Big Trouble in Little China

May 28, 2017 / andrewmisk / 1 Comment

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Dir. John Carpenter

Written by: Gary Goldman, David Z. Weinstein, W.D. Richter

Starring: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Victor Wong

Action films have been a popular genre throughout the history of cinema. Some of early cinema’s most widely-known and well-loved films could fall into the action genre in some form, whether they be crime films, Westerns, or chase films. As the genre developed, however, a certain type of pure action style started to develop. Westerns began to cede popularity in the 1970s to these more modern action films, and by the 1980s, the blueprint for the action film as we now know it was largely set in stone. Classic action franchises were born in this decade, including Rambo, The Terminator, and Predator, and those films would go on to influence the next generation of action filmmakers who would continue to evolve and grow the genre. A direct line can be traced from our modern action blockbusters to the over-the-top, bombastic thrill rides featuring Arnold and Stallone that were ubiquitous in the 1980s. During that decade, however, there was an alternative style of action film being developed, one that sought to blend genres in interesting ways, that borrowed from international influences, and one that depended more on its star’s charisma than his physique (although that wasn’t so bad, either). I’m referring to the action films created by the pairing of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. These films, including Big Trouble in Little China, provide an interesting counterpoint to the more familiar action franchises of the time.

The duo teamed up for three movies in the 1980s and, though they weren’t all commercially successful on their initial release, Carpenter’s and Russell’s films have proved enduring. While their earlier films, Escape From New York and The Thing, were modest box office successes, Big Trouble in Little China had trouble connecting with audiences. Perhaps its blending of science fiction and action with traditional Chinese fantasy and folklore was too exotic for audiences in 1986. Maybe Kurt Russel’s performance, combining the lone hero of the action film with the wise-cracking leading man of the screwball comedy, was too unfamiliar. Whatever it may have been, Big Trouble in Little China had to wait to reach the level of appreciation that its director and star’s previous efforts had enjoyed. I saw all of these movies at different times in my childhood. They were staples on cable television on the weekends, edited for content and to run in the time allotted. When I was young, the gritty apocalyptic dystopia of Escape From New York was my favorite, but as an adult, I’ve become more and more fond of Big Trouble in Little China and all of its B-movie charm.

In the film, Russell plays Jack Burton, a fast-talking, fast-driving trucker, who finds himself embroiled in a gang war in San Francisco’s Chinatown. When his friend Wang’s (Dun) betrothed, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai) is kidnapped by one of the local street gangs, Jack agrees to help him rescue her. Along with the help of their friends Gracie Law (Cattrall) and Egg Shen (Wong), they set out to retrieve Miao Yin from the Lords of Death street gang. Their search takes them first to a brothel where they believe Miao Yin is being held, and Jack is successful in freeing many of the women being held there, but the rescue is interrupted by the Three Storms, three supernatural ninjas who take off with Miao Yin and take her to their master, David Lo Pan (Hong). Jack and Wang are again tasked with infiltrating a building to rescue Miao Yin, this time Lo Pan’s office front. When they get inside, they are again waylaid by the Storms and are introduced to Lo Pan’s sinister plan. Though he appears to be an old man, he is actually an incredibly powerful undead sorcerer, who is thousands of years old. He was robbed of his true physical body by the first emperor of China who placed a curse on him. In order to break the curse and regain his true form and his full power, Lo Pan must marry and then sacrifice a Chinese girl with green eyes, which Miao Yin has. From there, multiple rescue attempts must be made by everyone in the group as Jack, Wang, and Gracie all keep getting captured and escaping, all while trying to locate Miao Yin and prevent the wedding ceremony from taking place. The film’s final battle is a combination of traditional kung-fu, Wuxia, and slapstick comedy, as the heroes fight off the Storms and Lo Pan, rescuing Miao Yin. After everything settles down, Jack chooses to hitch up the Porkchop Express and return to the open road rather than staying in Chinatown with Gracie. However, just as Egg Shen says he will always have China in his heart, it seems that a piece of Chinatown is staying with Jack as the film’s final shot reveals that one of Lo Pan’s supernatural monsters has stowed away on his truck.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I likely have Big Trouble in Little China to thank for some of my later filmic obsessions. It was probably the first movie I saw that heavily featured Asian influences, despite having grown up in the ninja-obsessed early 1990s. I had seen shows like Power Rangers and even some Japanese anime when I was younger, but Big Trouble in Little China was probably the film that first introduced me to kung-fu and Wuxia, two genres that I would get into more seriously in my teenage years. I remember when I saw the movie for the first time, around the age of 11 or 12, thinking that it reminded me a lot of Indiana Jones, but more authentic and more exotic. The film was set in America, but it felt more immersed in Chinese culture. It seemed like a celebration of its influences, where the Indiana Jones trilogy felt more sensationalistic and exploitative. I probably didn’t give this a whole lot of thought at the time, but I now realize that the main reason the film feels so authentic is that it has an almost entirely Asian cast. Also, rather than relegating minorities to supporting and sidekick roles to a white hero, Carpenter places Wang and Egg Shen in the more traditionally heroic roles, while portraying Jack as, at best, a fish out of a water, but more often as a bit of a boob.

That’s another thing that I really appreciate about Big Trouble in Little China. While Jack Burton is definitely the main character of the film, he is far from the film’s hero. Carpenter deftly plays with Russell’s star persona, repeatedly placing Jack in positions where the other characters in the film have to come to his rescue. Russell plays Jack Burton as a swaggering man of action, modeling his performance on vintage John Wayne, but the film’s narrative often undercuts his heroism. Though he can more than handle his own in the film’s many fight scenes, Jack is frequently on the receiving end of punches that Wang is able to easily duck under or around. He’s inventive and unorthodox in his fighting style, but he’s also often a scene’s comic relief. This only works because of Kurt Russell’s natural charisma. He’s totally believable as an action star, but he also has a roguish sense of humor that is constantly on display in this film. Jack Burton is the ultimate cool guy, tough in a fight, but also able to be self-deprecating when the tilt doesn’t go his way. The wise-cracking tough guy was certainly a genre staple by this point, but mostly in the form of witty asides or scripted catchphrases. Jack Burton’s humor is inherent in his coolness, and it’s hard to see Schwarzenegger or Stallone being able to pull off the natural charm that Russell brings to the role.

Russell and the rest of the cast are aided by some great dialogue. The script went through several phases and rewrites, beginning life as a period Western, but as I mentioned earlier, the final product bears a strong resemblance to a screwball comedy with regards to its dialogue. Particularly in the interactions of Jack and Gracie, but throughout the film, the dialogue is snappy and articulate. The verbal sparring in the film is as entertaining as the fight scenes, with Russell and Cattrall displaying good on-screen chemistry. It’s one of the few action movies that is also genuinely funny throughout, without resorting to the aforementioned witty asides. Its humor isn’t nudging or winking, it’s subtly woven through the action, helping to establish these characters. Even a character like Egg Shen, whose role is almost strictly expository early in the film, gets some great lines. When discussing the hodgepodge of various mysticisms that influence Chinese spiritual belief, he says, “There’s Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoist alchemy and sorcery…We take what we want and leave the rest, just like your salad bar.” It’s a genuinely funny line, but it’s also a window into Egg Shen as a character. He’s obviously wise and worldly, but who knew that he had been to a Sizzler? It would have been easy for Egg Shen to have been a stereotype, as many other action films of the time probably would have portrayed him, but Victor Wong plays him with a mirthful sort of mysteriousness and the script gives him several opportunities to step out of his box.

I didn’t own a copy of Big Trouble in Little China until my late 20s. I grabbed it out of a bargain bin at a Best Buy one afternoon, and I’m really glad that I did. I hadn’t seen it in at least five years at that point, and I think I had forgotten just what a cool movie it really is. I think that all of the things that I really enjoy about Big Trouble in Little China are exactly the things that made it a flop upon its initial release. Mainstream American audiences just weren’t ready for an American movie that borrowed so heavily from Chinese culture. Obviously, Enter the Dragon had become a crossover hit in 1973, but martial arts pictures were still largely relegated to the grindhouse. Even the presence of emerging stars like Russell and Cattrall wasn’t enough to make the film bankable, as its deep dive into Chinese mysticism proved to be too confounding for its audiences. It wasn’t until home video really became a force in the late 1980s and 1990s that these types of films began to find an audience. Not surprisingly, Big Trouble in Little China found renewed interest in the home video market and has become one of the ultimate cult classics. It is the type of film that you can show a half-dozen different friends and each can come away enjoying something different about the film. Carpenter takes its series of disparate influences and mixes them up in a cauldron of 1980s action sensibility, churning out a wholly unique product that is more than the sum of its parts.

The Big Lebowski

May 21, 2017May 21, 2017 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen

Written by: Joel & Ethan Coen

Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore

I wrote a good bit about how much I enjoy the Coen Brothers in general when I was writing about Barton Fink last month, so I’ll keep this post more limited directly to The Big Lebowski. However, I will say that the movie’s immense mainstream popularity undercuts the fact that it’s one of the brothers’ deepest dives into filmic nostalgia. Lebowski is a celebration of old Hollywood, a deconstruction of the detective genre and film noir mode of storytelling, with shout outs to classical Hollywood pictures throughout. The nuances of the film are probably overshadowed for a lot of audiences by the story of what has become one of the classic characters in all of cinema. The Big Lebowski is a film that is equally as quotable as it is esoteric, a film with many layers, and standing tall above them all is Jeff Daniels’s iconic portrayal of Jeffrey Lebowski, the Dude, an armchair philosopher and hero for the slacker generation, one of God’s own prototypes, too weird to live and too rare to die, out there taking it easy for all us sinners.

For those who may have not seen the film yet, The Big Lebowski centers on a case of mistaken identity, in which The Dude (Bridges) is mistaken for the identically-named Jeffrey Lebowski (the titular Big Lebowski, played by David Huddleston) an aging millionaire whose trophy wife, Bunny (Tara Reid), owes money all over town, including to pornographer Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) who sends two thugs to beat the money out of The Dude. When The Dude fails to produce any money, pointing out that it’s fairly obvious a millionaire would not live in his tiny one bedroom apartment, one of the thugs proceeds to pee on The Dude’s rug. The Dude seeks out The Big Lebowski hoping for recompense for the soiled rug, which really tied the room together, and this sets the events of the plot into motion. After their initial meeting, The Big Lebowski contacts The Dude, telling him that Bunny has been kidnapped, and he needs The Dude to get her back. In turn, The Dude enlists the help of his buddies Walter Sobchak (Goodman) and Donny Kerabatsos (Buscemi), who are happy to help out in between games of bowling. Along the way, The Dude encounters German nihilists, a militant feminist artist who wants him for his seed, and is forced to abide countless acts of aggression. The film takes a lot of its cues from The Big Sleep, a famously inscrutable noir, and The Big Lebowski certainly doesn’t disappoint when it comes to weaving a tangled narrative web of deceit and double cross.

If that narrative seems somewhat complicated, that’s because it is. Raymond Chandler, who wrote the novel upon which The Big Sleep is based on, famously said that even he wasn’t sure who committed one of the murders in his book. The Coens take this idea and run with it in Lebowski, creating a stylized, contemporary noir in which the detective is constantly travelling through the world in a fog, unsure of which side of each uneasy alliance he finds himself at any given moment. The film is packed with subtle allusions to the films of the 1940s, containing oblique references to Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, but also to 42^nd Street and other Busby Berkeley musicals. As much as they are filmmakers, the Coens are also film historians, with their films often referencing favorite classic filmmakers such as Howard Hawks or Billy Wilder. All of their films dabble in this kind of pastiche, using film references as a shorthand language, but Lebowski is probably the most overt. As in Barton Fink, the Coens suture a fantastical version of Hollywood onto an actual time and place, in this case the immediate aftermath of the first Gulf War. In both films, the real life setting only serves as an anchor, and the action of the film is largely contained in its own world. The characters in the films occasionally reference actual events, but the Coens are largely free to create a universe of their own definition, and in The Big Lebowski, that universe is heavily filtered through the experience of American cinema of the 1940s.

Of course, this being a Coen Brothers film, those influences are scattered throughout The Big Lebowski, but they’re turned on their head, repurposed for a new generation and skewed in the process. The film uses many of the familiar tropes of the noir. It offers up two femmes fatales in Bunny and in The Big Lebowski’s daughter, Maude (Moore). It’s Bunny’s disappearance that kickstarts the film, but Maude is certainly the more interesting character. She appears halfway through the film, introducing herself to the dude by having her henchmen knock him out and take the rug that he had chosen to replace his originally soiled rug. She asserts that her interest is in preserving the Lebowski Foundation’s money, one million dollars of which her father has put up as ransom money for his missing wife. However, in classic femme fatale fashion, Maude’s motives are more duplicitous than they might seem on the surface. Her real interest in The Dude is procreative. While most classic femme fatales attempt to ensnare the detective using their sexuality, Maude enlists the Dude to the case before seducing him. After gaining The Dude’s trust, Maude beds him and makes known her desire to have a child with a man who will have no interest in raising it, or in being a partner to her. She’s fingered The Dude as just the deadbeat for the job, interested in him not for his bravado or his cunning, but for his biological ability to help her conceive. While I do think that a lot of classic femmes fatales could be seen as feminist characters, or at least female characters with agency in an era during which there weren’t so many such roles, I think that Maude’s overall character in Lebowski very deliberately marks her as a feminist. The shift in power dynamics marks one of the ways that the Coens are playing with the tropes of the noir mode.

Another modal shift takes place in the film’s style. Though its narrative is decidedly noir-influenced, the film’s visual style rarely quotes from film noir. They had already explored the visual aesthetic of noir in their debut Blood Simple and would return to the genre with a very explicitly noir-influenced aesthetic in The Man Who Wasn’t There, but The Big Lebowski is a much brighter, color-saturated film. Its hallmark visual sequence, the dream sequence that The Dude experiences after being drugged at Jackie Treehorn’s party, is an homage to the classic Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and 40s. The sequence is choreographed just like a Busby Berkeley musical number, with The Dude descending a black-and-white checked staircase to be greeted by a dozen beautiful dancers with tiaras made of bowling pins. He shares a dance with Maude and then floats down a bowling lane through the straddled legs of the dancers. The dream devolves into a nightmare after The Dude crashes through the pins at the end of the lane and cascades into blackness where he meets the three German nihilists, who are wearing red form-fitting suits, and who chase him through the nothingness with oversized scissors, presumably hoping to “cut off his johnson.” While this sequence marks just the most striking departure from the established visual style of noir, the film’s style overall is a bit more dreamy and subjective than a typical noir. That mode established the use of evocative chiaroscuro lighting and adopted the subjectivity of the canted angle, but the Los Angeles of Lebowski is characterized by bright lights, loud noises, and a slow-moving camera that often takes in the world through a gauzy filter.

The biggest departure of the film from a traditional noir detective story, of course, is in the character of The Dude. The prototypical noir detective is personified by Humphrey Bogart: serious, square-jawed, able to take and deliver a punch. The Dude is decidedly none of these things. He is a self-described pacifist who only gets caught up in this whole mess through a case of mistaken identity and a desire to get back a rug that really tied the room together. The Dude trades in Bogart’s ever-present scotch and cigarette for a white russian and a joint. He has reached a level of Zen that Bogart’s restless men of action could never hope to achieve. He treats the whole caper involving Bunny, the nihilists, his missing rug, and his perpetually battered car, as a cosmic inconvenience rather than a case to be solved or a mission to accomplish. The Dude would rather be left alone to listen to his tapes and bowl in the next round robin. If Bogart was the masculine ideal for a post-war generation, then Bridges’s performance as The Dude served as an inspiration and a rallying point for a certain type of counter cultural slacker in the late 90s and early 2000s. He is the Coens most enduring and endearing creation.

I first watched Lebowski around 1999 or 2000, a couple of years after it was released in theaters. I was instantly taken in by the characters and the dialogue. The film is simply hilarious and Bridges, Goodman, and Buscemi have unbelievable chemistry as The Dude, Walter, and Donny. Their lines are delivered lightning quick, one on top of the other, just like the conversation of real-life friends who know each other intimately. The film is endlessly quotable, with many of its turns of phrase having entered the cultural lexicon, but it is so densely written that it’s also easy to miss off-the-cuff lines on the first couple of viewings. The humor and the characters were what initially drew me into Lebowski. The interplay between Walter and Donny was so funny, and The Dude was one of the coolest characters I’d yet to encounter. Over time and additional viewings, I found new things to enjoy about The Big Lebowski and if you had asked me 15, or even ten years ago, it might have ranked up in my favorite movies of all time. It isn’t up there for me anymore, but it’s still a film that I love and probably one that I watch more frequently than some that might be in my “top ten favorite” films.

Though it started out as a cult film, the influence of Lebowski has spread far into the mainstream. As I mentioned, many of its lines have become instantly recognizable lingo, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone in 2017 who hasn’t seen the film. Bridges’s performance is now iconic, and many people would probably most readily associate Goodman with his portrayal of the bombastic, Vietnam vet Walter Sobchak. Screenings of the film have taken on a Rocky Horror Picture Show sort of tenor, with audiences often attending in costume and bringing props with them. An entire religion has sprung up centered on The Dude as a spiritual figure, with proponents of Dudeism embracing The Dude’s laissez-faire attitude and rebel shrug. Over the last 20 years, The Big Lebowski has graduated from film to full blown cultural phenomenon and while I’m happy that a great film is getting the attention and fanfare that it deserves, I would still rather appreciate it as a film text, devoid of any of the larger cultural trappings that it has come to be associated with. As a progressively-leaning, cannabis-advocating bartender who can often be found wearing a robe until mid-afternoon, and who is trying his hardest to take a “first do no harm” approach to life, I understand that the Dudeist lifestyle is probably perfectly suited to me. However, I still watch The Big Lebowski once or twice a year because it is a film that I really love, not because I hope to emulate its style or glean life wisdom from it. It never fails to make me laugh and pick up my spirits, and every time I watch it I seem to find some new little homage or hear a throwaway line that I had forgotten about. I can understand why someone might choose The Big Lebowski as the cultural artifact upon which they model their personal ethos, but even for those who choose to just enjoy it as a film, it’s an undeniable classic.

Big

May 14, 2017 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment

Big (1988)

Dir. Penny Marshall

Written by: Gary Ross, Anne Spielberg

Starring: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Robert Loggia, John Heard, Jared Rushton

No pun intended, but this is a big one for me. Big is the first live-action film that I can remember ever seeing as a child. I had definitely seen cartoons up to this point, and I had probably seen some other live-action movies, but I first saw Big when I was probably six or seven years old, and it’s definitely the first live-action movie to have made an impression on my memory. If my memory serves me correctly, my parents had recorded Big on VHS at some point and it was this copy that first introduced me to the movie. I also think that my mother had reservations about letting me watch the movie due to its abbreviated sex scene, but I was ultimately allowed to see the film, and it totally enthralled me. I understood the difference between movies and reality at that point, of course. My favorite film up to that point was a cartoon called Fluppy Dogs, in which a boy adopts a magical dog who can make his master’s bed fly when he gets scratched behind the ears. I watched the movie every day for an entire year, but solely because I thought it was cute and entertaining. I understood that it was divorced from any semblance of reality. Big was the first film that I saw that showed me how movies can bridge the gap between fantasy and reality, and open up the imagination to the possibilities of magic and wonder existing in the real world.

Big is probably the perfect movie to introduce children to the magic of movies because its plot about wish fulfillment and childhood magic is so relatable to children. What child hasn’t, like Josh Baskin (David Moscow/Hanks), wished to be bigger? The movie takes that premise and explores its ramifications as 13-year-old Josh makes a wish on a carnival machine that he could be bigger, and then actually wakes up the next morning in the body of a 30-year-old man. With the help of his best friend, Billy (Rushton), Josh heads to New York City in search of the magical machine that turned him into an adult, hoping that it can also reverse the process. While in New York, Josh takes a job at a toy company, and is quickly promoted due to his unique insight into toys and games. He experiences life as an adult, meets a woman whom he falls in love with, and, ultimately, must make the decision to remain an adult or make another wish and become a child, returning to his life with his family in New Jersey. It’s an urban fairy tale that’s perfect for children and adults, alike.

I watched Big a ton when I was a kid. Until I was about 10 years old, there were several movies that I watched over and over again on rotation and Big was among them, along with The Flight of the Navigator, Newsies, and Hook. I stopped watching those other movies as I got a little older, but Big continued to be a movie that I would always stop to watch if I came across it while I was scrolling through channels. Even more than its wish fulfillment fantasies, I started to become really interested in the movie’s New York City setting. When I was an early teen, I was very taken with the idea of moving to New York and leaving the sleepy, small town that I grew up in behind me. I can certainly chalk a lot of that urge up to simply getting the itchy feet that become so common to those who grow up in a small town and strive to see the bigger world, but I think that watching Big as much as I did probably fed into some of those desires as well. I can remember thinking that the loft apartment (really a warehouse) that Josh moves into after he becomes a VP at the toy company was the coolest place I’d ever seen someone live. An apartment like that couldn’t exist in my town, it was reserved for denizens of the big city. I was equally as enamored, however, with the flophouse hotel that Josh lives in when he first moves to the city. It seemed dangerous and edgy in a way that my habitations certainly were not. In fact, when I finally got to travel to New York City, I was a bit disappointed that many of its pointy edges that I had seen in movies had been smoothed over.

The other big draw for the film, of course, is Tom Hanks’s performance as Josh Baskin. Hanks is probably the most universally well-liked actor ever. He quickly became a mega-star, and by the 1990s, his presence in a film was a signature of a certain type of prestige and quality. Early in his career, however, Hanks was known mostly for his work in comedies, not big budget Oscar hopefuls. After transitioning from television and a co-starring role on Bosom Buddies, Hanks became a household name with 1984’s Splash and starred in other popular comedies throughout the mid-80s. Big is the culmination of this run, with Hanks providing both laughs and an emotional depth to his character. He slips seamlessly into the character of a 13-year-old boy, and watching Hanks react to the adult world with the enthusiasm, and also confusion, of a child is great. The party scene towards the end of the film always stuck out as one of the funniest in the movie. Josh shows up to the office holiday party dressed in a ridiculous white sequined tuxedo, which is funny in its own right, but his nibbling of baby corn on the cob and riotous reaction to trying caviar are the moments that I always lose it in the scene. It’s ridiculous, laugh out loud funny, and endearing all at the same time, and all because of Hanks’s wide-eyed, innocent portrayal of Josh. It’s also impossible to picture any other actor nailing the “chopsticks” scene at F.A.O. Schwarz the way that Hanks does. He and Robert Loggia jumping from note to note on the life-size keyboard while a crowd gathers around to watch has become an iconic scene in all of cinema.

As the film goes on, Hanks adjusts the way he portrays Josh as the character becomes more and more adjusted to his adult life. Early on, Hanks plays Josh as a naïve kid, scared, and often alone in the world. However, as he gains the acceptance of his peers and begins to spend more time with Susan (Perkins) and his other coworkers, and less time with Billy, Josh starts to act more and more like an adult himself. Hanks loses the pensive line delivery, modifies his body language, and becomes more assertive in general. The changes are subtle, but they come to a head when Billy confronts Josh late in the film after having found the Zoltar machine. After Josh is dismissive of Billy, telling him that he has work to do and he’s too busy to spend time with a child, Billy yells at him, “I’m your best friend!” and the illusion of Josh as an adult is shattered. He soon after makes the decision to go to the machine and wish to return himself to his natural state.

The Zoltar machine has been stashed on a forgotten pier, left there after a carnival has obviously closed up for the season. When Josh arrives on the pier, his transformation back into a child begins even before he approaches the machine and makes a wish. Josh runs to the boardwalk, looking for the machine, and when he sees it, his posture changes. Hanks starts to crumble in on himself, folding his hands in front of him and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, when he sees the machine. The camera zooms in on his pensive face as he weighs the decision that he’s about to make. Taking tiny steps, Josh approaches the Zoltar machine and pulls out a quarter. He unplugs the machine to recreate the exact scenario from the beginning of the film, slapping and kicking the machine until it magically comes to life. Susan arrives on the boardwalk just as Josh makes his wish and drops the quarter into Zoltar’s gaping mouth. Although she can’t comprehend his decision, and doesn’t want to believe his story about the Zoltar machine, Josh shows an emotional purity and depth of understanding that belie his years when he tells Susan that he has “a million reasons to go home, and only one reason to stay.” She’s fallen for him because he is so unlike the professional men that she usually dates, but the innocence that sets him apart is precisely the reason that they can’t be together. Susan gives Josh a ride home and, in a great sequence, watches as he transforms from a man to a boy over the span of one shot/reverse-shot. Josh turns to wave, giving Susan one last glimpse over his shoulder. She looks down to hide a tear, and when she raises her head, she’s astounded to see the child Josh Baskin walking away from her in an over-sized suit. Josh gives her a sheepish smile, which she returns, and then runs into the house to greet his worried mother, leaving his adult-sized shoes on the sidewalk as the film ends.

The ending of Big ranks up there with the ending of The Third Man and Casablanca as one of my favorites in all of film. In general, the movie is a favorite. I’ve seen it, literally, dozens of times but I still get caught up in the magic of it. Some movies I like to watch over and over again because I feel that there are nuances that I will discover with each renewed viewing. Some movies I like to watch over and over again because I know that they won’t offer me any surprises. Big is one of the latter. It’s a movie that feels like a well-worn baseball glove; it fits just right and it’s full of familiar seams and cracks. I often wonder how movies from my childhood will hold up, not just for my own personal viewing, but for new audiences estranged from the subject matter by time and distance. I really hope that there are new audiences discovering Big now, nearly 30 years after its release. As I said before, it’s a perfect fairy tale for the young and the young at heart. The universality of its themes and the performance of a young Tom Hanks coming into his full powers as a dramatic actor should keep Big fresh for the young viewers of today.

Better Off Dead

May 7, 2017May 7, 2017 / andrewmisk / Leave a comment

Better Off Dead (1985)

Dir. Savage Steve Holland

Written by: Savage Steve Holland

Starring: John Cusack, Diane Franklin, Amanda Wyss, Curtis Armstrong

It’s probably not surprising, as I did most of my collecting of movies as a teenager, but a good portion of my collection was, at one time, teen movies and teen romantic comedies. I was a devotee of John Hughes, even going so far as proudly displaying a Breakfast Club poster in my bedroom when I was in high school. I think it’s natural when a person is young and still trying to develop their identity to look to the teen archetypes that Hughes often traffics in and feel a kind of kinship. I also think that it’s natural that once one is a bit older they can look back at some of those characters and recognize that they’re fairly empty tropes. This isn’t to disparage Hughes’s output, as he’s made some classic films and I still enjoy watching many of them, but I don’t feel the sort of kinship to any of the young protagonists that I used to. The only Hughes-directed movie that I still own is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, copies of The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off having been lost or left behind somewhere along the line. Better Off Dead, however, is the one teen comedy from that era that I can still relate to as an adult, and it’s one of the few of its genre that have remained in my collection. I feel that Better Off Dead is such an essential part of my collection that, upon the initiation of this project, when I discovered that the disc for the movie was missing from the case, I felt that I had to purchase it again on Bluray, just so I could watch it again and write about it.

The film’s plot is fairly generic at its core, but Better Off Dead has a pitch dark and quasi-surreal sense of humor that most other teen films lack. Lane Meyer (Cusack) has two great loves in his life entering senior year of high school, downhill skiing and his girlfriend, Beth (Wyss). Lane loses out on both at the beginning of the film, as Beth cruelly dumps him for the captain of the ski team, Roy (Aaron Dozier), at the ski team tryouts. Seeing his high school social life crumbling, Lane decides that he is probably better off dead, but finds himself hilariously inept, even at suicide. Since he’s unable to off himself, and encouraged by his friend Charles (Armstrong), Lane decides to ski the K-12, a treacherous, possibly even lethal, run, in hopes of winning back Beth’s affections. Predictably, Lane fails miserably at his attempt to conquer the mountain, and his life continues to be a cycle of disappointment and adolescent frustration. That all starts to change when Lane meets Monique (Franklin), a French foreign exchange student who is living with the Meyer’s neighbors. Monique agrees to train Lane to ski the K-12 and the two develop a friendship. The film ends with a climactic race between Roy and Lane, in which Lane finally triumphs over his rival. When he crosses the finish line on one ski, Beth rushes to greet Lane, but he brushes past her, choosing Monique instead.

If you take out the failed suicide attempts, the plot to Better Off Dead reads like a fairly typical teen comedy of its time. It even slots in to a strange subgenre of the teen movie that was popular in the mid-late 1980s that featured skiing and partying as a pretext for hijinks and romance to ensue. However, Savage Steve Holland’s unique comedic sensibilities make this film stand out from others of its era. Better Off Dead was Holland’s first feature, and it is based on an actual breakup that led him to a hilariously botched suicide attempt, a la Lane Meyer. In real life, Holland was able to see the absurdity of his situation as he was sitting under a broken pipe, from which he had tried and failed to hang himself, water cascading onto his head as his mother yelled at him for damaging the pipe. He took that experience and began collecting other humorously bad ways to try to kill yourself, as the concept for Better Off Dead germinated. The end result is a film that is darkly hilarious and that feels emotionally genuine without employing the types of schmaltz that teen films sometimes resort to. The film features memorably absurd side plots and a cast of characters too whacky to truly be real, but just barely so. The film’s unique humor and the perpetually set upon Lane’s struggle to cope in the face of the insanity that surrounds him are the reasons that the film still resonates with me when others of its genre have faded off.

As I’ve mentioned before on this site, I was a big John Cusack fan in high school. High Fidelity and Say Anything were staples in my rotation, but I was unaware of the early Cusack film Better Off Dead until my friend Bill played it for me on VHS when we were probably about 16 years old. The film wasn’t as contemporary or as commercially successful as those others, but it’s the Cusack movie that I’ve watched the most as an adult by far. I was instantly enamored with the movie’s offbeat sense of humor. It was a totally different type of comedy than I was accustomed to at the time and I loved the unrepentant absurdity of the film. Better Off Dead is one of the few comedies that I’ve found to retain its humor despite at least a dozen repeated viewings. The film’s central comedic conceit, that Lane is so unbelievably inept that he cannot even find a way to properly end his own life, is funny, but the side plots and the supporting characters are probably the film’s most memorable comedic elements. Who can forget Lane’s younger brother Badger (Scooter Stevens), a deviant genius who constructs working lasers and rocket ships and seduces older women, despite never speaking in the film, or Lane’s mother (Kim Darby) who, throughout the film, makes creations from Better Housekeeping magazine recipes that look increasingly less and less edible? These characters, grounded as they are in recognizable reality, but spun out to the limits of plausibility, give the film its unique and memorable tone.

Cusack, himself a teen when the film was shot, is solid as Lane Meyer. The charisma and chops that would help him become one of Hollywood’s most consistent and successful leading men of the last 30 years are on display here. Anyone watching the film as an adult can recognize the world-weariness that Cusack displays as Lane is humorous in its desperation, but to a teenage viewer it can feel relatable and real. Lane’s only beginning to experience life, but he feels he’s already seen its pinnacle. The maudlin, mopey performance that Cusack turns in feels like a template for many of the characters he would portray over the next decade, which isn’t really a criticism. Cusack was better at playing that sort of lovelorn sadsack than anyone else at the time, and Better Off Dead allows him to do so in a film that points a self-reflexive lens on that character and chooses to laugh. Lane may be a precursor to the more iconic Lloyd Dobler who Cusack would later portray in Say Anything, but he’s also a more interesting and realistic character.

Better Off Dead and its follow up, One Crazy Summer, would be the only features that Holland would direct. He has enjoyed a long career directing in television, mostly in children’s programming, with his animated series Eek! The Cat enjoying mainstream success in the mid-1990s. I do wonder if Holland wouldn’t have had a longer career in Hollywood had he not run afoul of John Cusack after they finished working on Better Off Dead. Reportedly, the two had a falling out after Cusack saw the final cut of the film which he felt made him look ridiculous, and the relationship has never been repaired and the film has enjoyed cult-classic status, but it has never garnered the mainstream recognition it deserves. I often find that there seems to be a generational quality to appreciating Better Off Dead. Most people my age or slightly older recognize and appreciate the film’s iconic quotes and characterizations, while I haven’t encountered many people younger than myself who seem familiar with the film. While it is almost universally fondly remembered by those who have seen it, Better Off Dead falls outside the pantheon of classic 1980s teen comedies. Despite that, it is well worth tracking down and checking out if you haven’t seen it.

Addendum:

As I wrote, I felt so compelled to rewatch and write about Better Off Dead that I purchased a new copy of the movie to replace the DVD disc that had somehow gone missing from its case. That hasn’t been the case with every disc that has turned up missing in my collection. Since starting this project, I found out that my copy of American Psycho was missing. I had the case, but no disc in it. I decided that I wasn’t as interested in revisiting and writing about that movie, however, so I decided not to replace it, especially since the case that was on my shelf didn’t correspond with the original copy of the movie that I had bought on DVD in high school. Somehow, I had gotten my original copy switched up with a former roommate’s “Unrated Edition” copy. I don’t know why, but for some reason that made me much less inclined to include American Psycho as a part of this project. I loved the movie 15 years ago, and I still like it a lot. It’s an interesting satire and it features a star-making performance by Christian Bale, but it isn’t included in this project. Here are some films that I have owned in the past that I have since parted ways with that I wish I still owned so I could include them in this project. I will not be repurchasing any of these for inclusion.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

I am one of the few proponents of this film that I know. I was probably just young enough to be taken in by this fairytale. Had I been any older, or had my cynicism been as fully developed as it is now, I likely would have scoffed at the film, but I saw it in the theater and loved it immediately. I bought it on DVD and I watched it a lot. A.I. is so stylish, and even if it doesn’t fulfill on all of its promise, it’s at least interesting as a historical artifact as it’s the last film that Stanley Kubrick ever worked on. He and Spielberg share directing credits on the film, and the blend of their unique visual and narrative styles is fascinating, even if Spielberg’s influence is the dominant mode. I haven’t seen this movie since probably 2005 and I wish I could reevaluate it.

The Godfather (1972)/The Godfather II (1974)

The Godfather and its sequel are obvious classics of American cinema, and they’ll be noticeably absent from my reviews. I first saw The Godfather when I was 12-years-old on a double VHS copy that I borrowed from the library. I watched it three times in the week that I was allowed to keep it. Eventually, when I decided I wanted to more seriously pursue an education and, hopefully, a career in film, I often told people that it was the influence of The Godfather that had led me in that direction. I was obsessed with the movie as a teen to the point that I had memorized large chunks of dialogue from the film and could recite them on command as a sort of pathetic, nerdy party trick. I owned the DVD box set of all three films in high school, but I didn’t take it to college with me and it doesn’t seem to be at my parents’ house anymore. I suspect that my younger sister took over possession of it sometime after I moved out.

Manderlay (2005)

The second in Lars von Trier’s still incomplete “Land of Opportunities” trilogy. Manderlay follows up Dogville, and continues with that film’s experimental, spare visual style. It also explores similar themes as the earlier film. I have a love/hate relationship with von Trier, and Manderlay was one of his more difficult films for me to wrap my head around. I first saw it with my friend, Ben, at the Regent Theater when it was released. Shortly after giving a presentation on Dogville in a class in college, I lent my copy of Manderlay to a classmate who hadn’t seen it, and I never saw it again. This is one that I’d really like to write about as I’ll be covering several von Trier films over the next few months.

Say Anything (1989)

I don’t need to watch Say Anything again to be able to remember it perfectly. I watched this movie probably two dozen times while I was in high school. It perfectly intersected my filmic interests as a teen, and would have likely ranked up in my top five or ten movies at that time. I imagine my copy ended up with some girlfriend or another at that time, and that’s ok. It would be fun to go back and watch this movie as an adult, but it isn’t necessary.

Upstream Color (2013)

Shane Carruth is one of my favorite newer filmmakers. Both of his features, Primer and Upstream Color have been favorites of mine, particularly Primer. When I first saw that movie, I watched it three times in one day, and insisted that each of my roommates sit down to experience it with me when they got home from work. Obviously, I was eagerly awaiting Carruth’s follow-up, Upstream Color, which took several years to materialize. I saw the movie twice in the theater and purchased it on Bluray as soon as it was released. It was one of my favorite movies of 2013, and I tried several times to write a short essay about the film, but I never got it right. I still have several pages of screening notes from that time, but I let a friend borrow the movie and he lost it.

Drew's DVD Project

12 Monkeys to Zodiac

Month: May 2017

Big Trouble in Little China

The Big Lebowski

Big

Better Off Dead