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Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 5:33 pm**

Incredibly excited to have this. Hopefully it means more "lost" Universal films from the era like Puzzle of a Downfall Child and Red Sky at Morning are on the way, too.

Posted: **Thu Apr 02, 2020 5:35 pm**

Here's hoping Langella and Benjamin participate in the extras, too. Frank Perry has an official biographer working on his story, so I hope Indicator brings them in, too

Posted: **Thu Apr 14, 2022 12:05 pm**

DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE
(Frank Perry, 1970)
Release date: 18 July 2022
Limited Edition Blu-ray

Pre-order here

Superbly directed by Frank Perry (The Swimmer, Play It as It Lays), with a scathing screenplay by Eleanor Perry (David and Lisa, Ladybug Ladybug), Diary of a Mad Housewife tells the story of Tina Balser (Carrie Snodgress, The Fury, Pale Rider) a frustrated housewife trapped in an unhappy marriage to an insufferably controlling, status-obsessed bore (Richard Benjamin, Catch-22). Tina seeks solace in a fling with an abusive lover, the arrogant writer Georg Prager (Frank Langella, Dracula), who treats her like a sex object, leading to therapy and further unhappiness.

A caustic deconstruction of male chauvinism, Diary of a Mad Housewife was a huge critical hit, earning its female lead an Academy Award nomination upon its release. The Perrys’ film is presented here in both its theatrical cut, and a long-unseen alternative TV version.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• High Definition remaster
• Original mono audio
• Long unseen alternative TV version containing unique scenes, presented in Standard Definition, as originally broadcast
• Theatrical cut audio commentary with actor Rutanya Alda and film historian Lee Gambin (2022)
• TV version audio commentary with Frank Perry biographer Justin Bozung (2022)
• Video appreciation by Academy Award-winning editor and filmmaker Chris Innis (2022)
• Original theatrical trailer
• Larry Karaszewski trailer commentary (2020)
• Radio spot
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Paula Mejía, a profile of novelist Sue Kaufman, extracts from interviews with Frank Perry, Eleanor Perry and Carrie Snodgress, a look at Snodgress and Neil Young’s relationship, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies for the UK
• All extras subject to change

#PHILTD168
BBFC cert: 15
REGION B
EAN: 5060697920185

Posted: **Thu Apr 14, 2022 3:06 pm**

Is Justin Bozung the member “frankperryauthor” on here? I’ve been patiently waiting for that bio to drop, but good to know he’s still working on it.

I’m always fascinated by TV cuts, so I’m excited to see this here. It seems waiting for the Indicator release was the right thing to do.

Posted: **Thu Apr 14, 2022 9:27 pm**

I've not seen the film but the description of Frank Langella's character in Indicator's plot synopsis makes it sound like the actor was unintentionally revealing more about himself in this role, given today's announcement of his firing from the House of Usher series for misconduct and there having been one other sex-related incident elsewhere.

Posted: **Thu Apr 14, 2022 9:32 pm**

I don't endorse ascribing bad character traits to the actors that portray them, but it's certainly interesting timing to get this announcement today of all days after more than two years of knowing this release was forthcoming!

Posted: **Fri Apr 15, 2022 12:34 am**

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote: Thu Apr 14, 2022 3:06 pm Is Justin Bozung the member “frankperryauthor” on here? I’ve been patiently waiting for that bio to drop, but good to know he’s still working on it.

I’m always fascinated by TV cuts, so I’m excited to see this here. It seems waiting for the Indicator release was the right thing to do.

Been waiting a long time for that biography, too. I found a signed first edition copy of Eleanor Perry's novel Blue Pages at the Santa Monica library some years ago, and I think I paid less than $5 for it.

I cannot wait to buy this, as I held off on Kino Lorber's. For anyone here who has it, how is the Larry Karaszewski commentary? He ADORES Perry and was partially responsible for the
Australian 16mm print of Last Summer playing at both the American Cinematheque and New Beverly. He moderated a wonderful Q&A with Barbara Hershey at the former, who was kind to the film, but basically said that the experience of making it taught her to never be intimidated or pressured to do things she was uncomfortable with by a filmmaker.

Posted: **Tue Jul 26, 2022 4:38 am**

If you are waiting for this and PUTNEY SWOPE to ship direct from Powerhouse note that despite the 25/7 release date showing on the Indicator website it is now set for an August 1 release according to various UK etailers.

Posted: **Tue Jul 26, 2022 7:28 am**

If you ordered direct from Powerhouse, it’ll be shipped as soon as stock arrives.

Posted: **Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:04 am**

Diary of a Mad Beaver

Posted: **Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:43 am**

Final specs:

Posted: **Sun Aug 07, 2022 10:25 pm**

Cine Outsider review

This is another first-rate disc from Indicator, with a fine HD transfer and a substantial collection of high quality extras, including what may be the only surviving copy of the TV recut of the film. Warmly recommended.

Posted: **Mon Aug 08, 2022 7:18 am**

Just watched the modified TV version and it occurred to me that the version of this film shown on Australian TV in the 1980s could be yet another different edit. Two things stayed in my memory from that broadcast: the reference to Albertine from Proust and Tina calling George a “fag.” These scenes are definitely not in the Indicator TV cut. Perhaps the theatrical version was shown here since Australian broadcasters were not religiously constrained like the Americans. I do remember however that almost all US films from this period (usually shown late at night on channel 10) were subtitled “modified for television.”

Posted: **Mon Aug 08, 2022 7:54 am**

I didn't see the film on any of its three BBC showings (1976, 1980, 1983) but I'd imagine what was shown was the theatrical version with language edited. Even late at night (the earliest of those three showings started at 10.50pm) you didn't hear strong or very strong language in any film I can remember seeing then, whatever its merit, whatever channel it was on (BBC1 or the more minority-interest BBC2) or however late at night. That didn't really change until the mid-1980s on the BBC unless I'm missing something. The BBC didn't usually show modified TV versions and generally did the edits themselves. (ITV did sometimes show TV versions though. Channel 4, which started in 1982, was notorious in its early days for not editing language in the films it showed.)

The BBFC cut the C-word for cinema release back in 1970, so I presume the film didn't show in the UK uncut until the 2017 streaming/VoD certification submitted to the Board by Universal. I notice from the BBFC website that the TV version is still worthy of a 15 certificate.

Posted: **Mon Aug 08, 2022 8:08 am**

Yes, I still have my recording of one of those three late-night BBC broadcasts between 1978 and 1983 (I recall mine is the 1980 transmission) and can confirm the "TV version" is definitely not what was televised then in the UK. I haven't checked all the changes usefully listed by the reviewer, but I believe BBC screened it intact apart from the use of the word "cunt", the "cu" being erased on the soundtrack when Langella speaks it at the party, so it's probably the same as theatrically screened in the UK. With 4% PAL speed-up, my BBC recording runs just a few seconds short of 91 mins.

"Bloody" was certainly not "snipped for a TV screening" of this film in the UK (as the reviewer suggests), where for at least 60 years it's been a mild expletive, regularly heard in films and on UK TV since the 1960s or earlier. It was even allowed in the 1938 British film of Pygmalion.

Posted: **Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:05 am**

Thanks for the info Jonathan. I'm old enough to remember 'bloody' being cut from films on some TV screenings, but I have a feeling this may have been long before the VHS/Betamax era. I'll add a footnote to the review to acknowledge the point you made.

Posted: **Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:54 am**

charal wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 7:18 am Just watched the modified TV version and it occurred to me that the version of this film shown on Australian TV in the 1980s could be yet another different edit. Two things stayed in my memory from that broadcast: the reference to Albertine from Proust and Tina calling George a “fag.” These scenes are definitely not in the Indicator TV cut. Perhaps the theatrical version was shown here since Australian broadcasters were not religiously constrained like the Americans. I do remember however that almost all US films from this period (usually shown late at night on channel 10) were subtitled “modified for television.”

Jonathan S wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 8:08 am Yes, I still have my recording of one of those three late-night BBC broadcasts between 1978 and 1983 (I recall mine is the 1980 transmission) and can confirm the "TV version" is definitely not what was televised then in the UK. I haven't checked all the changes usefully listed by the reviewer, but I believe BBC screened it intact apart from the use of the word "cunt", the "cu" being erased on the soundtrack when Langella speaks it at the party, so it's probably the same as theatrically screened in the UK. With 4% PAL speed-up, my BBC recording runs just a few seconds short of 91 mins.

The BBC would generally prepare their own TV-friendly cuts, because the official US TV cuts were regarded as so comically extreme - especially their scrubbing of even the mildest expletive that might offend religious fundamentalists, of which we mercifully have very very few. (Northern Ireland has the biggest concentration.) So they'd most likely take the theatrical version as their starting point.

There's a famous BBC edit of Apocalypse Now that expunges every instance of the word "fuck" apart from Marlon Brando's famous line about writing it on bombers - which was presumably regarded as contextually appropriate.

Posted: **Thu Sep 01, 2022 11:05 am**

Slarek wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:05 am ...I'm old enough to remember 'bloody' being cut from films on some TV screenings, but I have a feeling this may have been long before the VHS/Betamax era...

Nothing directly to do with Diary but I was surprised recently to come across a 1960 episode of the family show Wagon Train in which Charles Laughton's military martinet character comments, "bloody good show... bloody good". However, it was presented in a separate shot so that the line could have been easily cut - and I expect it was cut on UK TV at that time!

Posted: **Thu Sep 01, 2022 11:08 am**

It certainly wasn't a problem in the Till Death Us Do Part era not long afterwards!

A word that routinely got cut out of the US versions of Hammer films at the turn of the Sixties was "bastard" - we managed to put four back into the Indicator edition of Yesterday's Enemy thanks to getting our hands on a UK release print. Although there's an interesting bit in The Camp on Blood Island in which a woman calls a fellow inmate a "tramp" but she's unambiguously mouthing "whore" - although in that case we think it was post-production tweaking rather than censorship. (Or rather, still censorship, but at Hammer's end.)

Posted: **Thu Sep 01, 2022 1:56 pm**

I suspect the late 1950s was about the time "bastard" and "bloody" routinely began to replace previous euphemisms like "basket" and "ruddy", at least in British films, probably starting in war contexts where such extreme displays of emotion were more excusable (Albert Finney uses "bloody" in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning but that was X-certificated anyway). A similar transatlantic discrepancy to that in Yesterday's Enemy had occurred, according to Leslie Halliwell, when "in 1942 the seamen in In Which We Serve could not say 'Hell' or 'damn' in front of American audiences."

I think regional and class differences also affected acceptability of certain words. Halliwell also wrote that "Poor Cow and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were the first to allow 'bugger'", yet my Northern working-class parents - who reserved even "bloody" for real anger and never used four-letter words in my hearing - would routinely say "bugger" (in a non-sexual sense) even as a term of affection, as in "silly bugger". They even encouraged me to say it, at a very early age (before those two films!), when in front of visitors they often asked me, "Jonathan, what word rhymes with 'sugar'?"

Posted: **Fri Sep 02, 2022 8:49 am**

Really enjoyed watching this again as I haven't seen it since watching on video in the 1990s. My partner who had never seen, let alone heard of it, throughly enjoyed it.

Like most Frank Perry films this has aged like fine wine. Blind buyers - take a chance and take the plunge for this gem.

Posted: **Thu Dec 22, 2022 6:29 pm**

Finally got around to seeing this, and while I realize it’s opting for something very different, the first half especially felt like a more effective and confrontational inverse of Jeanne Dielman’s meditation on domesticity. I think the film would’ve played better if the side plot with Langella’s lover was excised, though it surely would’ve also been unbearable without those breaks! The juxtaposition between the behaviors and responses of Benjamin’s ungrateful, boorish husband and Snodgress’ timid, apathetic housewife create an agonizing caustic sensation. The presence of the husband is key to achieve its effect but it’s definitely an opposing tone from Akerman’s film (likely only on my mind so much in reference to the film’s thematic concerns because of its recent crowning)

Posted: **Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:35 pm**

The TV version significantly shortens the Langella subplot, presumably because much of it simply wasn't TV-friendly.

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