The Grip of Film Read online

  Richard Ayoade

  Presents:

  THE

  GRIP

  OF

  FILM

  by

  Gordy LaSure

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Ante Foreword by Richard Ayoade

  Foreword by Skippy Briskman

  Introduction

  Acknowledgments

  What the Hell Am I Reading Exactly?

  A Note on the Text

  A Note on the Use of Gender within the Text

  Disclaimer

  THE GRIP OF FILM: AN A–W OF MOVIES

  Fade Out

  Index

  Other Publications by Gordy LaSure

  Credits

  About the Author

  By sort of the same author

  Copyright

  ANTE FOREWORD BY RICHARD AYOADE

  If I’ve recently learned one thing, it’s to never again accept a ‘two-book’ publishing deal. I’ve come to realise that I don’t have ideas as such, and if I were to have one, I certainly wouldn’t consign it to the anachronistic abstraction of prose. I am technically able to write out words, having attended school most years between the ages of six and nine, but I’m never certain when (or if) they are in the right order.* But as I became more and more celebrated as a visionary filmmaker, my management ‘squad’ thought it would be wise to fend off the inevitable gush of unauthorised biographies (however flattering) that would soon flood the market. That gushy flood, like in Vol. 1 of the Bible, never happened, but my advance had been cashed, another ’copter was in the hangar and my bleach shares had plummeted. One week later, I delivered the first and final draft of what I wished was my only book. Its title?

  Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey.

  The book became an instant bestseller, but the critical response to AOA: ACO deeply upset me.† I retreated, wounded, leonine, to one of my Ipswich compounds and immersed myself in the local culture. Two years later, I’d put on thirty pounds and developed a serious lip-salve addiction. At one point my lips were so soft I could barely hold in saliva. I sat dribbling in the town ‘centre’, plowing through candyfloss while nursing a jumbo isotonic sports drink, its increasingly non-directional sports nozzle foiling my desperate attempts to rehydrate.

  Tears, Lucozade and spittle had drenched my jodhpurs. A crowd had gathered.‡ I had hit Rock Bottom.

  My ‘mobile’ phone sounded, but my hands, tacky with ’floss, could not ‘slide to answer’. I had to call back, at my own expense.

  AYOADE

  Hello?

  NAMELESS PUBLISHER

  Why are you doing a Mick Jagger impression?

  AYOADE

  Too much lip salve. Who is this?

  NAMELESS PUBLISHER

  It’s Walter, your nameless publisher. Something interesting’s come in. It concerns one of those books that tell you how all films work.

  AYOADE

  You mean an A–Z of film? One of the many ‘definitive’ tracts that hubristically claim to unpack ‘long-held principles’ of movie narrative?

  NAMELESS PUBLISHER

  That’s right. We’re really excited about it, but there’s a problem.

  AYOADE

  Hit me.

  NAMELESS PUBLISHER

  I’d rather tell you – I’ve temporarily quelled my desire to strike you.

  AYOADE

  You’re the Nameless Publisher – it’s your pom-pom party.

  NAMELESS PUBLISHER

  I don’t know if that’s an obscure reference or a malapropism.

  AYOADE

  Welcome to Me.

  NAMELESS PUBLISHER

  Well, the problem is that the book which you just defined so concisely is written by someone that no one’s heard of.

  AYOADE

  Try me. But please don’t end a sentence with a preposition. I’m a serious literary voice.

  NAMELESS PUBLISHER

  His name is Gordy LaSure.

  That was the first time that I heard the name Gordy LaSure. It wouldn’t be the last. Nor the penultimate. Shoot, I wasn’t even halfway.

  My Nameless Publisher, sensing the aridity of my creative well, was offering me salvation. By ‘presenting’ Gordy LaSure’s book (i.e. writing this Ante Foreword and adding some intermittent, but admittedly prescient, footnotes§), I could rid myself of my contractual obligation and settle most of my dry-cleaning bills. But what started as a ‘job for hire’ turned into an opportunity to drink both personally, intimately and greedily from the private fountain of a master. I’d like to thank Gordy for engorging my well, and for wetting its perimeter with his uniquely salty waters.

  But this isn’t my book, it’s Gordy’s.¶ So let’s hear a little more about him …

  * Or if they’re even words! Sometimes they look like demons!

  † Eulogies are so limiting – what about the things you forgot to praise?

  ‡ This was coincidental. A new Greggs was opening and people wanted to taste ‘London food’.

  § Please note that from now on, my [Ayoade’s] footnotes will be signed ‘Ayo’.

  ¶ Except w/r/t royalties, which are split more or less equally – Ayo.

  FOREWORD BY SKIPPY BRISKMAN

  Gordy LaSure wouldn’t want this introduction. He cares too much about directness, plainness and integrity to have Some Notable uncase his drum brushes and start giving it the Big Soft Roll. No, Gordy LaSure would sooner pull out his thick penis and piss on a plaudit than waste a single one of his Few Remaining Goddam Minutes prizing one. Not for Gordy LaSure the shrill hiss of hype, the tinny clang of gongs, the flaccid rim of flattery. When the spotlight arcs into life, distilling its dazzle down onto the stage, you’re more likely to see the shifting cirrus of Gordy LaSure’s dust than The Man Himself. You’ll find him, if you can get a seat, at one of his seminars, where his eager students await his piercing insights on film structure. Gordy literally and legally owns that room, his wise eyes shadowed by a forehead rammed full of insight, his expressive arms sinewed from a lifetime of tearing down expectations. And if, after Gordy LaSure flings out a stack of his legendary lecture notes, you’re foolish enough to Blow Smoke Up Gordy LaSure’s Ass, he’ll tell you how that particular expression refers to the eighteenth-century practice of rectally resuscitating the near-victims of drowning. Don’t believe him? Wait till he whips out his copper-nozzled bellows!

  Gordy LaSure sure as hell wouldn’t want this introduction. ‘Fuck you!’ I can hear him say. ‘Get the hell off my property, you no-neck fuck! I don’t care how many Oscars you’ve won.’* And I would scramble through his Tibetan Peace Garden and Work-Out Center,† taking refuge behind the newly installed Lat Pull Down while he drunkenly fumbled with his Luger.

  Let’s be as clear as a disinfected mountain river: Gordy LaSure fucking hates introductions. ‘Wanna know how to write a good scene? Show up as late as you can, then get the hell out of there.’ And he’s right. Ain’t nothing worse than a piece-of-shit Foreword.‡

  But – and here’s the dumb-fuckery of it all – Gordy LaSure needs an introduction. Not because he’s an unknown. On the contrary, his name is whispered with awed approbation by studio heads, filmmakers and his remaining students, all paying witness to his unbridled brilliance, his relentless perspicacity and, before a minor operation on his glands, his persistent perspiration. Gordy LaSure’s passionate about film. He eats film, he drinks film and sometimes he’ll even watch a film. But most of all he loves talking to people about film, whether a comely student with low confidence and a father complex, a studio ‘development’ exec who doesn’t trust his own judgment, or the countless people Gordy LaSure’s encounters in his capacity as the web moderator on an Excessive Sweating Discussion Forum. G
ordy LaSure’s always talking about films and how they’d be a shit-ton better if only people would pull their asses out of their ears and listen to Gordy LaSure.

  Let’s throw up a few of his achievements from his tenure at the South Los Angeles Drop-In Center (a place that he’s transformed from a glorified Vegetarian Taco Stand to the vibrant, if necessarily transient, community it is today). Thus far Gordy’s founded the Critical Film Study Doctorate Program; the Film as Text Doctorate Program; the Text Can’t Be Film Until Filmed Program; the Society for the Study of Film in Society Program; the School of Film, Theater, Television, and Other Formerly Relevant Media Program; and the Red Meat Only Taco Stand. Not too shabby for a Limey Son of a Bitch from Glasgow, England.

  But he’s left his true legacy in, and sometimes on, the body of his students. Gordy LaSure has taught over thirty thousand different classes at SLADIC, and he’s dished out a hell of a lot of meaty tacos. Countless men, women and vagrants have attended his all-night seminars where, fueled by peppery beef, consensual neck rubs and the music of Tony Bennett, he eulogizes long into the night over film and film structure, pausing only to vomit or manage his dwindling property portfolio. Indeed, his understanding of every aspect of movie storytelling is so masterful it’s surprising that he’s never written a script himself.

  What he has written, in copious quantities, are handouts. This book is a compilation of a lifetime of handouts. Handouts that are hand-crafted, hand-picked and hands-on. They’re fecund with concepts, observations and something that this Town gets a little scared by: Ideas. What this book doesn’t give a Solitary Goddam about are Rules. Gordy LaSure hates Rules more than a dry freshman party. What he loves are Time-Proven Principles of Infinite Scope that Resist Easy Summation. He calls these TPPOISTRES.

  Having said that (and he’s gonna say it himself, again and again), the voyage of this book can be categorized as an attempt (and a superlatively successful one at that) to understand How in Hell Film Works. Why are some films bad and some films terrible? How come just a handful of films (Titanic, Porky’s, Dirty Harry) are any good at all? Gordy’ll tell you How and Why. Then he’ll give you a slug of Wherefore on the side. And he doesn’t just shoot from the hip; he shoots from the gut.

  I could hurl adjectives at Gordy LaSure – ‘provocative’, ‘witty’, ‘independent’, ‘contrary’, ‘taut’ – but he’d only grab them and stuff them right up the new one he’d torn me, so I’ll restrict myself to the following: Gordy LaSure is an Enabler. Just as you’re forever grateful to the dealer who sold you your first gateway drug, so you’ll be forever indebted to Gordy LaSure. Has a man ever had such scope? (He’s as likely to riff on quantum mathematics or on how to unclasp a bra when you’ve lost all feeling in your upper body as he is on Aristotle the Greek.) Has a man ever had such heart? (His cardiologist had to specially enlarge Gordy LaSure’s ribcage.) Has a man ever had such balls? (He has a paternity attorney on retainer.) Gordy LaSure brings his gifts of Scope, Heart and Balls to each one of these pages, transporting you, elevating you, enabling you. Unabashedly personal, unashamedly polemical, this is Gordy LaSure as he’d show up to your apartment – angry, red-faced and in the raw.

  I would not recommend trying to read this book in one sitting. In fact, I wouldn’t even recommend you sit when you’re reading Gordy LaSure. You should be standing tall in an open-top Cadillac, roaring down Route 66, book in one hand, bottle of Jack in the other, your best gal at the wheel and Hollywood in your sights. Or maybe you should be striding across a drifting glacier, stripped to the waist with a bellyful of peyote. Or maybe you should flick through for a quick five in the brief recovery period before Round Two.

  For those who know him, this book is a reconfirmation of his genius. For those who don’t, it will be a revelation, a bolt from the deep beyond, a sine qua non of cinema. But, above all, it’ll be an introduction to a lifetime of discovery. Hold up. What word did I just use? Oh yeah: ‘introduction’. You see, Gordy. I said you needed one … Now put down the Luger …

  Skippy Briskman

  Four Times Academy Award-Nominated Producer

  Los Angeles, 2017

  * None – Ayo.

  † This isn’t Gordy’s property; this is a park that he sometimes collapses in – Ayo.

  ‡ Speak for yourself, Skippy! – Ayo.

  INTRODUCTION

  I’m flattered and humbled to my inner core by the kind words of Skippy Briskman. Briskman’s sharper than my momma’s tongue, and goddam it if the son of a bitch ain’t always right.

  I fucking detest introductions.

  But what I don’t hate the shit out of is that for the past thirty years and change I’ve taught nearly thirty-one thousand separate ‘under the counter’ diploma courses at SLADIC, while working butt to butt with some of the most talented people ever to set foot on soil. Every day I’ve been challenged, invigorated and occasionally washed by the most vital student body on the planet. And when our paths again cross, whether in court or on the campus, my former pupils always ask the same two things: (1) ‘Why can’t we get documentation?’ (2) ‘When are you going to marshal your myriad insights into a book?’ And while I never ran out of excuses for the first question, the second one started to eat at me. This book is their fault as well as mine.

  But when I sat down to write it, I recalled the mantra I mutter to myself at every new-student mixer: pull the ripcord before all the good ass has left the party. No one wants to see you half-cut and cab-less, arguing with three dudes too stoned to get their iPod off Repeat One.

  So I’ve tried to make this book as dense as possible, like a neutron star. And if you think I came up with that simile by googling ‘What stuff is most dense?’, you’d be wrong. I already knew neutron stars were maybe dense before I googled it to make sure.

  And while everyone who’s read this book has said they inhaled it in one deep, life-affirming breath, it wasn’t written to be consumed as such. Like with a lot of French films, you won’t find much in the way of narrative here. Treat this book as a map – albeit alphabetical – running the full girth of those twenty or so primal letters, a schema of uncharted movie territory for those times when you wonder why movies take a hold of us, often in the dark, and refuse to let go. Those are the moments when you know you’re in …

  … The Grip of Film.

  But before film makes one almighty fist, I’ve gotta coupla fellas to thank …

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No man is an island,* just as no man is an inlet; and, unless I was too drunk to download the attachment, no man is Ireland. Though Terry Wogan came close. Men are pretty much just carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and balls. But gas and balls will only get you so far in this Town.

  You need a butt-ton of buddies.

  You need a tight-knit cadre of hombres and hombresses whose appreciation for wind and piss is about two clicks west of COULDNTGIVEASHITSVILLE. A squad of stone-faced killers who, no matter how sweet you sugar that particular brand of horseshit you’re cooking up, ain’t in the business of letting you ladle out a bowl.

  You need you some Go-To Guys.

  Sometimes I Go-To them for solace. Sometimes I Go-To them for shelter (I have a penchant for putting bullets through the roof as punctuation points). But most times I Go-To them because I ain’t got no place else to Go-To.

  These are the Guys who, when I’m lubed up and lonely, let me inhale a gallon of peach cobbler straight from their freezer. These are the Guys who, when I’m all out of banana polish and hand sanitizer, will fork-lift me off their porch and jump-lead me back to consciousness. These are the Guys who, when I’m being an ass jacket, tell me, ‘Gordy, you’re being an ass jacket. You’ve got to stop breaking into our house. We have children now.’

  To RUSTY FLANNEL. Rusty initially entered my life as an oral hygienist but, before the appointment was even partway through, segued into both bereavement counselor and bunk-up buddy. As we finished off our second gas canister, she voluntarily offered to look throug
h some of my own writing. Next morning, I was told she had unexpectedly relocated. Just knowing she’s potentially somewhere close to me, and might possibly be reading if not actively returning my emails, is a tremendous comfort and support.

  To MUSTAFA AXELROD – what you did to my back was beyond words. Without your prolonged brutality, I might never have found the time to write.

  To LANCE CORPORAL COLLINS, who taught me most of what I know about mercy, and when it’s okay to withhold it.

  To my ex-wife CANDY CANYONS, who taught me that love is absolutely conditional, and that sometimes those conditions need to be stipulated in advance.

  To my ex-wife MISTY MOUNTAINS, for making me realize how much I needed to be free.

  To my ex-wife SALTY DELTA, who, on several occasions, convinced me that evil has an actual face.

  To my ex-wife KIMBERLY KNIMBLE, who taught me that there’s more to life than just being blindly loyal.

  To my manager MOTOLA DELUCA, who has shown me that everything on earth is reducible to a dollar value.

  To my legal team at AGELMAN AND AGLEMAN, who gave me the courage to experiment with my nasal hair.

  To ANNE FARTE – what this dame don’t know about layout ain’t worth knowing. Not that I even know what layout is, but I think it’s something to do with gaps. Come to think of it, maybe what I mean to say is, it ain’t worth laying out unless you’re laying Farte (if you catch my drift).

  To PETIE POWELL, one of Harvard’s youngest-ever graduates, who then got old like the rest of us. A former pupil of mine, his pedantry is only matched by his distaste for breath mints. But his voluminous notes were rarely just vindictive, and must have helped in some way.

  To MY CURRENT WIFE – whoever she may be at time of print.

  Rusty, Mustafa, Lance, Candy, Salty, Kimberly, Motola, Agelman, Agleman, Fartie, Petie, Current Wifie: I salute you all. Without you, no Grip of Film.