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| Jodie Foster in Bugsy Malone |
Cast: Scott Baio, Florence Garland, Jodie Foster, John Cassisi, Martin Lev, Paul Murphy, Sheridan Earl Russell, Albin "Humpty" Jenkins. Screenplay: Alan Parker. Cinematography: Peter Biziou, Michael Seresin. Production design: Geoffrey Kirkland. Film editing: Gerry Hambling. Music: Paul Williams.
It could almost be a scene from the Apple+ series The Studio:
"I got an idea: a spoof of Warner Bros. gangster movies."
"Nah, I think it's been done."
"So what if we make it a musical?"
"Hmm. Tell me more."
"We could have it performed by kids!"
"Not bad. But what about the violence? You can't have kids gunning down kids."
"Yeah ... oh, wait! We could have the machine guns fire whipped cream!"
"Huh. You mean like those old movies with the custard pie fights?"
"Yeah. We could have a big pie fight at the end!"
"Great! Let's greenlight it!"
It didn't happen that way, of course. It was all Alan Parker's idea -- or bad idea, depending on how you respond to Bugsy Malone. I for one find it a bit creepy, with all those prepubescent chorus girls like something out of Jeffrey Epstein's fever dreams. But there are those who love it and find it perfectly innocent in execution. And it does have Jodie Foster's performance in what would have been the Joan Blondell role: the hard-bitten chorus girl with a heart. The 13-year-old Foster gives it all the sass Blondell would have given it. The songs, by Paul Williams, are clever enough, and fortunately they're dubbed, so we don't have to listen to them sung in childish treble. Most critics, with Pauline Kael a decided exception, liked it, and it was a hit in Britain, where it was filmed. Maybe the best thing about it is that it started no trend toward kiddie spoof movies.
