The Grip of Film Read online

  Lastly, and legally, I’m obliged to thank Richard Ayoade, to whom I ‘told’ this. Here’s to you, you glorified typist. I’ll always remember your taking 20 per cent from a broke bum. Why don’t you try coming up with something yourself, you plagiarizing stack of fuck?†

  * Equally, no man is a cattle grid, but I guess you can only have one image per aphorism – Ayo.

  † Mixed feelings about this, and I don’t want to get all legal so early. Suffice to say, the final figure’s closer to 60 per cent, so draw your own conclusions about the scale of my contribution – Ayo.

  WHAT THE HELL AM I READING EXACTLY?

  This is a book about how, why, when and if films work. The meanings of ‘how’, ‘why’, ‘when’ and ‘work’ are pretty clear, but the terms ‘if’ and ‘films’ could use a little clarification. Let’s cut the deck.

  ‘If’ is used here in a similar way to the word ‘whether’. It’s conditional, people. I’m saying that films might not make ANY sense. I think it’s unlikely, but it’s useful to bear it in mind, even though it’s definitely best to completely ignore it. Otherwise we could all be wasting our time. And if we are – and that’s totally possible, if not probable – we should absolutely just ignore that too. The other important thing to keep up front and center stage – and why the word ‘if’ is so important to me – is that I don’t want to be held responsible if in the future (e.g. next month/a month subsequent to that) a group of people can actually prove that films don’t work/are a waste of time (e.g. there’s been an evolutionary leap in intelligence because of something nuclear). Because if that happens, I don’t want to be this big pro-film blowhard going, ‘Hey, look how well films work, everyone!!’ I can totally imagine a world where someone like a Dickie Dawkins or that guy who invented the Dyson manages to scientifically prove that films don’t work/exist. But what I am also saying is that I believe that there are such things as ‘films’ and some of them ‘work’. Maybe. But I’m not saying that my reality is the only one that could exist. I’m massively signed up to the multiverse. And in that respect I’m completely with Scott Bakula. I think that quantum shit is just as valid as real-time shit. I don’t know if this makes sense – I’m a little jacked – but I just want to be honest, as well as pre-emptively defend myself because I’m so fucking sick of being attacked right now I could strangle someone.

  ‘Films’: what the fuck are films? Easy, padre – holster your blaster – because you’re holding my 320-page answer. So let’s not flip our lids just yet. But what I can say for certain(ish) is that I sure as shit know where films are. They’re in America. Fact is, the reason I shipped out from Glasgow back before beyond (besides some mixed feelings w/r/t unprovoked headbutting) was because I wanted to be where movies were. And that’s Way Out West. You know the place – they say ‘hooray’ for it. Still lost? Then glance up at the big-ass sign … I’m talking about H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D. This is a Town that’s constitutionally committed to clarity. In 45ft-high letters. And (if you want to talk cultural significance) those letters matter so much in these parts that Hugh Hefner, the international face of non-penetrative pornography, put his hand down his silk pyjamas to pony up for the restoration of the letter ‘Y’: the letter that looks most like the thing he’s dedicated his life to not quite showing.

  So let’s call a dick a dick: when I talk about films, I’m not talking about Werner the Elephant, an elegiac tone poem by some architecture postgrad from Portugal. I’m talking about films made in this Town. Films that actual people actually want to see. They’re popular. They’re important. They’re immortal. And The Grip of Film is only gonna pick the juiciest fruit from the bush. So go kneel on a splash mat – your cup’s about to overflow. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I talk about film …

  Roll call!

  3 Days to Kill

  Above the Law

  The Avengers

  Bangkok Adrenaline

  Bangkok Dangerous

  Barb Wire

  Basic Instinct

  Beverly Hills Cop

  Body of Evidence

  Bond films

  Captain Ron

  Charlie’s Angels II: Full Throttle

  Click

  Cocktail

  Cop and a Half

  Cop Out

  Crank

  A Dangerous Man

  Die Hard

  The Equalizer

  Executive Decision

  Fire Down Below

  Freddie Got Fingered

  Ghost Dad

  Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

  Hard to Kill

  He’s Just Not That into You

  Highlander

  Hotel for Dogs

  I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

  It’s Complicated

  Jaws: The Revenge

  Just Go with It

  Kindergarten Cop

  Legally Blonde

  Look Who’s Talking

  Mall Cop

  The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Guy Ritchie version)

  Marked for Death

  Meet Dave

  Olympus Has Fallen

  Predator

  Raw Deal

  Red Scorpion

  Red Sonja

  Road House

  RoboCop

  Rocky

  Shanghai Surprise

  Showgirls

  Silent Rage

  Six Bullets

  Sliver

  Striptease

  The Taken trilogy

  The Terminator

  Timecop

  Tokarev

  Total Recall

  Michael Bay’s Transformers (quadrilogy)

  View from the Top

  What Happens in Vegas

  What to Expect When You’re Expecting

  White Chicks

  Young Guns II: Blaze of Glory

  I make no apology for the fact that many of these films are from the eighties. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the last decade when kicking butt and taking names was what this Town did. And what names! Some of the most pumped-up dudes ever to walk past a phalanx of felled flunkies. Stand-up guys, standing tall in concealed lifts. Cruise, Lundgren, Russell, Stallone, Van Damme. Artists. Storytellers. Icons. Each one has held me and countless others in Film’s Grip, both on and off camera. I also make no apology for the fact that I’ve seen no more than eight of the films on this list. But I sure as hell plan to. Especially White Chicks, which sounds super-sexy and really not that racist.

  Films are stories, and stories are ‘equipment for living’. Recent scientific studies have confirmed that we now need movies more than we need food. In fact, they have shown that mice deprived of stories end up eating themselves, or at the very least eating more than they should.

  So, to study such films is to make a study of our own hearts. Not as the black husk we dimly discern when we let some light in under the duvet (appropriately called ‘comforters’ on these shores), but as we’d like our hearts to be: open, healthy and free from atherosclerosis.

  To spend time with movies such as these is to find out what makes us who we are, and why we need to gather in the dark and tell one another our deepest dreams, desires and high-speed-chase survival stories.

  Interested?

  Then stop yanking it and come on in.

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  Much of this text has been cut without my permission.* As a result, little of it makes sense, and some parts have ended up flat-out racist. Often passages end with a cross-reference to another passage that has been omitted, but some passages seem the same as before the cuts (or even longer, if that’s possible?) – I can’t really tell anymore, I’m so tired of fighting these goddam book people with their ‘grammar’ and intolerance for ‘repetition’.

  Upshot?

  I’m as frustrated with this situation as you’re about to be.

  * This is simply untrue. All cuts were made after a rigorous (email) consultation process. LaSure had final say, but he would often refuse
to say anything. He would answer most of my enquiries by sending me a picture of his penis. However, for some reason he insisted on keeping in the references to the pieces that were cut. Why? Who knows? The only explanation I could hazard is our old friend ‘Word Count’. LaSure is a pamphlet man. If you cut him open, you’d snag your blade on a couple of cheap staples – Ayo.

  A NOTE ON THE USE OF GENDER WITHIN THE TEXT

  I’m a man and I’m sick of apologizing for it.

  I’m sick of standing in front of some tribunal and having to explain that what I did is normal male behavior. And yes, you can sue me. That is your right. And, in fact, you are currently suing me, but this is who I am. You knew I couldn’t be faithful. I work with women! What did you expect me to do? Just look at them?!

  Point is, I’m not going to transition. I’m not ready to hand in my ‘Y’ chromosomes to the Matriarchy. I’m not saying I’m done talking to women. I’m just saying I’m assuming they’re done talking to me. I’m a Man’s Man, and for the sake of this book I’m going to assume you are too. In fact, as long as you’re between these here covers, you’re my Man.

  So sure, break my balls for writing ‘him’ rather than ‘him/her’. Kick me in the ass for trying to write elegant. Do you know how tempting it was to write ‘him/her’ seeing as I barely made my contractual word count?

  I’ll answer you.

  It was tempting.

  It was very tempting.

  It was very, very tempting.*

  But I’m an artist. I go my way. And that’s the way of an Ethnically Non-Diverse Cisgender Dude.

  Ready for some straight shootin’?

  Cos I’ve got a full clip, baby.

  * I fought and I fought and I fought.

  DISCLAIMER

  You may think, seeing as we’re already thirty pages deep and the book hasn’t even got going, that I’m having a problem with startin’ her up.

  Sure. It’s no longer a certainty.

  But you try maintaining a loving physical relationship when you don’t have a regular roof over your head. Most places I stay, I don’t own. Most places I stay, I’m not meant to be there. In fact, let’s call an ass an ass: most places I stay, I’ve forced entry.

  So yeah, if they’ve installed an alarm system, we will have to get down to it in the jeep. And that vehicle has all my stuff piled up on the passenger seat, including my lecture notes, which don’t have plastic covers anymore because I wanted to see how easily they’d melt, so okay, we’re just gonna have to head on out to the flatbed.

  Al fresco.

  Come rain, come shine.

  And let’s get some intel on this: the back of my jeep doesn’t even have a cover. The tarpaulin on the deck is rancid. Sometimes the smell is so strong I forget why I’m even there. And by the time I’ve scrubbed down and made good, the moment’s long gone.

  So’s she.

  What’re you gonna do? The gun range is closed for the night and your limp’s pretty bad now.

  Best grab a drink from the dash and take in a movie, huh?

  THE

  GRIP

  OF

  FILM

  AN A–W* OF MOVIES

  * Gordy wanted to be upfront about the fact that he couldn’t think of a ‘single, goddam thing beginning with “X”, “Y” or “Z”’ – Ayo.

  A

  ‘We’re born; we live; we die …’

  ACTION

  Guess what the director shouts at the start of every take? I’ll give you a clue: it ain’t ‘Talk!’ Whoever heard of Talkies!?

  You SLUG the guy.

  You KISS the dame.

  You TOTAL the car.

  That’s movies.*

  And I love ’em.

  See: KISSING; SLUGGING; TOTALING

  * A similar order of events unfolded when I accompanied Gordy on a taco tour of Montana. At one point he tried to rip off my arm because he thought I was a chicken fajita. LaSure would often go into deliriums precipitated by hand sanitiser, which he would drink when he ran out of nail-polish remover – Ayo.

  ACT STRUCTURE

  We’re born; we live; we die.

  How’s that for a THREE-ACT STRUCTURE?*

  All successful movies have three acts: Act I, Act IIA, Act IIB and Act III (not incl. the EPILOGUE). To highlight these Aristotelian principles in even more depth, let’s lock eyes once more on John Irvin’s visionary 1986 action thriller Raw Deal.

  ACT I

  A Mob informant under FBI protection is hiding out in the woods when – BAM! – an elite hit squad turns this ‘safe’ house into a ‘not-so-safe’ house. One of the fresh cadavers is Blair Shannon, the kid of FBI agent Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin). Surveying the aftermath, Shannon senior is busted up: ‘Thirty-seven years of this shit and I never got a scratch … They’re dead, whoever set this up. Whatever it takes, they’re dead.’ The subtext? Shannon wants payback. And then some.†

  Cut to: Small-town sheriff Mark Kaminsky (Arnold Schwarzenegger) taking down some punk posing as a motorcycle cop. After he busts the sorry lowlife, he goes home to his PAIN-IN-THE-ASS WIFE. This broad drinks like an open gutter, and what’s more, she’s slamming the hard stuff. We instantly know she’s a BAD PERSON and unlikely to feature heavily in this narrative, except as an OBSTACLE. During their drunken row, we hear Kaminsky’s BACKSTORY.

  Kaminsky was run out the Bureau by a PEN-PUSHING SON OF A BITCH called Marvin Baxter (Joe Regalbuto), when all Kaminsky had done was shake down a piece of shit who’d iced a kid. If Kaminsky hadn’t resigned, Baxter would have prosecuted and Kaminsky might not have got his current crappy sheriff’s job, which – by the way – he’s pretty damn good at, not that his wife gives a fuck. In fact, this sodden wreck tries to hit him in the kisser with a chocolate cake that has the word ‘SHIT’ written on it in squirty cream. As an audience, we instantly know that she’s pissed as hell, and possibly didn’t even enjoy making the cake. She’s doesn’t know how lucky she is that her husband has provided a roof over her drunk head AND an oven so she can make these sarcastic gestures in the first place! She misses Kaminsky by a mile. ‘You should not drink and bake,’‡ Kaminsky fires back, sharp as a whip.

  Later, when the old soak has passed out, Kaminsky, displaying the kind of largesse that binds us to him for ever, picks up this sloshed harlot in his safe, manly-as-hell arms and puts her to bed. Movies help us understand that people who can’t function after consuming large amounts of alcohol are despicable bums. Kaminsky can handle his drink – it’s one of the many things that make him better than other people and worthy of the CAMERA’S CONSTANT LOVING GAZE.

  But before he even gets a chance to unwind with a slug of the good stuff, he receives a telephone call from his old colleague Harry Shannon. Thus the CALL TO ACTION in Gary DeVore and Norman Wexler’s clever screenplay (from a story by Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati) is brilliantly literalized into an actual call. Shannon needs Kaminsky to go undercover and tear the Mob a new one. If Kaminsky successfully exacts revenge for Shannon’s son, he’ll have a shot at re-entering the Bureau.

  So, after a brief REFUSAL OF THE CALL (Kaminsky, characteristically humble: ‘There’s nothing that a small-town sheriff can do that you can’t’), Shannon REFUSES THE REFUSAL OF THE CALL by saying that this is under-the-radar shit, totally on the lowdown, and no one else is close to badass enough. Kaminsky uses the HERO’S PREFERRED VERBAL MODE OF ASSENT: the quip. ‘Do you think I’ll still pass the physical?’ Of course he’ll pass the physical! His tits are like marble!

  So Kaminsky fakes his own death in a CHEMICAL PLANT EXPLOSION and re-emerges with a new identity: convicted felon Joseph P. Brenner. The audience’s nuts are in their stomachs. There’s no turning back. We’re ASS DEEP into –

  ACT IIA

  Brenner/Kaminsky cosies up to Paulo Rocca (Paul Shenar), the right-hand man to head hombre Luigi Patrovita (Sam Wanamaker), convincing him they need a BADASS like him on their side by shaking down their rivals and generally being tough as shit. It
’s while at Patrovita’s secret basement casino that he meets Monique (Kathryn Harrold), a high-class piece who works for Rocca’s top-level flunky Max Keller (Robert Davi). It’s clear that she immediately wants him inside her on account of his being a PRIME PIECE OF BEEF WHO CAN HANDLE A HOT TAMALE. Kaminsky fast becomes a Mob linchpin, recovering $100 mil of China White from the Feds, as well as ghosting a rival hood. But Keller manages to find out that Kaminsky is not who he says he is and rats him out.

  ACT IIB

  Meanwhile, we find out the original leak was Baxter – the yellow piece of shit that ran Kaminsky outta the Bureau in the first place! When Kaminsky and Keller go to a cemetery to perform a routine hit, the target is revealed to be Shannon, blowing Kaminsky’s cover. Together they manage to mow down Keller and another Mob goon, but Shannon gets hurt real bad in the crossfire. Kaminsky gets out by the skin of his butt and takes Monique (who basically loves him now) to the airport. He tells her to wait for him while he embarks on some MAN’S BUSINESS …

  … AN EXTENDED ACT III ASS-KICK.

  ACT III

  Kaminsky suits up, tools up and single-handedly lays waste to every rotten fuck stationed at Patrovita’s gravel pit, wherefrom he swipes a mountain of green. He then heads to Patrovita’s casino and executes the louses who offed Blair. He then kills, in order, Rocca, Patrovita and Baxter, before heading to the airport to give Monique a cool quarter mil in readies. He tells her to take off and start again, even though the chances of her meeting a man of his caliber are two clicks west of Not Fucking Likely.

  EPILOGUE