Cut You

"Is this detention?"
"Actually it's your mother's house and we're all having a party."
-Elias Koteas in Some Kind of Wonderful (1986)

Distant Relatives: Blazing Saddles and Hot Fuzz

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do

It shouldn't come as a shock that Blazing Saddles and Hot Fuzz have basically the same setup: outsider comes to small town where he has a hard time fitting but eventually becomes the only man who can save the village.  It's not that Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and Mel Brooks and his co-writers all coincidentally had the same idea.  Truth is, the western and cop movie, the two genres being spoofed here, are the same genre only set 100 years apart or so.  In both cases, an outsider protagonist (not even literal outsiders, moral outsiders like High Noon's Gary Cooper or Serpico's Al Pacino work too!) creates drama by pitting the hero against insurmountable odds in an environment he doesn't know.  In both cases a lovable sidekick helps grund him and a conflict only he can solve elevates him to hero status (in terms of both his success and rare skill).

The protagonists of Blazing Saddles and Hot Fuzz couldn't be more different but they're similar in that they contradict expectations set up by their genres' more serious films.  Nick Angel (Simon Pegg) is a good cop who plays by all the rules.  He isn't exactly Detective Riggs.  Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) is vulgar, vain, charming, clever, and doesn't care to know the rules enough to break them.  He isn't exactly John Wayne.  The towns they inhabit, aren't so much contradictions of cultural portrayals as exaggerations.  The town of Sandford is comically peaceful, playing off the idea of the quaint and safe countryside of movies like Local Hero.  Rock Ridge has fun with the towns of the old west, with cows rummaging through churches, and citizens all named Johnson.

That's Entertainment

Each film skewers the genre it spoofs and eventually becomes.  How do they do this?  First by establishing a world where everyone knows the elements of that genre.  In Hot Fuzz it's easy.  Since the film is set in modern time, anyone can go down to the local store and rent a copy of Bad Boys.  In Blazing Saddles, while it seems like a good assumption that no one there has seen a western, they still know their roles, appreciating good old fashioned gibberish, getting annoyed at classic western cliche and genuflecting the very mention of Randolph Scott.  By giving everyone an understanding of how their world "should" work, they've made them extra-aware of when it's not actually working in that manner, like when a series of unusual crimes begin to unfold.




If comedy is inconsistency, then Brooks and Wright set up meta-levels of self awareness by which the characters can be inconsistent.  Each film culminates in the ultimate self-aware spectacle.  In Hot Fuzz this involves the plot actually turning into that of a generic action blockbuster.  For Blazing Saddles, the action literally spills off the lot and onto other films.

But did we learn anything?

The big difference between these two films, as anyone would note, is in social commentary.  Blazing Saddles, though often saddled itself with the qualifier "a film like this could never get made today" is an argument for tolerance, using the uber-racist town of Rock Ridge as a mirror for our reality.  While one could argue that the small town of Sandford in Hot Fuzz is a take on a "violence begets peace" mentality not uncommon in our world, it might be a bit of a stretch.  Hot Fuzz doesn't have a social message.  Is that a sign that as satire, message movies are dead?

What Hot Fuzz does suggest however is a reality in which we're so immersed in media and culture that we can no longer separate it from ourselves.  Culture is not a reflection of us, instead we are a reflection of it.  Blazing Saddles, with its self awareness and unending pop-cultural references often suggests the very same.  Both films get their laughs by creating worlds that couldn't exist without the totality of pop to be built upon.

The suggestion that the spoof film is dead is one made not without merit.  Such films still get made, just not often well.  What the evolution of Blazing Saddles to Hot Fuzz suggests is that while grand social statements aren't necessary, some statement, some observation about our reality is.  References to culture alone won't do it.  Some greater truth has to be revealed, whether it be the dark side of our society or the overbearing anti-originality tendencies of our culture.  There's truth there.  And truth is funny.


One Week Left of Voting. Best Actor Battles.

With only 18 days left until the big announcement, the fever is rising.

Over at my Tribeca Film Oscar column I'm sounding off on True Grit's hit status, the uncertain Supporting Actress race (it's the only race without a clear "winner" frontrunner), and which melodies are rising above the awards din. Read the article.

One thing I didn't cover in that article is these last minute endorsements of sorts we've been hearing about. Kathryn Bigelow and Martin Scorsese are pro Winter's Bone (and don't think they lack for pull in Tinseltown). Bigelow just hosted a screening. You've already heard that Javier Bardem's celebrity friends (including recent Eat Pray Love Vote co-star Julia Roberts) have been rallying for his Cannes-winning performance in Biutiful.

Meanwhile, Oscar winner Robert Duvall (Get Low) just put his hands in cement in front of Grauman's. You know what that means. Any reminder that you're still very much in it means that you're still working to win it. Not that Duvall isn't already a winner on every Oscar level. They've only ever loved 13 men enough to hand them six or more nominations and Duvall is one of that esteemed baker's dozen. If he gets this nod, he moves us to top ten Oscar beloved actor status (tied with Dustin Hoffman and Richard Burton in terms of nominations).

I've made some adjustments to the Best Actor chart to reflect the 7 man race nail-biter.

De Niro to Cannes: You Screenin' For Me?

"Huh? Huh? Faster than you. Saw you coming. I'm standing here. You make the movie. You make the movie. It's your movie. You screenin' for me? You screenin' for me? Then who the else are you screening to. I'm the only one here."

The Taxi Driver himself, Robert De Niro will head the jury for this summer's Cannes Film Festival. That honor recalls Taxi Driver's own Cannes win in 1976 and neatly coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Tribeca Film Festival this year. Jury members are TBA but the pool generally includes a couple gobsmackingly beautiful foreign actresses, a few directors and/or writers, and a couple key below the line giants. Last year, as you'll recall, Tim Burton and his Cannes jury gave their top prize to Apichatpong Weerathesakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (my review).

Here's to De Niro being a better judge of international art cinema than he is of his own current projects!

Blogger Man: Turn Off the Link

Serious Film Michael (a TFE columnist) is counting down his favs of the year.
Final Girl Stacy's cartoons of the Friday the 13th series almost make it seems as cute as a Pixar movie... okay no. I amend. It's still sick so it's almost as cute as a Don Hertzfeldt animation.
Parabasis a fascinating thoughtful and scathing review of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
In Contention Guy's 25 favorites of 2010. It was a very good year.

Alternative Film Guide RIP Miriam Seegar, one of the last surviving silent film actors.
Vulture Quentin Tarantino responds to the collective internet freakout also known as "OMG, why isn't Sofia Coppola's Somewhere which he awarded in Venice on his top ten list?!?"
Pop Matters chooses their (collective) favorite 20 female performances of 2010. Interesting li... okay, it's a bizarre list. We do appreciate Matt's writeup of Barbara Hershey in Black Swan. We do not appreciate the Annette Bening snub.

Fuming Actresses
US Weekly Michelle Williams is not pleased with the way Nightline edited her statements about Heath Ledger's death and their breakup.
EW's Inside Movies Julia Roberts has had it with everyone ignoring Javier Bardem in Biutiful. OBEY!
The Advocate Glenn Close is horrified that she has an unauthorized cameo in that anti-gay USS Enterprise Navy video that recently caused such a ruckus.