You’re a Big Boy Now (1966)

For his first major studio feature as director (after several years working for Roger Corman), Francis Ford Coppola made a fun offbeat coming-of-age nightmare comedy.

Bernard Chanticleer (22-year-old Canadian Peter Kastner) is a nice but very awkward fella working (on roller skates) as a stack boy at the New York Public Library and anxious to step out into the “adult world.”

He tries to escape his overbearing parents (real-life husband and wife Rip Torn and Geraldine Page), ignores Amy Partlett (Karen Black), the nice library assistant who loves him, and gets himself an eighth-floor walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village.

Bernard soon falls for a crazy man-hating go-go dancer and off-Broadway actress named Barbara Darling (Elizabeth Hartman), who lives with her dwarf confidant and “biographer” (Michael Dunn).

Julie Harris is Bernard’s suspicious spinster landlady, Miss Thing, who has trained her dead brother’s pet rooster to attack any girls who visit him.

Most of the film was shot on location, and there’s a good look at what 42nd St. peep shows were like in the 1960s. Doris Wishman’s My Brother’s Wife is on a marquee.

The Lovin’ Spoonful recorded the soundtrack (released by Kama Sutra) which includes Darling Be Home Soon and the title song.

The original novel by David Benedictus chronicles the rites of passage of a young clerk working in a London shoe shop. Francis Ford Coppola transposed the story to New York City for the film.

Bernard Chanticleer
Peter Kastner
Barbara Darling
Elizabeth Hartman
Margery Chanticleer
Geraldine Page
I.H. Chanticleer
Rip Torn
Richard Mudd
Michael Dunn
Raef del Grado
Tony Bill
Miss Thing
Julie Harris
Amy Partlett
Karen Black
Patrolman Francis Graf
Dolph Sweet
Kurt Dougherty
Michael O’Sullivan

Director
Francis Ford Coppola