{"id":8468,"date":"2013-03-16T20:00:04","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T00:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=8468"},"modified":"2013-03-15T21:26:28","modified_gmt":"2013-03-16T01:26:28","slug":"hopscotch-1980-ronald-neame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/8468","title":{"rendered":"Hopscotch (1980, Ronald Neame)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A really lighthearted spy romp, in which forced-into-retirement secret agent Walter Matthau spends some time with his girl Glenda Jackson (of a string of Ken Russell movies) and decides to write a tell-all book about the agency while his former bosses, led by humorless Ned Beatty (con man Hoover in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/2004\">Wise Blood<\/a><\/em>), try to locate and possibly kill him.  In typical PG-rated 1980&#8217;s style, Ned fails and is repeatedly humiliated, and Matthau (who proves himself awful at accents, languages and disguises) escapes detection despite having a bestselling book with his picture on the cover.<\/p>\n<p><em>How spies work:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image13\/hopscotch1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Stately Glenda:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image13\/hopscotch2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>KGB Chief Herbert Lom (known for the <em>Pink Panther<\/em> series) joins in the chase towards the end, along with sympathetic CIA guy Sam Waterston (simultaneously of <em>Heaven&#8217;s Gate<\/em>).  Matthau rents his ex-boss&#8217;s house in Adairsville GA (wooo!) and arranges to have it destroyed.  There are some plots that rely on perfect timing and coincidence, as in all spy movies, but it&#8217;s a well-meaning little movie, so I was rooting for it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Matthau&#8217;s son, Lom, Beatty and Waterson:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image13\/hopscotch3.jpg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A really lighthearted spy romp, in which forced-into-retirement secret agent Walter Matthau spends some time with his girl Glenda Jackson (of a string of Ken Russell movies) and decides to write a tell-all book about the agency while his former bosses, led by humorless Ned Beatty (con man Hoover in Wise Blood), try to locate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[357,1310,518,1199],"class_list":["post-8468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1980s","tag-espionage","tag-ronald-neame","tag-walter-matthau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8468"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8508,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8468\/revisions\/8508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}