Only now does it occur to me... THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1996)

Only now does it occur to me... that it took––no joke––twenty-five writers and a lyricist in order for the 1996 animated film THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME to improve upon the 1831 Victor Hugo novel of the same name. And how did they improve on said material, beyond lending it the ol' Disney happy ending?

Not pictured: the melancholy mingling of our dead protagonists' ashes.

Well, I'm going to point out one scene in particular, whereupon the French Roma dancer Esmeralda (voiced by Demi Moore) performs for an enthusiastic crowd by twirling acrobatically on a vertical pole (in actuality, a well-placed spear)––




and is subsequently showered by the audience with appreciative gold coins.

This strikes me as a clear––albeit as PG as humanly possible––reference to the 1996 Demi Moore masterpiece STRIPTEASE (which was certainly in the zeitgeist––it was due to be released exactly one week after HUNCHBACK). Driving the point home is that she is performing in part for a corrupt politician––the Archdeacon Claude Frollo––who soon develops a violent, flagellant's fascination with her.

This, naturally, stretches the STRIPTEASE comparison even further, as there's clearly a parallel between Frollo and corrupt Congressman Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds), who, in the latter film, pines for and slobbers over Demi Moore in a quite similar manner.

(In closing, please allow me to take this moment to sing the praises of STRIPTEASE, a trashterpiece that's equal parts Elmore Leonard and Menahem Golan––essentially OVER THE TOP except with striptease instead of arm-wrestling. It also features a performance by Ving Rhames and a tiny monkey sidekick that would be right at home in the Disney movie of your choice.)

Only now does it occur to me... LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD

Only now does it occur to me...  that the Willis vs. Schwarzenegger "rivalry" runs deeper than the EXPENDABLES.

I've followed the semi-fictitious "rivalries" between action stars on this site such as "Bronson vs. Eastwood" and "Schwarzenegger vs. Stallone," rivalries that pop up probably due to the actors being up for the same roles and generally expressing themselves in onscreen, good-natured ribbing and obscure references for the benefit of the diehards (no pun intended).  Being as they'd never really taken the spotlight together, I assumed that the Schwarzenegger vs. Willis jocularity in EXPENDABLES 1 & 2 was manufactured for the series, and befit their "major star in bit part" pairing.   Now, that I stand back and look at it from afar, it seems this "feud" has been brewing for years.

I got to thinking, and began to wonder– John McTiernan made DIE HARD and THE LAST ACTION HERO.  Willis had even worked with Shane Black's writing before on THE LAST BOY SCOUT.  Was Willis jealous that he wasn't 'the Last Action Hero?'  And afterward, when its financial losses became apparent, was Schwarzenegger peeved that it hadn't been Willis in the role?  Did Willis gloat?  That seems like something he would do.  Did Schwarzenegger mock him for his "Bruno" musical career and those Seagram's Golden Wine Coolers ads?  The possibilities are endless.  Of course, that's just speculation.  But look at this:

Willis, Schwarzenegger, and Stallone appearing together on British television in 1993.  Notable for  their spectacular 1993 fashions (for instance, Stallone's Planet Hollywood baggy stonewashed jean vest and Schwarzenegger's Hawaiian shirt that proves that he's actually playing 'himself' in TWINS),

Willis' clear but thinly veiled distaste for the host (Terry Wogan),

Stallone's insistence that he does not deliver one-liners well (ask COBRA about that!), the special presumably drunken appearance by Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith,

 Wogan's creepy request that Willis show off his left breast

as well as Wogan forcing him to awkwardly talk about INDECENT PROPOSAL in terms of Demi Moore and his personal life, and finally the simultaneously childlike and depraved way Arnold's eyes light up when INDECENT PROPOSAL is discussed, as if the idea of asking a woman to sleep with him for a million dollars is just then hatching in his mind.

In short, this is magnificent.

Anyway, now knowing that their friendship and rivalry has existed for many years, that brings me to the actual point of this entry.  Which is that in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, Bruce Willis (while protecting Justin Long from the bad guys)




takes out a TERMINATOR (figurine) as collateral damage and smirks about it!  If that ain't a shot across the bow, I don't know what is!


As a side note, I only rewatched LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (4) in order to pump myself up for seeing A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD (5) in theaters.  Though not horrible, seeing DIE HARD 4 again sufficiently disheartened me to the extent that I think I'm gonna wait on 5 for DVD.  Ah, well.

Only now does it occur to me... INDECENT PROPOSAL

Only now does it occur to me... that my favorite part of INDECENT PROPOSAL may very well be the brief, incredibly ill-advised flashback whereupon the thirty-one year old Demi Moore and the thirty-two year old Woody Harrelson are depicted as high school students.

Please bear in mind that this film is in no way intended to be a comedy.  

Adrian Lyne films generally fall into two camps:  Camp A:  slick, well-acted, extremely sincere fare (FLASHDANCE, INDECENT PROPOSAL, 9 1/2 WEEKS, FATAL ATTRACTION) that's designed as erotica Oscar bait but ends up in hindsight possessing uncommonly well-crafted unintentional hilarity.  Camp B:  JACOB'S LADDER.  And don't get me wrong: I love Adrian Lyne, just occasionally for the wrong reasons.  He's sort of an unsung 80s/90s commercial auteur, perhaps comparable to a Philip Noyce or an Alan Parker or, on his best days, a Philip Kaufman.  I'm also kind of excited to see that Lyne has his first film in a decade coming out next year, BACK ROADS.

Film Review: ABOUT LAST NIGHT... (1986, Edward Zwick)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 113 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: James Belushi (THE PRINCIPAL, WILD PALMS), Demi Moore (STRIPTEASE, ONE CRAZY SUMMER), Rob Lowe (WAYNE'S WORLD, ST. ELMO'S FIRE), Elizabeth Perkins (BIG, THE FLINTSTONES), Megan Mullally (RISKY BUSINESS, WILL & GRACE), Robin Thomas (SUMMER SCHOOL, AMITYVILLE: DOLLHOUSE).
Tag-line: "It's about men, women, choices, friendship, love, last night..."
Best one-liner:"You don't go here. You don't go there. You're about as much fun as a stick."

Alright, ABOUT LAST NIGHT..., I'll try and keep this brief. I've come to talk to you about last night. I watched you, and, to tell the truth, you weren't great. Allow me to clarify. If I was expecting 80's romantic fluff, say, like ST. ELMO'S FIRE (whose cast you stole!), I'd have been only mildly irked instead of actively pissed. See, the problem here is that you're "based on" a concise but complex play by David Mamet called SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO. This play was punctuated by sharply crude but masterfully constructed dialogue, and presented (in Mamet's words) "intimate relationships as minefields of buried fears and misunderstandings."

It's about misogyny, alienation, selfishness...in fact you could say it's about any number of things EXCEPT ten-minute 'moving in, having sex, and fixing up things around the apartment montages' set to sappy love ballads.


This movie changes and needlessly extends the play (it's almost 2 hours!) in ways that can only be described as offensive. Screenwriters Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue- whose most notable works include THE CHEROKEE KID, a TV movie western starring Sinbad, and FOR KEEPS?, an unforgettable collaboration between Molly Ringwald and Pauly Shore- have taken it upon themselves to mess with and expand upon Mamet's dialogue, and, as a result, the remaining 'untampered Mamet' within stands out like Maria Callas at Karaoke night. The final ignominy, is, of course, a 'love conquers all' ending, which by the time it happens, seems just about par for the course. Seriously, at that point, you're just happy to have the movie be over. Mamet disavowed the film, and later said, "as a callow youth with hay sticking out of my ears, I sold both the play and the screenplay for about $12 and a mess of porridge." Alright, well, here's two stars: one for Chicago-actor extraordinaire James Belushi (the only madman in the cast who really understands Mamet's voice)

and the unedited Mamet dialogue that survived, and one for teaching 'ole Dave a valuable lesson about intellectual property.

Side note: Slightly more enjoyable if you pretend it's a prequel to STRIPTEASE.

Demi and Elizabeth Perkins discuss that whacky Congressman Dilbeck.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: ONE CRAZY SUMMER (1986, Savage Steve Holland)

Stars: 3 of 5.
Running Time: 93 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: John Cusack (BETTER OFF DEAD, SAY ANYTHING), Demi Moore (ABOUT LAST NIGHT, STRIPTEASE), Joel Murray (SHAKES THE CLOWN, HATCHET), William Hickey (TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, PRIZZI'S HONOR), Bobcat Goldthwait (SHAKES THE CLOWN, POLICE ACADEMY 2), Curtis Armstrong (BETTER OFF DEAD, QUIGLEY, RISKY BUSINESS), Bruce Wagner (co-writer of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 and SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS), Taylor Negron (THE LAST BOY SCOUT, STUART LITTLE), John Matuszak (THE GOONIES, THE ICE PIRATES, CAVEMAN), Donald Li (BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN).
Tag-line: "They're out of school, out on Nantucket, and out of their minds. With this crowd, anything can happen!"
Best one-liner: "Oh, thank you, I think I will have some cookies-aehah!" (said by Bobcat Goldthwait).

Though I am somewhat unnerved by the terrible, tooth-clenching grimace which pulls taut the hideous, ruddy skin of the summer sun's face as depicted on ONE CRAZY SUMMER's one-sheet, I shall suck it up and attempt to soberly discuss the film on this chilly January evening. (Why does the sun have to wear SUNglasses?) For better or for worse, ONE CRAZY SUMMER certainly bears the whacky stamp of its creator: the 'auteur' Savage Steve Holland, who was the brains behind such irreverent flickery as BETTER OFF DEAD and HOW I GOT INTO COLLEGE.

This is the story of aspiring cartoonist Hoops Mcann (John Cusack) and his eponymous one crazy (Nantucket) summer. That's pretty much all you need to know. You'll laugh, you'll cry... you'll wince. This is Savage Steve Holland's style. He throws everything at you (including the kitchen sink) in the hopes that something will stick. That something will strike your funny bone. A lot of it will miss, oh God, so much of it will miss- but, whether by chance, by sheer persistence, or by simply grinding me down into delirious oblivion, he earned himself a few bulls-eyes. And those bulls-eyes, clichéd as they may be, are what I shall discuss.

ONE CRAZY SUMMER abides by many of the unwritten rules and regulations of 1980's cinema. I have no idea if it was from some anonymous cigar-smoke filled room that these filmic laws were handed down, but somebody, somewhere decreed that a certain quota of these had to be fulfilled, and ONE CRAZY SUMMER, like so many others, was ready and willing to comply.

#1. Villainous vanity plates. Sometimes heroes get vanity plates (Stallone's AWESOM50 in COBRA, for one), but villains just got to have 'em.


#2. The 80's rule of pools. If A., a swimming pool exists, then B., someone fully clothed must be pushed into it, arms flailing. If condition A. is not met and condition C., the presence of a cake, is, then again undertake result B.

KER-SPLOOSH

#3. If the criteria and conditions for a "makeover" or "shopping" montage do not exist, then a "fix-'em-up" montage must take their place, and the duration must be uncomfortably long.

Note Demi Moore's stylin' pants (foreground).
#4. If a role demands the an expertise that only Clint Howard can deliver, yet he's just a little too old to pull off the role, then Curtis Armstrong (left) must be cast in his stead.



#5. If A., Bobcat Goldthwait is available, B. this is not a POLICE ACADEMY film, and C., ...uh, aw, fuck it, just let him do that voice-thing, that growl, you know what talking about. The high-pitched, wailing-growl thing. AeeeEEEEehaAAAAaa. Yeah, that.


#6. Something about Mark Metcalf and crazy-eye and a 'stache and lobsters and 80's rich kid villains having even more villainous fathers. I can't remember the rest of this law, but I know Metcalf's 'lobster-hating-lobster-restauranteur' somehow is the logical response to Charles Durning's 'frog-hating-frog-leg-restauranteur' in THE MUPPET MOVIE. And if that wasn't enough, they make him a land developer, too. I think he maybe wandered away from the set of a Golan-Globus flick? He easily could've done the Ed Lauter role in DEATH WISH 3 or the John P. Ryan role in RUNAWAY TRAIN or even the Christopher George role in ENTER THE NINJA, but I digress.



#7. If there's one Asian guy hanging around (this time it's Donald Li from BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA), and it doesn't look like he has too big a part, then he's going to be the payoff of some joke involving nerdiness, Ping-Pong, Godzilla, or some such nonsense.


To be fair, this gag (involving Bobcat Goldthwait in a Godzilla costume running wild all over the aforementioned real-estate developer's scale model at a banquet designed to impress Asian investors) is pretty inspired, and one which was recycled in a third-season episode of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

#8. Somebody's gotta be in a band. It doesn't matter who. How about Demi Moore? Yeah, okay, Demi Moore will be in a band.



#9. And just every 80's movie must introduce me to a new hero. Or reintroduce to me to an old one. Here, we've got John Matuszak, ex-NFLer, two time Super Bowl winner, 9th place in the 1978 World's Strongest Man competition, the man behind the makeup as 'Sloth' in the GOONIES, 'Tonda' in CAVEMAN, 'Killjoy' in THE ICE PIRATES, and author of an autobiography entitled CRUISIN' WITH THE 'TOOZ!

I guess it took his role as 'Stain' in ONE CRAZY SUMMER to make me realize that all these great and disparate achievements belonged to a single man. So you can imagine the cruel blow dealt to my burgeoning fandom when I realized that he died of heart failure at the age of 38 (in 1989).

I submit the following images as a testament to his two-minute role as 'Stain,' which is certainly the highlight of ONE CRAZY SUMMER's parade of zaniness. 'Stain' is a purple-spiked-hair motorcycle punk whose entire character is based on the fact that he is a big, big man who loves him some money but hates getting dunked in water. They don't make 'em like this anymore. And when they do, they're always missing the charm and inspired casting choices typified here by Mr. Matuszak:






R.I.P., Tooz.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: STRIPTEASE (1996, Andrew Bergman)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 117 minutes.
Tag-line: "Some People Get Into Trouble No Matter What They WEAR."
Notable Cast or Crew: Demi Moore, Ving Rhames, Robert Patrick, Armand Assante, Burt Reynolds, Rumer Willis, Pandora Peaks. Cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt (THE HUNGER, THE COTTON CLUB, LETHAL WEAPON). Music by Howard Shore (AFTER HOURS, VIDEODROME, THE LORD OF THE RINGS).
Best one-liner: "I don't need no stripper to telling me how to live!"
Best eerily Hawksian exchange: "So we're it? A cop and a bouncer?" –"Plus two strippers and a kid. We're in great shape." Compare to RIO BRAVO: "A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" –"That's WHAT I got."

Now here's a crowded, chinwagging tableau that would make Howard Hawks proud, presented without comment: "Creamed corn wrestling!" "-Corn?" "-Corn wrestling?" "-That's disgusting!" "-No chance that I'm gonna roll naked in creamed corn with a bunch of drunken yahoos trying to stick niblets up my hoo-ha!"

Note Fabio poster.

Playing out like an unholy second-generation love-child of Elmore Leonard and Menahem Golan, the set-up to STRIPTEASE is this: Judge awards custody of Rumer Willis to deadbeat dad Robert Patrick, and FBI employee Demi Moore must strip for her daughter's love. Kinda like the female OVER THE TOP, in a way.




The film takes this already mind-blowing premise and piles on more and more inspired lunacy at a breakneck pace: Bouncer Ving Rhames has a tiny monkey sidekick and imbues his performance with a genuine artistry that surely isn't called for:

Armand Assante is wondering how the hell he got here (hint- this was his follow-up to JUDGE DREDD):

there's a Jewish stripper named 'Ariel Sharon' who has a crush on Steven Spielberg, Demi strips with a moody intensity that tells me she thought she had a shot at Oscar gold, and all of this somehow germinates into a searing exposé of Big Sugar!

The courtroom tableaux are worth the price of admission alone:


"Your honor, my ex-husband is a THIEF. That hardly qualifies him to raise a seven-year old CHILD."


"Neithah does bein' a mothuh without a JOB!" [bangs gavel]


There's the obligatory post-shower towel dance, and I have to give points to STRIPTEASE for including it, because I think it only was actually obligatory from 1982-1994.



Oh...and how could I forget: Burt Reynolds.

Reynolds plays Congressman Dilbeck (or, Congressman 'Dildo,' as he eloquently states in one exchange) as if he is constantly drunk and/or mentally disabled. Kind of a 'chicken or the egg' question here is: 'Was Dilbeck written as a psychotic rummy, or did Reynolds just show up drunk and they took it from there?'

Don't answer that. He's even involved in a barfight, which I think must've been part of his contract since HOOPER. Reynolds is doddering around, covered in Vaseline, muttering things like "We can talk about anything you want, as long as you're nekkid."

As time has told, Reynolds is not your garden variety pervert (i.e., see my scholarly papers on the topics of goosing, necrophilia, et al. as presented in STROKER ACE and RENT-A-COP), yet STRIPTEASE kinda seeks to reduce and simplify his myriad depravities to level of a Saturday morning cartoon villain:

He likes having sexy ladies around.

He likes seizing sexy ladies.

He likes dancing with sexy ladies in his boxers, which may as well have big hearts on them.

I posit that this reductive, superficial view of Burt Reynolds perversion is dangerous and, on behalf of Liza Minnelli goosage, I daresay irresponsible. Though the Vaseline scene is pretty incredible in its commitment to loopiness, so I'll let it slide this time.

And speaking of Saturday morning cartoons, the finale involves slow-motion leaping and a denouement that has absolutely zero deviation from that of a SCOOBY-DOO episode.


All of this, naturally, contributes to the film receiving high marks from me. (Also see: DR. JEKYLL AND MS. HYDE).

In the end, STRIPTEASE is a serious drama with a smattering of light-hearted social satire. Er, allow me to submit a revision to that statement: Demi Moore thinks STRIPTEASE is a serious drama, and that ensures that its heart is, somehow, in the right place. It is her performance that gives it that patented Golan-Globus level of sincerity. I guess that's why it works. My only caveat––instead of $12.5 million, they probably should have paid Demi, say, whatever they gave Mario van Peebles for RAPPIN' or Lucinda Dickey for NINJA III...