Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Years before "A Clockwork Orange," "Se7en," "12 Monkeys," "The Matrix," "Fight Club," "Memento" and all of those other weird psychological films designed solely to mess with the audience's mind, there was "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?." It's not science fiction, it's stagy, shot in stark black-and-white and (unless you count a shotgun prop) there's no special effects. Therein is the brilliance of it. The movie is really a little too much of a mainstream classic to be included on this site, but it IS an oddity, and it does have a cult following, so here we go...
The film is based on the Broadway classic of the same name, which featured Uta Hagen (Martha), Arthur Hill (George), Melinda Dillon (Honey) and George Grizzard (Nick). The story plays out in real time from late night to early morning following, as the elder school teacher George and his naggish wife Martha "entertain" George's new, young coworker Nick, as well as his flaky wife, Honey. Soon George and Martha begin to antagonize their guests, and it becomes clear that they may or may not be telling the truth. Only one word accurately describes this story: mindfuck.
In the early '60s an LP boxed set was released (never issued on CD) featuring a full audio recording of the Broadway show with the original cast. What is perhaps most interesting about this album is that a good chunk of the exchanges in the film between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor felt completely ad-libbed, but turns out it was entirely scripted. Oftentimes the success of a film dictates content in revivals of Broadway plays (the original version of "Grease," for example, was bawdier than the productions staged after the film had become a hit), so it's especially interesting to note that the dialogue has remained virtually unchanged.
We have the movie to thank (or blame, depending upon how one perceives it) for shattering the old Hollywood conventions. The film is littered with profanity and sexual innuendo, the likes of which had never been included in a film up to this point. Although movie ratings weren't yet in place, this was the first picture where theatre managers prohibited admittance to people under 18. The profanity and sex talk seems rather tame today (since they drop 50 f-bombs a minute in every other movie) but it was pretty shocking for 1966.
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" was the first (and only?) film to be released in its entirety on LP . This is probably because it's so convoluted that it takes more than once for the audience to digest everything. There was no home video or internet in those days -- and there was no way in hell that any of the three existing networks were going to broadcast the movie without hacking it to pieces. So a dialogue album was actually a pretty clever marketing move.
There's a few interesting things about the album. For starters, the only piece of music heard on the entire double-LP is "Virginia Woolf Rock," which plays while Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and Nick (George Segal) are dancing -- however, it plays a little differently than it does in the film. Also, there's at least one alternate take (Taylors memorable "Goddamn you!" line is "Screw You!" on the album, and I think some of the dialogue from the dancing sequence might be lifted from a different take). It's also worth mentioning the Martha's boxing story is heard clearly while in the film it becomes muffled as George goes into another room to get his gun. The album runs about a half hour shorter than the movie -- virtually every line remains intact, but most pauses and long silent moments were removed. Sadly, copies of this LP are scarce today and tend to have price tags set in the double-to-triple digits.
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And remember! When engaging in a game of Hump the Hostess, always make sure to wear protection. Cuz you never know where that tramp's been.