There are few things in this universe that are less operachic than old dusty Columbo reruns , with the sad, bad bouffants, the nylon suits, the silly stilted dialogue and the superboring plots (trivia: in Italy, the grody L.A. detective has lost the "u" and has been re-branded as Tenente Colombo -- the reason beats us).
But there is one episode, a lost gem, that makes Opera chic giggle with happiness: it's the crazycool 1972 episode Etude In Black, where genius proto-indy auteur (and obviously starved for cash in order to finance one of his little masterpieces) John Cassavetes plays a conductor/playboy/murderer, a pregnant-with-fetus-Gwyneth Blythe Danner plays his wife, oldskool Hollywood Empress Myrna Loy plays Danner's millionaire mom and L.A. Phil big boss, and Karate Kid's Noriyuki "Pat" Morita plays an offensive caricature of an Asian butler who speaks some sort of horrible pidgin English (the spectacularly inarticulate Columbo resorts to mime in order make himself understood by the poor man).
Well, besides the ludicrous plot -- Cassavetes kills his mistress right before a concert, sneaking in her house while wearing an inconspicuous white tie and sunglasses and white cotton gloves, then goes on to the Hollywood Bowl just in time to conduct the L.A. Phil with impressively violent karate chops unrelated to the actual score (it was probably Morita's influence: "Wax on... Wax off" lol).
Opera Chic's favorite, though, is the scene where Columbo plays "chopsticks" at the Hollywood Bowl under Cassavetes's bored-to-tears, watchful eyes.
Every once in a while, OC watches again this superlameness and really, really lols (a full flickr album with dishearteningly funny vidcaps is here). The question of course is, if you had to cast an actual conductor as the killer -- hopefully less incompetent than poor Cassavetes -- in a movie, who would you cast?
