Only in the song does she turn around and come back. Here is Bella Monica Bellucci in an ad forMartini Gold, produced by Dolce and Gabbana for the Italian vermouth makers, Martini & Rossi. (Your reward for reading this post is the video Monica at the end of this post.)
A bunch of us, including the guys over at Bar Talkon this site, recently completed the Proust Questionnaire, a 19th Century parlor game now named for French novelist Marcel Proust who completed it as a teenager. (You can read his answers here.)
The questionnaire is a personality inventory of how you feel about yourself, others and the world in general. It includes a list of questions designed to get guys, in particular, to open up about the things guys don’t usually talk about, even after a few beers: the personal feelings stuff, questions about shortcomings, bad habits and when we lie. There are questions on the easy stuff guys do talk about: favorite books, movies, painters, heroes. We completed it about the same time that George Clooney, Matt Damon and Daniel Craig did for Vanity Fair. They made the February 2012 cover of the magazine. All we made was a spreadsheet that we shared with each other.
(Vanity Fair has an interactive version that you can take and compare your answers to the three guys above plus other luminaries.)
Nevertheless, many of us had one thing in common with Clooney and Damon. In answer to the question about what talent we would like but don’t, we all replied, playing a musical instrument. (We’d make one helluva band: Clooney on keyboards, Damon on bass, Bowles on guitar, me on alto sax.)
If we had been asked, do you take a second or third longing look at pretty women walking down the street, no doubt we would all have shared that answer as well.
In the rock ‘n roll classic song by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” as played and sung on in his 1988 Cinemax special, “Black&WhiteNight,” it all comes together. T-Bone Burnett served as the musical director and lead guitar. “Oh, Pretty Woman” featured all the guys we guys fantasize about being the next time around: Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, J. D. Souther, Steve Soles. It includes a dueling guitar segment, if you want to call it that, between T-Bone and Bruce. You can’t blame Bruce for trying: what he lacks in licks compared to T-Bone, he more than makes up for with his shoulder-bobbing and foot-stomping that’s rather contagious. An amazing performance!
“Oh, Pretty Woman” was released in 1964 and Orbison posthumously won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the version cited above. The title was inspired by Orbison’s wife Claudette interrupting a conversation he was having with his friend and co-writer, Bill Dees, to announce she was going out. When Orbison asked if she was okay for cash, Dees said “A pretty woman never needs any money,” and this classic was born on the spot.
In the movie “Pretty Woman” which featured the song, Julia Roberts was okay for cash too—Richard Gere was along to pick up the tab.
Here is Bella Monica Bellucci in an ad for Martini Gold sponsored by Dolce and Gabbana.
