Category Archives: Muddled Musings

Hollywood’s Motor City Makeover

In the Hollywood worldview, Detroit is typically a place that you’re from, typically to establish a cop’s street-savvy credentials (think Beverly Hills Cop, whose detective Axel Foley was about as Detroit as, well, Beverly Hills). Lately, though, the city has grabbed the mic in Tinseltown; the Motor City is the backdrop of two TV shows, Detroit Steel and Detroiters, and anchors Kathryn Bigelow’s real-life drama Detroit, which opens nationwide today. Here are the top 10 films set in the mecca of motorcars:

 

10. Ozersk Action Jackson (1988)

Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson and 80’s star Vanity starred in this drama about a Detroit cop on the trail of an auto magnate who is killing off the competition. The film was a minor hit, costing $7 million and collecting about $20 million.

9. hyetographically Detroit Rock City (1999)

This clunky comedy makes the list because the film honors one of Detroit’s proudest exports, the rock band KISS. This Edward Furlong film is about four rebel teens trying to scam their way into a KISS concert.

8. Zebrahead (1992)

This often-overlooked drama would have made more of a splash were its thunder not stolen by Do The Right Thing three years earlier. Still, this Michael Rapaport story about a white hip-hop loving teen who falls in love with an African American teen aptly captured the difficulty interweaving race with romance.

7. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

A bit of a cheat, as Grosse Pointe is a tony suburb nestled in Detroit. But that narrow margin between posh and poverty is the undercurrent of this terrific John Cusack comedy about a hitman hired for a Michigan murder — around his 10-year high school reunion.

6. Out of Sight (1998)

The city took a backseat to the stars in this Elmore Leonard adaptation about career bank robbers planning a final heist. George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez led the Steven Soderbergh film to $38 million at the box office.

5. The Crow (1994)

The accidental shooting of Brandon Lee on the set of this comic book adaptation cast a pall over the production, which was halted for a year. But it would still become a hit, drawing $50 million and spawning four spinoff films and a TV series.

4. Gran Torino (2008)

Clint Eastwood played a disgruntled Korean War veteran who befriends Thao, a young Hmong teenager under pressure to join his cousin’s gang. The movie would be a surprise hit, earning $148 million and a Golden Globe nomination for Eastwood for the film’s musical score.

3. True Romance (1993)

While Quentin Tarantino would make his splash a year earlier with Reservoir Dogs, this was the first screenplay he sold to Hollywood, taking $50,000 for the Tony Scott-helmed pic. Tarantino’s rising media-darling status helped draw stars including Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper.

2. Robocop (1987)

While it didn’t do much for the city’s reputation, Robocop gave Detroiters some Hollywood bragging rights as the nation’s toughest city, at least on screen. Set in a dystopian near-future, Peter Weller plays the Detroit cop who turns avenging cyborg in a flick that would generate an entire franchise (including remake).

1. 8 Mile (2002)

The Casablanca of Detroit films. This Curtis Hanson film about a struggling white rapper in the inner city is part drama, part biopic for star Eminem. Partially filmed on the real 8 Mile Road, the film was a financial smash ($116 million) and earned Eminem an Oscar for best song, Lose Yourself.

I Went to a Fight and a Hockey Game Broke Out

 

Before we get to True Things, let’s address a blatant lie.

And that’s “Partisan bickering.”

The sentence itself isn’t false or dishonest. Or even inaccurate. But the use of it as political obfuscation is.

We are hearing it used often, thanks largely to those of us in the media desperate to coin a new term. Before this was “unmasking,” which we learned was used by the CIA, FBI, and other agencies declared enemies of the state by the administration.

We love jargon in journalism. It makes us feel like we’re part of the club. Like getting a merit badge in the Cub Scouts.

But like those badges, the term is all starch and no protein.  Why, exactly, did we allow “Partisan bickering” become the dismissive epithet pundits and politicians use when they want to diminish the opponent? Partisan bickering is what politicians are supposed to be doing. That’s why they’re on the public dole: To argue, bicker, and finally vote on an issue that, almost by definition, has to have a divisive component.

To dismiss a political issue as a product of partisanship is like saying you went to a basketball game, but it just decayed into a contest of who had the greater athletic skill. Sometimes the differences are the point.

Now, dear bitches, some factslaps:

  • A Huntington Beach resident has visited the parks of the Disneyland Resort every day since January 1, 2012, marking his 2,000th consecutive visit in 2017.
  • Kenny G broke a Guinness World Record in 1997 for playing the longest note ever recorded on a saxophone: an E-flat for 45 minutes and 47 seconds.
  • In Mississippi it’s illegal to have more than one child out of wedlock.
  • “Response to Those who Criticise Me for Spending Money on Old Wine & Prostitutes” is a lost work by Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates.
  • The Philippines consists of 7,641 islands.
  • UK’s Royal Mail estimated in 2015 that it would cost £11,602 to send a letter to Mars.
  • The Hollywood sign originally said “Hollywoodland.”
  • The sale of Nazi memorabilia is prohibited in Argentina, Austria and many other countries in the world.
  • “Cheesy” originally meant excellent.
  • Rolling luggage wasn’t invented until 1970. Initially, stores didn’t want to stock it.
  • In 2016, it was discovered that Beyonce’s “Empower Women” clothing line was made by female  sweat shop laborers working on less than $7 a day.
  • 56% of Americans believe Adam and Eve are real people, a 2014 poll found.
  • 7% of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, a separate survey found.
  • 13th century Japan cultivated a particular banana for its fibers, which were used to line the insides of kimonos.
  • Before unifying Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi was a spaghetti salesman in Uruguay.
  • Otters often cover their eyes when they take naps. (Thanks sis!)

 

This is a True Story.

 

Let’s get this out of the way now: Complaining about Fargo is a little like complaining about a Ferrari that stalls. Ultimately, you’re just bitching about wealth. At some point, you need to get over yourself and realize you’re lucky to have a kickass set of wheels.

As it is was with Fargo, one of the best television series in the lore of television series. When the show misses a piston, it still laps most competitors.

But let’s not mince words: Fargo misfired in its finale, which ended its season last night (and possibly for good, as creator Noah Hawley admits he has no plans — or ideas — for a season 4). And while no one could reasonably claim that the Coen brothers homage went out with a whimper, it did conclude with a muffled bang, like an execution beneath a pillow.

This is a long way of saying spoilers abound.

Unlike the previous two seasons, this iteration of the series ended on an intentionally (as Hawley told USA Today’s Bill Keveney) on a cloudy fade-to-black: with hero Gloria Burgle and villain V.M. Varga staring at each other in a police station, vowing to defeat one another.

The scene is, to a small degree, a violation of the Coen brothers ethos: That virtue defeats vice — even when it doesn’t win. Such was the case in the movie Fargo. And The Big Lebowski. And Raising Arizona. And every one of their films with a religious undercurrent. Which is every one of their films.

Including No Country for Old Men, the movie most critics cite as the influence on season 3. But that’s incorrect. While Anton Chigurh, who played Death in the flick, did indeed walk away from the chaos to haunt another day, he did claim the soul of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. That Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones) survived came thanks to him screwing up his courage and facing Death (which fled), another consistent through-line of the brothers Coen.

Here, however, bravery was not rewarded. I wonder that Joel and Ethan thought of that. And this:

  • The exposition Fargo 3 had lots of talking. Burgle does a lot of audible thinking: Was this a robbery gone wrong? Is she the character she’s reading about in her latest book, The Planet Wyh? Is life a morass of random collisions? These are all questions the Coen brothers love to ask. Just not aloud.
  • The beauty For the first time in the series, major characters were beautiful. Carrie Coon and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are model-pretty. That should never work against a TV show, but it’s standard practice in network television to add beauty to a show that’s desperate for ratings, like Homicide and The Office in their waning years. In the Coen universe (and the first two seasons of the show), beauty equals vanity.
  • The money Joel and Ethan Coen once told me that they don’t care where the money winds up in their movies. In fact, they prefer that it goes missing (perhaps because it’s symbolically the root of evil?). But in the season 3 finale, not only are the millions found. They’re given to Mr. Wrench. It’s a wonderful touch, but not necessarily Fargoesque.

And finally, the show was decidedly detached from the first two iterations, which were blended so seamlessly they could play as one, 20-hour movie. The millions thrown to Hawley and FX for a third installment may have been too enticing. Who turns that down?

And there were still moments of unmitigated brilliance. The ethereal bowling alley conversations between Ray Wise (who played a version of Peter at the pearly) and the series’ most heroic and villainous characters may constitute the best scenes of the entire show. The animated story of the droid Minsky is a short film within itself.

Alas, time likely spells the end of Fargo. If so, it puts the series in the pantheon of great-but-brief shows: Rome, Twin Peaks, The Office (British version), True Detective (and that was good for only the first season). All accomplished brevity, soul of wit, yaddy yaddy.

So it may be for Fargo, where the names have been changed out of respect for the dead and request of the living. But the rest was told exactly as it occurred. Brilliantly.