You know, I wasn't going to write this one because I'm sick, but fuck it, I spent gas money and froze my ass off to see this shit, so I'm writing about this shit

"Is it cold in here, or is it just me?" is a line twice-said in Demolition Man and the answer is Fuck Yes It's Cold, because it was. I know I'm just a pussified Californian because what passes for a heatwave in the East Coast was fucking my shit up with a serious case of the Brrr's, but you know what? Fuck you, East Coast, that shit ain't my fault, it's not my fault I live in a place with awesome weather and therefore can't handle anything below Freezing. Anyway, yeah, Demolition Man played at the New Beverly Cinema for a midnight show on Saturday (or Sunday, I guess) and I guess that shit is even more popular than I thought because the motherfucker was packed and damn near sold out despite the bitter chill.

Phil Blankenship showed up in his usual all-black ensemble, then would take deep audible breaths in between his extemporaneous paragraphs about what was playing next month at the New Bev (St. Quentin is programming March's schedule, it turns out). Turns out he was trying to buy time for the long line of concession-buyers that was snaking out into the audience; waiting until most people are able to get back to their seats is a typically considerate move by the New Bev'rs. The lights went down and I remember a couple of Wesley Snipes trailers; people laughed at the awesome Passenger 57 trailer and properly applauded at John Cutter's "Always bet on black" line. Fuck that, I'm capitalizing that shit because it's so awesome -- "Always bet on BLACK."

The audience then ha-ha'd the Boiling Point trailer, and I'm still wondering who to blame for that. I mean, I've seen Boiling Point and thought it was a pretty decent low-key crime drama/character piece from James B. Harris; I wouldn't laugh at that movie. The trailer, on the other hand, promotes that shit like it was Passenger 57 II (or Passenger 58 because Passenger 57 2 would look too confusing, that's for sure) with an extra dose of Retard and that's probably why back during one week in the spring of 1993, lots of my friends at school came back the following Monday to complain about going to see the new Wesley Snipes movie that looked Awesome but turned out Lame. I wish these same friends saw the Takeshi Kitano film of the same name, it would be funny to watch their reactions to that one.

In addition to Boiling Point, Demolition Man also came out in 1993, which I'm telling you because it'll add to the following sentence I'm about to write. The movie begins with a shot of a burning Hollywood sign and sounds of chaos and gunfire in the background, and when the onscreen title card declaring this scenario as "Los Angeles 1996" came up, everyone in the audience laughed their asses off, which wasn't much of a difference from how that shit was received when I first saw this flick in the theaters 17-18 years ago (give or take a couple seasons). Then Sylvester Stallone jumps out of a helicopter in some fuckin' bungee-harness thing and screams out PHOENIIIIIIIX while firing his pistol during free-fall and then some girl a couple rows ahead of me must've found that moment some kind of geek-out victory because she shot her arms up into the air like YES and all I could do in response was nod and say Fuckin' A, just like Alfredo Garcia in the movie.

The girl had friends who would cheer as well whenever Sly owned a motherfucker during the opening scene and that is a sentiment that I both understand and share. What I get confused with is someone who is having a good time but does so in a manner that distracts painfully sensitive (read: sober) people like me. I'm talking about this man or woman with an unfortunate distinct giggle in the audience. I'll do my best to describe it in the writing, but it's really something you had to hear to understand. It went something like UH-HEGH-HEGH-HEGH and it sounded like a baby's giggle with the pitch lowered down to the Satan's Minion setting and I've yet to figure out if it came from a man or a woman and even worse, I couldn't figure out the age range of said horrible laugh-er. I turned (so did a couple other people near me) but couldn't find this person.

To make things worse, he/she with the Rosemary's Baby giggle was mostly out-of-sync with the audience, so his/her laugh usually stood out during moments that should mostly be the property of the film's soundtrack. I wonder if this person had a different sense-of-humor than everyone else, or if this person knew he/she was making a spectacle of him/herself and did it on purpose. The Me of 5 years ago would guess the former, but Current Me thinks the worst of people now and assumes the latter. "Hey everyone, listen to my 'funny' laugh!" this cunt/dick probably thought, knowing it would be funny to his/her fellow jerkoffs in the audience.

Or maybe -- most likely -- I'm the jerkoff, and I'm just hard to have fun around. I mean, the guy next to me started taking slugs from his flask and I could smell the Jack Daniels and I was actually being a prissy girl about it, all Oh My Delicate Nasal Passages Are Offended, but to be real with ya'll, I was probably pissed at my current status as Former Drinker and even more pissed that I did not arrive slightly toasted in another manner. It is a midnight show, after all. Maybe I'm just a player hater.

Since the good guy is an eye-tie and the bad guy is a (Always Bet On) Black, it leaves a motherfucker wondering if that shit was intentional. Not in a Fueling The Race War kind-of-way, but in a Rocky I-III reclaiming past glory kind-of-way. Back when Eddie Murphy was funny and publicly homophobic, he had a hilarious bit on Italians coming out of the movie theater after a Rocky movie and I wonder if the same shit happened with this one. Alright John Spartaaaann! Alright, Sly!

I thought I read somewhere that Schwarzenegger was considered for the role of Simon Phoenix and I'm glad that shit didn't happen, even though I'm sure the Phoenix character would've been written differently to cater to Arnold's strengths, because I'm guessing lines like "They defrosted you just so you could lasso my piddly ass? Damn, you been had!" wouldn't sound the same coming from the Governator, nor would it sound right to hear Arnie extol the virtues of the scent emanating from an open manhole, saying it reminds him of biscuits and gravy.

As it is, they got Wesley Snipes, who is clearly having a ball with his villainous turn as Phoenix. Usually, I think the actor-ly thing to do when given a villain role would be to look at this shit from the bad guy's perspective; because the bad guy probably doesn't think he's the bad guy, he's just trying to do his thing. But Snipes probably realized way early the fuck on that this was no Spike Lee joint and he's not playing a motherfucker in a wheelchair (see: The Waterdance, no really, see that shit, it's really good) and then he probably called his people to find out if the check cleared, and after that, he just decided to just be one of those bad guys who are bad for the sake of being bad and have some fuckin' fun with it.

It's not like he's the only one. I mean Stallone is having a little fun with it, he knows this shit is pretty ridiculous, but he still tries to have his human moments, and besides, he's the hero and has to be kinda serious during these proceedings in comparison to the bad guy. But Snipes, he is totally comic-booking it up because he can, and I guess you really have no choice but to play it that way when your character's hair is dyed blond and your eyes are of mismatched color. Holy shit -- in that case, I think we need to keep a close look on Kate Bosworth because she isn't a natural blonde and her eyes are different colors too; for all we know, that chick's a super-villain in training.

So, Stallone's character John Spartan managed to capture Simon Phoenix and run all the way down a large building just before it completely explodes (they don't call him the Demolition Man for nothing) but it's all just a big Fail because the hostages he was trying to save were in that building. That means he joins Phoenix in "cryo-prison", where they put you in frozen isolation from the rest of the world. Cut to 2032, and society has become a horrifyingly pussied-out utopia of non-violence, political correctness and healthy food options.

You can't even swear in this motherfucker -- BUZZ! -- without getting a ticket from some nearby monitoring device for "violating the verbal morality". Shit --BUZZ! -- you can't even mutter that shit -- BUZZ! -- to yourself because that still counts as a "sotto voce" violation. Somehow, Phoenix escapes during a parole hearing (!) and trots off to "San Angeles", where he's like a kid in a candy store -- that is, if the kid is a psychopathic murdering criminal and instead of Snickers, lollipops and M&M's, you have weak unarmed shaky emo motherfuckers -- BUZZ! -- who need to get daily affirmations from a computer kiosk just to get by.

Faced with a bad guy they don't know how to handle, the San Angeles Police Department defrost Spartan and off he goes, looking to take this motherfucker down. Along for the ride is the fuckin' Gallo Negro himself, Benjamin Bratt and Academy Award-winning actress Sandra Bullock. I like Sandra Bullock, and I was happy to see her win an Oscar for that movie My Pet Negro, but I still think she should've thanked Lori Petty because if it wasn't for Tank Girl getting fired from Demolition Man, they wouldn't have had Bullock replace her and who knows what would've happened.

For all we know, if Bullock never got her break, then maybe it wouldn't have been her driving the bus in Speed which would create a chain of events that leads to Miss Congeniality never happening and while I know some of you hipsters are probably reacting to that scenario with "Good!", I am going to disagree and once again declare my love for that fuckin' movie and if any of you want to take it up with me, we can square that shit out in the muthafuckin' Octagon. Because I don't fuckin' play around when it comes to Miss Congeniality. As far as Part 2, OK, I'll stand for a little shit-talking, but that's about it. Hey Hollywood, you know there's always room for a part 3, you know. Special Agent Gracie Hart could take up a new partner after the one from part 2 dies in a terrible multiple-gunshot accident, and the new partner could be played by The Adorable Amy Adams. I already have the script written if you want to get that shit on the road tout de suite.

Speaking of adorable, Bullock's performance is sprinkled with liberal doses of it. Her Lenina Huxley (ah, looks like someone's a fuckin' reader) character is obsessed with the 20th century and while the idea of someone fondly looking back at a time when shit was more violent might be kind of disturbing, I don't agree, it's kind of endearing, actually. But you want to know what does disturb me about lovely Lenina? The fact that she has a poster of Lethal Weapon 3 -- the worst in the series, I say -- on her office wall. I bet you she has an excuse, though -- the poster for part 3 was probably the cheapest one she could get (who wants that shit?) and it's not like she could afford to get part 1 or 2 on a cop's salary. Anyway, I got a kick out of her unintentional nerdery whenever she tries to use a late 90's phrase and gets it wrong or when she excitingly claps her hands when her favorite "mini-tune" plays on the radio, and if I ever have to be kicked out of some lady's house, I can only hope she does it in as cute a manner as Huxley's stomp-on-the-floor-while-pointing-toward-the-exit move.

Demolition Man is one of those movies with a cast that looks even better with the passing years. You have Sandra Bullock before she was a star, Benjamin Bratt before he became more established, the fuckin' warden from The Shawshank Redemption is being an asshole to Sly, that crazy fuckin' King George III is in this bitch trying to out-utopia his current utopia, you got Denis Leary when he was still the guy from MTV (as opposed to now being known as the guy who ripped off Bill Hicks), former governor/current conspiracy theorist Jesse Ventura is here (not only does he not have time to bleed, he doesn't even have time for a line of dialogue), that fuckin' douche from MTV Sports shows up fast enough for you to not notice or give a fuck, and last but not least, the late great Glenn Shadix is here to further awesome this shit up with a Heathers vibe by saying "Greetings and Salutations" to everybody, which might be co-writer Daniel Waters' little shout-out to himself.

According to Blankenship, Mr. Waters was going to try to make it to the screening for a Q&A, but he was too busy getting drunk with hip filmmakers and stars after the Independent Spirit Awards to attend. Let me clarify, the part about Waters possibly attending was what Phil said, the rest of it is me projecting. But hey, the guy wrote Heathers and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, so he can do whatever the fuck he wants, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I raise my glass to Mr. Waters for his past work. Mr. Waters, here's to you -- suckin' my dick! OHHHHHHHHH!

Also, Deuce Bigelow has a brief role in the movie, and I don't think I caught his name in the credits. What up with that? Did he watch the final cut and realize he wasn't able to ruin it, hence his displeasure with the final product and his request to go without credit? Only he and the producers know for sure. Whatever, he's not paying my bills, so fuck that guy. The movie was directed by Marco Brambilla, which gave me a Latin Pride boner back when I was a kid, but then I found out he's really a Canadian eye-tie, so fuck him too.

You know, I'm being unfair to the guy. He did a great job with this flick, the action was chaotic without being confusing and the whole look of the film is pretty tight too (calm down, I'm also giving credit to the late Alex Thomson's cinematography and whoever the fuck did the production design). I don't know how much this movie cost to make, but I'm sure you see every penny of it on the screen. There's a shot in the beginning, when Spartan is about to attempt his free-fall drop onto the building; there's all these tracer bullets being fired towards the helicopter hovering over the roof, fuckin' searchlights moving around, all bordered by fire and little explosions -- and it's pretty fuckin' spectacular to watch.

The music by Julie Taymor's husband is pretty epic for the most part; the shit that plays during the opening action sequence (and the climax) is probably my favorite bit from him. The only track I didn't like was the one that would play whenever Phoenix was doing his thing, it's like a mixture of White Guy Scratching The Turntable and this weird scratchy 60's blues guitar riff that would come on and every time I heard it, I got the douchechills something awful. Also, I like Sting but he almost manages to suck out all the goodwill earned by the movie with his theme song. Motherfucker shoulda spent less time having Tantric sex with the chick from Fair Game and more time trying to write a badass song.

It's funny that one character says something to the effect of "no kiss kiss, no bang bang" because that's kinda what the action scenes are like in this movie. It seems like every scene between Stallone and Snipes involves a lot of dialogue in between the attempted ownage, a lot of dialogue:

Phoenix: I've been dreaming about killing you for 40 years!
 
(Phoenix fires his gun at Spartan)

Spartan: Keep dreaming! 

(Spartan fires his shotgun at Phoenix)

It's almost like the gunfire is interrupting their conversation, the bullets are the exclamation marks at the end of their sentences. I mean, these guys can't do a single thing without prefacing it with some line. "You're on TV!" sayeth the Spartan, right before swinging a television set at Phoenix. Usually, you say that shit AFTER you own a guy, not before. Plus, it's kind of weird that in a couple cases, one guy will ask the other guy a question and then fire at him. I'm like, what the fuck, don't you want to hear an answer? If you kill him, you'll never find out!

Back to Brambilla; so the guy then went on to make Excess Baggage because star/producer Alicia Silverstone wanted him to direct it, leaving me amused at the thought of Cher from Clueless watching Wesley Snipes using a poor guy's severed eyeball to escape from prison and then declaring "That's who I want to direct my rom-com!" In fact, it was also her idea to cast Benicio Del Toro (back when he was just the weird mumbly guy from The Usual Suspects) to play her love interest. Holy shit, Alicia Silverstone is a fuckin' mad genius, when you get right down to it. I'll have to watch that one again, because I didn't like it the first time, but who knows. I sure as fuck won't waste my time with Brambilla's other stuff though, because they look like lame TV-movies about dinosaurs, which come to think of it, I think those flicks ARE lame TV-movies about dinosaurs.

I enjoyed Demolition Man even more with this viewing; maybe it was the venue or maybe the movie improved with age, or maybe it was a little of both. I saw this movie back in '93 at a movie theater that had the best popcorn, so naturally that place eventually closed. Then I saw it a year later at a friend's house, and now I'm no longer friends with him. My third viewing was at the New Beverly and now I'm afraid something bad is going to happen. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure Bosworth and Silverstone are going to be behind it and it will be hot to look at.

TOM ATKINS is in this fucking movie, that's why you should pay money to see it

I arrived kinda early, so I stopped for a falafel because sometimes you're very hungry but at the same time you know that popcorn is both too expensive and not filling enough and when you have 20 minutes to spare before an early afternoon showing of Drive Angry 3D, you go for the falafel place. I ate that delicious terrorist cuisine in my car, listening to Jim Breuer's show on Sirius Radio. He was talking about a longtime fan/listener who went by the name Pocono Bob. This guy went everywhere preaching the gospel of Breuer and his Regulators, even on other radio shows. I remember once going on the radio show's message board and seeing that Pocono Bob's avatar was a pic of Nicolas Cage from Gone In 60 Seconds (the Angelina Jolie bullshit, not the original), which I thought was an interesting coincidence, considering that I was about to watch a Nic Cage joint. Anyway, the reason for all the Pocono Bob tribute was because Pocono Bob died of Cancer, because that's what Cancer does.

I do a pretty good job of keeping myself away from commercials and previews, and avoiding movie website talk about the same, so for the most part, all I know about a movie going in is the title and the actors and sometimes the basic premise. All I knew about Drive Angry 3D is that Cage was in it, Wes Craven's former editor directed (and yes, edited) it and that the poster looked like Gone In 60 Seconds II: Money Never Sleeps. Oh, and that according to the poster it was "Shot In 3D" which was written in type nearly as big as the title itself. That means that studios now have to distinguish their 3D movies from the shitty upconverts that have saturated the marketplace and have made many a moviegoer feel ripped off. "Shot In 3D" is basically saying "Hey guys, our 3D looks good, we promise! No three-dimensional noses here!"

So the movie starts off in Hell, looking kinda like the CGI hellscape from the 1997 film Spawn, only they added a city skyline and a bridge. Remember Spawn? I remember that shit. I remember being hyped as fuck for the first two-thirds of 1997 with my friends -- with the majority of young Americans, really -- and I would read some of the comics from my comic-nerd neighbor and I would tape the HBO cartoon series that aired Fridays at midnight during the summer (not like I had fuckin' parties to go to, or chicks to bang). Then my friends and I would catch the trailers on E! and in the local movie theater, and that shit looked fucking Spectacular. I'd see Michael Jai White in promos and declare that this motherfucker was gonna be HUGE, he was gonna be showing old-ass Schwarzenegger and Stallone how to be an action badass. Damn, Spawn was going to be THE SHIT, I tells ya. We were ready for that fuckin' movie. Then we saw the fuckin' movie.

Hard to believe, but I'm a glass-half-full motherfucker and I remember kinda defending the movie to my pissed-off/crushed pals, looking for things to like about it, but secretly inside I knew the truth -- Spawn was a majorly disappointing attempt at being a cool comic book movie. Anyway, I'm not here to bury Spawn, I'm here to praise Drive Angry 3D.

So yeah, it starts in Hell with William Fichtner narrating some shit I don't fuckin' remember. The important thing is that he's some kind of spectral presence known only as The Accountant, this suit-wearing motherfucker who I've yet to decide as being either an emissary of that bitch-ass Satan or if he works for both sides, but basically his job is making sure the right people die when it's their time and they end up in the right place based on their behavior on Earth. Shit man, I'll just say he's The Grim Reaper and be done with it, because that's what he pretty much is. Whatever the case, he keeps referring to "badass motherfuckers" so much during his narration, for a second I thought maybe I wrote this fuckin' guy's narration, you know?

After the Hellscape nonsense and The Accountant's narration, we then cut to some shit going down in Colorado (played by the tax-incentive-giving state of Louisiana) where this dude is car-chasing three redneck assholes and it ends with some nice ownage -- 3D ownage! -- that involves blood and limbs flying towards the screen. The dude is played by Nicolas Cage, who I will still declare as one of the most awesome fucking actors in the history of the cinematic arts. I'm sorry if you disagree (and many of you do), but I love how this guy treats every performance as performance art. Even in his most "boring" parts -- GODDAMN IT SOME MOTHERFUCKER OUTSIDE IS BLOWING A WHISTLE CONSTANTLY AND ITS BUGGING THE SHIT OUT OF ME I CAN'T THINK STRAIGHT NOR CAN I THINK GAY WITH THE INCESSANT FUCKING WHISTLE BLOWING BY WHAT I'M SURE IS A LITTLE KID DOING IT FUCK FUCK STOP FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS OK HE STOPPED -- he still manages to find something odd and/or interesting to do or display.

In the case of Drive Angry, his character John Milton (named after that Paradise Lost-writing mofo, I reckon) is a bit on the morose side and he doesn't Turbo/Nitro-charge his line-readings or mannerisms, but that's probably because there's enough crazy shit going on around him that the only way to look crazier is to actually underplay his shit in the midst of all the bloody, overacting insanity. Cage was probably like How Dare You to his fellow actors and sure enough, he found a way to show those assholes that you never mess with a pro, motherfucker.

I mean, this is a movie populated by people who swear so much, you'd think that saying the word Fuck allows them to continue breathing oxygen (in other words, these people can probably step in and write some ramblings for this blog). This is a movie where the bad guys are not only Satanists, but redneck Satanists and that's even scarier. No shit, I remember once -- I'm not proud of this shit -- I was bored out of my mind in Oklahoma (how I got there is way too long to get into) and I stepped into this pawn shop because the neon sign in front said GUNS and I love me some phallic symbols.

So I'm there, looking at the Colt Pythons and Colt Anacondas and the whole time I'm being stared at by these Stock Central Casting Redneck types behind the counter. It's OK because I'm judging them and they're judging me (filthy wetback) and right behind them, I shit you not, hanging proudly on the wall and taking up most of the space, was a Confederate flag. The idea of those kind of dudes worshipping Satan and trying to sacrifice babies during a full moon so that Hell can come to Earth is frightening and frankly, really fuckin' useless because we already have Hell on Earth, we live that shit everyday. Ain't that right, Egypt? I'm sorry, Egypt, I'm confusing you with Libya. Whatever, you're all terrorists to us. Hey, don't get angry with me, I'm just speaking for America (fuck yeah). We love your falafels, though.

Yeah, so that's what the awesome fuckin' Cage is dealing with here; redneck Satanists who are led by this guy who looks like a younger version of what Billy Bob Thornton currently looks like. This Billy Bob motherfucker is a real fucking asshole villain of the Boo Hiss variety; he thinks he's like the Messiah of Evil (good movie, by the way) or something and he's managed to collect himself quite the army of redneck assholes who live for the Devil with their heads full of devilish things, which is weird because I figure they were all about The Christ over there, but then I figure these Satanists are sick of that shit or just acting out and being all contrary and shit.

The people who cast this movie must also cast Coen brothers films because everyone looks perfect for the part, particularly the redneck army of Satanists. They don't look Hollywood at all (probably because they were most likely locals) and even the way they dress is straight out of some comic book or Luc Besson production; some are dressed in casual hick wear and then you have Billy Bob with his country rock star clothes or this one henchwoman who is dressed like middle management for no apparent reason other than it's fucking awesome to have a bad guy named The Business Woman in the credits.

Billy Bob speaks in very low hissy tones, like he knows he's the shit, he probably genuinely believes he's the Evil Messiah and not just huckstering these poor Nascar-watching fools he's gotten to follow him. I wanted to see this fuck get dealt with big time, and it's that kind of movie, the kind where he indeed gets his shit dealt with hardcore by the same motherfucker who drank himself to death in front of Elisabeth Shue; an asshole move, when you think about it, because if there was anyone to ever be sober for...

Cage hooks up with this annoyingly hot waitress played by Amber Heard, and she's absolutely smoking throughout the running time, but in real life she's dating a chick which is both a turn-on and a disappointment because obviously that was the only thing that was keeping her from getting with me. I liked that Heard's character is never treated as a potential love interest for the Cage, she's just his partner in Billy Bob-hunting. Movies always try to shoehorn in romance in shit that doesn't need romance and it never works. Hey, don't get me wrong, I can be a weepy bastard watching two overpaid motherfuckers get googly-eyed over each other while the music swells up and Celine Dion does her thing but not when it's just a strictly calculated move brought on by some suit at the studio who is bitching about getting "the female dollar". Hell, Heard's character isn't even treated as a potential fuck buddy -- Cage is busy fucking around with 40-year-old waitresses.

By the way, can someone tell me how to enter the alternate dimension that this movie takes place in, because apparently in Drive Angry World, every waitress wants to bang you, at least if you look like Nicolas Cage. These waitresses, they're perfectly cast because I totally buy them as someone you'd see working a Waffle House in the middle of some long godforsaken stretch of highway. They are as horny as the guy who wrote the screenplay, I reckon (sure enough, the writer is also in the movie; he's introduced fucking some broad in his room -- he's also a big buff dude, so I'm just joking with you, Todd Farmer, please don't beat me up. No, I take it back -- fuck you, Todd Farmer; you're a screenwriter, you're not supposed to look hard, you're supposed to look scrawny and nerdy have Coke-bottle glasses and speak with a voice made for This American Life).

In case you haven't gotten the hint yet, this is one of those over-the-top slightly Miike-esque bad taste kind-of movies; it feels like something Neveldine/Taylor would've written, in fact, I'd say Drive Angry is like a Neveldine/Taylor script directed by someone with a more old-school sense of action filmmaking, like, I don't know, Andrew Davis or somebody. It's interesting (and very telling) that even though this movie was directed and edited by a dude who formerly made his living cutting movies, there's little-to-no half-second razor edits and Confuse-O-Vision that is pretty much the norm nowadays in action movies. I think Wes Craven's former editor made a wise choice; it's like he figured that this script is so fucking nutty, to fill it with flashy editing and Michael Bay-style camera moves, it would overwhelm the audience to the point of exhaustion to do that shit.

It's a good choice, really. I mean, you have a scene where The Fuckin' Cage is having a shootout with Satanists while fucking some chick in a motel room. If that's not all, he's holding his .45 in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other. And if that's still not all, he's fucking, drinking and shooting while still fully clothed. If that was shot with a new angle every 1/12th of a second and with every shot spinning around the room and with constant fast-forwards and rewinds and whatever else the fuckin' Avid allows you to do, you wouldn't be able to take in how fuckin' insanely awesome that scene is.

I had a blast with this fuckin' movie; in between the cool action (in cool real 3D) there are dialogue scenes with very interesting characters. I read a tweet from someone who said this movie was made for DVD chapter stops but I'm not sure I completely agree because I was never bored at all during this. My favorite non-ownage scene is where a character describes the worst thing about living in Hell; I'm going to go ahead and spoil it, this character talks about how the worst punishment in Hell is that you're given a video feed where all you see is the suffering of those you left behind. It's a neverending loop of all the bad shit that happens to your loved ones, you don't get to see the other shit in their lives, just the worst moments, the anguish, the anger, the depression, the helplessness, over and over again, and you can't do anything about it. Compared to that, this character says, burning in a lake of fire is nothing. You think Hell is other people? Shit, it's even worse -- Hell is watching other people suffer. Go suck a dick, Sartre.

The whole movie was Good Times as far as I'm concerned. Blood, tits, action, some jokes, 3D, rednecks, David Morse looking really old and grizzled -- it has something for everyone. So it makes sense that nobody is seeing it, they're all watching Suicide Fail and the guy from SNL get into hijinks. The theater I saw it in was empty, which I guess was kinda cool because I was able to loudly asshole it up with some Fuck Yeahs whenever some cool shit happened. If this does poorly, I fear this is just one more step in Cage's career towards DTV-land (say hi to Seagal and Van Damme for me, and keep Snipes' seat warm for when he gets back).

Whatever. I dug it and I'm glad the movie was made so I can watch motherfuckers get owned by an awesome actor with a hot chick in tow and the occasional cheap use of CGI that all takes place in a location that looks to be for Millennium Films what North Carolina was for De Laurentiis Entertainment Group back in the 80's. Thanks for the Good Times, Buff Writer and Wes Craven's former editor. Thanks for being awesome, Nicolas Cage. And thanks for giving me a semi in the movie theater, Amber Heard; I'm lonely and if you ever leave that chick you're with and are looking to drop your standards from an astonishing height, give me a call. I'm in the phone book.

We've got provisions and lots of beer

I watched Phantasm for the first time last year and really enjoyed it, leaving me with an interest in catching the 3 sequels. So I was excited to find out that the New Beverly Cinema was going to screen Phantasm II, allowing me a chance to watch it on the big screen among other fans and first-timers. One of the stars of the film, Sam Phillips was going to attend and give a Q&A afterwards. I'm familiar with Ms. Phillips because she used to host a radio show with another chick named Sheena Metal on 97.1 FM -- "We're two chicks going at it in the middle of the night!" -- and I used to listen to that show because I used to listen to that station and I used to listen to that station because Satellite Radio didn't exist yet and because Howard Stern used to be my homie, used to be my ace.

Unfortunately, I was a little too stoned upon arrival -- I did not know the shit was going to be that strong -- so my memories of the first 20-30 minutes of this evening are hazy at best. I am basing this on my own fragmented recollections and the kindness of the married couple I invited (I made myself the third wheel, YAY!) clearing me up on some things. Before the film, Mr. Phil Blankenship asked the audience how many people had watched the first Phantasm in preparation for tonight's screening (answer: very few) and then a Hatchet II Blu-ray was given out to someone in the audience who got the question right (What do Phantasm II and Hatchet II have in common? The lead character was recast between films). Ms. Phillips then came up to the stage with the casting director of the film (they became friends during production). It's cool to know that she still does radio and it's cool to see that she still carries with her the upbeat nature of the eternally optimistic.

She admitted to being a chatty person during her lengthy intro, but that was fine with me because she seemed very nice and happy to be there and besides, I prefer a non-stop chatterbox at these events to those....who....talk....with....huge....gaps....between....words because I get nervous/impatient waiting for them to finish their sentences. Also, I'm a non-stop chatterbox as well, so it's not like I could hate on my own kind. As the intro went on, she read an e-mail from writer/director Don Coscarelli and then I remember hearing something about "vagina hair", I think it had something to do with her being nude in the film and I think she wanted the audience to shout the words "vagina hair" at one point in the movie, but I wasn't taking that chance -- maybe I was making that shit up in my head and I certainly don't want to bring attention to myself that way, or any way, for that matter. I'm not gonna yell "vagina hair" in the middle of the New Beverly Cinema audience unless I'm 100-percent sure I was supposed to.

She also brought up how she pretty much thought she was wrong for her role (the script called for someone with blonde hair and big tits, and Ms. Phillips has brown hair and at the time was bosom-ly challenged; she happily admitted getting implants since, grabbing her chest for effect -- well, it certainly worked on me) but the casting director gave her a shot anyway. The only crime Ms. Phillips committed in this courtroom was the crime of giving away part of the ending, but since this movie is the second part of a four-part series, I let that shit slide. But next time I'll find Sam Phillips in contempt if she pulls that again, regardless of whether she discovered Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash back in Memphis, it doesn't give her the right to spoil the movie.

The munchies were kicking my fat ass, so I excused myself during her intro and stumbled up the aisle, where I noticed Phil talking with a couple people sitting near the back (some dude and his chick). I went to the concession stand and waited until I could get my medium popcorn (they've been out of large for a while, it appears) and then I noticed Phil come out of the aisle entrance and walk over to Michael Torgan (he was working behind the counter) and talk with him in a kind-of This Is Important So I Must Lean In manner. Then some other dude came out from the opposite aisle entrance and asked Phil if everything was OK.

Apparently, based on what Phil told this guy and to the best of my AK-47-clouded memory, some guy in the audience (probably the guy I saw Phil talking to a couple minutes earlier) was being an asshole during the intro (which was still going) and unlike your general well-mannered human being with a soul, he would not stop being an asshole even though Phil had given him the Stop Being An Asshole request. I was reminded of the time Phil got punched in the face by another piece-of-shit whose father did not believe in condoms and whose mother did not believe in abortion. That must've really sucked, but at least a bunch of New Bev patrons came out and held the motherfucker at bay until the police showed up and let the guy go, because the pigs have better things to do than take in some violent asshole who's punching people in the face.

The intro/trivia deal went on for a while, giving me time to scarf down my popcorn without disrupting the movie's soundtrack, then Phil came down and politely stopped Ms. Phillips mid-intro. He told her that he was afraid she might spoil a few more things for the audience and besides, she was more than welcome to stick around after the movie and continue. I think. I mean, I could be creating this in my head as I go on, which would be appropriate given the movie I was about to watch.

The movie starts with this chick named Liz looking through her journal and doing a favor for those in the audience who are unfamiliar with the first film, because she's been writing about her last dream/vision/whatever and it involves a recap of part one. Not that it matters; I don't think the movie makes any more/less sense whether you've seen the first one or not. All you need to know is that there's this creepy Tall Man running a funeral home/mausoleum and he's jacking the corpses and turning them into short, squat Jawa-looking motherfuckers. There are also flying killer balls.

Anyway, Liz has been having these visions/dreams/whatever involving the character of Mike from part one, even drawing pictures of him bordered with what I swear were little cutesy hearts. I don't know if there was a part of the journal with I Heart Mike on it, but I wouldn't have been surprised if there was. I thought it was pretty cool how they took the ending of part one and expanded on it during the opening sequence of part two, and I don't know how much of that was shot specifically for this film or if some of it was like, I don't know, outtakes from the original, because it all matches visually. I think there was like a ten-year gap between films, but they look very much like they were shot at the same time with the same film stock or something.

So Mike has since been spending time in a sanitarium, but bullshits his way out by telling the head doctor that he's all right in the head now, and the doc is like Sure Thing and lets him go. I didn't know it was that easy; I've always been under the fearful assumption that those joints are like a roach motel -- you check in but you won't check out, and the only way one can be truly free in a place like that is if they McMurphy your ass and/or you Brazil your mind into a better place (I remember reading how Robert Evans checked himself into one of those places, but then they wouldn't let him leave; he eventually had to escape. Could be typical exaggerated Evans bullshit, though). Anyway, Mike's ice-cream-truck driving friend Reggie picks him up and tells him that all that shit that happened at the end of Phantasm I and the beginning of Phantasm II never happened, it was all a dream. Then a fuckin' house explodes. Again. That's one of the awesome things about these flicks, you have no fucking idea what is real and what isn't, or if any of this shit even happened in the first place or why it's fucking happening.
 
In the Phantasm series, there are these flying killer balls that go swooping around the area, looking for someone to kill. Once they smack against an unfortunate schmuck, they hook into the schmuck's head and then a drill comes out and bores into the schmuck's skull, draining the schmuck of blood because the schmuck's head is like a milkshake and the ball is the straw that drinks it up -- which I guess would make The Tall Man in this movie Daniel Plainview. Except these balls are bulimic or something, because all the blood they take in, they immediately shoot out the other end. Gotta watch that figure, I guess.

What a fantastic allegory for the inevitability of Death, these Flying Killer Spheres! Try as you might, once that ball sees you and goes after you, that's your ass. As we get older, the flying sphere gets closer and closer; you can slam every door in the world to block it, you can take all the vitamins in the world, eat the healthiest diet around, exercise and deny yourself the pleasures of alcohol, tobacco and drugs, but that flying sphere -- DEATH -- will casually blast through them and it's only a matter of time before that shit catches up with you and leaves you fucked up in the most permanent manner imaginable.

Whether you're an atheist or a believer, there is a common belief that there is some kind of peace after death; either the peace of nothingness or the peace of going to a place filled with beautiful music and a giant bearded man who is happy to see you and there's my dead grandparents and my dog Shadow. Or you're some fuckin' terrorist who thinks you're going to get 70 non-experienced chicks to blow you -- sure, that sounds like fun. The Phantasm movies fuck me up in totally taking that belief, as well as taking the idea of treating the dead with the highest dignity & utmost respect and massively shitting all over it, and Coscarelli is all MWAHAHAHA about it.

"You think when you die, you go to Heaven. You come to us" says the Tall Man to some priest who was probably simultaneously pissing himself in fright and kicking himself over choosing a lifestyle that could possibly have been a giant waste of time. I mean, here's this old otherworldly motherfucker with superhuman strength and his Flying Killer Balls basically telling you that the only thing that awaits you in the afterlife is a life of slavery as a Jawa-looking motherfucker.

The idea of that scares me more than the idea of some hockey-masked psycho motherfucker, because at least once Psycho Freaky Jason chops you up, that's it for you -- the nightmare is over -- whereas once you're tits-up in the Phantasm universe, shit man, the party's just begun. Even if you don't get hired on as a Jawa-looking motherfucker and you end up getting cremated, there's just something so fucking unnerving about that fate as well; in one scene, this creepy mortician (I guess these are the Tall Man's henchmen) take out the bones that weren't totally crisped and starts beating the shit out of it with a mallet and all I could think was "Fuck, that used to be a human being."

That's some chilling shit -- even Death won't stop you from getting fucked with. I'm reminded of an old Sam Kinison bit where he talked about necrophilia; he imagined himself on the slab, having faced Death and now ready to move on to the other side, completely at peace -- until -- "Wait a minute, what's that? It feels like a dude's dick! IT NEVER ENDS! IT NEVER ENDS!"

While Liz is trying to figure out what's up with seeing Mike in her dreams and trying to make sure her recently-deceased grandfather doesn't end up getting Jawa'd, Mike and Reggie do a kind of miniature version of the Surplus City scene in Commando; they stock up on goods while creating weapons to fuck up the Phantasm-ites with -- Mike makes this pretty cool flamethrower and Reggie puts two double-barreled shotguns together -- and off they go in their badass Hemi Cuda to track down the Tall Man and his traveling circus of grave robbers. Along the way, they pick up this girl on the road named Alchemy, and that's who Sam Phillips plays. Mike and Reggie might be on a life-or-death quest, but a hot chick is a hot chick, and besides, she doesn't get weirded out by the fact that they take pisses together, so that helps.

The first film felt and looked like a bad dream, an atmosphere that is kinda missing in this one (which feels more like a straight horror flick), but in exchange we have bigger set-pieces, gooier special effects, and most importantly, nudity. I don't remember anything particularly new added to this film aside from a new type of Flying Killer Ball and some explosions; it's like Coscarelli was loathe to answer any questions in the first place, if anything, the ratio of Questions Answered to Questions Raised is probably like 1 to 10. He's more interested in adding more to the characters of Mike and Reggie than he is in explaining to you why the Tall Man is doing what he's doing.

But I guess that's part of the fun with this movie; it still manages to entertain you with some pretty awesome shit while remaining coy about What The Fuck Is Going On in this motherfucker. While I missed the nightmare logic of the first film, I still think this sequel is an improvement in overall Good Times. In addition to the creepy and unnerving settings, it's got some cool action moments and it's a genuinely scary film at times. I can see re-watching this one anytime I felt like it, while the first one you gotta be in the proper mood to watch (I watched part one around 4 or 5 in the morning and it felt perfect for that time period).

In the first film, Reggie was just some lame ice-cream-truck driver who liked to sing and play on his guitar; he was in over his head once he got involved with the Tall Man and company -- and in the second film he's still in over his head, but at least this time he's fucking Jawas up with his four-barreled shotgun and slicing Romero-gas-masked motherfuckers up with a chainsaw. That's kind of the best way I can describe the differences between movies, really.

I'm afraid to watch the last two joints; I've been told that Phantasm II is the best of the series, and it's my understanding that the series still isn't complete and probably never will be, so maybe this is a good place to stop. I don't know, I think part III is on Netflix Instant and curiosity will get the best of me, and eventually I'll end up watching part IV and if my worst suspicions are confirmed, I'm gonna feel as assed out as those who watched every episode of Carnivale or Deadwood or ALF.

After the film, Ms. Phillips came up to do a Q&A and give out signed pictures from the film to those who got her trivia questions right AND raised their hand (seriously, people -- raise your fuckin' hand, don't just shout). Phil then asked her about a series of films that she produced called Busty Cops. I don't know what Busty Cops is (probably because I don't have Cinemax anymore) but I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that they're gritty tales about hardened police officers and their day-to-day dangerous attempts to fight crime and the difficulties in working within a system with rules that favor the criminal. It definitely sounds like something I should watch soon; I've yet to see The Lives of Others, but I bet you if that shit was retitled Busty Cops Go To East Berlin, I'd have watched that shit four times by now. Anyway, Phillips talked about how the entire cast & crew worked under pseudonyms for Busty Cops (I think there's 3 of them so far, and parts 4 and 5 are going to be combined into one film) except for her, and then she went on to offer a role to Phil in a future Busty Cops installment.

Hey, if they need someone to play the Chief, I'm game -- Goddammit, Busty Cops! The Mayor is on my ass because of all the damage you created during the last collar! A hundred-thousand dollars in broken K-Y Jelly containers! Next time you pull some shit like that, I'm gonna have your badges, your guns, and your bras on my desk! And then one of the Busty Cops will say something about how that won't happen because they're the best cops on the force, and then the other will say something flirtatious, leaving me powerless at their charms and good looks, leaving me shaking my fist at them as those incorrigible hotties leave my office -- they might make a mess, but goddammit, they get the job done.

A couple things I learned from the trivia questions; first, Phantasm II was shot under the name Morningside (the name of the funeral home) for whatever reason; and second, Brad Pitt was up for the role of Mike, which James LeGros ended up playing (replacing A. Michael Baldwin from the original). That's funny to me because years later, LeGros was in a movie called Living in Oblivion where he played a character that many believed to be based on Brad Pitt. Do you know what the fourth Phantasm film is called? Oblivion. Holy shit, that's some full-circle, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon shit, isn't it? OK, I know it's not, but it'd be pretty fuckin' cool if it was, right? OK, fine, so it wouldn't. Be that way.

Fractional Orders Deviating

(Full Disclosure: I know someone who worked on this movie. Not that you care, but I thought I'd let you know that I'm trying to write this and judge it on how I felt sitting through two hours of this shit, rather than what I already knew about it during its production. I wasn't going to do a blog on this, but I am a sucker for people who actually read this garbage and make requests. Haha, "people". More like person, but what a swell person to have asked me.) 

I have a headache. I tried a couple cups of coffee at Norms (along with the Bigger Better Breakfast, which was advertised with this ad inside the restaurant featuring a man holding his hands up triumphantly like Yes, Finally -- $5.99 For A Filling Breakfast!) and a couple aspirin and nothing's doing. It probably didn't help that I was sitting next to a retarded kid in the other booth. He didn't stop wailing and his parents have to act like they're not embarrassed and smile while imagining a different life, a quieter and more fulfilling life had they used a condom or aborted those damaged goods when they had the chance, but alas, they left it up to God, just like Sarah Palin, and now they found out too late that they don't have Sarah Palin money and ladies & gentlemen, raising a waterhead isn't as easy when you're lower middle-class aka poor. We're all going to die and Unconditional Love is going to pull the trigger.

The Dilemma is a serious film racked with tension, filled with sad scenes and occasionally visited by a rare slightly humorous moment, which is weird because I think it's supposed to be a comedy. It stars Vince Vaughn, who I remember being a good-looking tall dude back in the Swingers days but nowadays seems to be trying to beat Jon Favreau in the Fat Fuck game they're apparently competing against each other in. I don't know, I guess I'd have to ask my friends of the female persuasion if they still find Vaughn attractive, because you never know, there are people who still find Alec Baldwin attractive even though he looks like he swallowed Jack Ryan somewhere along the way. I can talk all this Fat shit because I am also a Fat Fuck, only I don't have celebrity bros to compete against, my only competition is Death and Death always wins -- this is something Adam Richman will find out soon enough (have you seen him recently?).

So yeah, Vince Vaughn plays Vince Vaughn, only this time Vince Vaughn's name has been changed to Ronny to protect the innocent, otherwise this is Vaughn right down to his politics; Ronny's a fast/smooth talking operator who wears Don't Tread On Me t-shirts and complains to his wife about paying for a bunch of overweight street kids' medical bills because "we're all on the same healthcare now" or something like that because Fuck Obama, he ain't even American.

I'm reminded of an old interview back around the time that Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake was coming out; I remember one article even went as far as calling Vaughn the new Steve McQueen and even now I still cringe when I think about it. But yeah, they interviewed Favreau for one of these articles and he talked about Vaughn's Republican leanings and how pro-America he was and how once at some fancy French hotel, Vince threw a shit-fit when he noticed that of all the flags outside the hotel, the American one was improperly placed. I'm with Vince there; fuckin' Frenchies thank this great country for saving their asses by pulling some shit like that? Nique ta mère, you ungrateful fucks. I feel like an asshole for having taken the time to learn your fucking language. Take Luc Besson back, he hasn't done shit for me recently anyways.

Because this movie takes place in one of those late 90's/early 00's sitcom alternate universes where you can be fat and sloppy and NOT rich and still get a hot wife, Ronny is hooked up with Jennifer Connelly, who's playing an Oscar-winning actress whose last few films didn't do so well, so fuck it, why not play third fiddle to Fred Claus and The King of Queens, right? Mrs. Paul Bettany is such a beautiful woman, I actually got lost a couple times during the movie just taking in her lovely face -- she is my ultimate argument for watching movies on the big screen, rather than on some bullshit iPod -- and it says a lot about her beauty that she still manages to be so luminous even after going on the Hollywood Stick Figure diet. I like Jennifer Connelly 2.0 as much as I liked Jennifer Connelly 1.0 (The Rocketeer, The Hot Spot), but like homeboy said in Innocent Blood, "you're a good-lookin' broad, but I gotta tell you, a little meat on the bones never goes out of style".

Since hangdog big-gut Vince is going with Jennifer Connelly, that means Paul Blart: Mall Cop is married to precious little Winona Ryder, who's eyes are even wider than usual, probably out of disbelief that she's married to this tubby bastard. She used to be cinematically hooked-up with pretty boys like Ethan Hawke and Johnny Depp, now she's making do with Adam Sandler and Kevin James and I'm sure in her next film she'll give an Oscar-worthy performance getting all up on Rob Schneider and/or David Spade and acting like she wants it while being grateful for the work. My crush on Winona Ryder has not waned though, even after noticing this time that she isn't quite the young pixie she once was. Further proof that Life Is A Motherfucker -- she's getting older, we're all getting older, and it's fucking depressing.

For the most part, I'm in total agreement with the old saying "You're only as old as you feel" because even now at the eve of Carousel, with my palm blinking, I feel like I'm still 20 years old -- a fat sedentary 20-year-old, but a 20-year-old nonetheless. The only time I feel old is when I listen to some of this shit the young kids who won't get off my lawn are listening to. But when I see an actress I grew up watching/went down masturbating starting to exhibit a little bit of age, never mind if she's aging like a fine wine, I'm still dragged kicking and screaming into The Cold Harsh Reality that we're all getting old.

Most movies now feature people my age, actors I remember playing high schoolers, then they moved to college students, then aimless young adults -- and now they're playing mothers and fathers and responsible adults and that fucks me up. Fuckin' Donnie Darko is playing a fuckin' medication salesman? Natalie Portman played a mother the year before and now she's going to be a mother this year? What the fuck is this bullshit? What is this getting older bullshit? Trust me, I'm no Peter Pan Syndrome motherfucker but I don't feel like going to bed early either and I don't like being reminded that I should be going to bed early, know what I mean? 

Anyway, Vince Vaughn and Paul Blart are the best of friends and they have that whole bromance thing going, and ultimately that's what The Dilemma is, it's a bromantic film about one bro wondering what to do after finding out that his bro's wife is sleeping with G.I. Joe behind his back. It doesn't help that they're on the clock with some American auto company (we still have those?), working on creating what basically amounts to a sound system you install in an electric car, that way it will sound like an old muscle car, not like some faggy putt-putt hybrid.

There was a whole brouhaha over the word "gay" being used in the movie -- not even the movie, it was in the trailer, the movie hadn't even come out yet and people were all up in arms over it. Because when Vince Vaughn says Gay in the movie, he means Gay as in Lame or Stupid or Has Sex With Men, but when other people hear Gay, they think of Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepherd and all those high-school kids killing themselves over being ostracized and bullied. In the end, the filmmakers took it out of the trailer, but they still kept it in the movie, probably because they figure those gay dudes aren't going to pay to see a film that uses a word they don't agree with. Based on the box-office performance, I don't think a lot of straights are paying to watch this movie either.

As it is, Ronny Vaughn uses Gay to describe how electric cars are seen in the general public's eyes, and there's a good scene where Ronny compares these putt-putts with more manly vehicles from the 1960's. "Took more virginities than Francis Albert Sinatra" says Ronny about the Plymouth Barricuda, and he's got a point because I really don't know how one can get business done in a fuckin' Hyundai. My first car was a 1965 Ford Mustang and man, I can only imagine all the action I would've had in that car if I actually had the balls to ask a girl out back then. I never did acquire the balls, but that was OK because soon I was well into acquiring booze and weed -- and my friend, that is all the balls one needs.

I liked how Vaughn's character slowly loses his shit, which is a big deal for someone who is very good at keeping his wits about (it's Paul Blart who is generally more of the worry-wart); he admits to Connelly early on that he sees Paul Blart and Ryder as heroes -- because they're two people so happy and in love with each other -- but after catching Ryder cheating on Blart, his entire foundation has been shaken and it's fucking him up and he doesn't know how to deal with it. My favorite scene involves Vaughn sitting alone at a bench, talking to God, getting choked up and teary-eyed and basically kinda wishing this wasn't happening because he can't handle it and because it's his bro that it's happening to. His fucking foundations, people. Shaken like a muthafucka.

Your foundations would probably shake too if you had those two bro-mosexuals pacing up and down your floor; I'm sorry, I can't get over this shit: Paul Blart has always been a shorter, squat Fred Flintstone, so there's no surprise there, but Vince Vaughn -- the Steve McQueen of 1998 -- he used to be lean and mean. Now he's just mean -- in The Dilemma, he keeps talking about these fat kids he met on the street, he keeps referring to them as fat and I couldn't stop laughing at the blackest pot in the fucking world talking about some fucking kettles. They don't call him Vince "Big Balls" Vaughn for nothing, I guess. That's because they never called him Big Balls, I just made that up. My doctor would probably call me Big Balls, that is, if I had medical insurance, but I don't, so when I drop dead of the Big C someone will probably go "Oh, so that's why his testicles were getting larger."

It doesn't help Vaughn's self-delusion that the movie still finds ways to visually fuck him over; side views that reveal just how much more Vaughn there is to Vince nowadays, or close-ups of him gobbling up sloppy spoons of cereal or slicing a huge piece of cake and shoving it into the same mouth that kissed many a starlet in films past. Should it be a surprise that Connelly's character is a chef? Probably not. Later on, he references the Donner Party and we're even treated to a quick flashback of said party (because it was necessary, I guess) and while he talks about these cannibal motherfuckers, I'm thinking Jesus Christ, Does Everything Have To Involve Eating With This Guy?! Haven't you seen Boyz N The Hood? Now one of us is going to get eaten!

He gets around in this movie by leaving his shirt untucked; the untucked shirt is my specialty (it's both a stylish choice and a way to slightly disguise the gut -- but let's be serious here, the untucked shirt is as effective as a fucking combover, you ain't fooling nobody) and if a movie star has to dress like me to get by, then be grateful that you at least have a bed of money to cry on, because me, I'm fuckin' broke. But not too broke for pizza, right, guys? HIGH FIVE!

The Other Man is played by G.I. Joe and he's probably the funniest thing in the movie, and yes, I just called him a thing because that's what he is, just a sexual object for Ms. Ryder to get off on. He's a living, breathing vibrator and appears to be slightly more intelligent than one. Eventually, that fat motherfucker Ronny meets up with this himbo and I think we're supposed to laugh during their violent altercation, but I thought it was pretty intense. It ends (or does it?) with Vaughn screaming in the middle of the street for what seems like five minutes, just going on and on about how he's gonna kill this motherfucker if he sees him again, leaving me to think out loud (there was no one else in the theater) whether this was intended to play like something out of a violent crime movie or like some fuckin' Western. Because that shit did not feel too out-of-place from Kurt Fuckin' Russell screaming out to that fuckin' cur in Tombstone about how he better tell all the other curs that he's coming and Hell's coming with him. Either that, or maybe Al Pacino could've joined my man Vince during that scene and been all like YOU THINK YOU'RE BIG TIME? YOU'RE GONNA FUCKIN' DIE BIG TIME! YOU READY? HERE COMES THE PAIN!

Some people might consider Winona Ryder's character very Boo Hiss worthy, but I'm not among them. I mean, sure, she does some bitchy things to both Vaughn's character and his fellow bro-mo Paul Blart, but I think she's operating more out of a Woman Scorned kind of playbook. Granted, maybe she's sticking it in and breaking it off a bit too much, and I don't agree with some of her actions, but you know what? I can understand why she'd want to do that. Or maybe she is a total cunt and I'm just forgiving it because she's Winona Ryder. I saw her on that late night show; either Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon, whoever it is who used to fuck up SNL by laughing all the time like he was fuckin' Harvey Korman or somebody. Anyway, she seemed to be doing a pretty good job being genuine when she talked about her fear of the Internet and computers. Kooky? Yes. But that's our Winona, people. She then brought up a picture she took on her iPhone -- a picture of her drinking out of the Stanley Cup -- and she held up her phone to the audience and was like Wow My Phone Has A Camera On It and if this was say, I don't know, Katherine Heigl, I'd have been like Shut Up Ya Fuckin' Lying Hag, but it wasn't, it was my favorite little klepto saying that, so I thought it was cute.

Ultimately, the movie has way less to do with beautiful Jennifer Connelly and precious Winona Ryder and more to with these two br-ags, Vaughn and Blart, and how they've been Friends Forever like that fuckin' song from that Zack Attack episode of Saved by the Bell. These guys, they're inseparable and they've been through thick & thin (in that they used to be the latter and are now the former) and even Queen Latifah's character seems to want to be a part of it, and why not, she's a Bro too, right? That's what I assumed; she has a kid, but does that really mean anything in this day and age? She wants to be one of the guys, and I'm sure that's why she wears pants instead of a skirt (that, and also because she probably has the kind of legs she would be doing the world a favor by hiding) and it's also why she keeps referring to her "lady-wood" like it was funny the first time or something.

In the end, I thought this was an OK movie overall. I chuckled a few times, but honestly, I thought this worked more as a dark ride through a trying time between two couples. There's a scene where Ronny Vaughn proposes a toast at Connelly's parents' wedding anniversary and that shit got more and more disturbing and uncomfortable as he went on. Again, I was all alone in the theater and wondered, how did this play with a crowd? Did they laugh? Or were they convinced -- as I was -- that they were watching a deleted scene from Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight? I don't know. All I know is that I'd like the movie a lot more if it was about Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder having some alone time. That movie is currently in post-production in my head but will play in the cinema of my mind soon enough, I reckon.

When the movie ended and the credits began to roll, I walked down toward the exit and almost bumped into the female security guard who had just come in. It was the last showing of the night and I guess she wanted to make sure I wasn't going to sleep in there or something. I felt the need to tell her -- in my usually douchey excited manner -- about my friend and how he/she worked on the movie as ***REDACTED***. The guard smiled, not totally believing me, and then asked me why I was sitting alone in this neighborhood theater, having paid to see a movie that my friend worked on. She told me that surely there had to have been one screening that my friend could've invited me to. I stood there for a moment, then looked at this guard and told her, "Between you and me, my friend is a fucking asshole."

I would love to live in the 1940's, but I'd have to change my name to something more Anglo and disregard my ethnicity, otherwise I'd probably be relegated to washing dishes or bagging me a funny redheaded actress

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Calm down, dear

Please pray for Charlie Sheen; it's really fucking tough to be super-fucking-rich and have top-shelf pussy delivered to your house every day like fuckin' Domino's Pizza. The citizens of Egypt are a bunch of pussies who don't know a fucking thing about having it tough, unless they walked in Sheen's designer Italian shoes. Until then, those bitch-asses will only walk like an Egyptian, not like the fuckin' Ma-Sheen.

Anyway, I went to see The Mechanic last night, which I didn't even know was coming out this weekend, but there you go. A friend texted me to join him and his buddy, so I did, hoping to see some Statham bringing down serious fuckin' ownage on a motherfucker, because Jason Statham is pretty dependable when you want to see someone bringing the pain these days. His co-star is Ben Foster, who is pretty dependable when you want to see an ultra-intense actor who looks like he needs a bath -- fuck that -- he needs a shower, because baths aren't that fuckin' clean, you know.

This is a remake of a movie starring Muthafuckin' Charlie Bronson and I guess the producers who decided to do this shit over thought it was White Boy Day, and you know what? It kinda was White Boy Day when they commissioned a motherfucker to adapt a new version of that 70's shit, because honestly, it wasn't that great of a fuckin' movie, in my most humble of humble opinions. In case you don't know the story of either version, it goes like this: a "mechanic" is a fuckin' assassin who generally specializes in making the hits look like accidents or like it was the work of someone else. Arthur Bishop is the name of the title mechanic in both flicks, played by Bronson & Statham. In both movies, Bishop takes on a young protégé and mentors the dude in the killing arts; in both movies, the young protégé also happen to be the son of Bishop's recently-deceased mentor.

As I said in the last paragraph, I didn't think the original was any great shakes. The Mechanic falls under the Ocean's 11 category of movies that are absolutely acceptable to remake because the original wasn't anything to write home about -- there's more potential to improve, less potential to fuck it up. But yeah, the 70's version was a decent flick that had its moments (and a great ending), but overall what that flick had going for it was that it's never not awesome to see Charles Bronson doing his thing -- except he wasn't really doing his thing in The Mechanic, he wasn't going around owning people, he's just turning their fuckin' stoves on and letting the gas fill the apartment so it can explode later. And for the first half of this movie, that's kinda what Statham is reduced to, for the most part, accident-ing his targets.

I say "for the most part" because I think the filmmakers felt they needed to beef up the action a tad for today's audience, so now Statham will occasionally get more hand-to-hand in his business, like wrapping his belt around a motherfuckers neck and strangling him to death with it, then hanging him with it in front of a laptop filled with porn. That's kinda fucked up and scary, I gotta admit; Statham made it look like the dude went past the limit doing the ol' autoerotic asphyxiation and now everyone who knows the recently deceased is gonna think that's how he really died, and that's what he was really into. Fuck, that must be what David Carradine's family must feel like, shit, maybe a fuckin' Mechanic took his ass out for whatever reason. Fuck, I really hope Mechanics don't exist, and if they do, I hope I don't do anything to incur the wrath of a Mechanic's employer, lest I find myself with a belt around my neck and my pants around my ankles and a naked chick on my computer screen. If I'm going to die that way, it'll be from my own shitty timing and inability to unloop the belt, not because Jason Statham made it look that way.

If this updated version is any indication, then Carradine must've been into some fucked up shit when a Mechanic got to him, because most of the targets in this movie are pretty despicable guys in a The World's Better Off kinda way. I don't remember the Bronson version ever explaining who the targets were and what they did to get got, they just get got and for all we know they could've been guys who deserved it or guys who were unfortunate enough to see/know some shit they shouldn't have fuckin' seen/known. In the Statham joint, they're guilty of being pieces-of-shit like drug kingpins, arms dealers, and cult leaders with a thing for young girls. I don't know, I guess it's a whole having-a-likable-character thing they want to add to this version, although to my friends who had never seen the original, Bishop still came off as a cold-blooded sociopath. So I guess you can say that while Bronson had ice water in his veins, Statham's blood is slightly chilled.

Bronson's Bishop eventually started getting dizzy spells and shit, took to medicating in-between glasses of wine. It's never spelled out, but I figured the job was getting to him and that's why he was getting all fucked up. In this version, it's more out there for the audience to see, it's a lot easier to gather that the life is probably getting to Statham's Bishop, because they have scenes of him looking all sad and shit while sitting on his expensive couch in his expensive house, or constantly visiting a yacht that's for sale and playing with the idea of buying the fuckin' thing and sailing off into a new life or whatever the fuck these hired assassins do when they don't want to be hired assassins anymore.

That word -- assassin -- is an awesome word, because it reminded me of the time I once had this small poster for the Stallone/Banderas flick Assassins, and one day I was bored and blacked out the first 3 letters and the last 3 letters of the title, put the poster up, and never got tired of the reactions of people who saw the poster, confused that there was a Stallone/Banderas film called Ass and that Julianne Moore would sully her respectable body of work by appearing in such a movie. What I'm trying to say is that Mike Judge stole my shit. He better watch his fuckin' back -- I got to Brittany Murphy, I can get to him. Too soon?

So Bronson is the better Mechanic, but as far as who does a better job as the young protégé, it's a tie between Ben Foster and Jan-Michael Vincent; Foster is basically a fuck-up prone to violence, while Vincent's version of the character seemed more of a fucked-up dude psychologically who took to mechanic-work like the proverbial duck to water -- that was more fun to observe. Jan-Michael Vincent only loses to Foster in that his character looked more like some rich kid while Foster looks a lot more rough around the edges, and as I mentioned before, he probably smells a little too. Funny thing is that in real life, Vincent is probably All Man who probably starts every morning with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a raw steak, while I wouldn't be surprised if Foster is one of those tofu/soy-eating motherfuckers. That sounds like something Dolemite would say: "You born insecure, tofu-soy-eating muthaFUCKA!" Rest In Peace, Dolemite -- I'll mourn ya till I join ya.

The first half is kinda dull, really; I'll be honest, maybe staged accidents just don't really do it for me, because that was kinda my issue with the original. The remake pretty much follows the main plot points of the original, which doesn't really help in this flick's favor, but halfway through, the filmmakers start bringing in more ownage into the proceedings and that slightly improved it and made it a little more fun to watch. Eventually, motherfuckers start getting blasted in the kneecaps and head and it would be even cooler to watch if it wasn't so obvious that they were using Stallone's digital blood leftovers from his last 2 movies for these scenes.

I forgive Stallone for that shit because he overwhelms you with so much mayhem and will still occasionally use a real blood squib every once in a while, but with this one, all I could imagine was a film crew happy to go home earlier that day because they didn't need to set up a fake headshot for that scene, they just had the stunt man jerk his head back and fall down and knew they could make that shit "cooler" in post. I shouldn't be thinking that, I should be all FUCK YEAH BRING THE FUCKIN' PAIN, BABY! while watching motherfuckers getting owned in action movies. At least make that shit look more real or something, I don't know, what do I know?

There's this one scene where Foster is going to start his first assignment and is told by Statham to buy a small chihuahua and take it with him every morning to a local cafe, and later he finds out it's because his target is this 6'7 300 lb. Hard Motherfucker who also happens to be gay and I was like Wait A Minute because I'm wondering if somehow having a little faggy dog = I Like The Cock. That's kinda fucked up that the filmmakers resorted to that kind of visual storytelling, like a gay dude can't be into rottweilers or something, they gotta be all about Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

But at least the target isn't some stereotype of a lisping prancer; he could probably take out 10 straight dudes without batting an eye -- you don't want to fuck with this dude, and if you're Ben Foster's character, you just don't want to be fucked *by* this dude. Seriously, I see them standing together and think, Man, That Would Fuckin' Hurt. You're using the entire tube of K-Y, is what I'm saying. I'm reminded of this one guy I knew and I would still know if it wasn't for the fact that he doesn't know how to pick up a phone. Anyway, this guy, he towers over his girlfriend and I imagine that those two going 69 on each other would be a futile effort. I want to say that True Love is knowing you can't do it but you try anyway, but what would I know about love, unless it's love of pizza or love of gold (makes the world go around, you know)?

Again, I saw this because I was invited to see it, otherwise I'd have waited for the DVD or Blu-ray and honestly, I feel I'd have enjoyed this more had I waited. Overall, it's even with the original; this version has better action and pace but the original had stronger characters and a better lead. That's what I think, anyway.

The director of the original was Michael Winner, who is a winner to me because he's got a second career going nowadays as an asshole who goes around being an asshole about other people's food. He's either the Simon Cowell of food critics or Simon Cowell is the Michael Winner of record executives, I'm not sure, all I know is that Simon Cowell did not direct Death Wish 3, therefore fuck that born-with-a-silver-spoon piece-of-shit. Michael Winner, on the other hand, did direct Death Wish 3 and that means he is Awesome For Life in my book and if he ever wanted to come to my place, eat my spaghetti carbonara and then call it garbage, he is welcome to do so and I will be happy about it. The director of the remake is Simon West, who did not direct Death Wish 3, but did direct Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, so fuck that guy. If he ate my food and critiqued it afterwards, I'd punch him in his fuckin' limey face and tell him to get the fuck out of my house.

Mexicans will shoot you in the face through a pillow

Why does seeing a guy in flip-flops make me want to punch him in the fucking face? It's like Zuckerberg in The Social Network didn't even have to do anything else in that fuckin' movie, because I judged that fuckin' book cover as soon as I noticed he wore flip-flops most of the time. I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll get to that motherfucker in a bit.

Edgar Wright co-wrote and directed the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a film that made less money in its entire American theatrical run than Paul Blart: Mall Cop made in its opening weekend, which means that the latter is a way better film than the former, and Mr. Wright should be ashamed of himself for wasting his time on adapting Bryan Lee O'Malley's work when he really should've been working on cool ways to film Kevin James falling down. But at least Mr. Wright is trying to atone for his obvious cinematic sin, by hosting another two-week run of cool movies at the New Beverly Cinema -- The Wright Stuff II -- and I went to see a double-bill of The Driver and Duel. In attendance was the director of the first film, Walter Hill, along with two of the actors, Bruce Dern and Ronee Blakley, and producer Frank Marshall. They would give a Q&A and tell stories between films.

So yeah, I noticed a dude in line wearing flip-flops and shorts on what felt like a crisp night and it just made me want to have sex with him tell him to put some pants on. Instead, I did nothing; judge not lest ye be judged, they say, and since I'm a fat fuckin' douche, I have no right to judge. Instead, I asked my friend about his day at work and pretended to care.

Walter Hill is a great fuckin' filmmaker because he tells two-fisted, double-barreled stories about Men doing Man shit and the best part is that his tongue is not anywhere near his cheek as he does so. Sure, these things take place in fantasy worlds, as Hill himself admitted during the Q&A, but he goes with the fuckin' fantasy, he doesn't stand back and play off some Yeah, I Know This Is Bullshit kinda vibe. His second film, The Driver, takes place in a downtown Los Angeles where apparently the population is like, 27 people or something, and the people in the movie are always wearing the same fuckin' clothes. Marc Heuck brought that up during the Q&A about the clothes being like the characters' uniforms, and Hill was like Fuckin'-A They're Uniforms and I don't know about Marc, but if I had been the one to bring that up and get that response from a fuckin' filmmaking god like Hill, well, that shit would've made my fuckin' month.

But yeah, in this movie people have on their uniforms and they don't have names, they have descriptions. The main character is called The Driver, and he's played by Ryan O'Neal, who unfortunately is now best known as the motherfucker who says OH GOD OH MAN OH GOD OH MAN in Tough Guys Don't Dance. A lot of these young punks, they go on the YouTube and they watch that shit and laugh their asses off, never knowing that this guy was a fuckin' badass in at least one movie. They don't know that there are two sides to his nature -- the enforcer and the maniac -- and they never met the maniac. But you know, back in the 70's, O'Neal probably had to deal with that kind of shit for different reasons. He was known for playing pretty boy pansies in pretty boy pansy movies, and I guess he wanted a shot at playing Hard Motherfuckers, and along came Walter Hill's script for The Driver.

Bruce Dern plays The Detective, an awesome motherfucker with a shit-eating grin (probably because he knows how awesome he is) and a hard-on for catching The Driver. Hill said later during the Q&A something about Dern's character hating on The Driver for this kinda pure Zen lifestyle he's got going; The Driver gets paid big bucks for being the wheelman on heists, yet doesn't appear to spend it on much. The fuckin' guy stays in cheap motels (not even paying the extra $1 for a television set) and doesn't appear to own any belongings. You never see him reading a book or doing a fuckin' crossword puzzle. He certainly doesn't need to own a car, he'll boost one if he needs a ride somewhere. All he has is that suit and a tape player with the same fuckin' song playing from it. So it leaves a motherfucker wondering -- what does The Driver get out of this life, enjoyment? Fuck no, this guy wears one of those Perpetual Blank Faces that Alain Delon probably gets royalties from every time a motherfucker in the movies puts one on. Is it a rush for him? I really doubt that, I never see anything resembling emotion coming from him before/during/after the job. It's just what he does.

The Detective sees this as a game, one that he Just Fucking Knows he's going to win. It's pretty awesome how he looks down at his fellow detectives, calling them losers and I bet he sees himself as being pretty fuckin' generous when he tells one of them that he's going to teach him how to be a winner -- then manages to keep that shit-eating grin while downing an old-school glass-bottled Coke. Fuckin' ace, man, fuckin' ace. He also likes referring to The Driver as a cowboy, which is funny because I don't think Driver likes being called that. I mean, I would guess that "cowboy" is synonymous with reckless assholes who fuck it up for everybody else, and if anything gets him out of his Perpetual Blank Face, it's dealing with cowboys.

This guy, Mr. Driver, he'll pick you up from the robbery you just committed and bail you out from certain capture by the cops, but because you took your sweet time and fucked up the timetable, he'll never work with you again. "You were late" he tells a couple cowboys, and that's all he really has to say. Later on, you see that he has a real dislike for one potential client, eventually knocking him the fuck out for trying to scare him into doing the job. But just in case the audience didn't get that you're not supposed to like Potential Client ("Teeth" is his given moniker), they cast raza in the role, so all the Harolds and Sylvias watching can go "Of course he shouldn't trust him, he's a filthy Hispanic". I kid, this movie is full of equal-opportunity criminals, but I'm sure some people watching did probably go Mmm-hmm and nod regarding Teeth's scumbaggery in connection with the ethnicity of the actor portraying him.

The Driver is one of my all-time favorite movies; the old-school car chases are super-fuckin-tense and I'm always reminded that these movies back then, they didn't need fuckin' Cuisinart editing to get the fuckin' point across. Most car chases nowadays don't do shit for me, the last car chase I remember really getting into was Tarantino's Death Proof and that's because he knows what the fuck is up, he doesn't roll Michael Bay-style. The main character is one of those awesome Men Of Few Words; Wright brought up how the guy never has any witty comebacks or shit like that, he'll just look at you for a bit and then just walk away. In the rejoinder department, he's not James Bond -- he's Golgo 13.

The main chicks in this movie don't wear skirts, they wear pants. I think this a way for the filmmaker to get across that even the women in this movie have balls. Isabelle Adjani (her character: "The Player") is smoking hot in this (she's still smoking hot if you like plastic surgery), and in a way her uniform is kinda like the female version of The Driver's; she and O'Neal look badass together and in the cinema of my mind, there's a sequel to this movie about their continuing adventures and it's even better than this damn-near-perfect film. It's the stripped-down simplicity that does it for me, I think. The mise-en-scene manages to be basic yet stylish-as-fuck, the settings and locations are underpopulated, and the dialogue is minimal (O'Neal hardly talks in the fuckin' thing; line-wise, this movie shoulda been called The Detective).

Hill mentioned how lots of actors turned down the film (Robert Mitchum met with Hill for six hours, sharing a bottle of frozen vodka while discussing possibly playing The Detective), probably due to its "experimental" nature and Wright brought up the European feel of this movie (later he referred to it as the French feel). Hill insists it wasn't intentional; while he's a fan of guys like Jean-Pierre Melville, films like Le Samourai are totally influenced by American movies, and Hill, he was tapping that shit at the source, so to speak. Hill thinks that casting a French actress like Adjani probably added to the European feel of the film. By the way, forgive me for using "mise-en-scene" earlier, I just noticed that right now and feel like an even bigger ass than usual. I don't even know what that fucking means!

The Q&A, what else happened during the Q&A? Oh, OK, Bruce Dern did most of the talking while Hill took most of the time talking, because one talked much faster than the other. Dern is one of my favorite character actors and he should be one of yours too, and he's a very funny dude too. He had a couple nights devoted to him at the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles California on Planet Earth (or something like that, it's a long name) and I'm totally kicking myself right now (figuratively) for not going because I bet that guy had some great fuckin' stories. He's the kind of awesome guy who will give a name to his particular kind of ad-libs -- "Dernsies" -- and not come off like a douche for doing so. He's the real fuckin' deal, people. Look at his resume and check out the motherfuckers this guy's worked with. Stories, motherfuckers, the stories this guy must have. I've read other interviews with the dude and he doesn't mince words, and the fact that he speaks nothing but praise for Walter Hill just proves, that, well, you know, that Walter Hill is just that fucking awesome.

I loved it whenever he got worked up about something and his voice would get louder and he would work gesticulations into it; favorite moment was when he talked about how there's a scene in The Driver where someone gets killed in a pretty sudden/brutal manner, Dern said that only Walter Hill would let the scene continue after the death. I can't do justice to how worked up he got at this point, but the gist of it was basically ONLY WALTER FUCKING HILL WOULD HAVE THE FUCKING BALLS AND UNDILUTED MANHOOD AND OVERALL I-DON'T-GIVE-A-FUCK HARDNESS TO NOT CUT AWAY FROM THE SCENE. ALL OTHER DIRECTORS ARE FUCKING PUSSIES COMPARED TO THE MANGOD THAT IS WALTER HILL. Fuckin'-A, Bruce Dern, fuckin'-A. I'm not a sports fan like you, but still, we gotta hang out some time, Bruce Dern -- and introduce me to your daughter, while you're at it.

A guy like Dern, you need to give him the spotlight and let him talk for as long as he needs to; as it was, he was sharing the stage with others, so the rest of the Q&A basically went like this: Edgar Wright asked a question, Walter Hill slowly/thoughtfully/carefully answered, then Bruce Dern interjected with a Walter Hill anecdote that always ended in effusive praise for the man. Occasionally, Frank Marshall would say something about the production and Ronee Blakley would try to chime in but a Soft & Sweet voice will always lose to Fast & Loud and Slow & Booming every fucking time.

Blakley did manage to get one story out, though; she had decided that her character in The Driver (her character's name: "The Connection") should carry a gun at all times. Hill disagreed, and she decided to carry a prop gun anyway because it would really help her performance, only she would hide it and wouldn't let the director know. No one would see the gun, only she would know that she was carrying -- The Connection would never want anyone to know she was strapped --  so it's not like it would fuck up the movie if no one could see it. Well, in between camera set-ups she started doing some calisthenics and sure enough, the fuckin' gun comes falling out and Hill was all like What The Fuck, Lady?

We found out that Walter Hill doesn't like to rehearse the actors, he treats the first take as a rehearsal and only shoots about 2 or 3 takes before moving on. Also, according to Dern, Walter Hill is a funnier guy than Eddie Murphy -- while Murphy would crack wise at a mile-a-minute, Hill's humor is apparently more of a quality-over-quantity approach. Dern and Hill haven't seen each other in a while, but they appear to be very much friends (eventually Hill started warming up more during the Q&A and would occasionally make a joke at Dern's expense), and Hill said he would've used Dern more in his movies if he wasn't so busy on other projects.

They also talked about about how the car chases were meticulously planned out, everything was written down and diagrammed and every precaution was taken -- Bruce Dern compared Hill's way of working with a football play called "organized mayhem" or "organized chaos" or something like that -- but in the end, someone died during the making of the movie anyway, but it wasn't from a stunt, it was an unfortunate crew member who died from a high fall while setting up a light. I wonder how a filmmaker deals with that, losing someone on the set; I guess most just move on because there's millions of dollars at stake. But does it get to any of them afterwards, or is it just considered an unfortunate accident? I thought I read somewhere that Richard Lester pretty much retired because an actor died on the set of one of his movies. I'm too lazy to Wiki that shit, you do it.

So, that was it for the Q&A. People went up to talk to guests and Wright, and I saw one guy carrying what appeared to be his entire fuckin' DVD collection (and a couple posters) to be signed. I'm one to talk -- I had my DVD of The Stunt Man signed at a New Bev screening -- but I don't think I have it in me to bring every goddamn movie the actors on-stage happened to be in.

Before the next movie, the European theatrical print of Duel, Mr. Wright read an e-mail from the director, some unknown fringe filmmaker named Steven Spielberg. The e-mail detailed the 11-day shoot (I think it was 11) and how they got so much done in so little time (they shot with 5 cameras) and then Wright joked about giving out Spielberg's e-mail address, saying how funny would it be if it was actually stevenspielberg@aol.com.

The trailers that followed were for similar vehicular horror flicks; The Car, starring the big-screen version of Pee-Wee Herman, Christine (I got a kick out of the Coming Soon card being in the John Carpenter font), and a trailer for Maximum Overdrive, which consisted of footage from the movie intercut with Stephen King going on about how he directed this film himself because it was the only way to get a Stephen King story on film done the right way. He looks really scary here, probably because he was a cokehead at the time, and also because standing in front of that Green Goblin truck, you realize that he very much resembles said Goblin.

It's also funny, because he keeps going on about how he's going to scare the shit out of you with this movie. I miss that kind of showmanship, that whole "If This One Doesn't Scare You, You're Already Dead" kinda deal. More movies should straight out declare that they're gonna fuck you up from how scary they are. I think the next step is to warn the audience that they will literally shit themselves from fright, but that kind of sell has to be done with the utmost sincerity, you can't be winking at the audience talking that kinda shit.

I first watched Duel on television when I was 4 or 5 and according to my parents, afterwards I wouldn't refer to trucks as trucks, I'd call them "duel". We'd be on a road trip and I'd see a passing truck and I'd get all excited and shout "Mom, Dad! Look, it's Duel!" Once I found that Duel was available on VHS, it became one of those movies I made my folks rent every time we went to the video store. I would re-enact Duel scenes using my toy cars. I'm telling you, man, I loved me some fuckin' Duel. The last time I watched that film, I would guess I was probably 10 years old. Man, I wished the little kid version of me was at the New Beverly last night, rather than the current jaded douchebag adult version, because....damn. I hate to fuckin' say this, but...fuck. I, uh, I didn't like it nearly as much as I did back in the day. I know! What the fuck, right? I still dug it, though. I'm just saying.

The first 20 minutes or so are fucking fantastic, with fuckin' McCloud on the road, dealing with this asshole trucker hogging up the road. He passes him, which I guess makes the trucker play the I Have A Bigger Dick Than You card and he passes McCloud in return. McCloud doesn't have time for this shit, he's got things to do, so he passes him once again and I guess that offends the trucker, who now demands satisfaction and the titular Duel is fuckin' on. This mainly consists of Asshole Trucker speeding up right behind McCloud and scaring the shit out of him and maybe trying to do a little more than just that.

In his e-mail, Spielberg praised McCloud's "game face" throughout the fast-paced production; me, I want to praise his performance. I'm watching this guy McCloud, and I can't think of anyone else who could play that part, because McCloud is very convincing as this business-type dude who straddles the line between non-confrontational and total pussy. There's a scene earlier where he's talking to his wife on the phone and I guess they had an argument the night before about how a co-worker of his was getting a little too touchy-feely with homeboy's wife at a party. She thinks he should've done something about it, and I agree.

That's your fuckin' woman, chief -- I'm not saying deck the guy, but step in and be all good-natured while telling him that's enough. I bet you this fuckin' McCloud, he didn't have the stones to take care of business but he sure as fuck raised his voice with his wife afterwards, when she was giving him shit for it. So in a way, this whole truck duel deal can be a way for him to prove his manhood or something. I mean, the motherfucker's name is Mann, the least he could do is try to act a little bit like one (albeit spelled with one less "N").

But for the majority of the movie, McCloud's getting more and more freaked out and the sweat stains on his corporate shirt are getting bigger and bigger and that fuckin' Asshole Trucker isn't going away. Kinda like how Black Swan puts you in the increasingly fragile mindset of poor, sweet Natalie Portman, this fuckin' movie (when it isn't boring the shit out of you) is putting you in the increasingly frazzled mindset of McCloud's character. At one point, I swear the motherfucker is actually squealing from fright and all I could think is There But For The Grace Of God And My Giant Testicles, Go I.

I don't know, maybe it was because it was following The Driver or maybe I'm not as easily amused by shots of trucks driving down roads, or maybe (most likely) I'm just an asshole, but whatever the reason, Duel did not hold up for me as much as it did back when my life was simple and happy. Which is not to say that I thought it was a bad movie, far from it, I just wasn't as into it as I was back then. It's still worth watching because it's Spielberg's first film and it's a trip to watch a fuckin' master doing his thing back during a time in his life when it was probably harder for him to get laid.

The guy had something like 11-16 days (depending on where you get your info) to shoot the fuckin' thing and the fuckin' thing is definitely well-made. This was made-for-TV but looks like it was made for the big-screen, and you can tell Spielberg was giving his all making the motherfucker; there's one of those long take deals where McCloud's character walks into a restaurant, goes into a restroom, washes up, has one of those internal monologues, dries off, walks out the restroom, through the restaurant and then looks out the window. I doubt some old pro television director would've even bothered doing it that way.

After the movie, Mr. Wright thanked everyone for coming out (while they were turning their backs to him and walking away) and thanked his guests for being cool enough to do a Q&A (while they were probably already at home, fast asleep). As my buddy and I walked down the sidewalk, I looked over at the residential street and how narrow it was, made even narrower with the parked cars taking up both sides. A car going down one direction would have to practically make contact with one of the parked cars just so the car coming down from the opposite direction could get through. Jesus Christ. I'm not from this city, and I don't live here. How do you people fuckin' do it? Every fucking day, you deal with this shit? Should I be surprised that you're not all Asshole Truckers as a result? Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?