Hacker Cinema
What's Up, Doc?
1972 · Film · 94 min
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
The accidental mix-up of four identical plaid overnight bags leads to a series of increasingly wild and wacky situations.
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4 comments on Hacker News
> it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.
This was probably always true, with some randomly amazing years every now and again, like 1972 (The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, What's Up Doc?,...).
IMDB listing shows 470 films released US in 1972. Google says there are ~3,900 IMDB entries for 1972 (why the 4X discrepancy?). The hit ratio was veeeery small even in killer years.
After watching that film so many times as a child, on my first visit to San Francisco I was astonished to see how much of the city hadn't changed since 1971.
I also made my hosts take me on a pilgrimage to the stairs at Alta Plaza Park, the damage done to which during the filming of What's Up Doc is still visible. IIRC, Bogdanovich didn't request permission to film that scene on the steps, and was to be charged with vandalism if he made himself a nuisance in the city again...
Bummer. My favorite movie of his is "What's up, Doc?", just a hysterical bit of comedy.
I have a friend who did this sort of thing back in the '70s, maintaining a PDP-8 that ran a weather radar at the South Pole station during the long winter.
Not much in the way of creature comforts back then, he said they got very familiar with the few movies they had copies of, What's Up, Doc? was the only one he mentioned by name.