Tuesday, March 06, 2012
I'm Never Too Old for This Shit!
By Kevin J. Olson
Lethal Weapon is one of those movies that explains my love of the medium. Sure, it’s not as sexy as saying that Fellini’s 8½ or Vertigo or something by Rohmer or Godard were the catalyst for my cinephilia, but — as odd as it may sound — Richard Donner’s buddy cop movie starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover helped shaped me as a lover of film. The progression goes something like this: As a kid, I loved Lethal Weapon. I wore out my Columbia House copy of the tape after only a few years. The more I watched it, the more I was curious about things that hadn’t always occurred to me. Things such as: “I wonder how they pulled that shot off” or “I like how they go from this scene to this scene.” Essentially what was happening was I was becoming more aware of the process of how a film was constructed. Naturally as a fan of Lethal Weapon (and its fantastic sequel), I devoured every action film I could. Sure, there were some horrible titles that I saw, but I remember one day biking home from my local Mom and Pop with a Cantonese movie that looked awesome. John Woo’s The Killer would have never been on my radar had I not loved Lethal Weapon so much that I went out and explored every kind of action movie. I become obsessed with Woo’s films, and as nerds are wont to do, I began researching (before Google! Yes, I had to use a library.) in magazines and movie encyclopedias what films possibly could have influenced John Woo to make this cinematic obsession of mine. This led to me finding out about Jean-Pierre Melville and how his Le Samourai was a huge influence on Woo’s version of the same film. So, in a roundabout way, Lethal Weapon led me to Le Samourai which led me to seeking out more world cinema.
The reason for this story is that my appreciation for Lethal Weapon goes far beyond mere nostalgia (although they don’t make ‘em like this anymore) or a kind of detached, ironic appreciation for a ‘80s action/comedy. I legitimately do love Richard Donner’s film for being the catalyst for my seeking out world cinema (a spark can come from the most unlikely of places), but I also love the film as its own entity separate from just being the movie I credit to interest in “higher” art. And on this, the film’s 25th anniversary, I found myself channeling the pre-teen that watched the film endlessly on VHS as I found myself, upon my most recent viewing of the film, to be just as wound up and invested in the film’s story and utterly elated by the finished product as I was all those years ago.
So, what was it that made this film about an oddball, yet endearing, duo of Los Angeles cops Martin Riggs (Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Glover) so appealing and engaging to audiences? Part of it may be the combination of two rising stars (Gibson was coming off the success of the Mad Max movies, although he wasn’t quite the international megastar yet; Glover had appeared in an important bit part in Witness and a major star turn in The Color Purple) and a more than competent action director, but I think a lot of the credit has to go to Shane Black’s script. Before he became a parody of himself with bloated screenplays for The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight, Black wrote a screenplay that featured great dialogue for two actors who spouted it perfectly. The film’s narrative — a basic murder mystery that naturally finds its way into the drug world — actually develops nicely and wraps up without us thinking about how implausible it all was. The film’s script had attention to detail that so many action films lack today. It also allowed for Glover and Gibson to buy into these characters creating one of the most charismatic duos in the history of buddy-action movies (this formula had really only been done once prior to this with the lesser Walter Hill movie 48 Hrs.).
Richard Donner was really the only established commodity working on the film when it went into production (although one could make a case for Gibson due to his international success), and he makes sure the film is paced perfectly so that we never get worn out by the relentless action. The pacing of the film has an impeccable rhythm: we are introduced the mystery over the opening credits (using
Christmas music as a gimmick to juxtapose the film’s violent story a year before Die Hard would), then to the two cops and their very different lives, then they’re thrust together and have their initial conflict, then they reluctantly begin to strike up a friendship as the two try to solve the Amanda Hunsaker mystery, and then realize how serious the investigation is while on their way to interview a witness. All of this takes place before any of the real action that affects the film’s main plot. Sure, there are a few establishing action scenes (my favorite being Riggs doing a Three Stooges shtick while busting some low-rent drug dealers), but the establishing 25 minutes or so of Lethal Weapon is more interested in giving the audience enough time to get to know and like these characters and like them as they joke around at the shooting range. (I love Riggs’ smiley face target guy) and Riggs seamlessly ingratiates himself into the Murtaugh family (coming into his bedroom in the morning with coffee and saying, “Come on, we got get up and catch bad guys.”) Roger Ebert correctly called Lethal Weapon a “bruised forearm movie” (meaning that the action is so intense that your date clutches your arm for the entire picture without letting go, leaving it bruised), but there’s so much more to it than that. Gibson and Glover, and their onscreen chemistry, are the reason why.It’s crazy to think that Donner shot the film’s original ending with the intent that the film would be a “oner,” a movie that had no intentions of having a sequel. This original ending can be seen on the DVD special features and shows the partners at ease with their friendship and saying goodbye to one another. However, Donner felt the chemistry between Glover and Gibson — which they didn’t predict when the film went into production — was so good that he couldn’t just let these two characters part ways as the original ending intended. So, a new ending (the one in the film where Riggs gives Murtaugh a bullet signifying he won’t kill himself and Murtaugh letting Riggs into his home for Christmas) was shot that gave the duo a happier ending that allowed room to maneuver should they want to make a sequel. It’s a tribute to just how good Glover and Gibson were in these roles and their chemistry together that they convinced the director to change the ending of the film.
One of my favorite scenes that really showcases Gibson’s acting ability is when we’re first introduced to the suicidal tendencies of Riggs. Looking at a picture of his deceased wife, Riggs puts a gun in his mouth unable to go on. It’s overdramatic, sure, but Gibson acts the hell out of this scene and gives the character more depth than what we’re used to in action films. These aren’t Dirty Harry-type cops who just shoot the bad guys and simply allow that trait to define them. Riggs is mentally unstable, and we know why, and it plays a lot better than the film’s original opening which shows Riggs as a maniacal bad ass as he roughs up a handful of toughs in a bar. Having a director such as Donner helped the filmmakers to see that they had a better scene in the can for introducing Riggs and how they wanted him to relate to the audience; they definitely made the correct choice.
Murtaugh, conversely, is a family man who just turned 50, is unsure of his place as a cop in a modern police department and a father in a modern family, and we know why (the great opening scene of him in the tub on his birthday being serenaded by his family is another favorite) because the film gives these characters depth and dimensions that allow the viewer to get invested while juxtaposing these two very different eras of the cop prototype. Murtaugh feels more like John Wayne and Riggs seems inspired by the Schwarzenegger/Stallone inspired superman style of action heroes. By grounding Murtaugh in the past and in more of a reality than we’re accustomed to with action films from the ‘80s, it makes Riggs’ character stand out more (which is good because Gibson is more than up to the task as a performer) and the violence he inflicts (and has inflicted upon him…Murtaugh, too) means more when it happens.
So instead of the murder that Riggs and Murtaugh investigate just being an excuse for them to kill people and blow things up real-good, it actually begins the process of renewal and reawakening for the two characters; it gives them purpose. Riggs is able to channel his elite killing skills for something good (making him less suicidal in the process), and Murtaugh — once the investigation turns to personal threats — is able to reestablish his worth as a cop and father when those things seemed to be slipping away from him and becoming altogether obsolete (this family dynamic of the Murtaugh’s is actually one of the aspects that attracted Glover to the film’s script). All of these touches of character development were more abnormal in 1987 than in today’s modern action film (and keep in mind they did all of this and still kept the movie less than two hours, go figure).
Donner also makes the film re-watchable all these years later because the logistics of the action scenes make sense. Something modern action films are completely devoid of, letting your audience get their bearings and understand the confines of the space the film’s characters inhabit (especially during fight scenes) is what separates the really good action films from the bad ones. Look at the final fight scene between Riggs and the mercenary Joshua (a fantastic performance from Gary Busey in a role he credits to saving his career at the time) which is an interesting mix of Brazilian ju-jitsu and a fighting style known as Jailhouse Rock which is a mixture of different styles. These fighting styles hadn’t been seen onscreen before in a mainstream action movie (Steven Seagal’s Above the Law wouldn’t come out for another year) and showcase just how lethal Riggs is; they also put the viewer right into the chaos of the final fight which is a brutal, intense hand-to-hand battle. The difference between this final fight scene and say something from the Bourne movies is that Donner wisely cuts back about every 20 seconds to an establishing shot to remind the audience where they are so they can logically follow the action in the scene despite its chaotic aesthetic. It’s one of my favorite fight scenes in any action movie.
The time the film spends with these characters in their everyday lives, and the way the viewer always is aware of where the characters are and what is going on is one of the reasons the film still holds up 25 years later. But what really makes it special and memorable this many years after its initial release is the on-screen chemistry between Gibson and Glover. Maybe an argument could be made for the duo
of Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy (although Murphy, it seems to me, did all the heavy lifting there) as the better example of the mismatched buddy cop formula, but I prefer Riggs and Murtaugh for their poignancy as real-to-life characters, their wit and charm, and the ease in which these two actors slipped into these career-defining roles. Money made at the box office is never the determining factor for how good a movie is; however, it is a good indicator (sometimes) of what an audience connects to. Made for just $15 million, Lethal Weapon went on to gross more than $100 million and spawned the rare (this point is arguable, I admit) sequel that is better than the original (the film series, four films in all, has grossed more than $900 million). I think audiences responded to more than just the fact that the film is a perfectly executed action movie; I think audiences responded to these lived-in characters that are thrust into these action scenes. Lethal Weapon is certainly the most influential cop movie to come out of the ‘80s spawning all kinds of comedy/action hybrids that never could touch the concoction that Warner Bros. put together of Richard Donner’s direction, Shane Black’s script, and Glover and Gibson’s performances as they all coalesced perfectly to make one of the most influential and memorable action/comedy films of all time.Tweet
Labels: 80s, Ebert, Eddie Murphy, Fellini, Godard, Mel Gibson, Movie Tributes, Nolte, Rohmer, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Wayne, Woo
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Saturday, January 14, 2012
“That’s S-A-N…F-O-R-D…period.”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
In 1968, despite never having watched an episode, television producer Norman Lear purchased the rights to Till Death Us Do Part, a landmark U.K. sitcom that featured an unapologetic bigot as its main character. Lear was convinced that such a show could catch hold on the American side of the pond, and after two pilots were turned down by all three major networks he succeeded with All in the Family, which premiered on CBS in January 1971. The program would come to revolutionize television comedy in the U.S., eventually (after a slow start) leaping to the No. 1 position in the Nielsen ratings.
Lear and his partner Bud Yorkin, who produced All in the Family through their company Tandem Productions, decided to follow up Family’s success by adapting another sitcom that had a British pedigree; Steptoe and Son, a series about a father-and-son team of “rag and bone” (junk) merchants, had been a favorite of U.K. audiences since 1962 and both men were certain that the show could accommodate the viewing habits of U.S. viewers. Yorkin, with the help of veteran TV scribe Aaron Ruben, put together two separate pilots in mid-1971; one that starred Lee Tracy and Aldo Ray as the American versions of the Steptoes, the other with Barnard Hughes and Paul Sorvino as père et fils. It was only after seeing stand-up comedian Redd Foxx in his scene-stealing role as a junk dealer in Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) that Yorkin and Ruben realized changing the ethnicity of the main characters to African-American was the way to go with their adaptation…and with that, the stage was set for the premiere of Sanford and Son 40 years ago on this date.
Redd Foxx’s birth name was John Elroy Sanford — and that surname was soon adopted as the same handle of the television character that would make the actor-comedian famous (the “Fred” was a tribute to Foxx’s older brother). Not that Redd Foxx was an unknown in show business; it’s just that he was more popular among black audiences as a familiar fixture in the 1940s and 1950s on the “Chitlin’
Circuit” (a nickname given to some famed black nightclubs of that era) in addition to recording a series of ribald (rated XXX for the times) “party” albums in the 1960s. At age 48, Foxx would be playing a 65-year-old widowed junk dealer but could no doubt be convincing due to his years of hard living (booze, cigarettes and drugs). Yorkin observed of the Man Who Would Be Sanford: “He was gray, and the way he walked on the show was pretty much the way he walked in real life. He had beaten himself up too much.” The role of Redd’s 30-year-old television son — to be dubbed Lamont Sanford — went to 24-year-old Demond Wilson, a young actor whose résumé included both Broadway and off-Broadway productions and who had made a favorable impression on Lear when Wilson guest-starred on an episode of All in the Family as one of two burglars (the other played by Cleavon Little, who had been approached originally by Yorkin to appear on the series but wound up recommending Foxx instead) ransacking the Bunker house. With the cast in place, Yorkin worked on a third pilot with Foxx and Wilson and after CBS President Fred Silverman passed on the show (a situation he once said was “one of the stupidest things I did at CBS”), it was snapped up by NBC executives Herb Schlosser and Mort Werner, who scheduled Sanford and Son as a mid-season replacement for The D.A. in January 1972.
At 9114 S. Central Ave., in the Watts section of Los Angeles, Fred G. Sanford and his son Lamont operate a combination junk/salvage/second-hand antiques store, and often struggle to make ends meet. Though both men ostensibly are partners in the business, Lamont did most of the work — driving the company’s pickup and doing the heavy lifting while father Fred functions as the “coordinator” of their inventory. Fred is, in many ways, the more childlike of the duo, often shirking his duties (like many adolescents) in favor of watching TV (his preferences lean to soap operas, game shows and Godzilla movies), playing cards and/or checkers and just generally goofing off. When called on his goldbricking by Lamont, Fred would complain about his “arthur-itis” (holding one hand up in a claw-like motion) and when that failed, would fake a heart attack at the drop of a hat, clutching his chest and hollering out “You hear that, Elizabeth? I’m comin’ to join you, honey!” (Elizabeth was Fred’s late wife.) Fred also possessed an irascible nature that often threatened to cleave the strong family ties between he and his son. He refers to Lamont as “you big dummy” and would raise his fist frequently to ask threateningly: “How would you like one ‘cross your lips?”
The stormy relationship between Fred and Lamont in the early years of Sanford and Son parallels that of its British counterpart (not surprisingly, since many of its scripts were retooled versions of the U.K. originals). Despite their incessant bickering, both father and son demonstrate real affection for one another and both could be out-and-out schemers when it came to the junk business. This gradually was phased out in later seasons, as Fred became more of a Ralph Kramden-like plotter determined to find ways to make a quick and easy buck, and Lamont morphed into a more level-headed individual patiently trying to get his dad to be more open-minded and accepting of people’s cultural differences. For Fred Sanford also was, in the tradition of his white All in the Family counterpart Archie Bunker, an unrepentant bigot, whose contempt for other races, sexes and creeds — whites, Latinos, Asians, women and even gays — knew no bounds and, as such, his prejudicial views frequently caused son Lamont endless headaches.
However, there was a subtly subversive characteristic in Fred Sanford’s detrimental make-up: Sanford and Son, like All in the Family, may have satirized prejudice by lampooning its bigoted main character and emphasized its absurdity by making certain those individuals suffered the consequences of their backward thinking, but it often seemed as if Fred got off a little easier than Archie. Bunker would be challenged by other characters on his offensive remarks but with Sanford, not so much. The “lessons” that Family placed special emphasis on weekly weren’t always in full force on Sanford. It seemed to eschew topicality in favor of what author Paul Mavis calls “guilt-free racial humor.” Re-visiting episodes of Sanford and Son reveals that much of the show’s insult-based comedy is most assuredly un-P.C., and if anyone attempted to offer up a series cultivating such a freedom of expression to a network today, they would most definitely be on the receiving end of a media backlash, despite the groundbreaking nature of the show’s portrayal of an integrated neighborhood in the 1970s. Fred and Lamont may have resided in lower-income environs but they shared the same square-foot yardage with Jews, Latinos (Gregory Sierra’s Julio Fuentes) and Asians (Pat Morita’s Ah Chew).
To emphasize how pioneering Sanford and Son was in its five years on the air, film critic Gene Siskel once wrote, “What All in the Family did for the Caucasian race in our nation with television, Sanford and Son did for African Americans. It is one of the two most noted and significant African-American sitcoms since the invention of television.” I don’t know which other sitcom Siskel references, but even though Sanford was awarded recognition by many scholars for its innovations, a second look at the series reveals that it was in many
ways an updated Amos ‘n’ Andy for the 1970s. The lead character of Fred Sanford, with his endless conniving and scheming, wasn’t too far removed from George “Kingfish” Stevens, and Fred’s nemesis on the show, sister-in-law “Aunt Esther” Anderson (LaWanda Page), was a direct descendant of Kingfish’s shrewish spouse Sapphire. Many of Fred’s pals on the show — Melvin (Slappy White), Bubba (Don Bexley), Leroy (Leroy Daniels), “Skillet” (Ernest Mayhand), etc. — could all be members-in-good-standing “of that great fraternity, the Mystic Knights of the Sea.” Fred’s best buddy, the eternally befuddled Grady Wilson (Whitman Mayo), was interchangeable as both the show’s resident Andrew H. Brown and the Mystic Knights’ slow-witted janitor, Lightnin’. The minstrelsy of Sanford could be attributed to the fact that the series, like the earlier A&A, was written mostly by white comedy scribes, including a young Garry Shandling before he turned to standup comedy, (a sore point with star Redd Foxx, who fiercely lobbied for more black writers and directors on the show) but when you also take into consideration that Foxx was an Amos ‘n’ Andy fan (he often waved away that series’ controversial nature by simply arguing that “funny is funny”) the comparison isn’t perhaps all that coincidental.
Sanford and Son’s premiere in 1972 gave NBC a solid hit on its Friday night schedule (long considered by industry wags to be a “death sentence”); it finished as the sixth-rated TV series in the Nielsen ratings in its first short season and for three seasons after that, was second only to All in the Family in viewership. Foxx’s instant celebrity from the sitcom eventually led to his dissatisfaction with what he was being paid for his role (he started out at $7,500 an episode, the same salary that Carroll O’Connor started out with on Family) and midway during the 1973-74 season, he walked off the show in protest. To explain Foxx's departure, the show introduced a storyline where Fred was away in his native St. Louis attending a cousin’s funeral and Grady had been put in charge of the business (and Lamont) in his absence. When Sanford’s ratings remained consistent despite its missing star, however, Foxx returned to the fold. While the show continued its ratings dominance for a time afterward, the seams already were starting to show; the plots got a bit sillier (Sanford fell back on the same gambit that was prevalent on The Lucy Show, making each outing a “guest star of the week”) and more outlandish. Foxx’s longtime cocaine addiction didn’t do him any favors, and co-star Wilson also developed a substance abuse problem (as well as numerous disagreements with the show’s production staff). Occasionally, the sitcom indulged in a bit of self-reflexive almost meta-humor as in an episode when Fred enters a Redd
Foxx look-a-like contest and plays both parts. The best example was the fifth season episode "Steinberg and Son" when Fred and Lamont discover a new TV sitcom appears to be based on their life, except all the characters are Jewish. They file suit, but then Fred sees it as his chance for stardom and gives tips to the actor play the Jewish Fred Sanford (Lou Jacobi) on how to react to the Aunt Esther equivalent. John Larroquette plays the Jewish Lamont. Robert Guillaume appears as Fred and Lamont's lawyer. The final inside joke comes when it turns out the show was written by a cousin of Rollo's and they asks the young African-American man why he didn't make the characters black, but he says no one would buy that. It's one of the more clever later episodes. In its final season, Sanford and Son was ranked No. 27 in the ratings, still respectable for a renewal, but by that time Foxx had been lured away to ABC for more money and a comedy-variety hour bearing his name. Demond Wilson couldn’t come to terms with Sanford’s producers so he called it quits as well. The result was a spin-off series (the show’s second; its first was a program starring the Whitman Mayo character, Grady, in 1975-76) entitled The Sanford Arms that starred Teddy Wilson as Phil Wheeler, who buys the rooming house next door that Fred and Lamont rented out to boarders for supplemental income. Sanford returnees who made appearances included Mayo, and Bexley. (Eight episodes were filmed, but the series was canceled after four.)Foxx’s ABC effort may have lasted longer (four months) than Sanford Arms but since the comedian remained out of work, he returned to NBC in March 1980 to try and halt the network’s slide into third place with a revival of his hit '70s series re-titled Sanford (no “and Son” because Demond Wilson wasn’t interested; the Lamont character was sent up north to work on the Alaskan Pipeline). Fred Sanford was just as cranky as ever but he had a new partner in the junk business (the go-to thespian for rednecks, Dennis Burkley) and a new girlfriend (Marguerite Ray) whose wealthy family detested him. (The whereabouts of Fred’s old girlfriend on Son, Donna “The Barracuda” Harris — played by actress Lynn Hamilton — went unexplained.) Lamont’s best friend from the previous series, Rollo Larson (Nathaniel Taylor), was now a regular on the show and the characters of Aunt Esther, Grady and Officers “Smitty” (Hal Williams) & “Hoppy” (Howard Platt) turned up from time to time as well but without Demond Wilson’s participation, the series fizzled after two attempts (both of its seasons were as mid-season replacements). Foxx would go on to two other attempts to re-create the sitcom magic of Sanford and Son, notably with The Royal Family in 1991. Midway through this Eddie Murphy-produced sitcom (which paired Foxx with co-star Della Reese), Redd suffered a heart attack while filming an episode. Sadly, the cast and crew mistakenly thought he was gagging it up with his old Sanford “Comin’-to-join-ya-Elizabeth” routine. (When they figured out it was no joke, it came too late to save the comedian’s life.)
One of the longest-lasting legacies of Sanford and Son takes less than a minute. Composed by Quincy Jones, the series' theme (its official title is "The Streetbeater") has such an infectious beat that even people who have never seen an episode of the sitcom can likely make a good attempt at humming it. In fact, on Scrubs, J.D. did exactly that once to try to get Turk into a good mood. Thanks to YouTube, here is the series' opening with Jones' track.
The stars of Steptoe and Son, Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett, might have made small screen magic during their long TV partnership but according to several sources, their relationship off-screen was quite acrimonious. The same charge has been leveled at Sanford and Son’s Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson — but in re-visiting the series, one can’t help but marvel at the chemistry between the two actors in their roles. Lamont, despite suffering from the indignities and difficulties generated by his cantankerous father, really does love and respect Fred and you can see it in how actor Wilson will sometimes grin at Foxx when Redd does a bit of business that tickles him. A character like Fred G. Sanford probably would be intolerable in real life, but Foxx exhibits a pixie-ish temperament (his apologetic wave at a person he’s gone too far insulting or his petulant pout at being scolded like a mischievous kid) that makes him endearing despite his shortcomings. A genuine artifact of the 1970s; Sanford and Son’s uncompromising humor still resonates with audiences today both on DVD and in endless reruns; furthermore, it laid the groundwork for future hits from the Norman Lear stable, including Good Times and The Jeffersons. And in the words of the immortal Redd Foxx: funny is funny. That’s all you need to know, you big dummy.
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Labels: 70s, Eddie Murphy, N. Lear, Shandling, Theater, TV Tribute
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Friday, April 06, 2007
SMOOP II: Electric Boogaloo
By Odienator
After the success of last year's Shameful Movies of Odie's Past Film Festival (henceforth known as SMOOP), I decided to make it an annual tradition. The rules can be found at the above link, but to recap, every showing at SMOOP is a double feature of films that I should be ashamed for liking, but am not. Each double feature has a title and a theme, though the movies may not be related thematically.
Last year, however, several people took me to task for selecting movies that were not shameful enough. This presented a wonderful yet expected challenge for me. Sequels are bigger, noisier, and worse than their predecessors, so I expected nothing less than to go back and revisit some tackier fare. We got it all: pimps, hos, car crashes, chicks in chains, and very strange foreign movies with sex scenes I hope someone will be able to explain to me.
Quentin and Robert aren't the only guys who spent time at grindhouses. I grew up with the 42nd Street theaters, which smelled like pee and had posters in their windows that advertised the kind of sin and degradation that earned you a one way ticket to the home of Linda Blair's possessor. Some of the films below I actually saw on 42nd Street; others fill that crazy desire of SMOOP's programmer, a guy with a love for gory horror movies, gratuitous nudity and musicals. In honor of the Trashy Movie Blog-a-thon and the release of Grindhouse, I give you SMOOP II: Electric Boogaloo. Bigger, badder, and with even more shame!
Chicks in Chains, Literally and Figuratively
Shameful movies: Willie Dynamite and Black Mama, White Mama
When Three-6 Mafia wrote the Oscar-winning “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp,” they must have been thinking about 1975’s Willie Dynamite. The titular pimp has plenty of problems. His theme song sounds like a commercial for a Blaxploitation soft drink (“Will-ayyyyy! Oh-ohhh Willl-eee Deeee! Will-ay D!”). His bitches keep getting arrested and/or sliced up by razors. His pimpmobile can’t stay away from tow-away zones. Rival pimps keep pressuring him to join their punany-pushers union; and his stable is repeatedly threatened by the self-proclaimed “Ralph Nader for hookers,” a former prostitute who tries to talk the girls out of walking for Willie or, at the very least, becoming their own bosses. Worst of all, by day Willie D. has to deal with an “8-foot yellow turkey” and the trash can-living grouch who hates him. That’s right, Willie Dynamite’s alter ego is Gordon (Roscoe Orman) on Sesame Street! When he wasn’t also bitchslapping Donna all over Locust Street on All My Children, Orman was teaching kids like us our ABC’s. “A is for ass, B is for bottom bitches…”
Despite my seeing this on a 42nd Street double bill in 1977, Willie Dynamite isn’t as trashy as most grindhouse fare. The actors, especially the late Diana Sands as Ho Ralph Nader, give fairly decent performances. There is very little nudity and, apart from a rather vicious throat-slashing, very little violence. What elevates this to trash-status is the sheer audacity of the screenplay. It thinks it’s a respectable expose on pimpdom, yet it absurdly demands you feel sorry for its hero — and not just because he’s wearing dead animals disguised as fur hats on his head. Willie D is compulsively watchable and fun because its big studio producers, Richard Zanuck and David Brown, are terrified to plumb the depths Roger Corman would have gone to had he made this film. It’s an ABC Afterschool Special on pimping. Toss in bad '70s fashion, a family dinner where Willie’s Mom thinks he’s an Amway salesperson (or something like that) and scenes that remind us what 42nd Street was like before Disney destroyed it, and you have the makings of an unintentionally hilarious cautionary tale/trash classic. This is the original Hustle and Flow.
Special mention goes to the “villain” of the piece, Diana Sands, who sadly died way too early from cancer. She manages to infuse with gravity the lousy dialogue and situations she’s given, which is no easy task. She’s even “conflicted” when she realizes how ruined Willie D’s career winds up being. Her last scene with Willie has a poignant quality that had me scratching my head, yet I couldn’t stop watching her.
Far more appropriate for SMOOP is the movie that filled the aforementioned double bill with Willie D, Black Mama, White Mama. Whaddaya get when you cross a chicks-in-chains movie with The Defiant Ones? You get a Black chick and a White chick chained together, on the run from a Philippine prison, “learnin’ ‘bout each other while they do their thing.” Unlike Willie D., however, there’s no pretense behind the message of Ebony and Ivory female empowerment; the filmmakers just want to show you some tits.
Co-written by Jonathan Demme, who cut his teeth on prison movies such as this and Caged Heat, Black Mama, White Mama chains Pam Grier to her three-time co-star Margaret Markov, and welds a women’s prison movie to the equally popular jungle revolutionary movie. Poitier and Curtis, I mean Grier and Markov, escape from one of those women’s jungle penitentiaries so popular in the early '70s, and while on the run have more catfights than Joan Collins while successfully falling out of their tops. Markov and Grier are both tough chicks, and neither is hard on the eyes nor are they shy about giving you what you paid to see.
All the requisites of both film genres are in abundance: there are grungy guys with guns shooting people for their cause AND a multi-culti shower scene, complete with a masturbating female guard peering through a hole in the shower wall. “Did you enjoy yourself?” asks another guard after busting her overheated colleague. “Hell yes!” said a voice that sounded like me.
The Black and White Nookie Of Death
Shameful Movies: Species and Def By Temptation
Guys, ever have one of those nights when, smack dab in the middle of some super-hot first date sex, your date turns into an alien or the Devil? Stuff like that really crushes one’s ego. “Did you hear?” the gossipmongers would whisper, “he was so bad in bed, the girl turned into Satan and killed his ass.”
Both Species and Def By Temptation use gore, nudity and violence to remind you that Jesus doesn’t like it if you bump uglies before marriage. They played together here at SMOOP to illustrate that old Eddie Murphy comedy routine about the difference between Black people and White people in horror movies. No matter the color, the dudes put their dongs where they don’t belong and die; it’s what happens when they deduce they are doomed that’s different.
Species tells the heartwarming story of an alien named Sil whose race sends instructions on how to create a human/alien mutation. The scientists create a female named Sil, unaware that the alien DNA comes with a case of that disease Christina Ricci has in Black Snake Moan. Sil escapes, heading into the night to breed a race of superaliens the old fashioned way. It’s easy for Sil to find volunteers for her sex-o-rama—she looks like model Natasha Henstridge. Men mistake her immediate demands for sex as a stroke of good luck, and pay dearly for it. Nothing’s free in this world, ESPECIALLY not hot sex with models.
Chasing Sil amongst the broken bodies of her victims (she pulls one female rival’s spine out) are Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker, Virginia Madsen’s bro, Doctor Octopus and that chick from CSI. One of those people satisfies the hottie the way most men wish they could, and gets killed anyway, proving that there’s just no pleasing women in bed. Showing that he was an equal opportunity offender, screenwriter Dennis Feldman wrote a sequel where the primary alien looking for love in all the wrong places is male. Avoid that one.
Ernest Dickerson’s cin-tog livens up Def by Temptation, a Troma release that features writer-director James Bond the Third as a divinity student in the big city. Temptation appears in the guise of Cynthia Bond, a demon/vampire/succubus who crawls the bars in Black neighborhoods looking for guys out for an easy score. She takes them home and gives the gossipmongers grist for the mill when she turns into the kind of nasty girl Vanity wasn’t singing about in that song. Blood and gore ensues as she gives the guys an AIDS metaphor.
Chasing Ms. Bond is the unrelated Bond the Third, Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, Radio Raheem, and Samuel L. Jackson who, if memory serves me, isn’t even allowed to say his favorite 12-letter word. Dickerson’s camerawork adds atmosphere and a few surprises, including the scene that proves Murphy’s point that Black people DO act differently in horror movies. When bartender John Canada Terrell realizes the woman he’s banging in the shower is Old Scratch, the next shot is a skewed camera perspective of him running, full frontal nude, directly at the audience. No towel, no drawers, nothing. He was willing to run down the street like that to escape the date from Hell. Ms. Bond gets him anyway (the shot of that is creepily effective), but still. He ran without asking why. Nobody in Species even thinks to run away before Sil kills them. "Push that bitch offa you and run!" one patron yelled at the screening I attended. Men. They never listen.
Hell on Wheels, and Under Them Too
Shameful Movies: Death Race 2000 and Psychomania
It’s fun when we get to the year depicted in futuristic movies and books, because we get to see if they were eerily prescient. Unless you lived near Queens Boulevard, Death Race 2000 was thankfully erroneous in its depiction of Y2K. In DR2K, people compete in a sporting event that involves running people over with your car. Different types of hit people earn different types of points. Manning the wheels are David Carradine (who also starred in the pseudo sequel Deathsport, which I saw on the Forty-Deuce) and Rocky Balboa, Mr. Sylvester Stallone.
QT certainly saw Death Race 2000 before he made Death Proof, his section of Grindhouse. This Roger Corman quickie, directed by Paul Bartel and featuring his Eating Raoul cohort Mary Woronov, has car crashes and pedestrian pummeling galore. Years before I saw this film, my uncle Chris told me this film was “very nasty” and he was right. With a low budget, filmmakers have to be a little less subtle and a lot more offensive with their satirical points, so Bartel and company resort to such scenes as rolling old people in wheelchairs out into the middle of the road so that cars may forcibly remove them from it (this doesn’t go as you may expect). Roger Corman knows how to stroke our baser instincts, which explains why the legend is he has never lost money on a production.
All About Eve is my favorite movie, and I should have been brutally distressed to see George Sanders in a Satanic biker movie. But I found it easy to believe Addison DeWitt would engage in a ritual that turns a woman into a frog in exchange for sending the bikers back to Hell. Psychomania is a confused biker movie that scared the ever-loving shit out of me as a kid, but is tame enough for a PG. A biker gang called The Living Dead make a deal with the Devil to become just that — the living dead. After a ludicrously funny mass suicide and return, they wreak “havoc” on a California town. Havoc includes knocking over a baby carriage and making loads and loads of donuts in the dust. They hook up with a girl hot for trouble, and eventually return to Hell via the aforementioned reverse Frog Prince deal. The movie does not make one lick of sense, but it’s fun to watch and would make a damn fine drinking game. Every time these hell’s angels rev their engines, take a drink. You’ll be dead.
Spanish Fly, or Grabbing the Bull by the Horns With Your Johnson
Shameful Movies: Jamon, Jamon and Matador
SMOOP goes international, and la fiesta está caliente! You may think I’m cheating by selecting a film by Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar, but back then, he wasn’t known as the guy who directed Todo Sobre Mi Madre. He was the sick bastard who made candy-colored Spanish movies that gave the MPAA fits when they came to this country. Matador is old-fashioned Almodóvar, full of what made grindhouse movies famous: envelope pushing sex and violence. A gored bullfighter (Nacho Martinez) gets off while watching people get murdered and/or murdering people while a criminal lawyer gets off on killing people while getting off on them. Still with me? Antonio Banderas plays a student who starts confessing to the murders committed by both the matador and the lawyer, despite the latter’s penchant for stabbing huge hairpins into the necks of her male lovers. Is she a distant relative of the aforementioned killer sex women from Species or Def? Or did Almodóvar see that horrible Tom Selleck vehicle, Lassiter, made two years earlier and featuring a similar scene between Lauren Hutton and an unlucky guy?
No matter. Those Spanish directors sure are freaky. Eventually the two killers find each other and you can just imagine what transpires. Meanwhile, in our other feature, Jamon, Jamon, director Bigas Luna gives us two Oscar nominees (Almodóvar favorite Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem) in an overheated melodrama about an underwear factory, a well-endowed underwear model, class warfare, naked bullfighting, brutal death by ham, a sign shaped like a bull with big testicles, and a sexy parrot. More on the sexy parrot and the naked matadors in a second; you don’t wanna know what happens to that bull sign.
Unlike most people, I think Penelope Cruz can be a fine actress provided she doesn’t speak English. Jamon gives us the uber-hot Cruz at 17, gladly offering up her ample naked bosom to hungry men lucky enough to bury their face in it. In fact, everybody seems to be having sex with somebody in this film; it got so complicated I actually had to stop the video and draw a chart so I could keep track. Cruz plays the daughter of the local prostitute (or la hija de puta as the credits on IMDB tell us) who’s impregnated by Manuel, the son of underwear factory owner Carmen (Stefina Sandrelli). Carmen is outraged that Manuel is going to marry below his station, so she hires her underwear model (Bardem) to seduce la hija de puta away from Manuel. Bardem’s character isn’t known for his brain; in Spain you need, um, qualifications to be an underwear model, especially if the underwear company is called Samson.
The MPAA shit on itself when it got a look at Bardem and his equally naked pal using unconventional means to incite the bulls during a late night bullfight. That’s self explanatory; the Spaniards aren’t afraid of full frontal male nudity. This is the most penis-obsessed movie I have ever seen. What confuses me to no end is the “sex scene” in the brothel between the guy, Cruz’s mom (la madre puta, according to that profane IMDB), and a parrot. If someone can explain to me what this scene is supposed to mean, I’ll be a better man for it.
Closing Night: Mad Musicals
Shameful Movies: The First Nudie Musical and Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers
Just like last year, SMOOP closes with musicals. Where last year’s festival ended with the best film in the series, this year ends with the worst. I freely admit to cheating a tad regarding the latter title up there — I didn’t like the movie that much; I liked making fun of it. I watched it twice, but I couldn’t commit to liking the whole as much as the parts.
It’s great when movies live up to their titles. The First Nudie Musical is the movie Rodgers and Hammerstein would have made if they were perverted cheap musical hacks. A film studio is on the verge of going under, so a director and his assistant (played by Shirley herself, Cindy Williams!!!) decide to put on a show, as Rooney and Garland used to do in those old movies, to save their jobs. Except this show has naked tap dancing, '70s nudity, and a scene where the male actors dress as giant vibrators with buttons across their crotches — buttons the actresses eagerly push. How can any trash lover dislike a movie with a truly inspired rendition of the piano “Scales” and with lyrics like “I’m not blind, and I’m not cripple, won’t you let me do your nipple?” Shockingly, this was released by Paramount Pictures and was promoted by the studio in 1977.
Last, but certainly not least, is Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers, a movie that must have been made to cash in on the Hee-Haw craze. Of all the films on this list, this one comes closest to the true grindhouse experience. The video I saw was made from a horribly dated print full of scratches and fading colors. The continuity errors were enormous, the boom mike made cameo appearances, and the car chases went past the same scenery about 800 times, like on The Flintstones.
What makes this a classic bad movie and a worthy addition to SMOOP’s festival roster are the musical numbers. The plot is simple: it’s about cottonpickin’ chickenpickers, or chicken thieves. Imagine the country and western songs you can get from that plot, then include a theme song with the titular words. As a whole, the movie didn’t make me like it enough to recommend on shame factor, but I did love several scenes. My favorite three are a musical number where the singer is playing a guitar with no musical accompaniment, but seven instruments are playing on the soundtrack, the car chase, and the “You Dirty Ol’ Egg Sucking Dog” number. You will not be able to get this song out of your head, except by force. “Stop stealin’ mah chickens, You Dirty Ol’ Egg Suckin’ Dog! Egggggg Suuuu-Ken Dawg!” sings the guy with such earnestness that you want to join hands with him and sing along. Now that’s how a trashy movie should make you feel.
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After the success of last year's Shameful Movies of Odie's Past Film Festival (henceforth known as SMOOP), I decided to make it an annual tradition. The rules can be found at the above link, but to recap, every showing at SMOOP is a double feature of films that I should be ashamed for liking, but am not. Each double feature has a title and a theme, though the movies may not be related thematically.
Last year, however, several people took me to task for selecting movies that were not shameful enough. This presented a wonderful yet expected challenge for me. Sequels are bigger, noisier, and worse than their predecessors, so I expected nothing less than to go back and revisit some tackier fare. We got it all: pimps, hos, car crashes, chicks in chains, and very strange foreign movies with sex scenes I hope someone will be able to explain to me.
Quentin and Robert aren't the only guys who spent time at grindhouses. I grew up with the 42nd Street theaters, which smelled like pee and had posters in their windows that advertised the kind of sin and degradation that earned you a one way ticket to the home of Linda Blair's possessor. Some of the films below I actually saw on 42nd Street; others fill that crazy desire of SMOOP's programmer, a guy with a love for gory horror movies, gratuitous nudity and musicals. In honor of the Trashy Movie Blog-a-thon and the release of Grindhouse, I give you SMOOP II: Electric Boogaloo. Bigger, badder, and with even more shame!
Shameful movies: Willie Dynamite and Black Mama, White Mama
When Three-6 Mafia wrote the Oscar-winning “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp,” they must have been thinking about 1975’s Willie Dynamite. The titular pimp has plenty of problems. His theme song sounds like a commercial for a Blaxploitation soft drink (“Will-ayyyyy! Oh-ohhh Willl-eee Deeee! Will-ay D!”). His bitches keep getting arrested and/or sliced up by razors. His pimpmobile can’t stay away from tow-away zones. Rival pimps keep pressuring him to join their punany-pushers union; and his stable is repeatedly threatened by the self-proclaimed “Ralph Nader for hookers,” a former prostitute who tries to talk the girls out of walking for Willie or, at the very least, becoming their own bosses. Worst of all, by day Willie D. has to deal with an “8-foot yellow turkey” and the trash can-living grouch who hates him. That’s right, Willie Dynamite’s alter ego is Gordon (Roscoe Orman) on Sesame Street! When he wasn’t also bitchslapping Donna all over Locust Street on All My Children, Orman was teaching kids like us our ABC’s. “A is for ass, B is for bottom bitches…”
Despite my seeing this on a 42nd Street double bill in 1977, Willie Dynamite isn’t as trashy as most grindhouse fare. The actors, especially the late Diana Sands as Ho Ralph Nader, give fairly decent performances. There is very little nudity and, apart from a rather vicious throat-slashing, very little violence. What elevates this to trash-status is the sheer audacity of the screenplay. It thinks it’s a respectable expose on pimpdom, yet it absurdly demands you feel sorry for its hero — and not just because he’s wearing dead animals disguised as fur hats on his head. Willie D is compulsively watchable and fun because its big studio producers, Richard Zanuck and David Brown, are terrified to plumb the depths Roger Corman would have gone to had he made this film. It’s an ABC Afterschool Special on pimping. Toss in bad '70s fashion, a family dinner where Willie’s Mom thinks he’s an Amway salesperson (or something like that) and scenes that remind us what 42nd Street was like before Disney destroyed it, and you have the makings of an unintentionally hilarious cautionary tale/trash classic. This is the original Hustle and Flow.
Special mention goes to the “villain” of the piece, Diana Sands, who sadly died way too early from cancer. She manages to infuse with gravity the lousy dialogue and situations she’s given, which is no easy task. She’s even “conflicted” when she realizes how ruined Willie D’s career winds up being. Her last scene with Willie has a poignant quality that had me scratching my head, yet I couldn’t stop watching her.
Far more appropriate for SMOOP is the movie that filled the aforementioned double bill with Willie D, Black Mama, White Mama. Whaddaya get when you cross a chicks-in-chains movie with The Defiant Ones? You get a Black chick and a White chick chained together, on the run from a Philippine prison, “learnin’ ‘bout each other while they do their thing.” Unlike Willie D., however, there’s no pretense behind the message of Ebony and Ivory female empowerment; the filmmakers just want to show you some tits.
Co-written by Jonathan Demme, who cut his teeth on prison movies such as this and Caged Heat, Black Mama, White Mama chains Pam Grier to her three-time co-star Margaret Markov, and welds a women’s prison movie to the equally popular jungle revolutionary movie. Poitier and Curtis, I mean Grier and Markov, escape from one of those women’s jungle penitentiaries so popular in the early '70s, and while on the run have more catfights than Joan Collins while successfully falling out of their tops. Markov and Grier are both tough chicks, and neither is hard on the eyes nor are they shy about giving you what you paid to see.
All the requisites of both film genres are in abundance: there are grungy guys with guns shooting people for their cause AND a multi-culti shower scene, complete with a masturbating female guard peering through a hole in the shower wall. “Did you enjoy yourself?” asks another guard after busting her overheated colleague. “Hell yes!” said a voice that sounded like me.
Shameful Movies: Species and Def By Temptation
Guys, ever have one of those nights when, smack dab in the middle of some super-hot first date sex, your date turns into an alien or the Devil? Stuff like that really crushes one’s ego. “Did you hear?” the gossipmongers would whisper, “he was so bad in bed, the girl turned into Satan and killed his ass.”
Both Species and Def By Temptation use gore, nudity and violence to remind you that Jesus doesn’t like it if you bump uglies before marriage. They played together here at SMOOP to illustrate that old Eddie Murphy comedy routine about the difference between Black people and White people in horror movies. No matter the color, the dudes put their dongs where they don’t belong and die; it’s what happens when they deduce they are doomed that’s different.
Species tells the heartwarming story of an alien named Sil whose race sends instructions on how to create a human/alien mutation. The scientists create a female named Sil, unaware that the alien DNA comes with a case of that disease Christina Ricci has in Black Snake Moan. Sil escapes, heading into the night to breed a race of superaliens the old fashioned way. It’s easy for Sil to find volunteers for her sex-o-rama—she looks like model Natasha Henstridge. Men mistake her immediate demands for sex as a stroke of good luck, and pay dearly for it. Nothing’s free in this world, ESPECIALLY not hot sex with models.
Chasing Sil amongst the broken bodies of her victims (she pulls one female rival’s spine out) are Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker, Virginia Madsen’s bro, Doctor Octopus and that chick from CSI. One of those people satisfies the hottie the way most men wish they could, and gets killed anyway, proving that there’s just no pleasing women in bed. Showing that he was an equal opportunity offender, screenwriter Dennis Feldman wrote a sequel where the primary alien looking for love in all the wrong places is male. Avoid that one.
Ernest Dickerson’s cin-tog livens up Def by Temptation, a Troma release that features writer-director James Bond the Third as a divinity student in the big city. Temptation appears in the guise of Cynthia Bond, a demon/vampire/succubus who crawls the bars in Black neighborhoods looking for guys out for an easy score. She takes them home and gives the gossipmongers grist for the mill when she turns into the kind of nasty girl Vanity wasn’t singing about in that song. Blood and gore ensues as she gives the guys an AIDS metaphor.
Chasing Ms. Bond is the unrelated Bond the Third, Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, Radio Raheem, and Samuel L. Jackson who, if memory serves me, isn’t even allowed to say his favorite 12-letter word. Dickerson’s camerawork adds atmosphere and a few surprises, including the scene that proves Murphy’s point that Black people DO act differently in horror movies. When bartender John Canada Terrell realizes the woman he’s banging in the shower is Old Scratch, the next shot is a skewed camera perspective of him running, full frontal nude, directly at the audience. No towel, no drawers, nothing. He was willing to run down the street like that to escape the date from Hell. Ms. Bond gets him anyway (the shot of that is creepily effective), but still. He ran without asking why. Nobody in Species even thinks to run away before Sil kills them. "Push that bitch offa you and run!" one patron yelled at the screening I attended. Men. They never listen.
Shameful Movies: Death Race 2000 and Psychomania
It’s fun when we get to the year depicted in futuristic movies and books, because we get to see if they were eerily prescient. Unless you lived near Queens Boulevard, Death Race 2000 was thankfully erroneous in its depiction of Y2K. In DR2K, people compete in a sporting event that involves running people over with your car. Different types of hit people earn different types of points. Manning the wheels are David Carradine (who also starred in the pseudo sequel Deathsport, which I saw on the Forty-Deuce) and Rocky Balboa, Mr. Sylvester Stallone.
QT certainly saw Death Race 2000 before he made Death Proof, his section of Grindhouse. This Roger Corman quickie, directed by Paul Bartel and featuring his Eating Raoul cohort Mary Woronov, has car crashes and pedestrian pummeling galore. Years before I saw this film, my uncle Chris told me this film was “very nasty” and he was right. With a low budget, filmmakers have to be a little less subtle and a lot more offensive with their satirical points, so Bartel and company resort to such scenes as rolling old people in wheelchairs out into the middle of the road so that cars may forcibly remove them from it (this doesn’t go as you may expect). Roger Corman knows how to stroke our baser instincts, which explains why the legend is he has never lost money on a production.
All About Eve is my favorite movie, and I should have been brutally distressed to see George Sanders in a Satanic biker movie. But I found it easy to believe Addison DeWitt would engage in a ritual that turns a woman into a frog in exchange for sending the bikers back to Hell. Psychomania is a confused biker movie that scared the ever-loving shit out of me as a kid, but is tame enough for a PG. A biker gang called The Living Dead make a deal with the Devil to become just that — the living dead. After a ludicrously funny mass suicide and return, they wreak “havoc” on a California town. Havoc includes knocking over a baby carriage and making loads and loads of donuts in the dust. They hook up with a girl hot for trouble, and eventually return to Hell via the aforementioned reverse Frog Prince deal. The movie does not make one lick of sense, but it’s fun to watch and would make a damn fine drinking game. Every time these hell’s angels rev their engines, take a drink. You’ll be dead.
Shameful Movies: Jamon, Jamon and Matador
SMOOP goes international, and la fiesta está caliente! You may think I’m cheating by selecting a film by Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar, but back then, he wasn’t known as the guy who directed Todo Sobre Mi Madre. He was the sick bastard who made candy-colored Spanish movies that gave the MPAA fits when they came to this country. Matador is old-fashioned Almodóvar, full of what made grindhouse movies famous: envelope pushing sex and violence. A gored bullfighter (Nacho Martinez) gets off while watching people get murdered and/or murdering people while a criminal lawyer gets off on killing people while getting off on them. Still with me? Antonio Banderas plays a student who starts confessing to the murders committed by both the matador and the lawyer, despite the latter’s penchant for stabbing huge hairpins into the necks of her male lovers. Is she a distant relative of the aforementioned killer sex women from Species or Def? Or did Almodóvar see that horrible Tom Selleck vehicle, Lassiter, made two years earlier and featuring a similar scene between Lauren Hutton and an unlucky guy?
No matter. Those Spanish directors sure are freaky. Eventually the two killers find each other and you can just imagine what transpires. Meanwhile, in our other feature, Jamon, Jamon, director Bigas Luna gives us two Oscar nominees (Almodóvar favorite Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem) in an overheated melodrama about an underwear factory, a well-endowed underwear model, class warfare, naked bullfighting, brutal death by ham, a sign shaped like a bull with big testicles, and a sexy parrot. More on the sexy parrot and the naked matadors in a second; you don’t wanna know what happens to that bull sign.
Unlike most people, I think Penelope Cruz can be a fine actress provided she doesn’t speak English. Jamon gives us the uber-hot Cruz at 17, gladly offering up her ample naked bosom to hungry men lucky enough to bury their face in it. In fact, everybody seems to be having sex with somebody in this film; it got so complicated I actually had to stop the video and draw a chart so I could keep track. Cruz plays the daughter of the local prostitute (or la hija de puta as the credits on IMDB tell us) who’s impregnated by Manuel, the son of underwear factory owner Carmen (Stefina Sandrelli). Carmen is outraged that Manuel is going to marry below his station, so she hires her underwear model (Bardem) to seduce la hija de puta away from Manuel. Bardem’s character isn’t known for his brain; in Spain you need, um, qualifications to be an underwear model, especially if the underwear company is called Samson.
The MPAA shit on itself when it got a look at Bardem and his equally naked pal using unconventional means to incite the bulls during a late night bullfight. That’s self explanatory; the Spaniards aren’t afraid of full frontal male nudity. This is the most penis-obsessed movie I have ever seen. What confuses me to no end is the “sex scene” in the brothel between the guy, Cruz’s mom (la madre puta, according to that profane IMDB), and a parrot. If someone can explain to me what this scene is supposed to mean, I’ll be a better man for it.
Shameful Movies: The First Nudie Musical and Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers
Just like last year, SMOOP closes with musicals. Where last year’s festival ended with the best film in the series, this year ends with the worst. I freely admit to cheating a tad regarding the latter title up there — I didn’t like the movie that much; I liked making fun of it. I watched it twice, but I couldn’t commit to liking the whole as much as the parts.
It’s great when movies live up to their titles. The First Nudie Musical is the movie Rodgers and Hammerstein would have made if they were perverted cheap musical hacks. A film studio is on the verge of going under, so a director and his assistant (played by Shirley herself, Cindy Williams!!!) decide to put on a show, as Rooney and Garland used to do in those old movies, to save their jobs. Except this show has naked tap dancing, '70s nudity, and a scene where the male actors dress as giant vibrators with buttons across their crotches — buttons the actresses eagerly push. How can any trash lover dislike a movie with a truly inspired rendition of the piano “Scales” and with lyrics like “I’m not blind, and I’m not cripple, won’t you let me do your nipple?” Shockingly, this was released by Paramount Pictures and was promoted by the studio in 1977.
Last, but certainly not least, is Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers, a movie that must have been made to cash in on the Hee-Haw craze. Of all the films on this list, this one comes closest to the true grindhouse experience. The video I saw was made from a horribly dated print full of scratches and fading colors. The continuity errors were enormous, the boom mike made cameo appearances, and the car chases went past the same scenery about 800 times, like on The Flintstones.
What makes this a classic bad movie and a worthy addition to SMOOP’s festival roster are the musical numbers. The plot is simple: it’s about cottonpickin’ chickenpickers, or chicken thieves. Imagine the country and western songs you can get from that plot, then include a theme song with the titular words. As a whole, the movie didn’t make me like it enough to recommend on shame factor, but I did love several scenes. My favorite three are a musical number where the singer is playing a guitar with no musical accompaniment, but seven instruments are playing on the soundtrack, the car chase, and the “You Dirty Ol’ Egg Sucking Dog” number. You will not be able to get this song out of your head, except by force. “Stop stealin’ mah chickens, You Dirty Ol’ Egg Suckin’ Dog! Egggggg Suuuu-Ken Dawg!” sings the guy with such earnestness that you want to join hands with him and sing along. Now that’s how a trashy movie should make you feel.
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Labels: Almodóvar, Banderas, Bardem, Blog-a-thons, Corman, Demme, Eddie Murphy, Garland, Hammerstein, Kingsley, Penélope Cruz, Rodgers, Samuel L. Jackson, Stallone, Tarantino
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Monday, March 05, 2007
Pulling your satirical punches
By Edward Copeland
For Your Consideration zipped in and out of my town with such alarming speed that I didn't get a chance to catch it until it hit DVD. I wish I could report that it was worth the wait.
I've felt Christopher Guest's films have been getting better. I was mixed on Waiting for Guffman, liked Best in Show and really liked A Mighty Wind. However, For Your Consideration is a real low mark for Guest, Eugene Levy and their growing and talented ensemble of regulars.
When I heard that Guest's next project would take on the hysteria that comes with Oscar campaigning, I couldn't wait. Too bad he didn't make that film. Few laughs can be found in For Your Consideration and the entire film is so silly that it plays as if he's afraid he'd really piss someone off if they did a razor sharp satire on the press barrage actors and filmmakers embark on as they chase Oscar glory.
Real Oscar campaigns produce more laughs than For Your Consideration. (My favorite from this year: When Eddie Murphy tried to pull the patented Nicole Kidman-failed marriage ploy. Not surprisingly, Murphy didn't make that one fly as Kidman did. Perhaps if he had been married to Tom Cruise instead of someone no one knew...)
For me, the biggest problem was that while this obviously sets out to be a comedy, it exists in a universe that bears no resemblance to the real movie industry so the whole enterprise seems ludicrous. Sure, sometimes Oscar buzz does start before a movie has been made (especially if the increasingly loony David Poland is involved, since he's predicting a best actor win for Johnny Depp next year for Sweeney Todd a mere three weeks into the filming) or released (The casting of Meryl Streep in the film version of Doubt seems like a sure bet for a nomination for example).
However, I can't recall reports percolating from a movie in progress such as they do from the set of the movie-within-a-movie "Home for Purim," especially when it's made clear that the cast is populated with has-beens, failed standup comics and actors reduced to appearing in commercials as giant hot dogs.
The whole premise seems ridiculous, yet the first hour of the movie takes place entirely while the film is still being made. Then, the story (which only has 20 minutes left) tries to score a point with the by-now tired cliche of movie execs interfering with a film, the campaigning barely happens, the nomination day comes and the movie ends.
I know I may be silly asking for some level of realism in a movie such as this, but if they can say "Oscar," why do they have the nominations announced at 5 a.m. Pacific time when they've been at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time for ages?
This is the first in Guest's series of films that abandons the mockumentary format but I can't help but think that perhaps this is one that called for that most of all, perhaps competitors from several titles portrayed as jockeying for position.
Some of the performers get their moments (I especially liked the odd turn by John Michael Higgins), but everything falls so flat I don't see how poor Catherine O'Hara got any real buzz for her work here. Many of the dependable regulars such as Guest himself almost seem like afterthoughts in the movie. (Parker Posey actually gets more laughs in Superman Returns than she does here.)
The best moments belong to the team of Fred Willard and Jane Lynch as the hosts of an Entertainment Tonight clone, but their scenes alone aren't enough to salvage the film. In a way, it's ironic that Ricky Gervais appears in the film as a movie exec because though I'm not a big fan of his HBO series Extras, his first season episode with Kate Winslet was funnier and more on the mark when it came to the rabid pursuit of Oscar nominations.
I can understand the inclination not to want to burn any bridges, but with a project such as For Your Consideration, what's the point of doing it if you don't leave some flaming wreckage in your wake?
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For Your Consideration zipped in and out of my town with such alarming speed that I didn't get a chance to catch it until it hit DVD. I wish I could report that it was worth the wait.
I've felt Christopher Guest's films have been getting better. I was mixed on Waiting for Guffman, liked Best in Show and really liked A Mighty Wind. However, For Your Consideration is a real low mark for Guest, Eugene Levy and their growing and talented ensemble of regulars.
When I heard that Guest's next project would take on the hysteria that comes with Oscar campaigning, I couldn't wait. Too bad he didn't make that film. Few laughs can be found in For Your Consideration and the entire film is so silly that it plays as if he's afraid he'd really piss someone off if they did a razor sharp satire on the press barrage actors and filmmakers embark on as they chase Oscar glory.
Real Oscar campaigns produce more laughs than For Your Consideration. (My favorite from this year: When Eddie Murphy tried to pull the patented Nicole Kidman-failed marriage ploy. Not surprisingly, Murphy didn't make that one fly as Kidman did. Perhaps if he had been married to Tom Cruise instead of someone no one knew...)
For me, the biggest problem was that while this obviously sets out to be a comedy, it exists in a universe that bears no resemblance to the real movie industry so the whole enterprise seems ludicrous. Sure, sometimes Oscar buzz does start before a movie has been made (especially if the increasingly loony David Poland is involved, since he's predicting a best actor win for Johnny Depp next year for Sweeney Todd a mere three weeks into the filming) or released (The casting of Meryl Streep in the film version of Doubt seems like a sure bet for a nomination for example).
However, I can't recall reports percolating from a movie in progress such as they do from the set of the movie-within-a-movie "Home for Purim," especially when it's made clear that the cast is populated with has-beens, failed standup comics and actors reduced to appearing in commercials as giant hot dogs.
The whole premise seems ridiculous, yet the first hour of the movie takes place entirely while the film is still being made. Then, the story (which only has 20 minutes left) tries to score a point with the by-now tired cliche of movie execs interfering with a film, the campaigning barely happens, the nomination day comes and the movie ends.
I know I may be silly asking for some level of realism in a movie such as this, but if they can say "Oscar," why do they have the nominations announced at 5 a.m. Pacific time when they've been at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time for ages?
This is the first in Guest's series of films that abandons the mockumentary format but I can't help but think that perhaps this is one that called for that most of all, perhaps competitors from several titles portrayed as jockeying for position.
Some of the performers get their moments (I especially liked the odd turn by John Michael Higgins), but everything falls so flat I don't see how poor Catherine O'Hara got any real buzz for her work here. Many of the dependable regulars such as Guest himself almost seem like afterthoughts in the movie. (Parker Posey actually gets more laughs in Superman Returns than she does here.)
The best moments belong to the team of Fred Willard and Jane Lynch as the hosts of an Entertainment Tonight clone, but their scenes alone aren't enough to salvage the film. In a way, it's ironic that Ricky Gervais appears in the film as a movie exec because though I'm not a big fan of his HBO series Extras, his first season episode with Kate Winslet was funnier and more on the mark when it came to the rabid pursuit of Oscar nominations.
I can understand the inclination not to want to burn any bridges, but with a project such as For Your Consideration, what's the point of doing it if you don't leave some flaming wreckage in your wake?
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Labels: 00s, Cruise, Depp, Eddie Murphy, HBO, Nicole Kidman, Oscars, Streep, Winslet
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Saturday, December 30, 2006
Soul Food...from a Can
By Josh R
The history of African-American recording artists in this country is one with a turning point. In the late 1950s, upstart producer Berry Gordy founded Motown Records, the specific mission of which was to bring Rhythm & Blues out of the realm of ethnic specialty and into the mainstream of American culture. From the get-go, it was an uphill battle. While there had been African-American R&B artists with some crossover appeal, notably Fats Domino and Little Richard, white audiences were, at best, wary of the rumblings coming out of Detroit. Rude, rough, racy and unapologetically confrontational, R&B was a tough sell for that segment of the population that wasn’t quite ready to accept any show, overt or otherwise, of African-American power, strength and defiance. Well-heeled suburbanites who happened into Harlem’s Apollo Theater, that inner-city musical cathedral where blues and gospel merged with the insistent beat of rock n’ roll, might well find themselves scuttling towards the exit doors in fits of apoplexy ... and it’s not hard to imagine them double-bolting their own front doors after staggering home to New Rochelle.
When Domino’s first crossover hit, “Ain’t That a Shame,” was infamously covered by squeaky-clean Pat Boone — whose easy-listening style made The Beach Boys look like a metal band — the cover version hit No. 1 on the pop charts, eclipsing the success of the Domino original. Since the Boone track received much wider radio airplay in segregated areas, Gordy understood that a change was needed if black artists had any hope of getting their sound into the mainstream — without seeing it plundered and cannibalized by the Pat Boones of the world, who would ultimately reap the rewards of other people’s labors. A canny appraiser of what white audiences were ready to accept, Gordy deliberately steered R&B away from its boisterous origins, cultivating a milder, softer sound that was more patently listener-friendly. Thus, the raucous, hair-raising vocal stylings of Little Richard were jettisoned in favor of the smooth, silky falsetto of Smokey Robinson, Gordy’s first top attraction in what would soon prove to be an unprecedented stable of talents. It was the most nonthreatening approach he could have taken, and it proved to be a lucrative one — while white audiences of the early 1960s weren’t necessarily prepared for electric firebrands in the James Brown and Tina Turner mold, they were more than happy for the spectacle of smiling black men sweetly harmonizing about having “sunshine on a cloudy day.” Whatever you happen to think of the Motown sound as refined and perfected by Berry Gordy — and I, for one, happen to love it — it must be acknowledged that it was a sanitized, smoothed-over (if not de-fanged) version of how R&B was originally conceived.
This is essentially true of the new film Dreamgirls, based on the wildly successful Broadway musical of the 1980s and brought to the screen by writer-director Bill Condon. Not-so-loosely based on the saga of The Supremes, the trio of singers molded by Gordy into the most influential girl group of all time, the film looks and sounds like a reasonably fair approximation of the Motown style. But looking and sounding the part is only half the battle, and Condon’s effort ultimately feels less like a genuine reflection of the hardscrabble African-American experience in America (and the personalities who served as its artistic spokesmen) than a nice, safe little film pitched directly at a suburban white audience. The result feels cautious, and somewhat on the bland side — the cinematic equivalent of the kind of mass-marketed soul food that comes out of a can. To be fair, this is R&B filtered through the more conciliatory sensibility of Broadway ... nobody expected Hustle & Flow, but we weren’t expecting Mahogany either.
Dreamgirls follows the story of The Supremes closely in many respects. For anyone unfamiliar with the history, Gordy replaced the group’s original lead singer, the soulful Florence Ballard, with Diana Ross, the light-skinned beauty with the tiny little voice. While a consummate performer with star quality to spare, Ross — and I’m sure I’ll get tons of flack for saying this — was never much of a vocal powerhouse. Or really even much of a singer. If not for the science of electronic amplification, it’s doubtful she might ever have found herself on The Supremes roster, let alone serving as its lead vocalist. She was, however, a personality that could be packaged and marketed to the target audience, unencumbered by the kind of virtuosic skill that might overpower the mellow vibe Gordy was trying to create. It was about as far from Aretha Franklin as one could get — it was Nancy Sinatra and Brenda Lee. To be blunt — and go ahead, start firing off those outraged comments accusing me of stereotyping — she sang like a white girl. She also was romantically involved with Gordy at the time, which hardly hurt her cause. Ballard sank into obscurity and poverty, and died at the age of 32, a victim of depression and alcohol abuse.
The film provides its own thinly veiled version of The Supremes in The Dreamettes, a trio comprised of brass-lunged Effie White (Jennifer Hudson), demure Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) and pert Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose). Ambitious would-be producer Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) lands them a gig singing backup for established star James Thunder Early (Eddie Murphy), a soul singer in the James Brown-Little Richard mold whose popularity doesn’t extend much beyond the R&B circuit. While romancing the dynamic Effie, whose unabashed confidence makes her full-bodied sensuality only that much more pronounced, Curtis doesn’t permit sentiment to distract him from the goal of using the Dreamettes as a vehicle for crossover success. He installs conventionally pretty, honey-voiced Deena as the new lead vocalist of the re-christened Dreams, demoting Effie to the role of backup vocalist. Her pride and vanity wounded by Curtis’ rejection of her talent, Effie’s inability to accept her diminished role leads to her eventual dismissal from the group. Unlike her real-life counterpart, Florence Ballard, she eventually rises up from the subsequent indignities of poverty to achieve success in her own right as a solo artist. Meanwhile, Deena (now Mrs. Curtis Taylor Jr.) has grown increasingly dissatisfied with the extent to which she has had to sublimate her own personality — conforming to the confining mold Curtis has pushed upon her — and tries to recover her own voice as both an artist and a woman.
It’s basically your standard rags-to-riches formula, enacted in predictably soapy fashion. The cast is undoubtedly talented, but with two notable exceptions, they fail to imbue their roles with much in the way of personality. Foxx comes across as neither dynamic nor ruthless enough to convince as the kind of upstart who could build an empire from scratch — his failure in the role is surprising given what a natural choice he would have seemed to be for the assignment (for a character who, in his own words, "step(s) up to the dark side," he seems pretty harmless). Beyonce looks and sounds like a dream, bringing a creamy luster to her vocals in what would also seem to be a tailor-made role — but she is similarly hamstrung by the soft-focus approach favored by Condon. Her character is supposed to be dewy-eyed and pliant, but without a sense of genuine drive behind the come-hither stage smile, her character arch isn’t particularly compelling. Her performance of the song “Listen,” written specifically for the film, shows off her vocal chops to great effect, and is the only moment in the film where her undeniable star quality is fully utilized. The talented Anika Noni Rose, who won a Tony for her buoyant performance in Caroline or Change?, by necessity comes across as a bit of a third wheel.
That leaves two performers — and they are, for all intensive purposes, the only thing which lends the film any measure of distinction. I watched Jennifer Hudson as a contestant on American Idol — while she impressed with her powerful vocals, there was nothing in her presence to indicate the potential for stardom. As Effie White, however, she commands full attention, at times offering enticing glimpses of what Dreamgirls could have been if brought to life with more conviction. I didn’t see the legendary stage version, but anyone with any familiarity with the show knows that its centerpiece has always been Effie’s raging anthem of defiance and denial, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” Jennifer Holliday, the original Effie, sang the song with such force that it drew ovations the likes of which hadn’t been heard on Broadway since the age of Ethel Merman. Hudson puts the number over with a voracious theatricality and a shattering sense of urgency, all but blowing the lid off of a film which would otherwise seem to settle for tepid complacency when it should be going for the jugular. It’s the highlight of a performance that, while strong from start to finish, may not quite deserve the overweening praise that’s been heaped upon it by critics — truth be told, it’s only when she unleashes her spectacular voice upon the Henry Krieger-Tom Eyen score that the effect is truly riveting. If I remain unconvinced as to whether or not Hudson is, in fact, much of actress, let it be said that she is ideally suited to the demands of the role, and demonstrates a thorough understanding of the bruised feelings and fractious fits of temperament which make Effie a cyclone of a diva. Condon, who has been instrumental in drawing career-best performances from the likes of Ian McKellen, Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, doubtless deserve some of the credit.
It is Eddie Murphy, however, who provides Dreamgirls with its most effective acting performance. As the rough-living soul singer who can’t temper his electric style to suit the demands of the industry, he creates a touching study of a tortured soul struggling to bridge the gap between his natural assurance as a performer and his lack of wherewithal when the curtain comes down. Once the former has been cruelly taken away from (Curtis tries to shoe-horn him into the mold of an Al Green-style crooner), it isn’t long before his self-destructive impulses fully take hold. The advance word was that Murphy, along with everyone else in the film, would be swept away by the tidal wave of Hudson’s tour-de-force, but that proves not to be the case. Again, this is the sort of film that can only furnish good performances, as opposed to great ones, since there isn't much complexity of characterization — but Murphy certainly acquits himself well, and he and Hudson come closer than anyone else to suggesting the turbulence of the artistic temperament, and the restless, audacious spirit of a generation of musical pioneers.
The re-emergence of the movie musical has been a heartening development in recent years, even if the films themselves haven’t always provided much cause for cheer. Dreamgirls is far from a debacle on the level of The Phantom of the Opera, which was as overwrought as it was overproduced, or as disappointing as The Producers, which managed to be singularly uncinematic in Susan Stroman’s insistence on treating her original Broadway staging as if it were the Holy Grail. Hell, next to something like Babel, it could be called a masterpiece (will I ever stop razzing Babel? Not in this lifetime, kids). But Dreamgirls, while not a bad film, is sorely lacking in the one crucial ingredient by which a musical succeeds or fails — a sense of vitality. Bland and safe when it needed to be vibrant, it keeps its soul hidden under a bushel.
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Labels: 00s, Awards, Eddie Murphy, Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, Merman, Music, Musicals, Television, Theater
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Tuesday, December 20, 2005
From the Vault: Shrek
With a wicked spirit of fun and more cultural references than a year's worth of Dennis Miller Live, Shrek proves a delightful antidote to the increasingly formulaic world of the animated feature.
Aside from Toy Story and Toy Story 2, animated movies for the entire family have decline in the years since Aladdin. The films themselves look great, but the stories and music leave a lot to be desired (RIP Howard Ashman).
Mike Myers brings life and a Scottish brogue to the title character, a bitter ogre trying to get by alone in his swamp when evil despot Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) exiles all fairy tale creatures there. Suddenly, Shrek finds his life turned upside down, especially by a talking donkey, aptly named Donkey and voiced by Eddie Murphy, who gets to have a lot more fun with his voice role here than he did in the lackluster Mulan.
In order to restore order to his world, Shrek makes a deal with Farquaad to rescue the fair Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) so Farquaad can make her his bride. Like the Toy Story films, Shrek uses the latest in computer animation techniques and they are even more impressive here, with realistic facial expressions that make for an amazing look.
In many ways, Shrek may entertain adults more than children since grown-ups will get a bigger kick out of the skewering of fable conventions and the nods to other cultural signposts.
It's no accident that this DreamWorks production gives a lot of gentle ribbing to the Walt Disney factory, even to the point that Farquaad slightly resembles its chairman, Michael Eisner. The music choices are fun as well and, if nothing else, Shrek will likely be remembered as the first animated film to use a song by Leonard Cohen.
For those worried that Shrek may be all cynicism and no heart, there even is the tried-and-true message of not judging a book by its cover. Thankfully, the sentimentality doesn't last long enough to risk sugar overload.
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Labels: 00s, Animation, Disney, Eddie Murphy, Lithgow
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From the Vault: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 21, 2001
Five years after the book came to DreamWorks, four years after development began and 2 1/2 years after the start of production, the computer-animated feature Shrek finally his theaters.
No wonder co-director Andrew Adamson says directing an animated feature is like making a live-action one, only in slow-motion.
"Whereas on a live-action set, you get all your actors and gaffers and the camera crew and everyone shows up on the set on the same day and you shoot a scene, in an animated movie you might record one of the actors one day, another actor a couple months later. So what took a day on a live-action set ended up being spread out over a year. Many of the same tasks, just separated and slowed down."
Shrek, based on the children's book by William Steig, tells the story of an angry ogre who finds his solitary life disrupted when evil Lord Farquaad banishes all "fairy tale creatures" out of his kingdom and into Shrek's swamp. Hoping to get rid of the squatters, Shrek makes a deal with Farquaad to rescue Princess Fiona so Farquaad can marry her.
Like the Toy Story movies, Shrek is an example of state-of-the-art computer animation. Using tools called "shapers," Shrek advances the art by creating characters that can express dialogue and emotion through a complex facial animation system developed by PDI/DreamWorks. To achieve the expressive looks, the system applies layers of bone, muscle, fat, etc., that can be manipulated separately. The technique also allows for more realistic depiction of clothing and environment. Having co-directors, in this case Adamson and Vicky Jenson, helped move the process along faster.
JENSON: "What we tend to do with an animated feature is kind of break the movie down into separate scenes or sequences and kind of tackle those one at a time in story. What we did was kind of divide up those sequences, kind of like trading cards."
That approach also gave Adamson and Jenson someone who could help out if either hit a bump in the road.
JENSON: "We were both very involved with each other's sequences. If one of us ran into a creative block in editorial ... then we were there for each other."
Perhaps the biggest problem the production encountered was the death of Chris Farley, who had recorded some dialogue as the title character before he died. Farley's former Saturday Night Live co-star Mike Myers stepped in and the film had to start over, almost from scratch. Because of the conflicting schedules of the voice talents, Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow and others sometimes would record their work up to a year apart.
Both directors laud their cast's willingness to record many versions of their lines to allow for more options in editing. Fortunately for the filmmakers, improvisation is second nature for Myers and Murphy, which made the film's gentle ribbing of fairy tale conventions all the more fun.
JENSON: "It really is, at best, a gentle homage. We've all grown up with fairy tales and we've all grown up with theme parks. I think the kind of things we're poking fun at have become pretty universal.
Adamson is working on an animated adaptation of British author Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy about gnomes. Jenson's plans are more personal.
"I'm just rehearsing lush, tropical locations where a weary director and her husband can go and relax for a while."
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Labels: Animation, Eddie Murphy, Interview, Lithgow
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