I Don’t Know Where I’m Going, Domino!

I interviewed Dyan Cannon on Friday. She was lovely. If you’re not especially well-versed in things that happened before the olive green-turquoise-burnt orange decades, she would be the actress who played one-fourth of the title characters in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which is a movie you should see. The interview concerned The Last of Sheila, which is also a movie that you should see but which carries more clout by virtue of being a cult classic. It’s a stylish murder mystery, and the trailer adeptly demonstrates what sort of aesthetic the director was going for. Observe:

Dyan is the beautiful blonde you see freaking the fuck out at around the forty-second mark. Bonus points: The Last of Sheila was written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, who, unless I’m mistaken, were boning at the time, so I suppose it’s impressive that they finished the script.

However, had I watched the following scene from a different Dyan Cannon film, the inexplicably titled Child Under a Leaf, all of my questions would have been about it. Please watch this 2:25 clip, which also features Dyan playing a blonde who’s freaking the fuck out. From now on, it shall be what I show people if they ever ask me what in media res means.

Questions I’d ask Dyan:

• Why did you want the baby so badly?
• Were you trying to rescue your baby or kidnap the weird man’s baby?
• Wait, do any of these characters know each other at all? Who is kidnapping whom?
• Is the baby kidnapping the adults?
• Yeah, but maybe is it? Secretly?
• Was your character really named “Domino”? Did someone really think that was an okay name for a person to have?
• Can you tell me who did the music? Because it’s awesome and I want it to be my ringtone.
• Do you think the baby realized how much cuter it looked when it wasn’t crying and that’s why it’s suddenly all pleasant-looking at the end?
• And finally, who the hell OKed the poster?

via

Apparently they had real stars back then, but not so much with the graphic design skills.