The Grip of Film

by Richard Ayoade

  ‡ I wish. These days it takes films ninety minutes to warm up – Ayo.

  SUSPICIOUS NATIVE, THE

  As the HERO pads toward him, fearless but respectful, we see revealed the SUSPICIOUS NATIVE, his face an onyx edifice, his moon-white eyes unable to comprehend.

  In Joseph Zito’s 1988 African-set counter-insurgency dramedy Red Scorpion, Nikolai Petrovitch Rachenko (Dolph Lundgren) is a Soviet agent who loses faith in commie high command. He flees to the desert and, dehydrated, passes out. Native bushmen find his body and take him to their village, but before long they’re laughing at him for being unable to spear a warthog! But why should Rachenko be able to spear a warthog? He’s white! He buys his food in shops like a normal person! He could buy a billion warthogs in Whole Foods!

  But Rachenko doesn’t respond to their mockery. He doesn’t try and undermine them. He could easily say, ‘Maybe if you people had industrialized, we’d be bolt-gunning warthogs in a slaughterhouse like civilized people.’ Instead, he calmly sets about proving Nietzsche right. Not only does he easily spear a warthog after a matter of days, but he also learns how to say the words ‘thank’ and ‘you’ in their native tongue. This is a Renaissance Man. Which they’d know if they’d even had a Renaissance! They couldn’t tell a Renaissance Man if, to the accompaniment of crumhorn and lute, he challenged them to a joust in a palazzo while a Flemish portraitist captured the scene in realistic linear perspective!

  ‘You’ve earned the mark of the hunter,’ the Village Elder says in his barely comprehensible dialect. He gives Rachenko a long spear, immunity to scorpions and a tattoo on his left tit.

  ‘I’ve come a long way,’ Rachenko replies with contrasting humility.

  Too fuckin’ right! I’d love to see the Village Elder attain Rachenko’s level of expertise in a similarly short montage!

  But sometimes a suspicious native will mutter an aphorism in the middle of Act II that will resonate later in Act III, allowing the hero to display HIS INHERENT MORAL SUPERIORITY. In Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 man vs bear grudge match The Revenant,* Pawnee refugee Hikuc (Arthur RedCloud) tells maul victim Hugh Glass† (Leonardo DiCaprio) that ‘Revenge is in the Creator’s hands.’ Later, having pummeled near-incomprehensible trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) by a riverbank, Glass remembers Hikuc’s words and withholds a final death blow, instead pushing Fitzgerald across the water toward a patrol of suspicious natives, who, true to form, scalp the fucker.

  See: HERO, THE; INHERENT MORAL SUPERIORITY OF THE HERO, THE; SCALPING DOS AND DON’TS

  * AKA the most expensive Bear Grylls episode ever made – Ayo.

  † I’m ashamed to admit that had he been to my school, he may have been teased for that name – Ayo.

  T

  ‘And this is the clincher …’

  TAGLINES

  A TAGLINE is a short piece of text, often displayed on a movie poster, hinting at the key themes/aspects of the story. But it’s amazing how often these marketing goons get it wrong.

  Take Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 sedative Hour of the Wolf:

  The Hour of the Wolf is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The Hour of the Wolf is also the hour when most children are born.

  That ain’t a tagline, it’s a Wikipedia entry. It reminds me of when my last wife started talking. Terror would rise up in my throat. I knew I was meant to ‘remain present’, but how can you be ‘present’ if you don’t know where the fuck you are? Where are the handles on this thing? At least give a sense of how long this is gonna take. It’s just one thing after another. State your thesis, then support it: that’s a conversation. I started trying to alternate my gaze between her eyes and her mouth and saying ‘uh huh’ every five seconds, but I’d feel my head get heavy, and before I could say ‘shit’ I’d be asleep at the wheel.

  Bergman’s previous catastrophe, Persona, ain’t much better. Here’s the tag:

  The new film by Ingmar Bergman.

  That’s the best thing they could find to say about it. That it wasn’t the last one. Maybe you know the plot? Two dames stuck on an island, but only one of them talks. Please. I like sci-fi, but give me something halfway credible.

  In John Irvin’s 1986 Mafia dramedy Raw Deal, Mark Kaminsky (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a wrongly dismissed FBI agent who infiltrates the Mob to tear them a new one from right under their feet. Tagline?

  The system gave him a raw deal. Nobody gives him a raw deal.

  But the system literally just GAVE him a raw deal. Why should I see your movie if you’re lying to me already?

  In Joseph Zito’s 1988 counter-insurgency saga Red Scorpion, Nikolai Petrovitch Rachenko (Dolph Lundgren) is an elite Soviet soldier who infiltrates the commies in Africa to tear them a new one from the inside out. Tagline?

  He’s a human killing machine. Taught to stalk. Trained to kill. Programmed to destroy. He’s played by their rules … Until now.

  Get out your little red pen, boy. Isn’t it obvious that a human killing machine will have been ‘trained to kill’? Even Stallone didn’t come out of the womb busting heads. And ‘programmed to destroy’ is the same as ‘trained to kill’! I want to kill whoever wrote this! Unless they also wrote ‘Taught to stalk’, which is pretty much the best ordering of any three words ever, except for ‘You’re all clear’.

  In David Cronenberg’s overhyped 1986 insect dramedy The Fly, scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) inadvertently fuses himself with the titular in a teleporter. Hilarity ensues. Yet the tagline is:

  Be afraid. Be very afraid.

  Of what? Bug spray? And by the way, you don’t need the first statement. ‘Afraid’ is a subset of ‘very afraid’: you can’t be ‘very afraid’ without being ‘afraid’. And you’ve used the word ‘be’ twice. If this tag’s anything to go by, you could lose 40 per cent of the movie without even noticing.

  Harley Cokeliss’s 1987 Burt Reynolds-starring procedural Malone has this appeal for your custom:

  Ex-cop. Ex-CIA. Ex-plosive.

  So this former law-enforcement officer also used to be a ‘plosive’? What was he? The letter ‘b’? Had a little alphabetical reassignment and now he’s pursuing a new life as a sibilant? Cos I’m not sure I’m ready for Sesame Street Undercover …

  In Michael Miller’s 1982 kung fu sci-fi* drama Silent Rage, a small-town sheriff must destroy a mentally ill man granted near indestructibility by a botched experiment. Here’s the tag:

  Science created him. Now Chuck Norris must destroy him.

  What was the experiment in? Meta-textuality? Chuck Norris is the talented actor playing Sheriff Dan Stevens. Why would you confuse them?

  The copy for Roger Donaldson’s 1988 bartender dramedy Cocktail is:

  When he pours, he reigns.

  But since when does being a bartender confer sovereignty? The idea that working in the catering industry might lead to some kind of monarchical power is completely misleading and lost me the best part of a summer. My suggestion:

  DO mix your drinks.

  Jaws: The Revenge goes with:

  This time it’s personal.

  I can be touchy, but of all the things to take personally, a shark attack isn’t one of them. Speaking from experience, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.

  Orson Welles’s 1941 ass-backward jumble Citizen Kane has a tag that’s even more misguided than the movie:

  It’s terrific!

  That’s what you say if someone gives you a jumper you hate. Here’s how to do it right:

  Welles, Welles, Welles.

  Let’s close with a coupla stone-face killers.

  In Bruno Barreto’s 2003 cabin-crew drama View from the Top,† Donna Jensen (Gwyneth Paltrow) plays a small-town girl striving to become a first-class international flight attendant. The tagline?

  Don’t stop till you reach the t
op.

  Grade A+. This is going to be an exhilarating tale of raw, Darwinian ambition. Relentless and thrillingly linear.

  And this is the clincher. Mike Nichols’s 1973 aqua-com The Day of the Dolphin dropped this dangler:

  Unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States.

  This tagline was so fully satisfying as a piece of work in its own right that no one felt the need to see the movie.

  See: IMPOSSIBILITY OF REMAINING PRESENT, THE

  * Sci-fu? – Ayo.

  † At the risk of committing a meta-textual breach of my own, I re-refer interested readers to my own treatise on this masterful movie, ‘Ayoade on View from the Top: A Modern Masterpiece’ – Ayo.

  TAKING PUNCHES FROM HYSTERICAL WOMEN

  In most cases the HERO should just stand there and take them. The woman’s clearly upset and not in her right mind. She might be bereaved or think that something’s the hero’s fault. She just needs time. Very often they’re barely punches at all, more like half-slaps/pushes, and she instinctively knows not to touch his hair.

  In most instances someone with a bit of sense will drag her off, whereupon she’s reduced to mere verbal insults or a Spit From Distance.

  Heroes are used to being spat on. Comes with the territory. You and I might go, ‘Ew!!! That was totally gross and really unhygienic actually.’ But the hero will simply remove the spittle with nothing more than the back of his hand and a rueful smile.

  However, there are times when he is justified in slapping a HYSTERICAL WOMAN back:

  She’s getting even more hysterical.

  They could be overheard by enemy snipers.

  She needs to shape up before the building explodes.

  See: HERO, THE; SLAPPING DOS AND DON’TS

  THANKS

  The HERO wants very little. A simple word of thanks, not that he’ll ask for it, is his only recompense for saving Humanity. It’s Mankind’s inability to appreciate the hero that keeps him in exile, alone and often divorced.

  In Joseph Zito’s 1988 counter-insurgency drama Red Scorpion, Nikolai Petrovitch Rachenko (Dolph Lundgren) is an elite Soviet soldier who selflessly helps a rebel group overturn a corrupt commie regime in the Dark Continent. Not only do people fail to thank him for his efforts for much of the film but, understandably, they don’t trust him because he’s Russian, which in movie terms makes him a Foreign National.

  But through his unique talent for destroying life he comes to win the respect and, ultimately, thanks of his peers. Looking like he’s been formed in a particle collider containing the original line-up of Bros and two miles of tendon, Lundgren’s character surveys the scorched scene of his PROLONGED ACT III ASS-KICK, when Kallunda Kintash (Al White), an African (representing savages everywhere), and Dewey Ferguson (M. Emmet Walsh), an American (representing the pinnacle of the civilized free world), take a moment to offer their approbation:

  KALLUNDA KINTASH (THE AFRICAN)

  We made it, my friend.

  DEWEY FERGUSON (THE AMERICAN)

  You did it, man.

  NIKOLAI PETROVITCH RACHENKO

  (THE RUSSIAN)

  Fuckin’ A.

  This simple, moving exchange shows how far each has come on their unique journeys. But note that only the American has the graciousness – a noted characteristic of his people – to single out someone else’s achievement. In Red Scorpion, as in all good movies, the true victory is for the INHERENT SUPERIORITY OF THE AMERICAN WAY.

  See: ASS-KICK, PROLONGED ACT III; THE AMERICAN WAY, INHERENT SUPERIORITY OF; THE DARK CONTINENT, IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING A FIRM HAND ON THE TILLER W/R/T; GRACIOUSNESS, UNIQUELY AMERICAN MODES OF; HERO, THE

  THOUGHT

  The only method of conveying THOUGHT in cinema is to bookend a series of fragmented, desaturated flashback images with a close-up shot of someone’s strained-looking face.

  And that ain’t gonna change any time soon. Unless …

  Camera tracks into my face. Dissolve to …

  TIMING

  In movies, TIMING is the key to everything.

  Except for locks.

  For locks you need a key.

  TITLES

  The TITLE of your picture should be intriguing and exciting, but it should let the audience know exactly what to expect. As such, Beverly Hills Cop may be the best movie title of all time. But it’s a question of nuance. As tempting as it feels, you can’t just put ‘Cop’ after another noun and expect a flick to be a hit …

  Kindergarten Cop

  How dangerous is day care? Why does it need policing? Are these babies carrying handguns? Too many questions.

  Mall Cop

  If you say it out loud, it sounds like someone telling a dog to disembowel a detective.

  Cop Out

  So he’s gay. Why do I care?

  Cop and a Half

  Of soy? What is this, a movie or a recipe?

  But if you come up with a kick-butt title like RoboCop, your work is pretty much done. All you gotta do next is think of a story to back it up. And remember: no cinema offers refunds based on quality; you just need to get ’em through the door.

  TITS

  … are a mixed blessing.

  In Tobe Hooper’s 1985 space-vampire dramedy Lifeforce, an astronaut considers removing the modesty sheet from a beautiful dead humanoid in order to take a respectful look at her jugs. But before he can get a proper eyeful, she sits up and sucks all the life out of him.*

  Here we see a microcosm of the sexual act: anticipation, consummation, fatal depletion.

  Hooper’s brilliantly prescient film is a timely warning about the transfixing power of wallopers.

  See: TOWEL RACKS

  * One of those undead, intergalactic honeytraps – Ayo.

  TOPLESSNESS

  Actresses often complain that certain producers pressure them to ‘appear topless’ in certain films, when in fact they are merely being asked to expose their breasts.

  Film is a visual medium. If an actress ‘appeared topless’, what would we look at? Some disembodied legs?

  In the entire history of motion pictures, a pair of disembodied legs has rarely managed to achieve movie-star status, whereas women wise enough to expose their breasts often become major stars.

  So it’s really a choice between bisecting yourself horizontally or getting work.

  See: FEMINISM

  TRUST

  ‘Trust me’ is another way of saying, ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but I sure as shit do.’

  HEROES don’t got time for ‘due process’. Things are getting too ugly, too fast for them to weigh up the moral complexities of torture. Their guts are calibrated to invariably make the right decision, even if it might seem to the untrained eye that a lot of people have started to lose their lives as a result of this revenge mission.

  In Antoine Fuqua’s 2014 home-depot dramedy The Equalizer, ex-CIA operative Robert ‘Bob’ McCall (Denzel Washington) decides to avenge a brutal assault on a prostitute he innocently befriended at a diner. With each particular kill he has to use his own judgment as to the level of force required, whether it’s exploding a series of trucks, electrocution, strangulation, stabbing, shooting, or forcing a shot glass into someone’s brain. It’s a matter of discretion, but the level of force required often seems to be: A LOT.

  Note: in the course of a revenge mission, it’s permissible to take ANYTHING from ANYONE and DESTROY ANY and ALL THINGS.

  See: CONFISCATION, HERO’S IMPLICITLY WIDE-RANGING POWERS OF; HERO, THE

  TWO-STAGE BAR BRIBES

  TWO-STAGE BAR BRIBES (incl. shoe-shine/street-corner bribes) come in three stages:

  Stage 1. HERO asks for info; snitch says, ‘Who wants to know?’; hero offers ‘x’ dollar(s); brief comic business w/r/t value of ‘x’; handover of ‘x’ dollar(s) (often folded); informant gives indication that he may know something but will prob need more dollar(s) to be sure.

  Stage 2. Transfer of supplementary do
llar(s) – ‘y’; some (minor) info revealed; informant asks for yet more dollar(s) – ‘z’.

  Stage 3. Enraged/saddened by request for ‘z’ dollar(s), as a breach of an implied two-stage bar-bribe contract, hero commences COLLAR GRAB, accompanied w/ coarse threats (e.g. ‘Listen, you fuck knuckle/Don’t fuck with me, Chico,’ etc.), to extract further intel; further intel is duly spilt; hero strongly requests additional intel spill; snitch says words to effect of ‘That’s all I know, man, I swear’; hero unhands scum-bucket; scum-bucket remonstrates w/r/t severity of collar grab; hero follows up lead in next scene.

  More recently, the Two-Stage Bar Bribe scene has been replaced by the torture scene, in which the hero may extract intel by methods incl. (but not limited to) Single Gunshot to a Non-Fatal Body Area; Knife Twist; Digit Snap; Chinese Burn (Severe);

  Window Dangle; Pushing Informant’s Head Toward Something That Would Fatally Damage Informant’s Head, i.e. drill, band saw, electric whisk, etc.

  I welcome this shift, as I was always uncomfortable with lowlife scum getting dollar for intel that could be just as easily extracted by moving straight to Stage 3.

  See: HERO, THE; PAY, WHY