world!" That's truth in advertising. Niagara (1953) was Monroe's first big starring role, as a fatale of the femme-est variety who runs around on her husband as they stay at the Rainbow Cabins motel, the famous falls thundering in the background of nearly every scene. The production actually built the faux-tel on location beside the falls, and a single building from the set still stands to this day.

SPOILER ALERT: Monroe's life may have ended too soon, but her on-screen personas always fared better -- except in Niagara, her only movie where her character dies.

Movies Are Often Not True

Nothing pleasant ever happens at a motel in a film. No one enjoys a quick dip in the pool before grabbing a soda and retiring to their room to see what’s on cable, but people do get murdered, tortured, murdered and tortured, or terrorized, murdered, and tortured. Here at Motel Me More, we like to ease peoples’ minds by debunking what they see onscreen.

In the 2007 release VACANCY, a bickering couple (Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale) heal their marital woes by being trapped in a motel and made the stars of a snuff film. But fear not, gentle readers, for this picture is nothing but a ludicrous fiction. How do we know?

In the motel room’s bathroom towel rack, we see two wash cloths and two hand towels, but ONLY ONE BATH TOWEL. This preposterous error instantly pulls the viewer out of the movie, tearing a gaping hole in the film’s logic through which the rest of the plot is helplessly sucked. Incapable of suspending disbelief, the relieved audience now knows nothing they are watching could ever really happen, up to and including Frank Whaley’s mustache.

Hope that helps.

Image copyright Sony Pictures

Better Left Unseen Dept.

I have never seen the movie, "MOTEL HELL," and I know you do not believe this, but it's true. It came out when I was 11, and the trailer ran before something innocuous I was seeing, probably "AIRPLANE!" The poster was in the lobby of the theater:

The trailer and the poster combined in my mind to form a storyline so horrifying I literally lost sleep over it. Now it is many years later, and I have picked up bits and pieces of what it is about over the course of my travels, but I've never actually seen it. Because when something succeeds so perfectly at what it is trying to do, don't you hate to spoil its fun?

Poster copyright MGM/UA.

Family Resemblance

People have said to me, "You grew up living with your mother at a roadside motel in the desert? Isn't that like...?" And I smile and shake my head and say, "It wasn't the same at all. I was never into taxidermy."