For Your NFR Consideration: “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “Original Cast Album: Company”

Today marks the 7^th anniversary of the Horse’s Head blog (or maybe it’s tomorrow, I genuinely don’t remember anymore). For seven years, I have not only chronicled my attempt to watch every movie on the National Film Registry, but I’ve also submitted my own nominations for films I believe should be on the list. So far, 36 films I have submitted have been inducted (23 of them inducted in the year I nominated them). Most of my selections are iconic films that I’m sure would have made it on without my help, but there are two that haven’t made the cut yet that I feel need a little extra endorsement. These two movies are far from the greatest movies of all time, but they are personal favorites that I feel are worthy of a place in the Registry. For your NFR consideration I give you “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “Original Cast Album: Company”.

By 1963, director Stanley Kramer was Hollywood’s king of the Important Movie, with “The Defiant Ones”, “Inherit the Wind”, and “Judgment at Nuremberg” under his belt (plus he produced “High Noon“). When New York Times critic Bosley Crowther challenged the serious-minded Kramer to make a comedy, Kramer accepted the challenge, and vowed to make the film comedy to end all film comedy. The result was “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”, an epic in which an old man’s dying words about a hidden fortune spark a race across California to find $350,000. Everything about “Mad World” is big: the cast is packed with the most famous comedians of the 20^th century (everyone from Buster Keaton to Jerry Lewis), the action contains some of the most impressive stunt work in movie history, and the film’s widescreen Ultra Panavision 70 was so wide Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome was built specifically to show the film. “Mad World” may not get as many laughs at it did 60 years ago, but it is still an impressive undertaking that deserves to be preserved and enjoyed.

By its very nature, theater is hard to document. No recording can replicate the feeling of watching a live performance, and while the NFR has plenty of film adaptations of plays and musicals on the list, it doesn’t have anything that documents the kinetic energy of American theater. That’s why I always push for 1970’s “Original Cast Album: Company”. Legendary documentarian D.A. Pennebaker takes his camera into New York’s Columbia 30^th Street Studio to witness the cast album recording for Stephen Sondheim’s latest Broadway musical “Company”. Originally filmed as the pilot for a proposed TV series, “Original Cast Album: Company” chronicles the marathon 14-hour recording session of the entire album, complete with in-the-moment adjustments from Sondheim himself as well as record producer Thomas Z. Shepard. The climax of the movie is performer Elaine Stritch trying and failing to nail her signature song “Ladies Who Lunch” in one take. A cult classic among theater fans, “Original Cast Album: Company” is a rare glimpse into part of the creative process of putting on a Broadway musical, the kind of “lightning in a bottle” preservation that every documentary on this list strives for.

Both “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “Original Cast Album: Company” stand on their own singular piece of ground, and are therefore worthy of inclusion in the National Film Registry. I will keep pushing for these movies every year until that December morning when I read that the NFR finally made the right decision. As always, you the reader can nominate any American movie you want for NFR consideration. Just head over to the NFR’s official nomination page, and be sure to check out their list of movies not on the Registry for reference. And if I may, please also visit my own For Your Consideration page for the countless other movies and stars I have lobbied for over the years.

Happy Viewing and Happy Nominating,

Tony