In life, people don’t change. Wives change. Does this mean that wives aren’t people? It’s the job of movies to ask these questions. So how come there hasn’t been a movie about the fact that wives are probably not people? Well, guess what? You’re wrong as shit. They made one. It’s called The Stepford Wives.
Only flaw?
You can’t help but sense the implication that the smiling submissiveness of these women is meant to be a bad thing.
See: HERO, THE
* Those interested in a deeper discussion of Top can consult my monograph, ‘Ayoade on View from the Top: A Modern Masterpiece’ – Ayo.
CHARACTER
CHARACTER is action.
If you walk out on me, you’re a whore. It doesn’t matter whether you ‘actually’ charged me for sex, it’s your actions that make you a lowdown whore.
No one is born a killer. You become a killer by your action of killing someone. And trust me, it doesn’t matter whether you were properly trained to use that machine or not. If someone dies and it was your shift, it’s on you. And if you were drunk, put your shit in storage, because you’re going to jail. Not even being white can get you out of that one.
If character is action, and it is, the truest character study is the fight sequence, which makes Jackie Chan the greatest character actor of all time.
CHARACTER STUDIES
If someone describes a movie as a CHARACTER STUDY, we all know what they mean: ‘This thing’s gonna be slow as shit.’
If Rocky were boring, they would call it a character study.
Raging Bull is a character study.
The studio didn’t even pony up for color film stock. Fancy humming the theme tune to Raging Bull? Didn’t think so. If I want to see a fat fuck talk to himself in the mirror, I’ll put CCTV in my bathroom.
Predator isn’t a character study. Is there any moment in time when you’re doing something better than watching Predator? I’d rather be watching Predator now, and I’m having sex with someone.
See: BATHROOM SURVEILLANCE, PROS AND CONS; GOING TO CHARACTER UNIVERSITY AS A MATURE STUDENT
CHOPPERS
If a fleet of jet-black CHOPPERS ain’t cresting over a backlit hill by the end of Act II, you’ve got to start asking yourself whether this is a movie or a fucking art installation.
See: MOVIE, IS IT A
CITIES AS CHARACTERS
They’re not. All right? New York is not a ‘character’ in the movie. Characters DO things. What is New York doing? It’s just there, sucking the life out of everyone, charging too much rent and getting crazy hot every summer.
Also, your city is too tall.
See: CITIES, IDEAL HEIGHTS FOR
COSTUME
They say that clothes maketh the man. What they don’t tell you is that they can also breaketh him. I once wore sports sandals with drop-crotch trucker pants to a funeral and didn’t get a second date for a month.
Clothes can BE a narrative. In John Irvin’s 1986 action benchmark Raw Deal, former-FBI-agent-now-small-town-sheriff Mark Kaminsky (Arnold Schwarzenegger) tells us his story by what he wears.
Let’s chart the key outfits chronologically:
ACT I
MEET MARK KAMINSKY
Blue jeans, large jeans belt, tucked-in red lumberjack shirt.
INCITING INCIDENT/COMPLICATION
Blue jeans, jean jacket, large jeans belt, tucked-in blue lumberjack shirt.
Note: the jean jacket could be seen as the physical embodiment of this complication.
ACT II
SHIT GETS REAL (IN HIS NEW UNDERCOVER IDENTITY AS CONVICTED FELON JOSEPH P. BRENNER)
Gray flannel pants w/a crisp open white shirt and blue blazer.
A SETBACK
Tighty whitey T-shirt with piping round the sleeves + neck (which, by the way, really shows off his killer bod – he is busting out of this thing, it can barely contain him).
RECOVERY
Large mid-brown double-breasted jacket, chocolate-brown shirt, champagne tie, dove-gray pants and saddle-brown suede shoes.
MONTAGE SECTION – KAMINSKY BLOWS HIS COVER
A series of chunky double-breasted suits. (Can you imagine being Arnie’s tailor? How do you even get a tape around those things?)
ACT III
SHIT GOES DOWN
Black jeans, white vest, black leather jacket.
THE HERO RETURNS
Blue jeans, large jeans belt, tucked-in blue lumberjack shirt.
So, what do these eight distinct outfits teach us? Suits are for stiffs. Just like any true HERO, Arnie can only be his true self in tight jeans.
Tight jeans can be teamed with:
a white vest
or
a white T-shirt
or
a lumberjack shirt
+
a jean jacket
or
a leather jacket.
That’s it.
Deal with it.
See: HERO, THE; IT, DEALING WITH
COUNTDOWNS
There is no film that could not be improved by regularly cutting to a COUNTDOWN.
What is New Year’s Eve except a bunch of people counting backwards? And this event fills every capital city the world over. Annually!
It’s so compelling that people feel it’s worth televising.
What is a film except a countdown? I don’t care how good your movie is, we’re all just waiting for it to end.
COUNTING ON PEOPLE
Everyone you’ll meet will let you down. Apart from the HERO. You know who the hero is. He’s played by the best-paid actor. He gets top billing. And he’s the only man you can trust.
Why?
You keep his colonics flowing. You fund his yacht parties. You pay for him to pay other people to keep people like you away from him.
He needs you. That’s why he’ll keep playing that character you like in every movie you see him in. He’ll speak in the same voice and wear the same clothes and brush his hair just the way you like it – you know how it frames his face just right? He’ll be the same in the interview about the film as he is in the film. He’ll tell funny stories that initially appear to be self-effacing.
He refuses to be a slave to variety.
See: COLONICS, FLOWING; HERO, THE
CRUELTY
Why is it okay that Steven Seagal breaks the Foreign National’s arm by bending it the wrong way at the elbow? Because the Foreign National deserved it. He was standing in the way of righteousness. Righteousness, in a Steven Seagal film, is symbolized by Steven Seagal.
Why, when the evil drug baron blows smoke in Steven Seagal’s tiny eyes, do we feel it to be so unjust? Because the evil drug baron is blowing smoke into the comically small eyes of right-eousness itself.
But were Steven Seagal to blow smoke in the face of the evil drug baron or another OBVIOUS ASSHOLE, esp. an AUTHORITY FIGURE MOUTH-WRITING CHECKS IN EXCESS OF HIS ASS’S PREDETERMINED CREDIT ALLOWANCE, it becomes a gesture of defiance, a celebration of individuality, and a true sign of the HERO.
CRUELTY isn’t about what is being done; it is a matter of who is doing what to whom. Hence American foreign policy.
The charismatic cop beating up someone because they’re with-holding information is totally different to some new stepdad trying to make the charismatic cop feel small in front of his daughter by buying her what, on the surface, seems like a more thoughtful gift.
The first instance is okay; the second is worse than genocide.
See: ASSHOLES, OBVIOUS; BAD PEOPLE; CHECKS IN EXCESS OF [ONE’S] ASS’S PREDETERMINED CREDIT ALLOWANCE, THE MOUTH-WRITING OF; HERO, THE
CURSES
A CURSE is anything that limits a person, lowers them or blocks them from their full potentiality.
Impotence is a curse.
Many myths involve a character being changed into an animal, such as a frog. Because being a frog is totally limiting. Sure, it might be nice to hop a little better, but you can’t get a restaurant reservatio
n. You can’t even get a driver’s license!
Being a frog stinks!
Menstruation is often called ‘the curse’ because it stops women, for ‘a period’, from even trying to be nice.
That’s why Curse of the She-Wolf never did any business. Who wants to see a lycanthrope blaming everyone else for her problems?
See: RESPONSIBILITY, TRY TAKING SOME
CUTS
Sometimes you gotta make a CUT. I don’t care if you’re in the edit bay or a knife fight. A shit-heap of kick-butt movies have* benefited from dumping scenes surplus to requirements.
Did you miss the pole-vaulting tournament in 12 Years a Slave?
Did you miss the titular street-diarrhea scene in Inside Out?
Did you miss the first three episodes of Star Wars?
Nah.
Wanna know why?
You never saw them.
And you never needed to.
* Surely ‘has’? The ‘shit-heap’ here is singular. Gordy said ‘has’ sounded ‘fuckin’ goofy’ and that grammar was for ‘ass-handlers’ – Ayo.
CUTTING TO THE CHASE
Any good editor will tell you the same thing: CUT TO THE CHASE.
But don’t cut during the chase.
Ideally, you should cut out all the material between your various chases.
Do you remember seeing a chase sequence in Orson Welles’s 1941 tycoon tale Citizen Kane?
Neither do I.
The most exciting moment in that dud is when the super-old dude at the start drops a snow globe – an incident that really should have been mined for laughs.
If he was so ill, why the hell is his so-called nurse allowing him to hold glass souvenirs?
He’s well enough to shake it, then the next minute he’s dead? Please.
(Don’t) See: CITIZEN KANE
D
‘I don’t bake cookies for a living …’
DAUGHTERS
The modern HERO often has a DAUGHTER. This allows an aging action star to interact with a young female character without the complications of sexual tension. Instead, the love story can be played out with her mother/his ex-wife, who, with sensitive lighting, can be played by an actress in her mid-thirties.
A narrative featuring a daughter also allows the filmmakers to prominently feature HOT ASS on the poster, rather than some rancid old catastrophe.
The daughter’s role is simple: to be continually wrong.
She is worried that her daddy doesn’t love her enough …
Wrong. He loves her more than she could ever know. It’s just that on several occasions he’s needed to save – you know – HUMANITY, plus the mission was classified actually. It’s not his fault that he’s an assassin with an unparalleled skill set who feels ethically compelled to defend his country and the freedom of the West without seeking personal gain.
She is worried her daddy isn’t good enough …
Wrong. Even though he’s broke, violent and possibly alcoholic. Those things give him color.
And the new stepdad, despite the fact that he’s never killed someone by twisting their head quickly, is actually evil. Okay, so the new stepdad got the daughter a white Ferrari rather than a second-hand ride-on lawnmower with a big pink bow on it, but he probably got his secretary to book One Direction* for his daughter’s Sweet Sixteen. And that shit don’t mean squat if it don’t come from the heart. Because money and status are not cool. Working in asset management is not cool. Wearing a suit and knowing what kind of wine to order is not cool. Being ‘sensitive’ to other people’s needs is not cool.
Busting ASS, smelling musty and being intuitively right in every situation while administering on-the-spot justice is cool.
She thinks that her friends are cool …
Wrong. Her dad is actually way cooler than them.
She thinks some silly young punk kid is sexy …
Wrong. Her dad is way sexier. He’s actually super-sexy – even her friends tell her so. And yet she cannot possess him carnally. That tragedy is also her freedom. Because of the societal injunction against incest, this impossibly sexy man can finally have a meaningful relationship with a hot woman who doesn’t want to uncoil his secret length.
She thinks it’s cool to party …
Wrong. It’s actually cooler not to party. Parties are filled with danger and debauched punk kids trying to get her hooked on reefer.
She thinks travel broadens the mind and that France is more or less safe …
Wrong. Foreign countries are filled with dangerous anti-American insurgents, hooked on reefer, intent on kidnap.
But occasionally the daughter can teach her old man a small lesson that he already knows …
In McG’s 2014 brain-tumor dramedy 3 Days to Kill, absent father and CIA agent Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) has an argument with his daughter after he’s rescued her from a DOUCHE-Y GUY AT A PARTY. Angry, he asks her to get on the bike that he inexplicably bought her earlier in the movie. She says she doesn’t know how to ride a bike.
At this point, some filmmakers would have allowed the audience to put two and two together. But McG knows that his audience didn’t illegally download this film for educational purposes.
ETHAN RENNER
What kind of kid doesn’t know how to ride a bike?
ZOOEY RENNER
The kind of kid who never had a father to teach her.
If you think Ethan Renner’s going to rest before Zooey Renner knows how to ride that bike, you don’t know Ethan Renner. By close of business, Zooey is cycling, for the first time, by the steps of the Sacre Coeur. At first glance, an oddly public place to learn, but it means that she can be applauded by strangers when she finally balances. In commercial cinema, personal breakthroughs don’t mean diddly until they’re publicly validated by large groups.
Ethan Renner learns that it’s never too late to realize how good a father he already is.
See: ass; ASS, HOT; HERO, THE; HUMANITY; OLDER MEN, INHERENT COOL OF; PARTY, DOUCHE-Y YOUNG GUY AT THE
* Because this reference won’t date – Ayo.
DIALOGUE
Should be:
Economical.
See 1.
Two of my favorite lines are (in no particular order): ‘Dial, dipshit’
and
‘Fuck justice.’
DIALOGUE, by contrast with our shitty lives, must move forward. It can’t just drift like a polystyrene crust on a stagnant pond. Let’s take an ordinary, everyday scene:
INT. SOME CHEAP APARTMENT – COULD BE ANY TIME
Buck (fifties, virile, looks thirties) is talking with Candy (twenties, impossibly hot, with a fiery temper to match; smarter than she looks, but not overly so), who is trying on different outfits.
CANDY
Buck? Bucky baby?
BUCK
If I was asleep, I apologize.
CANDY
Which one do you like?
BUCK
Definitely that one.
CANDY
Which one?
BUCK
The one you’re wearing.
CANDY
Well, that’s funny, because I’m wearing something completely different to when you last said that.
BUCK
I know, I was –
CANDY
Which might indicate that I’ve changed my mind as to what I’d like to wear.
BUCK
That’s why –
CANDY
Or that you don’t care. Which I think is more likely. You just don’t care.
BUCK
I really do. I care so much about our getting this outfit right.
CANDY
Oh, so I have to ask your permission before I change?
BUCK
No, of course I –
CANDY
Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for allowing me to decide what I may or may not wear.
BUCK
(justifiably bitter)
It’s just that we’re a littl
e late.
CANDY
Fuck you. Don’t put that on me. I don’t even want to go out. They’re your friends, not my friends.
BUCK
They’re our friends.
CANDY
My friends don’t patronize me.
BUCK
Well, let’s not go then.
CANDY
We have to go, Buck. They’re our friends. You don’t just cancel whenever it suits you. That’s what animals do.
BUCK
Fine, let’s go.
CANDY
I am already going. I’m trying to go now.
BUCK
Do animals make dinner reservations?
CANDY
But I’d like to not be naked. Which means I have to put clothes on. Which means I need to choose some. Unless you just want me to wear the same thing every day like a prisoner.
BUCK
That’s –
CANDY
Why don’t you just get me some prison pyjamas and I’ll wear those? Like in the death camps. Then people might see the hell I’m in.
BUCK
I also liked the other one you put on.
CANDY
Thanks for the mandate, but it’s a little late to be engaging with me now.
BUCK
I’m very engaged with you. Why else would I have taught you the word ‘mandate’?
CANDY
You’ve never shown interest in anything I do.
BUCK
How do you mean?
CANDY
Why don’t you ask a question once in a while? Would it kill you to ask a question?
BUCK
Do you think you might be getting closer to deciding?
The Grip of Film Page 7