Authors: Hadley Freeman
Batman: Superheroes Don’t Have to be Such a Drag
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Some snarky types out there might be encouraged to remark that later events in the life of Pee-Wee’s creator, Paul Reubens, who was arrested in 1991 for indecent exposure when he was caught masturbating in a porn cinema, validated my initial impression. But I would disagree most vehemently with this. For a start, now that we live in an era where a person is turned into a celebrity by appearing in a sex tape, the idea of a celebrity’s career being destroyed by masturbation seems downright quaint – as quaint as the idea of porn cinemas, really. For heaven’s sake, what are people supposed to do in a porn cinema if not masturbate – eat popcorn? (Public health announcement: do not eat in a porn cinema.) In fact, I’d go so far as to claim that masturbating in a porn cinema was the least creepy thing Paul Reubens did in the entertainment industry by 1991.
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Not actually her real name, but all middle-class New York girls in the eighties had names like Alison Schnayerson.
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I am not exaggerating: that is literally what
Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
was. I think to enjoy that show you have to have an already existing or incipient love of psychedelics.
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A separate sentimental part of me also fancies that part of the movie’s appeal comes from the fact that the wonderful and sadly now late Canadian comedian Phil Hartman co-wrote it. Hartman appeared occasionally on
Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
and was a much beloved cast member on
Saturday Night Live
in the 1990s, but he is best known in the UK as the voice of shady lawyer Lionel Hutz and cheesy infomercial host Troy McClure in
The Simpsons
. Hartman, by all accounts one of the sweetest and lowest key guys in show business, was shot and killed by his wife in his sleep in 1998. Sorry, I know this is a terribly distracting and pretty unnecessary footnote, but some people should be commemorated at any possible opportunity.
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‘I really liked [
Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
] because it really tapped into the permanent adolescence thing, and I completely connected with that,’ Burton said (
Burton on Burton
). When Burton made
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
, he was twenty-seven.
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‘Even though I wasn’t that close to them, [losing your parents] obviously has a huge effect on your life. I was shocked at how much I was affected,’ he said (‘Dark Arts’,
Guardian
).
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I don’t think we need to talk about Schumacher’s
Batman
films too much for two simple reasons: they were made in the nineties and are therefore fairly irrelevant to our purpose here, and they are absolute garbage. When the best performance in a movie comes from Elle Macpherson, as is the case in
Batman and Robin
, you know you are in the presence of a Thanksgiving-sized turkey.
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Which, by the way, isn’t even true. Of COURSE it isn’t darkest before the dawn – it’s darkest in the middle of the night, not at 5 a.m. Sheesh!
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‘Part of what interested me was that it’s a human character who dresses up in extremely vulgar costumes … [it’s] the freakish nature of it, and I found it the most frightening thing’ (
Burton on Burton
).
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Another major point in Burton’s
Batman’s
favour: it has a STELLAR cast.
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I did not make those titles up (how could I?). They come from
Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men – Superheroes and the American Experience
, ed. Julian Chambliss, William Svitavsky and Thomas Donaldson. Knock yourself out with that tome.
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Possibly not an entirely true quote.
Eddie Murphy’s Eighties Movies: Race can be Transcended
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LA Story
: brilliant.
Shopgirl
: kill me.
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Choice Chevy Chase anecdotes from over the years: in 1996 he made a guest appearance on
Saturday Night Live
and, among other things, told a female writer ‘Maybe you can give me a handjob later’ (
Live from New York
, Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller); no one who works with him has a good word to say about him (‘Chevy has a reputation for being a dick, and that reputation is earned,’ said Dino Stamatopoulos, who co-starred with Chase on the sitcom
Community
); even Will Ferrell, who is widely agreed to be one of the nicest men in comedy, described Chase, who he reveres, as ‘the worst host [of
Saturday Night Live
] … maybe he took too many back pills that day’ (
Live from New York
, Shales and Miller).
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Well, Guttenberg was a comedy superstar in MY world, OK?
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‘… and Steve Guttenberg!’ nine-year-old Hadley.
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Suggested essay: ‘The nineties were to eighties comedians what the eighties were to seventies musicians. Discuss.’
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In which Murray plays a mafioso and Robert De Niro plays an everyman nebbish. Sure, that makes sense, right?
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Although some of us are getting a little tired of Murray playing the same role of the cuckolded husband in Anderson’s films, and miss the manic Murray of the eighties and wish he didn’t always have to play a jaded cynic now. But that’s a subject for another day.
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Although, ironically, when Murphy made homophobic jokes in the eighties – which he did A LOT, and later apologised for – the only people who protested were gay people.
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And he knows it, and what’s more, he doesn’t care. Murphy: ‘I’m never gonna go, “I want to do this role because it’s a challenge. I might not be able to pull it off, that’s why I’m excited about doing it.” For someone to sit on the outside, talking about, “They need to push themselves,” it’s so ridiculous. Push myself? I’ve had a whole fucking career already, these are the gravy years. I have more than distinguished myself in the movie business’ (‘Eddie Murphy Speaks’, Brian Hiatt,
Rolling Stone
, November 2011).
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John Hughes was especially bad at portraying ethnic minorities. Aside from
Sixteen Candles
and
Weird Science
, there was 1983’s
National Lampoon’s Vacation
, which he wrote. In this film, the Griswold family get lost in the ghetto, which is populated by scary profane black people, and they promptly have their hubcaps stolen, because that’s what black people are like.
‘I wonder if these guys know the Commodores,’ the Griswold son (Anthony Michael Hall) muses.
‘I’m not going to pretend I know the black experience,’ Hughes said in an interview with the
New York Times
in 1991, and that is fair enough. Unfortunately, he did seem to think he knew the black experience, and it was an experience consisting of thieving and jive talk.
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Back to the Future
, as you well know.
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Obviously, calling him these names behind his back wouldn’t be great either, but watching him say them to Murphy’s face is physically painful.
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Paul Gleason, the go-to man in the eighties for stupid villains.
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I should probably stress again at this point that I completely adore this film and watch it at least three times a year.
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Murphy: ‘I’ve never actually even physically had cocaine. When I was 18, I was down in the Blues Bar with Belushi and Robin Williams, everybody was partying, I was like “No.” Every now and then, I’d think about that moment, too, because I was around those guys, it was easy to party, and how everything would have changed. I know if I fucked around with that, I would have been all the way in. I’d have made a million headlines. There would have been no success, the story would have stopped in the Eighties’ (‘Eddie Murphy Speaks’, Brian Hiatt,
Rolling Stone
, 19 November 2011).
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Murphy later said in an interview with Spike Lee: ‘Richard doesn’t like me … There’s this thing where Richard feels that the reason his shit is the way it is, is because I came along and fucked his shit up. He really believes that … It’s really weird to find out that your idol hates you and shit’ (‘Eddie’, Spike Lee,
Spin
magazine, 1990). On the one hand, Pryor is right, Murphy did take his place. There was room for only one black man at the table back then. But on the other, it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to do so if Pryor hadn’t been setting himself on fire while freebasing crack.
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Yes.
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A decade later, they would, again, recast a film written with white actors in mind with black stars.
Bad Boys
was originally supposed to star Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz, of all the dweebs in the world. But they were then wisely swapped for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
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And notably much lighter skinned than him, to boot, particularly in
48 Hours
and
Coming to America
, reflecting yet another racial stereotype.
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Murphy was almost right: the next African-American actors to win an Oscar were Denzel Washington and Halle Berry, both in 2001.
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Landis’s wife, costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis, was right to be excited: she ended up getting nominated for an Oscar for her work on
Coming to America
.
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And depictions of Asian men have hardly improved since the eighties either. The screaming Asian gangster in
The Hangover
, played by Ken Jeong, is a direct descendant of Long Duk Dong.
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Also from
Moonstruck
, I would like to give special mention to ‘Chrissie, over on the wall – bring me the big knife’, because I love that scene so.
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Also, special credit to ‘Dr Brewster has tried to seduce several nurses in this unit, claiming to be in the throes of an uncontrollable impulse. Do you know what? I’m going to give every nurse on this floor an electric cattle prod and instruct them to zap them in his badoobies. Ruby? Hi, you wanna open the Yellow Pages under the section, Farm Equipment Retail …’
Epilogue
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Soderbergh explained earlier in his speech that exhibitors take half the gross, therefore a movie needs to make twice what it cost in order to break even.
Introduction
We’re massive fans of John Hughes: ‘The 1975 Takes Cues From John Hughes for Debut’,
radio.com
, 12 July 2013.
Some of the people who come up to me: Interview with the author.
I still get stopped in the street: Interview with the author.
There are a million reasons: Interview with the author.
The studios had been individually held entities: Interview with the author.
The world has changed:
Sleepless in Hollywood
, Lynda Obst.
But it’s less brilliant: ‘How Transformers 4 Became the No 1 Film in Chinese History’, P. Nash Jenkins,
Time
magazine, 8 July 2014.
I doubt very much: Interview with the author.
Half of my movies: Interview with the author.
would rather spend $250m:
Variety
, 12 June 2013.
It’s very much like when television: Interview with the author.
Teen actors: As noted by Charlie Lyme, producer of
Beyond Clueless
.