It's a little hard to explain why it might be, but It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World might just be my favorite movie of all time. The first time I saw it was probably thirty-five years ago or so now, during one of the annual New Year's Eve showings on television, and it set me dreaming of myself rakish and dissolute in a heavy steel-bodied convertible with a woman in a satin gown, racing across the California desert towards the Big W. Dreams I still have today, half a lifetime later.
This site is my tribute to a movie I love, to a time that is lost, and in some ways, to the child I was, sitting in a warm living room in the far frozen north of Canada with my bowl of salt and vinegar chips, dreaming of a life full of laughter and adventure and wacky hijinks.
It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World pulls me back into a time I'm a little too young to remember -- it was released two years before I was born -- but also to a time in my life when the world and all the wonders in it were opening up to me. It brings me back the mid 1970s when I was around 10 years old. The movie was played on CTV in Canada every New Year's Eve, and for a few years before I was old enough to start seeking out parties, I'd be babysitting for friends of my parents, deep drifts of snow outside, the deserts of southern California there on the screen.
It's refreshing to me, too, in an era when every wonder that is imaginable can be created with CGI and put up there on the screen, to see spectacle created that involved real danger, real cars, real planes flying through real billboards just to capture a few thrilling seconds of action.
And honestly, I still find it hilarious -- the sheer madcap, intense, scenery-chewing acting going on never ceases, after all these years, to make me smile.
If you haven't seen the movie, and this site inspires you to watch it, my work here is done. I hope you love it as much as I do.
the man who inexplicably continues to be known, against all odds, as stavrosthewonderchicken. I love you all.