U
‘We must deceive ourselves in order to go on …’
UK FILM
‘It’s been an outstanding year in UK film …’ is the claim the UK film ‘industry’ continues to make to itself on an annual basis, fundamentally perverting the definition of the word ‘outstanding’, bankrupting language itself and destroying trust in that most sacred of spheres: PR. Far better to say, ‘It’s been a year,’ and leave it at that. For the UK FILM industry is, like the unicorn, a myth: something that is fun to imagine, but impossible to believe in.
Yet, in show business, we must deceive ourselves in order to go on. To us, lying to ourselves is as natural as (briefly) marrying people half our age.
Case in point: that last sentence contained a deception. I used the term ‘show business’, two words which don’t apply to UK film. Because for something to be a ‘show’, people have to watch it. And for something to be a business … well, I guess the end of that sentence writes itself.
Not that I’m bitter – I live abroad now.
On a side note, it’s important never to applaud people ‘working’ in UK film, as it may startle them. They are unused to applause, coming as it does from audiences. People ‘working’ in UK film have rarely heard any sounds from an audience other than dry coughs.*
At UK film ‘events’, they often have an award for the Best International Film. This film, by its very definition, is always better than the ‘Best’ UK film because the Best International Film will be American. In fact, the Best International Film won’t be a film at all: it’ll be a movie.
A movie is a film people want to watch.
Having a category for Best International Film is like having a special category for Best Tall Basketball Player of the Year. Conversely, you would never have an award for Whitest Athlete. That award is for tennis.
See: BRITISH FILM
* Or a murmured suggestion to leave, followed by the awkward ‘thuk’ of a cinema seat flipping back up – Ayo.
V
‘If we could take these lessons into the school system …’
VILLAINS
VILLAINS rarely have top lips.
Villains like fruit-based cocktails.
Villains like fussy food.
Villains struggle to maintain team spirit.
Villains struggle with stress management, and tend to unload onto subordinates.
Villains set themselves unrealistic goals.
Villains, by their nature, tend not to be American.
Villains are obsessed with failure, yet they never succeed.
HEROES don’t worry about failure, yet they always succeed.
Perhaps if these lessons could have been taken into the school system, I wouldn’t have left without qualifications.
See: HERO, THE
W
The answer’s simple …’
WHEN VS WHETHER
When we’re watching a good movie, we know what’s gonna happen. That’s why they’re comforting. If you’d told me thirty years ago that I’d be single and living most of my life in a jeep, I wouldn’t have paid the price of admission.
So with the flicks that matter it ain’t a question of WHETHER, it’s a question of WHEN …
WHEN will Steven Seagal break someone’s arm by bending it the wrong way at the elbow?
WHEN will Nicolas Cage start screaming?
WHEN will Robert De Niro do that thing with his mouth?*
There are too many surprises in life; we don’t need ’em in drama.
* I have my own set of WHENs:
WHEN will Liam Neeson’s daughter in Taken realise how dangerous gap years are?
WHEN will the Albanian Mafia realise that Liam Neeson is more powerful than all of them put together?
WHEN will Sean Penn realise that everyone gets cut out of Terrence Malick films in favour of those prepared to skip through meadows?
WHEN will Nic Cage realise that it’s possible for a character to get moderately annoyed? – Ayo.
WISECRACKS
All humor comes out of a fear of mortality, which is why the death of an enemy is an excellent time to test out new material and lighten the mood before the next kill.
See: KILLING SPREE, SETTING THE RIGHT ATMOSPHERE ON A
WOMEN
I think men and WOMEN are different. My female students work better if I flatter them and give them mix tapes and praise their poetry. (The pretty ones, at least. There’s always a couple of tanks who try to stir shit up cos they don’t got a date to the prom.) Whereas the more I belittle the men (boys, really) and say that I would let them ride in my car if it wasn’t so full of high-class ass, the better they seem to do. It’s just an evolutionary fact. If you wanna get mad, get mad at Chuck Darwin.*
But the bottom line is that without women, there would be no movies. Who else would we mentally undress? Who else would we rescue? Who else would we lovingly but firmly tell to stay put while we get on with the DANGEROUS ASS-KICKING BUSINESS OF ACT III?
But that’s not to say women are just passengers. Sometimes dames can help – e.g. by smashing something light/breakable over someone’s head, thus giving the leading man a little extra time to deal with the other assailants.
See: ACT III, THE DANGEROUS ASS-KICKING BUSINESS OF
* I’ve always wondered whether Chuck D’s name was a reference to Darwin – Ayo.
WORD, GIVING IT
When the HERO GIVES his WORD, it ain’t like a groom saying, ‘I do.’ This gift ain’t just for Christmas, it’s till the final credits roll. And just like your momma’s hymen, you should think twice before breaking it.
Perhaps that’s why so many heroes choose to speak in grunts.
Grunts don’t break.
See: HERO, THE; INHERENT UNBREAKABILITY OF GRUNTS, THE; YOUR MOMMA’S HYMEN, IMPORTANCE OF RESPECT VIS-À-VIS
WORDPLAY
Félix Enríquez Alcalá’s 1997 eco-thriller Fire Down Below is rightly renowned as a WORDPLAY masterclass. Let’s break down two key exchanges.
In the first, undercover CIA operative Jack Taggart (Steven Seagal) comes face to face with the villainous Hanner Sr (Kris Kristofferson):
HANNER SR
You’re violating my constitutional rights.
JACK TAGGART
I will show you a new meaning to the word ‘violation’.
Apart from the filmmakers’ evident joy at the possibilities of language, what’s truly interesting is that Taggart isn’t going to show Hanner Sr a new meaning to the word ‘violation’. Seagal’s signature smirk tells us that the activity he’s implying would still fall under the umbrella term ‘violation’. Indeed, for the threat to work, Hanner Sr is required to imagine the kind of violation that Taggart is suggesting. And if we assume that the violation would be non-consensual – and I think it’s safe to assume that it would be non-consensual – what we’re talking about here is quite clear.
This is a rape threat.
And ‘rape’ is one of the possible definitions of ‘violation’. So what Taggart’s going to show Hanner Sr is an existing meaning of the word ‘violation’. And while it may be hard to say for sure whether he’s personally threatening to rape Hanner Sr, Taggart does seem to be leaving that possibility open.
Here’s another way that the scene could have been written, if screenwriters Jeb Stuart and Philip Morton had a less sure hand with subtext:
HANNER SR
You’re violating my constitutional rights.
JACK TAGGART
I’m going to rape you.
Not quite as witty, is it? It lacks wordplay. Action films of the late eighties and early nineties seem to be the only forum left in which a Man’s Man like Seagal could, inspired by a sheer love of language, threaten to rape another man. Then the PC brigade rode in on their holier-hobby-horses-than-thou, leaving the battlefield strewn with harmless banter, making the movies a much poorer place as a result. They’re certainly a whole heap less fun, and I think repressing people’s freedom
to threaten male rape as a punishment may be turning everyone gay. I don’t know. You can’t say anything now without people twisting your words. People will probably start calling me a homophobe just because I happen to find gayness terrifying.
In our next featured scene Taggart is undertaking some routine reconnaissance when he’s intercepted by villainous flunky Hatch (Mark Collie):
HATCH
What the hell are you doing here?
JACK TAGGART
Well, I was just out taking a Sunday stroll … but I guess maybe it’s not Sunday.
This guy’s too much! Hatch was probably thinking, ‘That’s weird – it’s not Sunday. This guy is out of his idiomatic depth,’ when – BOOM! – Taggart calls him on it. ‘But I guess maybe it’s not Sunday,’ he says, casual as shit. What do you think of that rejoinder, you low-level flunky fuck? This ain’t some meathead you’re dealing with. You’re face to face with a master of repartee!
And the linguistic light show ain’t about to dim. See how Taggart subtly qualifies the qualifier: ‘But I guess maybe it’s not Sunday.’
So maybe it is Sunday!
Who knows? You think this killing machine checks his iCal alerts? He’s too busy snatching guns out of drug dealers’ outstretched hands. You think Taggart has a Stroll Schedule? Taggart strolls to his own completely unpredictable and heavily syncopated rhythm. He’ll take a Tuesday Stroll on a weekend. He’ll take a mid-morning nap in the dead of night. His breathing pattern is so unusual it’s hard to know how far through a sentence he is.
Upshot? Hatch can no longer tell one day from another! And Taggart hasn’t even started physically assaulting him!
This is wordplay in action.
See: ICAL ALERTS, KILLING MACHINES’ INSOUCIANCE W/R/T
WORK
How do we know if a film works?
When I was a wee laddie, mid-mooch along the Celtic cobbles of East Kilbride, dreaming of new foodstuffs to submerge in hot oil, I thought WORK was something you tried to avoid. ‘I dinnae wanna werk!’ I’d oft exclaim to my young Scotch friends, many of them already parents, faces shrunken, smocks smeared with dirt, darting black eyes searching for escape. Aye, work was for ‘gingin’ fannybawbags’. Strictly for the spondoolies. But what that little braveheart couldnae have predicted was that one day he would live for work. And what’s more, a whole Town would be gobbling up his pamphlets like bone-in picnic ham.
But this is noun talk. We need to get verb-al.
As in …
WORK, V.
So you could say that the opening paragraph to this chapter was completely unnecessary, and you’d be right – it was an irrelevance. Worse, it was a prologue.
With prose you can scribble any old ‘gash’ and it’s ‘nae bother’ …
But movies are an art. They don’t sell them at airports. They have to be slicker than an unregulated-factory shoreline.
Remember the start to 2001: A Space Odyssey? Bunch of monkeys collecting bones. What’s that got to do with space? They don’t even have lasers!
Cut that shit.
And what about Citizen Kane? A guy so drunk he can’t hold onto a snow globe mutters something about the clitoris and then dies for no reason. Suddenly, we’re into a ten-minute news bulletin that schleps through his entire life story, then we’re back in the future with a bunch of silhouettes arguing about what he said when he died, even though no one could have heard it, plus who gives a shit, and then we have to go through the whole thing again starting from his childhood! No wonder they couldn’t get distribution. If they’d wanted to gross some dollar, they should’ve called it Dude, Where’s My Sled?
So how do we know if a film works?
The answer’s simple. One word.
The audience.
The audience tell you. They’ll whisper it in your ears as you try to get to sleep. (‘Hey, Orson! I want my spondoolies back! The sled was in storage the whole time!’)
Never disrespect your audience. They barely have any self-respect to start with. If they did, they’d be reading a book.
Just like you’ve been …
FADE
OUT
‘You know there’s a special name for that kind of “grip” …’
The clouds fill, the rains fall, but the sea remains, as does some land.
A cycle without end or beginning. Which makes scheduling tough.
So, too, the movies.
They go on.
Sweet mercy, they go on. Do they think we have all day?
But what of those regions of cinema that have been hosed down the delta of ‘progress’?
What of the heterosexual buddy film, kung fu films starring white people, and sincere slasher films?
Perhaps their day has sailed.
Well, not in my backyard.
This landlubber is itching to pilot them back to his private dock.
So, what of the future? Will the waves be calm? Or choppy as shit? Will this book help us stay on course? Why would you even say that? Don’t put your negativity on me – I didn’t promise anything sober.
All I’ve done is tell you exactly how every movie that has ever been good works. All you have to do is copy the formula.
The only thing stopping you is dumb pride.
You see it different? Great, have a margarita. You chart the course, I’ll grab a dinghy. I’d rather paddle ashore with my rancid tongue.
Because come the apocalypse, the first thing us survivors will do, right after we thrash out a barter system for guzzolene, is tell one another what happened …
In other words, we’ll start to tell a story …
Maybe get a couple of good-lookin’ people to act it out …
Next thing you know, some guy in a checked shirt and baseball cap wants to make a record of that story …
Perhaps a visual record (heck, why not throw in some sound while we’re at it) …
Then he can show it to others for a fee in selected theaters, and after a rapidly diminishing hold-back period, on home-entertainment platforms …
And if he wants people to keep watching and not start posting negative feedback on social media, that visual record had better hold them in its grip …
You know there’s a special name for that kind of ‘grip’, right …?
I kinda coined it.
You just read it.
It’s called …
THE
GRIP
OF
FILM
INDEX*
3 Days to Kill, 1, 2, 3, 4
12 Years a Slave, 1, 2
2001: A Space Odyssey, 1
Above the Law, 1
accents, funny foreign, 1
Achilles heel, ass as, 1
ACT III, THE DANGEROUS ASS-KICKING BUSINESS OF, 1
ACT III ASS-KICK, EXTENDED, 1
ACT III ASS-KICK,
PROLONGED, 1
ACTION, 1
ACTORS, AMATEUR, 1
ACTORS, HAVING MORE THAN ONE ASIAN ONE, 1
addiction, lip salve, 1
ADR, 1
AESTHETIC, 1
air bag, recently deployed, 1
ALCHEMY, 1
Alien, 1
Allen, Woody, 1
Altman, Robert, 1
AMERICA AS MAT, 1
AMERICAN ASS, THE LIFE-AFFIRMING EXPANSIVENESS OF, 1
AMERICAN WAY, INHERENT SUPERIORITY OF THE, 1
Anderson, Pamela, 1
Anderson, Paul Thomas, 1
ANSWERING QUESTIONS WITH A QUESTION, 1
Apocalypse Now, 1
APPROBATION, THE FEW REMAINING BAROMETERS OF, 1
Aristotle (Greek philosopher), 1, 2
arms, manly as hell, 1
arses, 1
Asher, Jane, 1
ASS, 1
ass (as site of ultimate vulnerability), 1
ass (w. partic. ref. to ontology), 1
ass, attempts to civilize, 1
ass, being on your, 1
ass, blowing smoke up G
ordy LaSure’s, 1
ass, calling an ass an, 1
ass, exotic, 1
ASS, FEELING IT IN THE, 1
ASS, GETTING OFF YOUR, 1
ass, good, 1
ASS, HAULING, 1
ass, hostile, 1
ASS, INCURSIONS IN THE, 1
ASS, KICKING, 1
ASS, MANAGING, 1
ASS, OUTRUNNING, 1
ass, permanent parking space for, 1
ASS, POSITIONING, 1
ASS, RELYING ON YOUR, 1
ass, rolling, 1
ASS, SELECTING, 1
ass, silent, 1
ass, soft, 1
ass, tight, 1, 2
ASS, YET MORE, 1
ASS DEPTH, 1
ASS-KICKING, CONCERTED, 1
ASS-KICKING, EFFECTIVE TRANSITIONING FROM CLOSED CONTAINER TO OPEN CONTAINER OF, 1
ASS-KICKING, ULTIMATE SITE OF, 1
ASS-KICKING GLOBALLY, 1
ASS-KICKING RAMPAGE, AVOIDING SETTING PREEMPTIVE PARAMETERS FOR, 1
ASS TALK, 1
ASS VS HEAD, 1
ASSAULTING KEVIN COSTNER: WHEN, WHERE, HOW OFTEN, 1
ASSHOLES, 1
ASSHOLES, OBVIOUS, 1
attractiveness, women of aboveaverage, 1, 2, 3
AUDIENCE, 1
auteurs, 1
authority, being rewarded for mistrusting, 1
Avengers, The, 1, 2
award nominees, parasitic dependency of, 1
AWARDS, 1
AWARDS HOST, THE, 1
Ayoade, Richard, 1
Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey, 1, 2, 3, 4
‘Ayoade on View from the Top: A Modern Masterpiece’, 1, 2, 3
BACKSTORIES, 1
BAD PEOPLE, 1, 2
BADASS, ACING SHIT LIKE A, 1
BADASSERY, 1
The Grip of Film Page 15