UNITED STATES—Are you celebrating, now that Southern California emerges from the quarantine woods, by setting out to do something special you long ago promised yourself would do? I’d love to hear about it. Meanwhile I continue the intellectual and nostalgic journey I promised
myself in the depths of COVID: a defense of the 1963 madcap comedy epic,
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
About 30 minutes, into the story of eight travelers brought together on a desert roadside by the dying words of a paroled thief who crashes and before kicking the bucket,
literally, shares the secret of “350 Gs under a Big W in Santa Rosita” and thus sets off a greed-fueled race for the loot. Here is a stunning cut to activities at the Santa Rosita Police Station (on a par with the revelation that Roger Thornhill in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” is not a real person, but a meticulously created non-existent Cold-War agent, established through elaborately staged behavioral patterns and simulated travels).