The satirical plot follows film industry denizens and Hollywood society, all preoccupied with making a movie. After an elaborate song-and-dance sequence set to "Polly Wolly Doodle", we learn successful film producer Felix Farmer has just suffered the first major flop of his career, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars to Capitol film studios and his own sanity.
Felix makes multiple suicide attempts, each one a failure. He is rescued by beachgoers after his carbon monoxide-filled car accidentally slips into gear, crashes through the garage and into the Pacific Ocean. His attempt to hang himself in an upstairs bedroom fails when he crashes through the floor, injuring a Hollywood gossip columnist standing in the room below. While Felix is variously catatonic or heavily sedated, his friends and many hangers-on occupy his Malibu beach house, which leads to a party, which degenerates into an orgy. Felix then tries to asphyxiate himself in his kitchen oven but he is again thwarted by two randy party guests with other things on their mind. Felix next attempts to shoot himself, but is distracted by a young woman wearing only a pair of panties. This experience gives Felix a sudden, intense epiphany: His film's failure was due to its lack of sex.
Thoroughly convinced that an erotic version of Night Wind will be a resounding success, Felix persuades the executives at Capitol studios to sell him the film outright. He then attempts to convince his recently estranged wife Sally Miles, the star of Night Wind and an Oscar-winning actress with a squeaky-clean image, to perform in the revised film — now a softcore pornographic musical where she would appear topless. Despite Sally's objections, Felix liquidates most of their financial holdings to buy the existing footage and to finance further production. The studio executives believe Felix is deranged and initially are keen to unload the film and recoup their investment. However, when Sally goes through with the topless scene and the revised Night Wind seems a likely success, they plot to regain control. Since half of Felix's assets legally belong to Sally, the studio persuades her to sign a distribution deal that also gives them the right to edit the film. Hysterical and brandishing a water pistol, Felix attempts to steal the film negatives from Capitol studio's color lab vault but he is shot and killed by police, after holding the lab's manager hostage.
Felix's tragic death creates a crisis for his cronies, film director Tim Culley, press agent Ben Coogan, and physician Dr. Irving Finegarten; the trio decide to save their friend from the lavish but hypocritical Hollywood funeral and give Felix a proper sendoff. They break into the funeral home, steal his body and substitute the corpse of a largely forgotten character actor who died on the beach at the beginning of the film. After toasting their fallen comrade, the three give Felix a Viking funeral in a burning dinghy, while the actor in Felix's coffin gets an elaborate Hollywood sendoff. The epilogue reveals that Felix was right: His revamped Night Wind was a box-office smash for the studio, with Sally winning another Academy Award for her performance.
Cast
Julie Andrews as Sally Miles, the star of Night Wind and the wife of film producer Felix Farmer
William Holden as Tim Culley, the director of Night Wind and Felix's best friend
Richard Mulligan as Felix Farmer, the producer of Night Wind and the husband of Sally Miles
Robert Preston as Dr. Irving Finegarten, Felix and Sally's physician
"S.O.B." (in the film) stands for "Standard Operational Bullshit" and refers to misinformation being the norm.[1] The abbreviation means "sexually oriented business" (if pertaining to strip clubs) and more generally "son of a bitch" (a ruthless person).[citation needed]
A Spanish dub of the film keeps the abbreviation S.O.B., claiming that it stands for "Sois honrados Bandidos" (You Are Honest Crooks). The Argentine title for the movie was changed to Se acabó el mundo (The World is Ended), having no relation to the original title.[citation needed]
Three years later, when Edwards had his name removed from the writing credits of 1984's City Heat, he was billed under the pseudonym Sam O. Brown. (S.O.B.)[citation needed]
Influences
When writing the screenplay, Edwards drew upon several of his own experiences as a film maker. The character of Felix Farmer is a person not unlike Edwards, while actress Sally Miles bears certain similarities to real-life wife Julie Andrews (who plays her).[citation needed]
The story of S.O.B. parallels the experiences of Edwards and Andrews in their infamous, but Academy Award-nominated, failure, Darling Lili. Intended to reveal Andrews' heretofore unseen wicked and sexy side, that film had a troubled shoot, went significantly over budget, and was subjected to postproduction studio interference. The early 1970s brought more bad news for Edwards; he made two films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wild Rovers, a Western with William Holden and Ryan O'Neil and The Carey Treatment with James Coburn. Once again, studio interference occurred during postproduction of both films, which were edited without any input from Edwards. Both movies opened to negative reviews and poor business. Hit hard financially and personally by these events, Edwards moved to Europe to work independently, away from the meddling and restrictions of the Hollywood studios. The plan worked, leading to several successful projects, including three very profitable Pink Panther sequels starring Peter Sellers.
In S.O.B., Andrews's character agrees (with some pharmaceutical persuasion) to "show my boobies" in a scene in the film-within-the-film.[7][8] For this scene, comedian Johnny Carson thanked Andrews on the Academy Awards for "showing us that the hills were still alive," alluding to a famous line from The Sound of Music opening sequence.[9]
Production
S.O.B. had been in development by Edwards since 1976.[10] In 1979, the film was set for preproduction at Orion Pictures with distribution by Warner Bros., Edwards's third film with Orion after 10 and The Ferret, which was due to star Dudley Moore.[10] In July 1979, Orion put the film into turnaround.[1] Later that year, Edwards signed a deal with Lorimar through United Artists set to distribute.[1] In January 1980, Variety announced that Cloris Leachman and David Callan had been named among the cast members, but neither ultimately appeared in the film; Variety also reported that Joel Grey had turned down a role in S.O.B. In 1981, Lorimar's distribution agreement with UA ended and Lorimar began distributing their films through Paramount Pictures. Paramount released S.O.B. in July, 1981, though much animosity still existed between Edwards and Paramount over the Darling Lili debacle.[1]
Filming of S.O.B. took place between March and July 1980 in Los Angeles, Malibu, and Santa Monica on a budget of $12 million.[1]
Reception
Critical response
S.O.B. was released in July 1981, with critical opinion of the film sharply divided. Remarkably, the screenplay was nominated for both a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen, and a Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay. It was also nominated for a Razzie for Worst Director and a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical.[citation needed]
S.O.B. currently holds an 81% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 26 reviews, with an average rating of 6.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A sustained blast of unbridled vitriol from writer-director Blake Edwards, S.O.B. is one of the blackest – and most consistently funny – Hollywood satires ever put to film."[11]
Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, described S.O.B. as "a nasty, biased, self-serving movie that also happens to be hilarious most of the time...It's difficult to remember a film as mean-spirited as S.O.B. that also was so consistently funny." Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, then hosts of the PBS film review program Sneak Previews, both gave S.O.B. a positive review.[12]
Box office
The film grossed $3,116,078 over the five-day 4th of July holiday weekend and went on to gross $14.8 million in the United States and Canada.[2]The Village Voice dubbed the film a box-office flop.[1]
Television version
Broadcast television prints of S.O.B. contain alternate takes and edits of several scenes originally containing sex and nudity, such as the party and orgy scenes and Night Wind's erotica dream sequence where Julie Andrews exposes her breasts. The television version contains a scene where Robert Vaughn, as studio head David Blackman, receives a phone call while in bed with his mistress, and is simply seen naked from the waist up. In the original theatrical print, he is wearing a bustier and nylon stockings.[citation needed]
Home media
The original video release was made by CBS Video Enterprises in 1982, on both VHS and CED Videodisc, and was later reissued on VHS by CBS/Fox Video in the mid-1980s. Warner Bros. bought ancillary rights in 1989 with their purchase of Lorimar, and the film was released on Laserdisc through Warner Home Video in 1990.[13] Warner released a DVD edition in 2002 and reissued in 2012.[14] In 2017 Warner Archive released the film on Blu-ray.[15]
