Popeye (film)

Popeye
movie poster for Popeye
Directed by	Robert Altman
Written by	Jules Feiffer E.C. Segar (comic strip)
Produced by	Robert Evans
Starring	Robin Williams Shelley Duvall Linda Hunt Paul L. Smith Paul Dooley
Cinematography	Giuseppe Rotunno
Edited by	John W. Holmes David A. Simmons
Music by	Harry Nilsson Tom Pierson (additional music)
Distributed by	- USA - Paramount Pictures - non-USA - Walt Disney Productions
Release dates	December 12, 1980
Running time	114 min.
Language	English
Budget	$20,000,000 (estimated)

Popeye is a 1980 live-action film directed by Robert Altman, based on the comic strip and cartoon character Popeye the Sailor. The film was marketed with the tagline "The sailor man with the spinach can!"

The film is a musical, which was uncommon for the time. Its songs are by Harry Nilsson, and are very unusual in that there were almost no rhymes in any of the songs. Instead, the songs were structured by using a great deal of repetition, and cross-cutting inside songs to non-musical sequences. It starred Robin Williams (in his first film role) as Popeye and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl.

Popeye was a joint production between Paramount Pictures (distributors/producers of the 1933 – 1957 Popeye theatrical cartoons) and Walt Disney Productions, and was released by Paramount in the USA, and Buena Vista Distribution overseas. It was filmed almost entirely on Malta, in the village of Mellieħa on the northwest coast of the island, and the set is now a tourist attraction called Popeye Village.

The movie's script, by Jules Feiffer, draws heavily on the original Thimble Theater comic strip by Elzie Crisler Segar. The town of Sweethaven, Olive Oyl's family, her former comic-strip boyfriend Ham Gravy, and a handful of minor characters from the strip appear in the film. Olive's brother Castor has a relatively important role, as he did in the strip before Popeye came aboard.

The film earned $49,823,037 [1] at the United States box office, more than double the film's budget. Although the opening week saw respectable box-office results, word-of-mouth and film critic reviews derided the film's musical score as being "the only thing more unintelligible than Williams' mumblings as Popeye", and the film quickly disappeared from most theaters within a few weeks of release. Siskel and Ebert were nearly alone in praising the film, while other critics, such as Leonard Maltin, savaged it.

Criticism of the film had dire consequences for director Robert Altman, whose career had become checkered with successes (Nashville, MASH) and failures (Health, Buffalo Bill and the Indians). Popeye stymied Altman's career as a film director during the early 1980s until his big Hollywood comeback, The Player. While not one of his most critically acclaimed films, Popeye features hallmarks of director Robert Altman's style, including an ensemble cast, overlapping dialogue, and cross-cutting to non-musical sequences during songs.

Plot summary

One dark and stormy night, the gruff but goodhearted seaman Popeye rows his small dinghy into the harbor of the quaint seaside community of Sweethaven. There he rents a room at the Oyls' boarding house, where he quickly falls for their daughter Olive. But Olive's hand has already been promised to Captain Bluto, a bully and ruffian who is in charge of collecting taxes for the mysterious Commodore. Popeye and Bluto take a quick disliking to each other, and get in a large fight.

Popeye, who was orphaned at an early age, is in the midst of searching for his missing father, but what he does not realize is that he is close to his final destination. Along the way, he encounters an assortment of characters, including George W. Geezil, J. Wellington Wimpy, "Oxblood Oxheart" (The dirtiest fighter alive), and a greedy, unnamed taxman. Eventually Popeye and Olive are brought together when they find Swee'Pea, an adorable foundling. It is soon discovered that Swee'Pea can predict the future, by whistling when he hears the right answer. Wimpy soon learns of this, and uses the baby to gamble. Popeye is outraged and takes Swee'Pea away from him.

When Swee'Pea is kidnapped, Popeye and Olive Oyl go looking for him. Olive and Wimpy soon find that Swee'Pea was taken on the Commodore's ship, and who else should be the Commodore but Popeye's father, Poopdeck Pappy. Bluto has tied up Pappy, and is going to use Swee'Pea to find Pappy's old treasure. Olive and Wimpy go tell Popeye what they've discovered, but Popeye does not believe them. Popeye goes to the Commodore's ship where he finally meets his father, from whom he learns the secret to gaining great strength (Spinach). The irony of this discovery is the revelation that Popeye despises spinach.

Bluto kidnaps Swee'Pea and Olive Oyl, then begins to sail on his boat to an island on which the Commodore has said his hidden treasure is located. On the way, he tries to use Swee' Pea's predictive ability to precisely locate the treasure. Popeye, Pappy, Wimpy, and their friends give chase on another boat and chase Bluto to Pirate's Cove. Using a cannon, Pappy tries to sink Bluto's ship, but, in the end, has to ram it. Olive is trapped in a tube that is tossed in the water, and Pappy manages to get up on the cove with Swee'Pea and Popeye's friends.

Bluto and Popeye get into a swordfight on the cove's rocky walls. Bluto, being bigger and stronger, knocks Popeye into the water. Meanwhile, an octopus comes from under the water and tries to eat Olive. Pappy calls to Popeye and tells him that if he ate spinach, he wouldn't be losing. Bluto discovers Popeye's dislike of spinach, and attempts to add insult to injury by forcing the sailor to eat a can of it, and kicking him under the water. The expected reaction occurs, and Popeye shoots up and defeats Bluto in the traditional way with a mighty punch that catapults the villain out of the water. He then swims under the water and rescues Olive from the giant octopus - using his famous "Twisker' Sock" punch, sending the octopus flying into the air (in a poor special effect that was reportedly the result of the film having run out of production money). Bluto, now beaten, begins swimming away from the cove and out to sea, literally turned yellow, never to be heard from again.

Pappy finds his treasure, and opens it up to find spinach and a picture of "Me Son". All the characters then begin to sing "Popeye The Sailor Man", while Popeye dances and falls back in the water, only to pop back up smiling, and the film ends with the credits playing with a view of the cove, and Bluto still swimming out into the ocean.

Main cast

• Robin Williams as Popeye the Sailor
• Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl
• Ray Walston as Poopdeck Pappy
• Paul L. Smith as Bluto
• Paul Dooley as J. Wellington Wimpy
• Richard Libertini as George W. Geezil
• Peter Bray as Oxblood Oxheart
• Linda Hunt as Mrs. Oxheart
• Donald Moffat as The Taxman
• MacIntyre Dixon as Cole Oyl
• Roberta Maxwell as Nana Oyl
• Donovan Scott as Castor Oyl
• Bill Irwin as Ham Gravy

Soundtrack

(All songs written by Harry Nilsson except "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man," which was composed by Sammy Lerner for the original Max Fleischer Popeye animated cartoon.)

1. I Yam What I Yam
2. He Needs Me
3. Swee' Pea's Lullaby
4. Din' We
5. Sweethaven
6. Blow Me Down
7. Sailin'
8. It's Not Easy Being Me
9. He's Large
10. I'm Mean
11. Kids
12. I'm Popeye The Sailor Man

Curiously, the song "Food, Food, Food" was not included on the soundtrack, while the song "Din' We" (which was cut from the film) was.

The song "He Needs Me" was featured in the movie Punch-Drunk Love. (Coincidentally 'Punch-Drunk Love' was originally released on DVD the same day as the DVD release of 'Popeye'.)

In general, the soundtrack was unusual in that the actors sang some of the songs "live". For that reason, the studio-recorded soundtrack album did not quite match the tracks heard in the film.

To date, the album is out of print, its only releases being the original 1980s-era pressings on vinyl record, cassette and 8-track tape. The only song in CD format is "He Needs Me", which appears on the Punch-Drunk Love soundtrack. "He Needs Me" can also be purchased as a single from iTunes.

Trivia

• The set for the town of Sweethaven was built at Anchor Bay on the Mediterranean island of Malta. After filming it became a popular tourist attraction.

• The makeup appliances for Robin Williams' fake forearms were not ready when filming began, so in early shots, Popeye wears a long-sleeved raincoat to hide his normal-sized arms.

• Many of the "citizens" of Sweethaven, especially those who had to do some physical gags, were recruited from European circuses.

• The parts of Popeye and Olive Oyl were originally intended for Dustin Hoffman and Gilda Radner. Hoffman left over a disagreement in the hiring of Jules Feiffer as the scriptwriter and, although Radner was the preferred choice of the studio, Robert Altman held out for Shelley Duvall.

• While it may seem odd to most viewers that the movie's portrayal of Popeye does not like spinach, this was also a theme used in the original comic strip by E.C. Segar. In fact, only once during the syndicated run of the comic did Popeye eat spinach (to boost his already considerable strength before a fight). Popeye was not first shown to like spinach and eat it regularly until he made his debut as an animated character (probably more as a move on the part of his producers to promote the animated sailor as a positive role model for younger viewers than anything else). But because by the time of the movie's release people were only well aware of Popeye's eating spinach for strength (especially with a Saturday cartoon of Popeye on CBS at the time), this discrepancy that Popeye as portrayed by the movie dislikes spinach was one of several complaints many viewers and some critics had with the movie, and it was addressed in "Flopeye" (MAD Magazine's parody of the movie) as such: The Popeye cartoon character had been forced to witness several of these discrepancies between the movie and the common conceptions of his character all throughout the movie satire, and when the discrepancy that he doesn't like spinach came up, the cartoon Popeye saw this as the last straw. "What the hell IS dis?! Since WHEN don't I likes spinach?!" he complains and bursts into action to save this "disgustipating pitchur", eating up the spinach, rescuing Olives Oil and Swee'Tea (parodies of Olive Oyl and Swee'Pea, respectively), and teaching his live action counterpart a lesson he won't soon forget.

• Most of Robin Williams's muttered Popeye voice was discovered to be inaudible once filming wrapped, and he had to re-dub much of the dialogue.

• Popeye was Robin Williams' film debut. In interviews, referring jokingly to the perceived flop of the film, he has spoken of his early struggles as a film actor as "the Popeye years."

• Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, and Hal Ashby were each originally slated to direct this movie.

• The many sunken ships in the harbor were actually seaworthy vessels that were rented or bought and then sunk.

• In a print interview released around the same time as the film, Shelley Duvall admitted that kids used to call her "Olive Oyl" when she was in grade school.

• Shelley Duvall sang all her own songs.

• Harry Nilsson took a break in the middle of production of his album Flash Harry to create the music for this movie. He wrote all the original songs and co-produced the music with producer Bruce Robb at Cherokee Studios.

• A joint production between Paramount and Walt Disney; the former released the film in the USA, and the latter had overseas distribution.

• At one point, Lily Tomlin was signed to play Olive Oyl. (This was before the film hit development hell.)

• An international construction crew of 165 worked seven months to construct the set. Tree trunk logs were driven across the European continent from Holland, and wood shingles were imported all the way from Canada. Eight tons of nails and 2,000 gallons of paint were used to complete the set. When they finished, the fictional village of Sweethaven consisted of 19 buildings including a hotel, a school-house, a store, a post office, a church and a tavern.

• Everyone tried to dissuade Robert Altman from working with Harry Nilsson, claiming that Nilsson would be constantly drunk. Only Robin Williams supported him in this decision. As it turned out, Altman found Nilsson to be delightful to work with.

• Harry Nilsson took his band of musicians to the island of Malta where they had a purpose-built studio constructed for them.

• Swee'pea is played by Wesley Ivan Hurt - Robert Altman's grandson.

• A 200– to 250-foot breakwater had to be constructed at the mouth of the harbor to prevent the set from flooding during high seas.

• During filming of the scene where Ray Walston throws Robin Williams the can of spinach, Walston hit Williams in the head so hard that he required several stitches in his scalp. This delayed filming for several weeks.

• Many of the people's and critics' complaints with the film went comically addressed and made light of in MAD Magazine's satire, "Flopeye" (Sept. 1981).

DVD details

• Release date: June 24, 2003
• Anamorphic Widescreen
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Audio tracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1

English Dolby Digital Surround

• Available subtitles: English
• Running time: 114 minutes

Allusions

• Popeye's former ship, the Gloomy Gus, is the title of a comic book, "Gloomy Gus, the homeless ghost, and his angelic sidekick", by Red Holmdale.

External links

• Popeye at IMDb
• Popeye at AllMovie
• Popeye at Rotten Tomatoes
• Popeye at The Harry Nilsson Web Pages
• Popeye Village, a tourist site in Malta built on the purpose-built town of Sweethaven where the movie was filmed