r/movies • u/systemstheorist • 14h ago
Media Tommy (1975) - Champagne - scene starring Ann-Margret who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance
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u/centaurquestions 14h ago
But can she throw away a piece of paper?
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u/CaySalBank 14h ago
Such a great skit. Probably lost on much of that audience, but Kristen Wiig nailed it.
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u/ThaiJohnnyDepp 9h ago
What a woman, like a comment says, "Sweden's gift to America "
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u/Furlock_Bones 2h ago
I thought it was this scene: https://youtu.be/270KKGpvqTU?si=iGO5r_M9E07LwRbk
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u/iamthatbitchhh 14h ago
Everybody needs to watch Tommy. Every scene is absolutely insane and the cameos are fantastic. Imma call myself a dumbass here, but I didn't even know until I was in my teens that Pinball Wizard was The Who's song, thought it was Elton Johns.
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u/systemstheorist 14h ago
Ken Russell films in general need to studied more. One of those directors that's well known to film school geeks but derserves to be more widely known. All his films are just spectacles that could never get made into today's Hollywood.
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u/PhallusInChainz 10h ago
Lisztomania is brilliantly unhinged
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u/KurtVonnegutWasRight 8h ago
The first Ken Russell film I watched from beginning to end was Women in Love when I was about 19. I couldn't look away from the screen and I couldn't get the film out of my head for 4 days. I actually had to go back to the library and check it out again the next weekend, and I checked out The Boyfriend and Gothic, the only two other KR films in stock. Since then I have seen all of them ....and this post is making me keen to watch some again.
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u/TheRealHFC 1h ago
I think the only Ken Russell film I've knowingly seen is Altered States. It was a great and enthralling slow burn until it turned into a stupid monster movie. I can't think of another film that completely falls apart so late in.
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u/Easy-Lucky-Free 14h ago
This started weird and then goes completely off the rails. Did baked beans shoot out of her TV before the mud and after the bubbles???
Tommy is one of my favorite albums, but I can't say I've ever watched the movie.
Looks like its nearly as wild as Pink Floyd's The Wall movie?
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u/systemstheorist 14h ago
More wild, there will never be another director like Ken Russell.
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u/Easy-Lucky-Free 14h ago
Heh, I'll have to check it out when I'm in the right headspace for that sort of thing.
Thanks for sharing.
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u/kevnmartin 14h ago
I've seen it about 27 times. It came out when I was in high school and my friends and I used to go to the King Theater in Seattle to see it every chance we got. I even dragged my dad to it.
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u/iamthatbitchhh 14h ago
You need to watch the movie. It's completely unhinged. Jack Nicholson's best role. Really, every cameo is amazing.
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u/Easy-Lucky-Free 14h ago
Definitely on my list after watching this and the acid queen scenes lol.
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u/iamthatbitchhh 14h ago
Ahhh I totally forgot about Tina Turner! Don't look into more into the movie, just go in blind.
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u/Thendofreason 14h ago
And Elton John
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u/Cazmonster 13h ago
The Pinball Wizard scene is so good.
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u/Slamtilt_Windmills 13h ago
It always cracks me up to think that that role/song was originally Rod Stewart, but he was talked out of doing it for the movie... by Elton John
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u/iamthatbitchhh 13h ago
I made another comment about that. I had no idea that wasn't Elton John's song until I was in my teens. Even though I had seen Tommy multiple times, I thought every song that the other artists did were their own and not The Who's🫣.
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u/typhoidtimmy 10h ago
The eyes he and Ann lay on one another is something to behold. Dude had her bare assed on top of his desk with the amount of fuck me eyes going.
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u/Thendofreason 13h ago
The Who Sell Out Album Cover Shoot ( Baked Beans), London, 1967 | San Francisco Art Exchange https://share.google/BhLowCtpfjIFReivU)
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u/jimmyrhall 12h ago
I bought this movie on DVD from a Half Price Books a couple years ago. Watched it with my 60-year-old parents since they watched it when it came out, I think. Bizarre ride of a movie.
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u/Zealousideal-Ice123 14h ago
WTF is happening here?
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u/CaySalBank 14h ago
- 1975 is happening here.
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u/ohnofluffy 14h ago
…. in England. This and Monty Python were the first things I watched where I realized there are some truly English things in here and I am never going to get them. Love them both, I do not get it all.
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u/CaySalBank 14h ago
lol, yup. American here, but I grew up on a steady diet of Monty Python, Benny Hill, Tom Baker's Doctor Who, Dave Allen at Large, etc. And of course all the music. Might explain why no one gets my sense of humor. Not sure I get it, either.
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u/CaineRexEverything 14h ago
Full story: Her teen son Tommy just won a huge pinball tournament, to impending acclaim and stardom. But she’s still wracked with guilt because she’s partly to blame for the psychological condition he’s had since he was 5. Here the guilt and her intoxication cause her to have a hallucinatory mental breakdown.
Short version: Ann Margret writhes about in several varietals of muck because why not.
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u/sethn211 9h ago
…and humps a scat-covered body pillow
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u/CaineRexEverything 8h ago
I mean it’s supposed to be chocolate because she’s hallucinating the commercials she saw on TV - but yeah, I always think it looks like sloppy asf shit
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u/sethn211 8h ago
Oh now that you say that it makes sense. I didn’t get the connection. The first wave of stuff I thought looked diarrhea until I saw the beans, then I was thinking vomit. All in all, not pleasant.
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u/CaineRexEverything 7h ago
It does look a lot like shit, like sewage. Probably stank under studio lights with a whole ass pool of beans mixing in too.
Apparently Ann Margret cut her wrist really badly during this scene, from one of the shards from the TV screen. It wasn’t noticed til after filming stopped. She was hospitalised with severe blood loss. There’s a scene a little later, after Tommy has ‘converted’ her and she’s on TV with Ollie Reed’s Uncle Frank dressed in green fatigues, which was filmed the day after, and she looks very unwell.
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u/systemstheorist 14h ago
The character Nora is the mother of the titular Tommy. Tommy due to childhood trauma has mental block preventing him from seeing, hearing, or speaking. The scene depicts her nervous breakdown and descent into madness as her son wins the pinball championship. She questions their success and life of luxury but finds she can't fully enjoy it because of Tommy's condition.
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u/Oldfolksboogie 6h ago
Let's not bury the lede -
She questions their success and life of luxury...
because Tommy's disabled condition is due indirectly to her infidelity - had she not been cheating when Tommy's dad returned from WWII, Tommy wouldn't have witnessed his murder or experienced the subsequent trauma imposed by his mom and her lover in their panic to keep him from spoiling the beans.
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u/immagoodboythistime 14h ago
This scene is Tommy’s mother, now with riches, she watches his success on tv but can’t fully appreciate it.
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u/demacnei 12h ago
Ken Russell (the director) is famously over the top. Lizstomania is even crazier.
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u/DistinctSmelling 9h ago
It was one of those Fad eras. Rock opera. You had Phantom of the Paradise, Tommy, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We're all better for their creation.
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u/_Amateurmetheus_ 14h ago
You know how people wake up and maybe have a coffee. Yeah, back then people woke up and had a line of coke. And then another line of coke. And probably another one. And then, and only then, were you ready to do some more coke. And then maybe write a screenplay, while you do some more coke.
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u/Dogwhomper 14h ago
This is a bit before the full-on nothing but coke binge era of the 80s and 90s. In the 70s they'd alternate between coke and gin (London) or tequila (LA) to take the edge off. This made falling down and rolling around on the floor seem like a great idea.
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u/Zealousideal-Ice123 14h ago
Thank you, this is actually very helpful.
Also explains the all white motif.
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u/LegitimateBlonde 7h ago
I saw this movie WAY too young to understand the nuance but old enough to understand the overt. It messed with my head in ways I can pinpoint, and I can only imagine what it did to the hidden bits of my unconscious mind.
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u/OrangeJuliusCaesr 13h ago
She’s hot as hell
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u/wharpua 10h ago
She’s gorgeous in her opening song in Bye Bye Birdie, there was a whole Mad Men plot line about it: https://youtu.be/zWxgk2y5RDA?si=LdfCTLO-DGx-dhuJ
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u/spacemanspliff-42 13h ago
This is such a messed up movie, the ending really disturbs me.
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u/UGLY-FLOWERS 13h ago
yeah it's a great movie but the ending is not great
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u/spacemanspliff-42 13h ago
The music performances are magical, but the story it's telling is horrifying. I think the point is that they're happy about it, but in return I am unhappy.
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u/BradleyNeedlehead 5h ago
The ending has grown on me a lot on rewatches. The very last moments of Tommy climbing the mountain and returning to the opening moments of the film always get me so fucking pumped.
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u/ATXDefenseAttorney 13h ago
This is a reminder there was no internet porn in 1975. This might've been the hottest thing these dudes ever saw. OSCAR!
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u/OkBook4166 14h ago edited 13h ago
You should’ve posted Acid Queen by Tina Turner from the same movie. Excellent song/sequence.
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u/systemstheorist 14h ago
Too many memorable scenes to choose from. This is one that won her Golden Globe and got her nominated for an Oscar.
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u/Haggisboy 10h ago
Ann Margaret had to be taken to hospital where she received 27 stitches after cutting her hand on glass from the broken TV screen in this scene.
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u/Greggybread 11h ago
In my late teens I came home stoned one night and turned on the TV to this very scene. I was mesmerised
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u/EH_Operator 11h ago
Okay hold the bloody phone— the 1975 theatrical poster has the bizarre tagline, “He will tear your soul apart.” In the set-up to the film, which is expanded beyond the album’s lyric, the burned and not dead Capt. Walker (Tommy’s dad) returns to find his wife with a man called Frank, who kills him.
Has Clive Barker ever mentioned this?
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u/ucancallmevicky 11h ago
I hadn't seen this movie in over 30 years I can't believe I forgot about all of that
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u/Arizona_Pete 7h ago
Did not know that Ann-Margret humping a body pillow, while covered in beans and chocolate pudding, was a thing, but here we are...
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u/Funny-Presence4228 2h ago
You categorically cannot, and I mean physically cannot, drink champagne from the bottle without it blowing back.
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u/_skyfern_ 10h ago
Is the beginning of this scene what inspired the song number for Georgette in Disney's Oliver Twist?
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u/dogbolter4 9h ago
I grabbed a copy of this DVD from a used records/DVD shop a few years ago. Showed it to my then 20 year old daughter, she fell in love with it and all things The Who. I was worried it wouldn't live up to my memory of it - but it's fabulous. Reminded me that Paul Nicholas was going to be the next big thing for a while.
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u/kalkutta2much 9h ago
undefeated set design - this vanity mirror??? god everything was aesthetically better in the 70s
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u/Boring_Track_8449 9h ago
I saw this post and realized I have never seen this movie - so I’m watching it right now. Kinda wish I had a hit of acid…
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u/Such_Radish9795 8h ago
I remember sneaking into the living room when I was young when I saw in the TV Guide that this would be on TV around midnight. It must have been the very early 80s. I would sit right in front of the TV w the sound as low as it would go hoping my parents wouldn’t hear and ask me why I was up so late and what I was watching. I remember I very much felt like I was watching something I should not be watching. I don’t think I’ve ever made it all the way through the whole movie in my life.
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u/KaoxVeed 6h ago
I knew a wonderful man who had seen Tommy more than the director. Probably why I love it so much.
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u/billleachmsw 5h ago
Saw this on a double-bill with Nashville as a 12-year old. Two unforgettable films that left an impression on me 50 years ago.
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u/ImpossibleCause1296 4h ago
Every time I watch this movie, all i can think about is how that set must have smelled after this scene was filmed.
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u/-Stupid_n_Confused- 5h ago
I had to stop it pretty quickly. She sounds like a cat being strangled.
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u/CliffBoothVSBruceLee 14h ago
My buddy and I walked out of this piece of shit during its first run. This clip reminds me why
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u/CaineRexEverything 14h ago edited 14h ago
I love Tommy so much. Brilliantly unhinged. Ollie Reed, Keith Moon’s Uncle Ernie, Elton’s Pinball Wizard. Bonkers. Tina Turner’s Gypsy Queen scene is even better and weirder than this.