THE STING

This evening I saw George Roy Hill's 1973 Best Picture Oscar winner THE STING at the Yonge & Dundas Event Screen with the Movie Meetup group.  It didn't start till 7:30, so I finally had time to make fettucine alfredo for dinner.  Afterward we went to the nearby Pickle Barrel, where I had a banana split.

THE STING, of course, is Paul Newman and Robert Redford's second "bromance" vehicle, following 1969's BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID.  It's set in 1936 Chicago, the one where young grifter Redford hooks up with veteran scammer Newman to cheat dangerous racketeer Robert Shaw (the real reason for the movie's blockbuster success, IMHO) out of a fortune.  Redford's previous caper stealing mob money got his partner killed--the "token Negro who's about to quit the racket but instead gets killed off early" role--but he didn't learn his lesson.  I have a perverse admiration for people who don't learn from their mistakes:  it's an oddly American trait.

The movie won lots of Oscars, of course, including Edith Head's umpteenth Costume Design Oscar. (TIME magazine groused that she won it for remembering how people dressed in the 1930s.) Spoiler alert:  Dimitra Arliss plays a woman the mobsters hire to seduce Redford, but she wasn't so pretty, resulting in this exchange in the MAD magazine spoof: "They hired her to seduce you with her good looks." "Who did?" "The Polish Mafia!" Ray Walston plays one of the scammers who take over the telegraph office by pretending to be painters, and in the MAD version he says, "I'm beginning to appreciate the realism and credibility of MY FAVORITE MARTIAN!"