Writing is hard. I’d agree with that sentiment, especially because I’ve never worked in a coal mine or tried to cure cancer.
But now you don’t need to take my word for it! My old podcasting partner, Jason Soto, invited me on The Sportadicast to talk about how “Writing is Hard, Yo!” Joining us were old friends Nicholas Jobe (a yourfaceisa.com reunion!) and H.B. Walsh.
Check it out, check out Jason, Nick and Heather’s books, and check out all the fine programming over at Rabbit Hole Podcasts.
I’ve been slowly – slooooowly – getting myself back into writing fiction, and one of things I’ve been doing from time to time is flash fiction. There’s a weekly local group that I went to for a bit that gives single-word prompts, typically a word that could have many meanings like “stoop” or “must.”
I’m pretty proud of this one. Long-time fans of The Lair of the Unwanted will appreciate the turn at the end.
Detective Dart Barreta sauntered into the interrogation room, cup of vending machine coffee in hand. He slid into the empty chair and stowed his sunglasses into the pocket of his Members Only jacket before addressing the perp. “So! Looks like you’ve been a very busy boy, Marone.”
Sulking on the other side of the table, “Lefty” Lou Marone sniffed; Barreta’s cologne was aggravating his sinuses. “You got nothin’ on me. I want my lawyer.”
“Oh I got plenty,” Barreta replied. He held up his coffee, showing the cards printed on its side – all diamonds. “I got a flush from the vending machine, I got a date with the hot new clerk in processing, and I got you on three counts of larceny.”
Marone raised an eyebrow; he’d noticed the new clerk in processing. “Nice for you, but I still don’t have my lawyer.”
Barreta shrugged. “No, but you don’t need a lawyer to tell you that the quickest way to dart out of here is to roll on the guy bankrolling your illegal escapades. Of course, if you don’t want to talk to me, you can always talk to my partner…” He turned towards the two-way mirror and waved in the observer.
Marone chuckled. “They saddle you with a partner, Barreta? Guess the brass finally got someone to babysit you.”
Barreta sounded almost sad. “Sorry, Lou, but I’m the good cop in this scenario.”
The door to the interrogation room creaked open, but all that entered was a quiet “click, click, click.” Marone leaned over the table and gasped, his mind darting for a rational explanation. “Budget cuts,” Barreta said while his partner approach the table, as if that clarified things. “The Chief got real creative on this one.”
With a sudden flurry of activity, Barreta’s partner landed on the interrogation table. A tiny police badge hung around its neck, nestled in with its brown and white feathers. Its red plume was somehow slicked back, and tiny mirrored sunglasses sat on its dart-like beak. The bird was only two feet tall, but standing on the table put it at eye-level with Marone. It stared intensely.
“I’ve been trying to explain basic human rights to him,” Barreta said, “but he just doesn’t seem to give a cluck.”
The chicken cop shook the tiny sunglasses away so he could stare down Marone with his own eyes. He slowly approached Marone, claws scraping the table top. Marone couldn’t look away from those blazing yellow eyes, for if eyes are the windows to the soul then there was nothing inside the officer before him – no compassion, no humanity, nothing but savage determination.
“BAH-KAUWK!”
Marone broke into a cold sweat. The chicken cop would not be denied.
Any
fool with a camera can make a post-apocalyptic dystopia. You go out to a rock
quarry or a nice stretch of desert, get some bad haircuts and some leather,
forget to shave for a couple days, and you’re good to go.
Utopians are tougher – you need lots of shiny things. A dystopian utopia calls for a high degree of difficulty. But a dystopian utopia action film starring Sylvester Stallone? That’s be inconceivable if it weren’t for Demolition Man.
Then again, Demolition Man starts off rather dystopian-y, with a pessimistic view of what the Clinton Era might look like. We open in a version of 1996 Las Angeles where the Hollywood sign can be set on fire and no one cares. Is this supposed to be the future from the Terminator series? It’s like the Rodney King riots never stopped.
 |
| THIS! IS! SPARTAN! |
Supercop Sly Stallone – or “John Spartan,” as he’s called here – puts on a sporty beret and prepares to singlehandedly take on a burning building full of baddies. “Takes a maniac to catch a maniac,” Sly Stallones before bungee-jumping out of a helicopter. Clearly, John Spartan is not lacking in confidence.
After punching Terrorism in the face, Spartan comes toe to toe with world-class maniac Simon Phoenix (a blonde Wesley Snipes, a look that inspired Denis Rodman). Smart remarks are exchanged. Predictably, it all ends with Sly running away from big, big explosions in slow-motion. Bad news though: Spartan not only leveled the whole building, he didn’t quite get around to rescuing the hostages. Whoopsie! Now convicted of manslaughter, Spartan is stripped nude, tossed into a giant petri dish and flash-frozen, where he is to remain a Stalloncycle for the next 70 years.
Simon Phoenix also gets the freeze-dried treatment, only his sentence is for “eternity.” And by “eternity,” I mean he gets a parole hearing in 2032. Phoenix surprises the parole board by somehow knowing the password to unlock his shackles. Also, he now knows kung-fu.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “If I was in the year 2032 or some Rodman-esque guy started trying to karate kick me, I’d shoot him with my space laser!” Well, welcome to the dystopian utopia of Demolition Man’s 2032: Everything is shiny and happy and filled with shiny, happy people. Voice-controlled cars! Graffiti-proof walls! Rob Schneider is employed! Yes, it’s a particularly hellish sort of utopia.
In a world full of crime-free positivity, Sandra Bullock’s Officer Huxley – literary! – longs for some “real action.” But when real action arrives in the form of the freshly thawed Simon Phoenix, who leaves a trail of redundant “murder-death-kills” in his wake, it becomes clear that the police force isn’t equipped to deal with it.
Seriously? I could buy that crime is way down, that no one has had to deal with a lunatic like Simon Phoenix in years. I could buy that, if I try really, really hard. But to believe that the world of 2032 is so toothless, so neutered that society has completely eradicated all forms of anger, aggression and violence… that law enforcement has institutionally forgotten? That’s a bit much.
But it does lead to the police melting the Stalloncycle, so whatever.
So Spartan is thawed out under the logic that “it takes an old fashioned cop to catch an old fashioned criminal.” The only one not onboard is the police chief, which is strange because you’d think that if you were going to release and immediately deputize a felon, you’d need the blessing of the police chief. Not here! The police chief – who is like a bald John Hodgeman – spends the entire film bitching at Spartan and calling him a Neanderthal. Which is pretty crappy, when you think about it. That’d be like if a guy from 1983 time-traveled to today and the first thing you did was make fun of him for not being able to use a smartphone.
 |
| Stay classy, Taco Bell |
Yes, we get a full service of “fish out of water” gags as we watch Stallone “react” to the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library and fine dining at Taco Bell. There’s a whole thing where toilet paper has been replaced with three seashells that plays like the screenwriter’s own inside joke.
I seem to have gotten off-track, because there’s a lot more to Demolition Man than bad jokes, cheeky satire and faux Asian attire: ‘90s action sequences! Snipes is allowed to go full Batman villain, complete with mixin’-n-scratchin’ effects for some hip hop flava. Snipes and Stallone exchange gunfire and quips, then blow up everything. Also, Denis Leary shows up to do parts of his stand-up schtick. It is the ‘90s, after all.
It’s all good. Nothing out of the box in terms of action, but it’s silly and over-the-top and plenty fun. Except for Sting’s ear-bleedingly terrible song during the end credits. Seriously, that song is a crime worthy of flash-freezing Sting for eternity.
***
Directed by Adam McKay, 2008, 98 minutes, Rated R
“Did we just become best friends?”
I teased doing this move a month ago. I figured I was due to take on a Modern Cult Classic – no, I deserved to treat myself to a Modern Cult Classic. So I went poking around my streaming services and Step Brothers was just right there, begging to be reviewed. Awesome, great, and… it’s a month later, and I think this movie defeated me.
Because here’s the thing: It’s a different thing to watch a movie to write about it. You’re not just letting the experience wash over you, getting lost in the story or cinematography and getting swept up in the performances. No, you’re noting things to discuss, looking for angles and approaches to the piece, and waiting to capture the Big Takeaway.
All I took away from Step Brothers, pretty much the only notes I wrote during the film was WHAT IS THIS MOVIE?
A month later, and I still don’t know. I watched the whole film while taking notes, and what I keep coming back to is the fact that – on paper – this movie shouldn’t work.
Here’s the story: Richard Jenkins’ Robert and Mary Steenburgen’s Nancy get married, bringing together their middle-aged sons, newly minted step brothers Brennan (Will Ferrell) and Dale (John C. Reilly). Both Brennan and Dale had been living at home, and both stopped emotionally maturing around the age of 14. They do stupid shit to antagonize each other, then suddenly become best friends and team up to do stupid shit like this:
Just as suddenly, they’re kicked out of the house and blame each other. A short montage shows them separately become semi-responsible adults. Then they meet back up at the Catalina Wine Mixer – which became a real thing because of this movie – reunite and resume doing stupid shit, the end.
So… What is this movie?
Is it a character study? Because Brennan and Dale don’t have particularly distinct personalities. Is this a coming of age story? Is it a story at all? If I squint really hard, I think I can almost see a story arc. And hey, not every movie has to sport a traditional Hero’s Journey, but even such shaggy comedies of the period like 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up had pretty clear-cut plots. I don’t understand how Step Brothers works. At all. It shouldn’t work.
And yet, it’s fantastic.
With all due respect to the rest of the cast (Jenkins and Steenburgen are joined by Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn and Andrea Savage, and everyone is great here), Step Brothers works because of the performances of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Their chemistry was undeniable in Talladega Nights – a nice surprise, as Reilly wasn’t known for comedies at that point – and that chemistry is the driving force of this film. Yes they’re both playing the same note, but it’s a very specific note: not slackers, not man-children (men-childs?) middle-school boys, right down to the amplified horny rage and undercurrents of naiveté.
So what else is there to say? I’m sure papers have been written about the ways Robert and Nancy enable their sons’ behavior despite their best intentions, or of what this film has to say about What It Means To Be An Adult. Or I could call out some of the great gags, such as the joint job interviews, the real estate sabotage or the a capella Guns N’ Roses. Instead, I’m just going to give it a bunch of asterisks and recommend watching it for yourself.
****
(and then treat you to the a capella Guns N’ Roses)
It’s easy to forget these days, what with the now-completed Skywalker Saga and the wide assortment of spin-off features, Disney+ series, a...
