Dead Comedy: Part 1 - The Screwball Comedy

Comedy is a very interesting genre in movies, it’s probably the most diverse and accessible variety of movies that can range from any age group and virtually any style. Think about it, you’ve got a comedy of manners, slapstick, screwball, parody, anarchy, fish out of water, gross out, black-comedy or romantic comedy, then you’ve got the limitless hybrid genres that allows comedy to integrate itself with virtually any kind of film such as action, horror, fantasy, drama or science fiction. Today most of these deviations of comedy are still alive and kicking in cinema today, some may not have their own genre anymore and are merely combined with other forms of humour but for the most part each aspect of that is still present in our modern movies.
However, some of the ones I listed appear to be completely dead and buried and would need a complete overhaul or a great comedic mind to bring them back. This is something I’m going to look at with these articles. The first one seems to be the screwball comedy. Early pioneers of cinema like Howard Hawks and Frank Capra shined in the genre, but today no one seems to make them anymore, the closest thing you’ll find is homage or an assimilated form. What happened?
The screwball genre is defined as being ‘fables of love masquerading as hostility’. Many have drawn parallels with film noir as well, except screwball distinguishes itself with a number of elements such as its comedic tone and its escapist and farcical themes. It’s also a reversal of the stereotypical positions of power put forward by gender roles and social classes. During the Great Depression, there was a general demand for films with a strong social class critique and hopeful, escapist-oriented themes.
All of this basically means that in screwball, the woman dominates the relationship. It challenges the masculinity of the man and makes way for a comedic battle of the sexes involving romance, courtship, bedroom farce and marriage. The question that one may ask here is, why mask those themes under a comedy or film-noir style, why not just make a drama involving them? Three reasons, one was that this was all taking place during the great depression and audiences wanted escapism, not heavy handed emotional rollercoasters. Secondly, women’s suffrage had ended and they now finally had the right to vote so someone immediately had the brilliant idea of capitalising on this by placing the women in their films in positions of power. Thirdly, you had the Hayes Code. This prohibited films touching on the subjects of violence, religion and especially sex. To incorporate the more risqué elements of their films, studios used the genre as a disguise to appease the censorship boards.
How? They used the verbal sparring between two genders as a metaphor for the physical sexual tension between them, a sex comedy without the sex. It was subversive and superbly executed. As time went on though censors began to latch on to what these writers and studios were doing and tried to crack down on them, meaning that the creative minds behind the pictures had to think of increasingly inventive and ingenious ways of conveying innuendo and euphemism without the censors catching on. In other words the screwball writers always had to remain one step ahead of the censors while still making an artistically viable picture and ensuring that it would entertain audiences so it could generate a profit and allow them to do it all over again, talk about a busy workload.    
So the style evolved and developed as any successful genre does. Perhaps the most successful screwball director was Ernst Lubitsch, who crafted many of the standouts of the genre such as ‘Trouble in Paradise’, ‘If I Had A Million’ and ‘That Uncertain Feeling’. Then you had ‘The Philadelphia Story’ or ‘Bringing Up Baby’ and ‘His Girl Friday’. Even legendary director Alfred Hitchcock dabbled in the screwball genre with ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’.
Then a new generation came to take up the genre and the biggest name of this screwball era was Billy Wilder. He basically built his early career off of this genre, especially with his very first American movie ‘The Major and the Minor’. This movie revolved around a young woman that quits her career to return home but only has enough oney for a child’s ticket and therefore does the logical thing of posing as a schoolgirl only to become entangled with a Major who is increasingly worried by his attraction to what he believes is a young schoolgirl. So as the word Major in the title takes on a different meaning you can already guess what its accompanying noun was referring to, let’s move on before this becomes any more awkward. Wilder even used screwball in his more dramatic work like ‘Sunset Boulevard’ in which a struggling screenwriter agrees to assist an aging actress get her career back on track.
Wilder then made a direct return to the genre in 1959 with ‘Some Like it Hot’, the greatest cross dressing film of all time (sorry ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’). Named by the American Film Institute as the greatest comedy movie of all time and the quintessential screwball comedy, Wilder even set it twenty years ago during the thirties in order to make the environment more in tune with the screwball themes. Two musicians witness a gangland murder and must hide out by disguising themselves as women, though it pretends to have commentary on violence and greed, make no mistake, this movie is about sex. It’s only become more obvious as time goes on, becoming blatantly subversive (contradiction in terms) and starred the ultimate iconic sex symbol herself Marylyn Monroe. Trust me, watch the movie and make it a fun drinking game by taking a shot with every euphemism and innuendo you see.
So with the genre this successful, why did it die? Simply because as Bob Dylanput it the next decade, the times they are a changin’. Censorship in movies is a thing of the past by the time the 1960s roll around and now filmmakers don’t need to disguise the sexual tension in their movies, they can just outright show it. Nothing was off limits any more, with rating systems it meant that appropriate audiences could see appropriate films so there was no need to have a sex comedy without sex. So the screwball comedy is well and truly dead.
That’s not to say that the genre is completely buried. There are still various homages and tributes to the type, the work of Billy Wilder can still be watched and appreciated today and most of the individual artistic choices are still being used today in some form. The genre died out not because audiences grew board with it or the quality began to dip, but the change in cinematic society rendered it irrelevant.

Which Director is the Worst; Bay or Shyamalan?

So ‘The Visit’ is hitting theatres son and once again it appears that you would need to hire an undercover detective team to find out that it has been directed by none other than M Night Shyamalan, the director that everyone loves to hate. In fact only one director seems to be rivalling him for the spot of the worst high profile director working today, Michael (explosion) Bay. But who is the worst?
Well looking past the actual quality of their films and focussing more on the money they make, Michael Bay is miles ahead. Shyamalan has had one commercial failure after another, to such a point where the studios will try their best to make sure you don’t know that he’s directing it. I never heard his name mentioned once in the advertising campaign for ‘After Earth’ while Bay has been openly associated with every project he’s involved with, Bay didn’t direct ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ but his name was the one that dominated the trailers. Even with that modest opening day, word of mouth spread so quickly that the film was dropping in the movie gross charts by day, starting at one, and finishing at number nine by the end of the week. Bay on the other hand has maintained a steady income from his films, a huge one in fact as, annoyingly, ‘Transformers: Age of Multiple Explosions’ was the highest grossing film of 2014, and Bay did the same thing with ‘That asteroid movie that wasn’t Deep Impact’ back in’ 1998.
But it’s for that reason that many will say he is worse as he seems to make films purely for the money, not to get any kind of artistic expression from it. He has been making the same kind of film for the past two decades, lots of action, little plot, sorted. Even his best film ‘The Rock’ was certainly not as complex as Shyamalan’s best effort ‘The Sixth Sense’.
Though that may not be a fair comparison, as both of them were good, and are now bad, for very different reasons. To the average movie goer the worst one will probably be Shyamalan, as Bay’s movies are still sort of fun. ‘The Rock’ and the ‘Bad Boys’ films are certainly fun to watch and there’s some very small enjoyment to have in the ‘Transformers’ franchise and ‘Pain and Gain’ but only on the lowest common denominator, and if you try to watch them back to back you will be left catatonic by the multiple and never ending explosions, stereotypes and revolving shots.
Shyamalan on the other hand is notorious for making arthouse films that aren’t well reviewed, so is there any point in branding them arthouse anymore? Bay has always said that he makes films for audiences and not critics, but with Shyamalan’s movies, if you can’t get good reviews surely there’s no point. ‘The Village’ was a failed psychological thriller and ‘The Lady in the Water’ was one of the worst attempts at a dark fantasy ever, it felt like something Guilmero Del Toro had left on the cutting room floor and the cleaner had assembled them with whatever was left.
Also, Bay was held up as a good action director at one point, and criticised for never doing anything new. But ‘The Sixth Sense’ was held up as one of the greatest horror movies of the modern age and many were calling its director ‘The next Spielberg’. When you think about how far Shyamalan has fallen in comparison to his potential, it’s quite staggering.  
‘The Sixth Sense’ of course is mainly associated with its final twist and this brings me on to another point. While Bay is known for a number of cheap traits such as racial and sexual stereotypes, explosions and his frantic editing pace. Shyamalan meanwhile is linked with one thing, a twist. Nearly every film has featured a twist and none of them have topped ‘The Sixth Sense’, instead they are viewed as cheap, exploitive and simply bad. The twist in ‘Signs’ ruined that movie for me (invading aliens turn out to be vulnerable to water, having invaded a planet that is 60% water), in ‘The Village’ this Victorian era community is actually in the modern world, somehow.
But when he tries to do a film without a plot twist they are equally as bad. Look at ‘Lady in the Water’. This film stars Shyamalan as a writer who is destined to save the world through beautiful writing, really? That’s like Scorsese casting himself as Henry Hill, or Francis Ford Coppola casting himself as Don Corleone. Then in ‘After Earth’ the plot (which he didn’t write to be fair) was nonsensical and riddles with obvious directing. ‘The Happening’ is the worst attempt as a horror film in recent memory, working better as the best unintentional comedy in recent years. Then you have the atrocity that is ‘The Last Airbender’, in which he is not only running his own material, but butchering material that had legions of followers and admirers that were hoping for a great movie.
However, most of these films are original, they are original ideas in an age where more and more people are criticising Hollywood for having no original ideas. What’s more is the fact that however bad they are I wouldn’t say Shyamalan is a lazy filmmaker. Bay on the other hand has been making the same ideas with the same unoriginal concepts and the same clichés over and over again. Shyamalan has dabbled in horror, neo-noir, science fiction, fantasy and though most have been terrible, most have also been unique. Not only are all of Bay’s films the same none of them are really original. We all know ‘Transformers’ was based on a toy and cartoon series, then you have ‘Pain and Gain’ which many people are surprised about to hear was an original story as the callousness with which he treats real murder and crime is almost laughable. Then there's 'Pearl Harbour', when Spielberg made a war film he made it loom realistic, Bay made a war film to make it look cool and sacrificed all authenticity, dramatic potential and quality in the process. There’s also no risk to his movies, I know that this is going to be another big dumb nonsensical action film before I see it, maybe, just maybe with M Night Shyamalan his next film is a return to form, because he’s trying new things and taking chances. True, many are horrifically awful, and I would rather watch ‘Pain and Gain’ twenty times than go through ‘The Last Airbender’ again, but I’m still going to see ‘The Visit’ because there’s a chance that it could surprise me. But let me close this debate with a cool and refreshing bottle of Bud-Light, see what I'm doing, product placement, another reason why Michael Bay is terrible.
So those are some ramblings but out of these two, who do you think is the worst director? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks and bye.

What Makes a Cult Movie?

With ‘American Ultra’ shaping up to be another cult classic for another small percentage of another generation, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at some various cult classics from the past and ask what makes a cult film?
Well to be honest, one of the worst things a film that wants to be a cult film can do is announce itself as a cult movie. It has to let a following gather naturally and such a thing can happen to any film from ‘Dredd’ to Kevin Smith’s ‘Clerks’. Is there a better way to define this or to pinpoint why a certain film can attract a following? In my opinion there are four sorts of cult movies, sleeper hits, polarisers, so bad it’s good and completely unique.
A sleeper hit can define most of the cult status, particularly lesser known cult films. ‘Dredd’ ‘Clerks’ are just two examples of good films that only a few people saw, or Roger Ebert’s cult favourite (he named it the best film of the year it came out) ‘Dark City’. Then you have some of the work from John Carpenter (watch out for his name later on) such as one of my personal favourites ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ and ‘Escape from New York’. The main point of this category is that these are still good films, but if you follow them you’re one of very few that do and that just makes it better in some way, you’ve discovered it yourself and for reasons that can’t quite be explained, there’s a special something about a film that you love but no one else sees. Would ‘Donnie Darko’ be as loved by a minority if a majority were constantly praising it and discussing it, no.
Then of course there are polarising films, ones that create fractured opinions among critics and a few not only like the film as opposed to the group that doesn’t, but worship it as amazing. ‘Blade Runner’ is a classic example of this. I know a lot of people that dislike that film, but I also know people that do not only like it, but praise it as one of the greatest films ever made. Then you have ones such as ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ or David Fincher’s ‘Fight Club’ whose cult status reached such an extent that magazines were pulling their negative reviews of it from their editions only to replace it with a revised version.
So on to so bad it’s good. The quintessential one has to be ‘The Room’. Without a doubt that is simply one of the worst things ever put to film, the acting is horrific, the dialogue is terrible and the story is irrelevant including one scene where one character announces she has breast cancer and then is never mentioned or referenced again, or that scene in which the three main characters and one extra called Peter get dressed in tuxedos, persuade Peter to do something, branding him a chicken when he refuse, then go out and play football for a while and then go back inside, none of this plays any integral part of the plot, there’s no explanation for dressing up in tuxedos, what they were about to do is never clarified and the character of Peter is never mentioned or seen before or after this bizarre event. It is awful. Yet it has a 36% rating on RT, regular midnight screenings and I would go as far to say it is essential viewing. Why?
The reason is that it is hilarious. You simply can’t believe that someone willingly and knowingly made a film like that, filled with so many mistakes, errors and inherent flaws then look back and think they had made a pleasant melodrama. It’s little wonder that today its writer, producer, director and star Tommy Wiseau claims that it was intended as a comedy and predicted a cult status. Could this be true? No. Cult films of this nature tend to have a cynicism about them that shine through as they highlight certain issues in a darkly humorous way. Another example is ‘Troll 2’, everyone involved believed they were doing serious work in a horror film, same with ‘Showgirls’ and many others, no one knew that they would create unintentional comedies. Another great example of a film being so bad its good is anything from Ed Wood, often regarded as the worst filmmaker of all time, his movies achieved such a cult status of terribleness that they even made a movie about Ed Wood and his terrible movies.
Then there’s the unique category. These films attract a cult status simply because there is nothing else like it before or since. This could be the most common one as it is littered with exceptional and distinctive examples that all shine through in different ways. There are the earlier films of Peter Jackson like ‘Bad Taste’ and John Carpenter such as ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ or ‘Dark Star’, they all share a unique vision and though it may not be polished or complete there’s a definite sense of fun from everyone involved. You have the unique vision of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ and ’12 Mokeys’ and sticking to the former Python, Monty Python’s work in general attracts a following mainly because there is simply nothing like it, no one else has ever tried to do the zaniness of ‘Holy Grail’ of the commentary of ‘Life of Brian’. The Coen brothers make so many cult classics but of course their enduring cult masterpiece ‘The Big Lebowski’ retains its popularity because we can never quite decide what it is, is it comedy, noir, symbolic? And where, oh where tell me, can you find a comedy musical about transvestites other than ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, perhaps the ultimate and quintessential cult film.
There are some cult films that I don’t like, as I said at the start one of the worst things a cult film can do is deliberately advertise itself as one such as the Asylum films. Their biggest success comes with ‘Sharknado’ and various mockbusters that are basically stealing ideas from everyone else and farming the zeitgeist for whatever’s popular at the moment. Tell me if these titles sound familiar and guess which movie they’re ripping off, ‘The Da Vinci Treasure’, ‘Pirates of the Treasure Island’, ‘Alien vs Hunter’, ‘The Day the Earth Stopped’, ‘Transmorphers’, ‘Atlantic Rim’, ‘Age of Tomorrow’, ‘Android Cop’, ‘Snakes on a Train’ and perhaps the worst of all, forget Indiana Jones because the new age of adventure comes from ‘Alan Quaiterman and the Temple of Skulls’ yeah…. These films may have the low budget and there is some kitsch value to it but for me there’s this overriding sense of soullessness to it, without passion and only aiming to capitalise on what’s popular to make money.  
Of course there’s a good chance that you won’t enjoy every film on this list and that is completely fine. That is the whole point of a cult movie, that not everyone loves it and there’s a small group of people that do, if you associate yourself with one of these movies listed, or a completely different one then great. If you don't then rest assured there’s one for you, you’ll find your cult movie sometime that you will defend tooth and nail against all of its critics. So what’s your favourite cult movie, leave a comment below to let me know, thanks and bye.