Looking For Good Bad Comedies

Lately I’ve been in the mood for lowbrow movie comedies, the kind of comedies you might not admit to watching if you want to sound sophisticated in polite company. In fact, I suppose I’m writing this in the vague hope that somebody reading this might have some suggestions. The Hangover is on my list but it’s currently a very short list.

So far, I’ve revisited films that for some reason didn’t connect with me in the past, which meant beginning with Will Ferrell, a guy whose definition of comedy is so broad that he makes Jim Carrey look like Bob Newhart. I began by rewatching Anchorman which previously hadn’t clicked but I have now come to love enough to have seen it three or four times. I watched Step Brothers and found it enjoyably loud and vulgar but perhaps not quite as good. The Campaign was better than both yet terribly underrated as a savage political satire. Then I moved beyond Farrell to other films in the genre. Get Smart is loveable fun. Horrible Bosses I’d seen before but I watched again and really enjoyed. I even went to the trouble of seeing the very recent We’re the Millers which was surprisingly good in its totally brash and vulgar way.

Last night, however, it was the turn of 21 Jump Street and this morning I’m wondering how the hell I managed to make it through to the close. Had I not been drawing cartoons as I watched it, I might have turned it off because it was a real struggle. Apparently it’s a remake of an American TV show I’ve never seen but is famous for being an early vehicle for Johnny Depp. I doubt if the show was anything like the movie.

I’d seen Jonah Hill in the brilliant Moneyball and apparently he was in Evan Almighty though I don’t remember it enough to say if he was good.  I haven’t seen Superbad, which is apparently the film to see if you want to become a Jonah Hill fan but, after last night, I can definitely say that’s the last thing I want to become. I enjoy purile humour. I enjoy offensive humour. I even enjoy downright bad humour if done the right way. Tonight I intend to tackle the modern Three Stooges just to see Larry David dressed as a nun. Even if it’s bad, I hope it’s bad in a good Farrelly brothers way. The only criticism I’ve ever had about the Farrelly brothers is that they try to rationalise their sick humour with sentimentality and a tendency to preach about the very issues they mock.

None of which explains 21 Jump Street which currently has a 7.1 score on the IMDB. I’m clearly in the minority who really hated this film and that just confuses me. Are there that many people in the world who enjoy the Roy Chubby Brown approach to comedy? It’s that comedy which substitutes wit for vulgarity. ‘Why did the chicken cross the road? Obviously to get to the f***ing other side you c***!’

21 Jump Street set up situations in which a half decent comedy writer could inject plenty of good one liners. Yet facing down some bikers, the two rookie cops enter into a typical exchange:

Jenko: Hey! You want me to beat your dick off?
Domingo: You want to beat my dick off?
Jenko: I'll beat your dick off with both hands. What's up? Let's go.
One-Percenter #1: That's weird, man!
Schmidt: I think what he was trying to say was, he's gonna punch you so many times round the genital area that...that your dick's just gonna fall off.

I suppose it takes all sorts to make the world and I should just move on, except that's hardly edifying, especially when I also note that whilst 22 Jump Street is due out next year, there’s still no word on a sequel to the best horror comedy of the past decade, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, the best science fiction film, Dredd, or the best thriller, Steven Soderbergh brilliantly subdued Haywire.

I love Stephen King but he’s just so wrong about Kubrick

I notice that the BBC have interviewed Stephen King ahead of the publication of ‘Doctor Sleep' (great cover, by the way), his sequel to ‘The Shining’. There's a far better piece in The Guardian today, though it doesn't really add to the points I found interesting from the BBC interview. They came in the context of a brief chat with the now ubiquitous Will Gompertz when King explained how and why he dislikes the Kubrick film. Naturally, the BBC seemed to ignore this point entirely and punctuated King’s interview with clips from the Kubrick classic when they could have used clips from the 1997 mini-series adaptation of the book, starring Steven Weber and Rebecca De Mornay, which King himself has said he prefers. That they didn’t means they’re either lazy, indifferent, or implicitly stating where their own preferences lie.

King is of course bound to prefer the 1997 version given that he executively produced the series. It probably means that he’ll never admit that it was the kind of made-for-TV show you watch with mixed feelings about whether you can be bothered returning for the final episode. It is plodding, rather too gentle, and utterly faithful to the novel. He’s just as unlikely to ever admit that the series proves why he’s so wrong about Kubrick’s version.

Let me say that I really like King. He seems one of the good guys in a world filled with fakes, charlatans, and snake oil salesmen. I love listening to King talk, especially when he’s talking about the writing process and literature. However, I have occasionally found it difficult to get through his books. For me, his strict 2000 word a day policy sometimes translates into books that break down into 2000 word chunks, switching between characters in a way that hinders the forward momentum of the novel. He loves creating such full worlds of the characters that it sometimes gets in the way of narrative. On occasions, that huge vision works really well. I enjoyed ‘The Stand’ and ‘It’. Sometimes it works less well. I recently couldn’t make it through 1400+ pages of ‘Under the Dome’. I was sitting there desperate to know more about ‘the dome’ when King only wanted to give me endless backstory about minor characters. Eventually, I realised I didn’t care about ‘the dome’ or ‘the book’.

I seem to remember also struggling to get through ‘The Shining’ but that’s not why I prefer Kubrick’s version.

Kubrick’s film is the ultimate example of mercurial filmmaking: scavenging just enough from the novel but craftily layering it with the things that obsessed Kubrick. King says it’s too cold but that’s precisely why Kubrick made films and didn’t write novels. It’s intellectual horror, not the physical horror rooted in familiar themes that King enjoys. King says that Shelley Duvall is the most misogynistic representation of a woman ever put on film and that all she does is scream but, for me, Kubrick destroys her so ultimately (including in real life) that she eventually finds her deepest instincts for survival. King also says that Nicholson played the character as crazy from the beginning. I would agree, although, that’s why it’s intellectual horror. The supernatural elements are almost psychological in Kubrick’s version. The Overlook Hotel feels like being trapped in a warped mind. King says that Kubrick's version is 'a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones' but I think that's it's greatest virtue. King wants us believe that the family found horror on the mountain but I think Kubrick wants us to think they found horror within themselves and that message is far more potent.

I suppose it’s understandable the King doesn’t like the Kubrick version because his characters are all but missing from the film. Kubrick’s ‘Shining’ shines because of Kubrick. In a way, the BBC report just highlighted this discrepancy. Even as it tried to promote King’s writing, it was reminding us of how much poorer we all became when we lost Stanley Kubrick.

***

Other than deciding whether I’ll be trying ‘Doctor Sleep’ (Hey! a review copy would be great! Sorry... Little in-joke there between me and Samsung), I’ve had a busy twenty four hours. I drew a quick cartoon to celebrate the birthday of an architect and then, as I predicted, I ended up tinkering with my graphic short story ahead of sending it on Monday. I tinkered with it all day yesterday and until 3.30 this morning: more cleaning up the drawings, more crosshatching, adding a little more humour, smoothing the prose where it didn’t quite feel right on the ear, and then I changed the overall tint. Turns out that printing greyscale on my on Canon gives things a very slight brownish hint which was just the effect I’m after.

It means I slept late this morning but woke up to find a wonderful gift in my inbox. It was an interview with Sparks, in fact, possibly the best interview I’ve ever heard them give and nearly an hour long. I now intend to spend too much time on the internet seeing if Samsung have announced the price of the new Note 10.1 (2014) edition which, if rumours are correct, will be appearing in shops on Wednesday.