I had seen this movie over thirty years ago. It was a bit seedier than I remembered, Ben Gazerra in the title role playing an American pimp operating in Singapore. It seems so odd to me now that it was produced by Roger Corman and I was surprised to see Hugh Hefner and George Lazenby's names in the credits. Lazenby is Australian but played an American Congressman. The director, Bogdanovich, plays a CIA agent out to get dirt on the Congressman.
I wished I could be like Jack Flowers, walking around greeting the countless people he knew. I wouldn't want to be a pimp. Wouldn't want to be menaced by murderous Chinese rivals.
Watching it again, I still wouldn't mind being amiable, or at least glib.
A scene that stood out to me was when he sees some American soldiers on leave. "Yankee go home," he says. He briefly chats with them, asks where they're from, tells them about a practice among local sex workers and gets rid of them by telling them he doesn't want to hold them up.
I hadn't seen the movie in decades. but I was in an elevator at the hospital with a couple of guys I took to be Mormon missionaries. They wear name tags. I thought for a moment about trying to channel Saint Jack and asking where they were from. "Hello, boys." But I had worries of my own. I later saw a security guard either showing them where they needed to go or escorting them from the building.
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