Cher Scholar and Robrt Pela Discuss Good Times

Time and Date of Conversation: September 10, 2023, 2:25 PM

Mary: Woo-hoo! We’re doing movies now!

Robrt: I know. Oh, lord. “Good Times”!

Mary: I love talking Cher-shit with you.

Robrt: Likewise. Especially since you don’t demand that I love everything Cher has ever done. Let’s hear it for critical thinking!

Mary: Yes! We can hate stuff. Okay, when did you first see “Good Times”? And what were your reactions?

Robrt: I remember this. I used to lie on the floor in my childhood bedroom and stare at the minis on the inner sleeve of The Best of Sonny and Cher, and long for some of those records, which were “out there somewhere.” Keep in mind, this was 400 years ago, and I was eight years old. There was no eBay, and I couldn’t hop in my car and drive to the local record store to look for old Sonny and Cher records. Different world.

Mary: “Where are the records, big wide world??”

Robrt: Yes. The old days. Stuff was just out there somewhere. Now you just press some buttons on your phone and they arrive at your door three days later.

Anyway, that was my first introduction to “Good Times.” There was a mini (the tiny photographs of album jackets, used to promote “other records you should buy!” on LP inner sleeves) of “Good Times” on the Best of inner sleeve, and so I knew they’d made a movie and released a soundtrack album. But it was…”gone.”

Mary: What year was this?

Robrt: It was 1968 or so.

Mary: So you just missed seeing “Good Times” in a theater.
(See teenagers watching “Good Times” in the theater.)

Robrt: I did just miss it. But I was also too little to go to a teen movie. The first time I saw “Good Times” was when it made what was billed as its “television debut,” in about 1971. Sonny and Cher were hot again, with their own TV show, and one of the networks, probably CBS, played “Good Times” during its prime time “Movie of the Week” one night. I was there. I had been waiting an eternity to see this thing. Probably four whole years!

Mary: Wow. Waiting four years is a lifetime when you’re a kid.

Robrt:  What about you? When did you first become aware of “Good Times”? How’d you know the movie existed, and the soundtrack LP?

Mary:  My discovery was a little over 10 years later, in 1982. My mother told me Sonny and Cher had a movie on TV one Saturday afternoon…this was in January. Probably our local station, not a network. This was significant for two reasons: My mother didn’t fully approve of my Cher obsession so this was a big deal, her notifying me. And the other thing was that the variety show had been off the air so long, I forgot what Cher’s speaking voice sounded like. I really wanted to see this movie, and was hoping it was a 70s-era Cher movie, but…

Robrt: Okay. Your memories of that first viewing? Did you like it?

Mary: I was disappointed it was old-days (1960s-era) Sonny and Cher but I liked it. I was 11. It was the week St. Louis had a terrible ice storm.  And I had taped the movie onto a cassette tape. We were off school for a week, the ice was so bad. I spent the whole week listening to that tape. I was in heaven. That was like the best week of my life up to that point. I memorized the movie like a radio show, and the lines of dialogue are now part of my DNA.

Robrt: I remember thinking it wasn’t very good. Maybe because the only song I knew from the movie was “It’s the Little Things” (included on Best of), and because I was nine or ten.

Mary: It’s funny we both saw the movie when we were around 10 years old, but in different decades. Not to be Mr. Mordicus, but what didn’t you like about it?

Robrt: Well, I think it was the music, and also how unpolished the movie was. The TV show looked so glam and so polished (then, not now) and this movie was kind of all over the place. And then there was only one song I “knew.” Did you notice that this was a different Cher than the one from the variety show? I mean the first time you saw it when you were little?

Mary: Yes, I had the Look at Us record and so I knew that the 1960s Sonny and Cher were different. But I preferred the 1970s version. I have to say of all of Cher’s movies, this is one of the hardest to defend (like the Prisoner album) but I can do it.

Robrt: There’s a lot to love about this movie. I don’t think you need to love Sonny and Cher to see some of the beauty of this little movie.

Mary:  It was interesting to see Cher behaving as a younger person. I hadn’t seen much of that.

Robrt: Yes, she’s very much playing the Original Cher Character, the one who’s subservient and childlike and “not strong”. I don’t think, as William Friedkin said, that this movie is “unwatchable.”

Mary: Before I was a fan of “Good Times” because I was a fan of Sonny and Cher. Watching it again, I saw a lot of  interesting things I had never before seen.

Robrt: Like what?

Mary: I think the whole music stars vs. Hollywood thing is very interesting. This movie could be a PSA for budding rock stars. (Don’t sign the contract!) The whole mobster element of Hollywood. And the fact that Sonny is at no point intimidated by any of it, even in the sketches. He loses the battles but you get the sense he will persevere.

I also saw a lot of small things like the recurrence of the fur vests, the different plays on Sonny’s bad singing voice.

Robrt: Oh, the Easter eggs. I look forward to talking about those…

Mary: How about you? How is it different for you now?

Robrt: Watching it again, I saw how much it forwarded the Sonny and Cher fable, but: In real time!

Mary: Right! Yes.

Robrt: You know: We’re married, we have these rings, we’re world famous, I’m ugly, she’s weird, we’re in love, we’re squares but we’re also hip…

Mary: Their origin story.

Robrt: Yep. But it was still new at that point, which I hadn’t considered before.

Mary: They were saying, “We’re real people.”

Robrt: Look how real we are!

Mary: We’re happy hippies…we are not commodities (despite being accused of being inauthentic all the time). Come visit our house!

Robrt: Right. So much of this movie takes place in their actual house.

Mary: Sonny could have invented the reality show. I noticed they had him at the piano, which was another real-life thing.

Robrt: Yes, and it’s the piano that Sonny and Cher always mentioned when they would tell the story of their beginnings. And it’s in the garage, which is where they always placed it in the story. But that garage where the piano originally was kept was in Laurel Canyon.

Mary: Self invention: Who controls your story? On the commentary track of the DVD of “Good Times,” Lee Gambin says this is a pitfall of many a movie and music star: being turned into something you’re not. And those who survive that, survive in general.

More origin story stuff: Cher doesn’t like business. It’s all on Sonny. Cher on an elephant!

Robrt: Oh, right. They’re hinting at their own futures, without knowing it.

Mary: I think the mythology was that the late 60s/early 70s night club act is where Cher went public with her wise cracks. But the “Good Times” story predates that and shows that’s not true. She was already doing it.

Robrt: No, you’re right. There are several inconsistencies with the late-early period story that don’t jive. Like, “We’re married.” (You’re not.) And “We got bored so we started insulting each other on the dinner theater circuit in 1970.” (No you didn’t. Go watch “Good Times.”)

Mary: Cher’s torch numbers were predicted too, with the character of Samantha the lounge singer, doing “I’m Gonna Love You.”

Robrt: Well, if you’re looking for predictions as out there as the elephant…how about Cher’s blonde wigs? She wears a couple in this movie.

Mary: Cher as a blonde…definitely interesting .

Can I say I also love the foley. All the sound effects of Sonny’s shoes down the hallway. All the sounds in the Western sketch, slapping badges on Sonny’s vest, him slurping soup and ripping open the envelope in the beginning of the movie.

Robrt: There’s a lot of looping (or dubbing) in “Good Times,” because there are so many exterior scenes. But that’s not unusual in any movie, right? I wonder if you notice the sound in “Good Times” more because you memorized the movie on cassette?

Mary: Yes. And I think that’s why some of the movie’s throwaway lines are ones I most like. And you say that deputy is not saying “Skip de doo, Irv?” in the western barroom scene?

Robrt: Of course he isn’t. But this is bugging me: I once told you, several years ago, what he was saying, and now I can’t remember what the actual line is. Also, I can’t unhear “Skip de doo, Irv!”

Mary: lol. Oookaay.

Robrt: I like the look of this movie perhaps more than anything else. A lot of its aesthetic is a deliberate attempt to be Pop Art and faux-psychedelic. I think the best example of what I mean is the “video” of “It’s the Little Things,” one of only two upbeat numbers in the movie. It’s set in front of comic strip panels (licensing fees!) and they’re dressed in some wild getups, and the way their call-and-response vocals are depicted is genius: He’s a giant two-color head to which she sings in split screen, and then they reverse it…How I wish Cher had recreated this in her last concert tour, rather than doing “The Beat Goes On” (which I also really liked).

Mary: It is really beautifully coloful. For a while I was just loving “Good Times” on a kitsch level… “Sheeeeeee’s just a girl!” You know, stuff like that.

Robrt: Oh, I know what you mean. It’s easy to look at it and go, “Oh, campy. Oh, cheesy. How fun!” But if you look at it through the lens of 1967? Kind of kicky.

Mary:  The whole Pop Art look:  Do you think that matched too closely to TV at the time?

Robrt: I think it does try to match the aesthetic of the moment, yes. Pop Art, TV shows like “Get Smart,” (1965-1970) “The Monkees,” (1965-1968) “Batman” (1966-1968). All influential, all aimed at teens. “The Green Hornet” (1966-1967).

Mary: Aimed at teens is key, I think. This wasn’t really trying to be high art. One of my concerns is that I like this movie because I like camp.

Robrt: I’ll defend camp for hours. Don’t get me started. Camp is subversive. But “Good Times” wasn’t shooting for camp, or for high art. The people who made it wanted to forward their careers.

Mary: But many things we like as camp today weren’t intended to be read that way. Sometimes I feel the only good camp is unintentional camp. Can we like this movie if we don’t like or understand camp?

Robrt: Yes. In part because, as you said, it’s not shooting for camp. They were in dead earnest, making comedy.

Mary: Another aspect of Cher is that she never aims to make art but sometimes accidentally does. And there are moments of that in “Good Times,” too.

Robrt: Accidental art. Like — and I’m going to keep returning to this — that video for “It’s the Little Things.”

Mary: Delicious. I was watching this movie with earphones and Mr. Cher Scholar was working on something else and he came over to say how great the movie’s visuals were.

Robrt: I love that! Did he cite examples?

Mary: Interesting cuts and angles. How it moves.

Robrt: Oh, the editing is quite something.

Mary: He mentioned the colors. And the great montages. Which I guess Friedkin did in other movies, too.

Robrt: Yes. And those quick-cut edit techniques were used each week in “The Monkees”…

Mary: There’s a moment in “Just a Name” where [cinematographer Robert Wyckoff] shoots that office building from a low angle and reveals the lights of each floor, floor by floor…Lots of good nighttime shots in that scene.

Robrt: Oh, I forgot about that.

Mary: Did you notice all the moments that were just swirls of color? Almost every segment had one or two. Just blips of swirling vortexes and whirls.

Robrt: Yes. And lights. Do you think “Good Times” plays well as a traditional musical?

Mary: I struggle with this. I don’t think “Burlesque” is a musical in any sense, just like I don’t think “Yentl” (which I love to death) is a musical in the traditional sense. To me, a musical is a full cast operation like “Hello, Dolly!” Everybody sings.

Robrt: Right. These are more like movies with music.

Mary: Do we call “Head” and “A Hard Day’s Night” musicals? A musical is an art form unto itself. These are not that.

Robrt: No. I think you can argue that rock-n-roll movies starring rock stars are a hybrid of the traditional musical. But elements of “Good Times” play as traditional musicals might: the characters sing about things that are happening right now. They also sing to and with one another about what they’re thinking and feeling and what’s happening at the moment.

Mary: That’s true and maybe they did that loosely in “Head” and “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Robrt: I think part of why “Good Times” doesn’t work is that it’s both too traditional and not quite traditional enough. Do you know what I mean? The premise provides for fantasy sequences, which is a very Old Hollywood trick. But then the flashbacks work a little too hard at pushing the “hip” button.

Mary: So you do see a disjunction in the real time vs. fantasy sequences?

Robrt: You mean, stylistically?

Mary: Yes, and just in trying to integrate those two elements.

Robrt: No, because they must be different from one another in order for that fantasy-sequence premise to work.

Mary: One is trying to be hip, using humor definitely of its time, but you couldn’t really do that in the live segments that are trying to get Sonny and Cher to look real.

Robrt: We have to believe that Sonny is Irving Ringo, but also that it’s Sonny thinking about playing a sheriff in his new movie.

Robrt: I have to confess, I don’t love the three mini movies. I just want to watch Sonny and Cher pretending to be themselves.

Mary: Yeah. So then, let’s talk about the relationship between Sonny and Cher at the time they made this movie.

Robrt: I love watching them together in 1966. They were still really into one another. And although I know they’re playing caricatures of themselves, I like to think I’m also seeing them as authentically as one ever could have, since their career was built on caricatures. This is where, if you really want to deconstruct this movie, things get a little weird. Because they’re caricatures playing caricatures of themselves. So who they “really were” remains a mystery.

Mary: But not broad caricatures, mildly to the left of themselves But I also think this was an affectionate time for them. Their chemistry is very sweet.

Robrt: Yes. Things didn’t go south until a little while later. One forgets how new they are to one another and to their story in 1966.

Mary: I think they “play themselves” and that honesty is a bit dangerous.

Robrt: But they’re playing themselves as people who…play themselves. Who were they really?

Mary: Yeah. it’s a rabbit hole. Layers of identity presentation.

Robrt: One small example of what I mean: In the 60s, on stage and on television variety shows, Sonny was a middle-aged man pretending to be a counterculture hippie. He was Sonny Bono playing “Sonny Bono.” So, in “Good Times,” he’s Sonny Bono playing “Sonny Bono” playing “Sonny Bono.” If that makes sense.

Mary: Yes, it’s a man playing a singing star who’s playing a version of that singing star as a character in a movie who is then envisioning himself in fantastical genre situations.

I think you can see that Cher worships Sonny and that Sonny is fond of Cher. That part feels “real.” I think the movie portraying Cher as jealous of Sonny with other women is interesting. It shows up a bit in the western skit and in her jealousy of Sonny’s dreaming of Zora.

Robrt: I’ll admit it here: I didn’t notice the jealousy angle in the story.

Mary: Really? Cher’s like, “Who is Zora?” and Sonny does his sheepish explaining.

Robrt: There’s a scene where he’s in bed with three dames and he’s kissing one.

Mary: Was it three dames or two?

Robrt: And I thought, Oh, Cher must have hated that.

Mary: When the blonde resigns as a deputy, Cher says, “When’d you make her deputy?”

Robrt: Squaresville jealousy. And that’s part of this movie’s charm, and its downfall: “Good Times” sometimes feels too vaudevillian. And kids didn’t necessarily trust Grandma’s taste.

Mary: Good point.

Robrt: But to be fair, the vaudeville isn’t entirely misplaced. Because remember that in the mid Sixties, there was that brief trend in embracing the 20s ethos: fringe dresses and high-color wig heads (there’s one in “Good Times”) and all those Tin Pan Alley songs on pop artists’ records—the A-A-B-A structure played on ukuleles: the Mamas and Papas and the Beatles (“If I Fell”) and the Monkees (“Magnolia Sims”) and even Sonny and Cher (“Podunk”).

Mary: Your comment just triggered this in my head: What if John Waters had directed this movie?

Robrt: It would have been bonkers. He would have had Sonny imagining a movie in which Cher is a prostitute and Sonny is her pimp. Cher would have been portrayed by Divine. Edith Massey would have turned up as Georgia: “I TOLD YOU you shouldn’t have married that guy!”

Mary: That vaudeville schtick did seem a bit goofy to me, even as a kid. But then I thought the Monkees were goofy, too.

Robrt: Goofy as cool. Old Timey stuff as counter-culture.

Mary: “Good Times” is nearly 60 years old now. But when it was released, the vaudeville thing was only forty years old.

Robrt: Right. Our perspective now is utterly different. But I watch movies like this with an eye on remembering the ethos of the time. I can remember when guys wore Nehru jackets, so if Sonny wears one in a clip from 1967, I’m not laughing at him. I’m going, “Yeah, that’s right.”

You mentioned how, in “Good Times,” they’re telling “the Sonny and Cher story” in real time. They also seem to be trying to move on from “I Got You Babe” and fur vests, and yet there are so many (unintentional?) Easter eggs in this movie: Sonny’s fur vest draped over a chair in the dining room; Cher wearing the wide-whale corduroys in “Just a Name”; Sonny wearing his costume from the “Wondrous World” cover shoot… I could talk “Good Times” Easter eggs for hours. But we should talk about the movie itself, right?

Mary: Cher practically fondles the fur vest in “Just a Name.”

Robrt: It’s possible I’m wrong, and they’re not really Easter eggs, because they were just “things that were relevant” in the Sonny and Cher story at the time.

Mary: Like the bit about Sonny’s long hair in the Jungle Morry sketch that alludes to Sonny’s being harassed in the 60s for his long hair. And Cher designing her own clothes. The most chilling moment for me is Cher’s disinterest in business and the whole “Trust Me” song.

Robrt: But…if you didn’t know these things about their career at that time, none of this stuff about them would register, right? Okay, we need to talk about the actual movie and stop meditating on fur vests and their deeper meaning.

I love how the whole story is set up during the titles. Very crafty. And Sixties Sonny and Cher concert footage! That opening sequence in downtown LA, despite all that crappy looping, is fun to watch.

Mary: It’s a very slick montage. I wish I knew where that fountain sculpture was located. Cher wears mostly coordinated suits in this movie, too. Very few dresses, if any.

Robrt: I love the premise of the movie, from their life: She doesn’t want to make a movie. And yet that’s never rung true to me. Cher has done everything else in show biz, why wouldn’t she want to make a movie, especially when she set out to be an actress in the first place? Her explanation is “I like what I’m doing.”

Mary: That has always bothered me, too. I don’t think this was the movie she had in mind for her acting debut.

Robrt: And that’s the thing about the context of the story: Sonny is thinking about making a movie…and instead of a New Cinema thing, he’s looking to make…the movies our grandparents loved. Sonny and Cher don’t want to make the old-fashioned “rags to riches” thing, but…a Tarzan movie? A western? A gangster pic? Sure! Sonny is coming up with story ideas that are as creaky and old-fashioned as the one he’s rejecting. It’s kind of contradictory.

Mary: I never liked the Hollywood mogul office scene before, but I’ve changed my mind now. And I love the nutty gladiator-like fight scene, the colors of the booze in the decanters. And Mordicus is set up as a power to contend with, like an Old Hollywood mogul.

Robrt: Yes. He was a Central Casting Big Guy. Also an old-fashioned cliché.

Mary: Right. His condescension to Sonny, the pop music star. “We’ll get a proper writer, thanks.” And how dismissive he was of a story in the first place! “We need a story and we’ll get one…a mere detail.”

Robrt: They blew their casting money on George Sanders, who couldn’t have been too expensive at this point in his career, either. All the others are little-known or unknown William Morris actors.

I love the way he says Cher’s name.

Mary: Cheeeahhh!

Robrt: He reminds me of Robin Leach: “And look! It’s Shyaw!” So, back to the movie: “The Saga of Irving Ringo.” Boo! But then I hate westerns.

Mary: Yeah. The skits are really silly but also a chance to be satirical. I like westerns and detective stories, so I liked those two better.

Robrt: Right. But are they doing satire, by mocking each genre? Hard to say.

Mary: I think we’re safe to say Sonny liked Westerns. “Bang Bang” and “A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done” are very good westerns, and some of his best material.

Robrt: I liked the noir spoof but hated all the violence against women. I get it; it was part of the era. But still hard to watch.

Mary: Yes. The cigarette girl part is very disturbing to me, then and now. Did you groan at the site gags in Irving Ringo?

Robrt: I groaned at most of Irving Ringo. But did you recognize the two famous voices at the top of that segment? The little boy playing cowboy with Sonny is the kid who voiced Charlie Brown.

Mary: No way!

Robrt: And then Paul Frees shows up as the announcer, and appears throughout the movie, doing all the voiceover parts. He was a famous announcer in Hollywood. His voice was everywhere.

Mary: I liked the LA street sign and the anachronistic jokes (in all the skits) but the whole thing about wearing his holster wrong was stupid.

Robrt: In the western segment, why does Sonny bite the guy he’s fighting with? Why is that funny?

Mary: Right. He’s so bad at fighting that he can’t break a bottle. But he bites. I do like Sonny as an Italian cowboy, since early Westerns were so Anglo.

Robrt: Well, maybe that makes this a spoof of Spaghetti Westerns?

Mary: The first Spaghetti Western was supposedly A Fistful of Dollars (1964). These cliches seem older to me. And then, what really scared off Irving’s bully [in the fight sequence]? Really this movie is about bullies, I think.

Robrt: Or wigs. There are a lot wigs. Also Cher’s wearing the famous jade ring in this sequence.

Mary: What’s the jade ring story? Sonny gave that to her?

Robrt: Yes, he gave it to her and she wore it constantly in the later 60s. Why does she say, “Irving Bubby”? Is Yiddish funny?

Mary: I do think Yiddish is funny. And because Irving is a common Jewish name?

Robrt: Lots of random gymnastics in the “Good Times” number, which is the movie’s big production number. Oddly placed, timing-wise.

Mary: I really like the way this is shot, showing the full bodies of the dancers. The lack of this is what I didn’t like about Burlesque. The can-can, the high kicks, the drop-splits…. This number is very happy. The way it’s intercut with Knife McBlade arriving and loading his gun. This is going to sound very pretentious but it reminded me of “Cabaret” for a second, the careless glee before it all falls apart.

Robrt: That doesn’t sound pretentious. If you want pretentious, try this: “Good Times” is a great example of “the male gaze” in cinema, because all of the fantasy sequences are imagined by Sonny. Cher’s at home watching TV or drawing on another tablecloth. (She’s Cher, so we don’t expect her to be dusting or cooking dinner.) And Sonny, because he’s a man and has all the power, is left to come up with story ideas for their movie.

I suppose we can embrace the notion that, because Cher isn’t interested in making a movie, she’s left Sonny to pursue script ideas. But even still, we’ve got three male-centered stories seen through a man’s eyes: private eye; Tarzan; cowboy shoot-em-up. The women are all afterthoughts in these genres: gun moll; Jane of the jungle; saloon singer. What’s more, there’s the cliché about men handling business while women stay at home cooking and cleaning (or, if you’re Cher, designing costumes made from British flags).

Anyway, you were talking about the song “Good Times.” The time shifts in that song are very Sonny.

Mary: How can I tell a time shift?

Robrt: The tempo changes. Sonny uses this shifting time signature a lot in his songwriting.

Mary: Like there are movements? Like in “Mama Was a Rock and Roll Singer”?

Robrt: Exactly. When the timing changes from, say, a ballad to an upbeat rock song.

Mary: Got it.

Robrt: So, the western bit is done, and we are…at Sonny and Cher’s house!

Mary: So…what about that wall art? And those sculptures?

Robrt: I love their art. The whole aesthetic. It’s all so period-correct. I suppose the art in the movie-set houses is designed to be less eye-catching, as most movie props tend to be for obvious reasons. But when we get to the onsite shoot at Sonny and Cher’s real house, which in the movie is the stand-in for their “real house,” we’re looking at Cher’s taste at that time. Or her designer’s. I love the aesthetic of what I presume to be Sonny and Cher’s interior designer. I’ll bet he or she took Cher shopping and they picked out pretty much everything in that place together. And then a year later, the house is in a movie!

Mary: I think it was a way to cut corners on the movie’s budget. We see their George Barris cars. The kitchen seems small but this was their first house.

Robrt: The house they bought after “I Got You Babe,” 1651 Academia Drive in the Royal Hills District of Encino, on the corner of Ballina Canyon and Academia Drive, just above Ventura Boulevard. The street sign is briefly visible in the movie. The house was either torn down or remodeled beyond recognition. It’s barely visible from the street behind security fences these days, if you Google it.

Mary: When I saw it back in 2002, I could recognize still it.

Robrt: As for the low budget, the story goes that Col. Parker, who was managing Elvis Presley’s career, told Sonny and Cher’s managers to shoot fast and cheap. The shooting schedule for “Good Times” was twenty days. Friedkin hadn’t made a movie, and he and Sonny were rewriting on the fly, so that slowed things down. A seasoned pro could have gotten this in the can in a month, but who shoots a movie with this many sets in three weeks? This has to be why they used Sonny and Cher’s house for so many scenes: They didn’t need a permit to shoot there.

Mary: I like how that worked out.

Robrt: Again, here we are, in a movie about Sonny and Cher, seeing their “real life” shot on the set of … their real life.

Mary: I want to see them in their natural habitat. This was pre-reality TV. Sonny believed that was a hook, showing them in real life.

Robrt: I love that house. I want to live in that house.

Mary: I forgot how gilded all the furniture looked. I saw that more in the movie studio props but everything was so heavy-looking.

Robrt: Pyrex bowls in the kitchen! Turned wood chairs! Toys as furnishings! Dolls as décor. Primitive, high-color visual art. Fabric with oversized prints (which make adults look smaller).

Mary: I much preferred the Tarzan-Barbie Townhouse. I liked watching Sonny cooking.

Robrt: Their house is a great set. It’s so of its time, with the “swinging pad” aesthetic that they actually lived in.

Mary: And this line is seared into my brain where Sonny is talking to their dog Scoongie, saying, “Come on, you’ll love it. It’s delicious. Just try it one time.”

Robrt: Is Scoongie their actual dog? Or a trained movie dog?

Mary: I’m not sure. Isn’t he on an album cover? With the German Shepherd in another photo? There’s a photo of Cher peeking out from behind a white dog somewhere, too.

Robrt: On the back of Best of, she’s with a German Shepherd. And after this brief respite at their house, we are … at Mordicus’s movie studio. Cher asks, “Where are the batpoles?” Another Hollywood in-joke: Passing around the script, “weighing” it, rather than reading it. Because audiences are dumb and will buy anything.

Mary: Cher’s wise-assing about the office looking like Batman’s lair.

Robrt: She’s mocking the decor. I love what she’s wearing when she takes off the marabou jacket. Are those soccer ball earrings?

Mary: When she takes off her faux fur I think she looks like a proto-Chrissy Hyde. Black leather pants, black t-shirt.

Robrt: And Hynde has said Sixties Cher was her ideal. So, this scene sets up our next musical number.

Mary: One of my favorite images in the movie are Sonny and Cher as Napoleon and a clown on that carousel.

Robrt: “Trust Me.” I think this is the best place to mention that what’s lacking from this movie is upbeat, catchy songs. I love this song, and her performance is delightful. The song is both very with it and also the opposite of hip. With typically subpar Sonny lyrics.

Mary: Very simple lyrics. I love the song. “Hey, my friend, I don’t know where you are. But I’ll be there. I’ll help you find your star.”

Robrt: “How about you?” And then, unfortunately, we find ourselves in “Morry, King of the Jungle.” They shot that in an animal park called Africa, USA. I bet they had to have permits for that shoot. Silly sight gags: the elevator, the pocket watch, the elephant car wash… Inserts of “wild animals”…It’s all a little too easy.

Mary: The jungle thing was my least favorite. Any use of animals and animal wranglers always makes me nervous.

Robrt: Ugh: Sonny wrestling that poor, sleepy tiger cub. What’s that?

Mary: The monkeys playing poker. And checkers. Eh.

Robrt: That whole Lancelot Link thing was the worst part of the movie.

Mary: It gives Cher another moment to be unimpressed by Sonny’s antics.

Robrt: I do love the Micky Dolenz cameo, though. A nod to the Monkees but also because he played Jungle Boy on TV in the Fifties.

Mary: The White Hunter bit isn’t funny. It’s depressing. And how Sonny always loses at the end of each fantasy segment—this once made me sad. But I don’t think that was the subtext, which was about how Sonny was willing to lose to win.

Robrt: Again, a hip joke that fell kind of flat: Boy as an old man. But, anyway, now we cut back to Sonny and Cher’s house. She and the dog are watching “The Green Hornet” on TV, and what is Cher wearing? And then Sonny and Cher argue about making a movie.

You seem to be looking for things in this movie that predict the future of Sonny and Cher, and so here’s one: This moment in the movie is an unintentional signaling of the beginning of the end: Cher is in the front yard of her house, lipsynching to a track for a scene in a Sonny and Cher movie that’s going to bomb when it’s released.

Mary: Yeah, these songs were not built to be popular, but I do really like them. In a way, this was Sonny losing his grip on music trends here.

Robrt: I have something to say about that. Hear me out, tell me if I’m nuts: You can tell Sonny is trying to “write movie music” here. I don’t dislike most of the music written for “Good Times,” but I do wish there’d been just one more catchy pop tune like “It’s the Little Things.” The title song doesn’t count; it’s not pop, it’s ersatz saloon music.

Mary: Can he have it both ways? Doing pastiches and current music?

Robrt: Without a big hit to support your movie? Not, as it turns out, by the time Columbia Pictures released the thing.

Mary: And the single from the movie soundtrack album was?

Robrt: “It’s the Little Things.”

Mary: Did “It’s the Little Things” do well?

Robrt: It did okay. It got to #50 on Billboard, and went to #3 in Canada.

Mary: Okay, well maybe nothing they were going to do was going to matter at this point. In a music world of complete gravitas, Sonny and Cher now looked silly.

Robrt: Maybe. I have more to say on that when we consider the release of the movie and their waning career. So, the sequence before the private eye spoof? Where are they? Is all of that supposed to be their property?

Mary: Sonny goes off to pop wheelies in still-undeveloped Encino while Cher sings “Don’t Talk to Strangers.”

Robrt: Anyway, the Johnny Pizzacatto bit. Ouch. Grapefruit abuse. An homage to “The Public Enemy” and Mae Clarke—again, very Grandma: a 1930s gangster picture.

Mary: I think this scene is Cher’s only real “acting” in the movie.

Robrt: Interesting.

Mary: The violence of the detective, the body pile-ups, Johnny being violent to everyone, not just the women. It’s not very funny.

Robrt: Cher being shot in the back is kind of horrible. Sonny assaulting the cigarette girl.

Mary: When he hits the cigarette girl’s box into her face, that really bothers me. It’s like Sonny overdid it. I want to imagine him apologizing after they said “Cut” but…

Robrt: Cringey. It’s like a time capsule of abuse against women. There are a couple of laughs. The closet full of trench coats, the 8:15 bit…

Mary: Yes, and he’s wearing two coats when he comes in. I do think it’s interesting to do a film noir spoof with 1960s color film.

Robrt: This always confuses me: Is Cher playing two different women in this segment?

Mary: She is…so her first blonde character gets killed. One of only two Cher death scenes in movies, right?

Robrt: Right. And then she’s in the club as “Sam.”

Mary: Then she’s Sam, right. The club is called Samantha’s Place.

Robrt: Oh, and this line is funny. Cher is worried that their engagement has lasted too long, and people will “begin to talk.” And Sonny says, “Not as much as they talked when we first got engaged.”

Mary: It references Cher being under-age age when she first started dating Sonny, and their age difference.

Robrt: This always feels like a shortcut: Cher lipsynching to “I’m Gonna Love You,” the flip side to her first solo hit. Like, “We’re out of time for new material…”

Mary: I want to like this torch song. But I lose the thread each time. That ring is in this scene too. What was it?

Robrt: The jade ring? She coveted it and he bought it for her. She wears it in a lot of photos of the era.

And up next, the surrealism of the movie resumes: Sonny returns to Mordicus…and describes the movie we are actually watching. Then Sonny goes home and there’s the piano in the garage again! (Sorry, can’t stop pointing it out.) What song is he plinking out on the piano?

Mary: “You know nothing, nothing about business!”

Robrt: And then it’s time for the duo to hold notes forever. Featuring lots of closeups of the Sonny and Cher rings. I wonder if you love the montage of outtakes from the movie that occurs at this point. I do.

Mary: I do, too. It’s Sonny finding Cher adorable. He’s mad at her and he’s reminded of why he loves her.

Robrt: Glycerin tears for both our heroes. She’s wearing those wide-wale corduroy pants she designed. Very Cher garments.

Mary: The line in the song always makes me laugh “She’s not so hot. I mean what’s she got? She’s got all I want and even more.” He literally just said she wasn’t so hot.

Robrt: Sonny’s crying. Now it’s his turn to sing, and to hold those notes. Shitty lyric alert! “She don’t have a curl.”

Mary: Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee’s just a girl. Great shots near Music City and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Unforgettable shots really.

Robrt: And now it’s back to movie-within-movie-within-movie.

Mary: And then the “Fuck off, Mordicus” scene. More condescension: “Only ideas? No script?” (You amateur.) There will be writs and injunctions! You kids will be taken with a case of permanent laryngitis!” More Hollywood bullies. When Sonny was rebuffed, he does this thing with his hands that I think is really great. Sonny is reflecting and he rubs his hands together. I like that piece of business.

Robrt: And now we’ve reached the end of our story. Cut to Cher: “Still wanna make a movie?”

Mary: We get Cher’s unusual laugh there at the end, when she’s handing Sonny that diminutive ice cream cone. When I’ve shown this movie to my friends, it’s this last sequence they most remember.

Robrt: Why?

Mary: Sonny and Cher hanging out on the streets of LA, out with the horses, more montages.

Robrt: Yes. Returning to “being Sonny and Cher.”

Mary: Their relationship comes out again.

Robrt: And Cher wins: No dumb movie will be made. The End. And now we must discuss the aftermath of the movie. I have some theories. I don’t think “Good Times” was a bomb. I mean, critically, yes. The critics weren’t fooled.

Mary: You know Roger Ebert gave it an interesting review in 1967. He said the Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” changed the playing field (from the Elvis movies) and that “Good Times” was the first non-Beatles film to use a similar storytelling approach. He said it was “better than other movies of its type.”

So what about the box office? Was it better than history remembers?

Robrt: No, the box office tanked. But!

Mary: But?

Robrt: Not a bomb financially. The film’s producer, Steve Broidy, sold the movie to Columbia Pictures before production began. So he didn’t lose any money on the deal, but Columbia did when the movie went over budget. They were budgeted at $500k and spent a little more than a million. The film didn’t lose money, though, even though it’s always reported as a bomb. And that’s because Broidy sold the TV rights before the movie was even released to theaters, and those proceeds covered the film’s production costs.

Mary: Interesting.

Robrt: Which always gets left out of the reporting of “Good Times.”

Mary: So it wasn’t as rough as it was when they did “Chastity” two years later.

Robrt: Not at all. And then there are my theories about why teens didn’t go see this movie.

Mary: What are those?

Robrt: Cher has said, “We took so long to make it, by the time it came out, we weren’t popular anymore.” But I have another theory about why their career doldrums began just around the time this movie came out: First, Sonny was too busy making a movie to focus on writing and producing catchy hit songs for the duo to record. And when he did sit down to write, he wasn’t thinking hooks and Top 40 radio, he was thinking about creating cinematic music that forwarded the story that is “Good Times.” In that respect, he did a heck of a good job. But it’s not technically true that they weren’t popular anymore, or that that’s why teenagers didn’t go see the movie.

Mary: Interesting. Yes, that makes sense.

Robrt: Consider the timeline: “Beat Goes On” came out in January of 1967; this movie came out in May. Six months later, in November, “You Better Sit Down Kids” was released and was a major hit for Cher, written and produced by Sonny. But by then “Good Times” had left theaters, a flop.

Mary: Aha. Good point. They had a hit after “Good Times” bombed. And a hit with an odd song.

Robrt: So, that sinks the theory that this crappy movie killed their career. The timeline is off. I think it was less that they weren’t popular when the movie came out. I think it was that their new managers (Greene and Stone had been fired during the making of “Good Times,” I think) had begun inching them toward being square. I’d have to look into this part of the timeline, but I think Sonny had already made his anti-drug film short, and maybe all the TV variety shows they were guesting on led to oversaturation. What do you think? Was it just that they were teen idols and every teen idol expires after two or three years?

Mary: The drug film was later. He has a mustache.

Robrt: Or was it that the last hit they had was about an adult divorcing … something a teen wouldn’t relate to?

Mary: But it’s interesting that their managers were in flux.

Robrt: Why was “Good Times” so reviled? I think it was partly that the producers, Lindsley Parsons and Steve Broidy, were old guys from Old Hollywood; they had worked at Poverty Row studies in the 1930s. Old guys producing a “hippie movie” wasn’t a great combination.

Mary: Sonny and Cher were booed at the Newport Pop Festival. And the democratic convention riot was in 1968, right?

Robrt: Good point.

Mary: Sonny would turn conservative then?

Robrt: I guess so. But I think what’s more relevant to the death of “Good Times” is that, once the movie was edited, and I’m not sure why, it sat on the shelf for almost a year. I’ll bet it would have done better if they had rush-released it. Maybe it sat there because Broidy was working out a distribution deal with Columbia? Do you know why? Because I don’t.

Mary: I don’t know. It seems bizarre not to want to cash in during 1966, at the height of the Sonny and Cher craze. The momentum was so high then.

Robrt: The only answer I can come up with is the old-guy theory. The industry still didn’t trust the rock movie subgenre, but this movie had a pedigree. Although it was made by an independent (the first movie produced by Motion Pictures International, a tiny filmmaker), it was released by Columbia Pictures, one of the biggest studios of the time.

Mary: When was it filmed?

Robrt: 1966. Then it sat on the shelf, and they were running out of steam, and making bad choices, and losing momentum on the charts. “I’m writing music for our movie, I don’t have time to focus on hits.”

So, that’s my theory. It wasn’t one thing, it was several.

Mary: Did we talk about how the first script idea came from a fan? The whole meta movie thing.

Robrt: No!

Mary: So they got a fan letter from a kid named Nicholas Hyams.

Robrt: Oh, right. He was a fan? I know he wrote the original. They hired him to write the movie, then fired him and stole his idea. Right?

Mary: Yeah, he was too slow and didn’t get along with Sonny or Friedkin. They later called him a sham.

Robrt: But don’t you think “Good Times” should have worked, given its better qualities? It’s Sixties stylish: The hyper-closeups of the martial arts scene. The depiction of what a rich movie producer looks and sounds like. And it’s got that oddball, quick-cut editing that was becoming popular in hip TV sitcoms like “The Monkees.”

Mary: It’s risky doing pastiche. It’s risky doing meta. Considering they were all newbs working with old people as you say, it could have been worse.

Robrt: I mean, Sonny demanded a hip young director, and got Friedkin, who hadn’t made a scripted movie before. So you’ve got a first-time director and you’ve got Sonny rewriting the script with Friedkin, and that didn’t probably help the material.

Mary: I want to say you gotta hand it to Sonny for tapping Friedkin on the shoulder for this. And they stayed friends to the end of Sonny’s life based on what Friedkin says on the DVD commentary.

Robrt: Let’s talk about that meta thing, because it’s what’s most fascinating about the movie. There’s commentary within commentary in “Good Times.” The movie begins with kids singing a ballad version of “I Got You Babe.” It ends with Sonny and Cher singing the same arrangement—an interesting way of saying they’ve reclaimed their story. It’s very Friedkin. A subversion of the truth.

Mary: Are there other examples of Friedkin doing this in other movies? It’s interesting that the only versions of their big hit are part of the soundtrack and not  ever performed as part of the story itself.

Watching the movie with the sound off does capture your interest.

Robrt: I’m going to have to try that. And you’ve isolated the audio, because you grew up listening to the cassette… But do you think there’s something going on there, with the way the movie begins and ends with different singers doing that song? Or am I just reading into something that’s not there?

Mary: A movie about writing your story within a movie trying to write a personal story.

Robrt: Yeah, you nailed it: It’s a story about a story within a story. Which is very New Cinema.

Mary: No one has been able to cover “I Got You Babe” well. Only Sonny and Cher can cover that song and keep it fresh.

Robrt: Yes. But is it a commentary on the story of the film to have it sung by kids at the beginning of the movie, and then, in a representation of Sonny and Cher reclaiming their own story, have them sing it themselves?

Mary: Is it trying to establish the iconic nature of the song?

Robrt: No. It’s not iconic yet. It’s just a two-year-old hit record at this point in pop culture/Sonny and Cher history. But at the end of this story, they are singing the song, and have returned to “themselves.” Or am I just making this up?

Mary: No. Because in the end, as the movie establishes, all they have is their real “real” selves. They have resisted being made over for more fame and money.

Robrt: Meanwhile, there are a lot of old-school cliches enacted by the hipsters in the story: Sonny is bored by his wife shopping for clothes in the intro to the film (because he’s a guy, and straight guys presumably find shopping boring), for example. He has a motorbike and she hides the keys (even though, in real life, she had a matching motorbike and they both rode).

Mary: Another real hidden comment: Cher loves to shop. She buys two of everything.

Robrt: So, is the movie commenting on itself? They did change stuff for the movie for its story’s sake, like that Cher loves to ride her motorbike…but she needs to “appear more feminine” in the movie of their “real” life.

Mary: I imagined Sonny not letting her drive one, the way we see him smoke all the way through this movie but we don’t see Cher smoking until she leaves Sonny publicly in the mid-70s.

Robrt: Hmm. Interesting.

Mary: There must have been real tension between Sonny and Cher around similar topics, if not the bikes though. Maybe that was a convenient fight to dramatize.

Robrt: It may be as simple as that, you’re right. As for them playing themselves: I’ll get booed for saying it, but I think they’re both fine, playing themselves here. I think Cher’s very charming, though I do get the feeling Friedkin told her to “smile!” in almost every scene. Sonny’s fine, too. They were both a little under-directed in some scenes where they’re asked to show emotion and then react; I don’t think Cher should say her exit line while she’s still walking out of the scene if she’s also yelling at her husband and crying. But, again, who in this movie had had much in the way of acting lessons? Or directing experience, for that matter.

Mary: Interesting. Those smile shots might have been nudges. I think she’s more herself here than in “Stuck on You.” That was almost Cher satirizing herself, as has every movie she’s made since then, even if her character has another name.

Robrt: I think we tend to forget that 1967 was not exactly a great moment in American cinema for movies by and about rock-and-roll. The Elvis movies were cornball by now; and the Beatles movies were, well, Beatles movies—beyond a gold standard. The really good stuff like “Don’t Look Back” and “Sympathy for the Devil” and “The Harder They Come” hadn’t happened yet, and in this weird in-between period we’ve got “Good Times” and “Chastity” and the Monkees’ “Head,” which is no better than this one, and less comprehensible.

Mary: I do like “Head” though.

Robrt: A lot of us love the Monkees movie. But it was similarly dismissed.

Mary: It’s my favorite of the silly-era music movies. It has a lot of similar problems because it’s about an act who are perceived as silly. Again, maybe it’s a camp sensibility.

Robrt: Yes, and an interesting contrast between this and “Head,” because both were trying to be something other than campy. They were trying to be subversive.

Mary: On the DVD commentary, Lee Gambin says “Head” and “Good Times” were released as a double bill in Australia. I think this speaks to the outsider quality of these two movies.

Robrt: I guess.

Mary: And the New Cinema people weren’t popular yet….this was like early thinking. These movies don’t translate as good music movies to music people.

Robrt: Because they’re not!

Okay, god, my hands are about to fall off from typing this much. Did we hit the heights?

Mary: Did we cover it all?

Robrt: I think we did. My fingers hurt. You okay?

Mary: I’m okay. Good work!

Robrt: Good Times! Oh, groan. I can’t believe I typed that.

 

For more on the movie, check out the Cher Scholar Guide.