Dallas Strip Clubs: Clip Job: Sarris Defends ‘Pussycat’
Woody Allen’s script is never hypocritical about our current sexual obsessions. What he is saying is that we are all involvd in the madness, unlike Wilder in “Kiss Me Stupid” who singles out Dean Martin and his fellow Clansman for abuse. We are all ridiculously over-sexed whether we admit it over not and, as Antonioni observes, eroticism is the disease of our age, but as O’Toole retorts, we prefer the disease to the cure, and in the end the only cure is death. I have become very attached to the characters and players in “Pussycat,” particularly Paula Prentiss’ suicidal stripper and Peter Sellers’ manic expressive. They are people I know and understand with the poetic logic of my time, and I sympathize with all of them. Why shouldn’t Paula take an overdose of sleeping pills every time some one looks at her harshly? What is life without love or sex?