Good movies that haven't held up.

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

12 hours ago, MrPhlegm said:

Been moving and blew out a disc in my back. Fucking sciatic nerve got pinched and made the inside front quad cramp like a motherfucker. Pain city. Hard to post bent over to take the pressure off. Disc swelling is finally going down. Had to ride to the er in an ambulance. Got morphine and everything.

Phlegm on morphine would be the greatest posting in Surly history.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 minute ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Phlegm on morphine would be the greatest posting in Surly history.

Like he already hasn't done that....  I celebrate the mans entire catalog.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

Just wrapped up Mission Impossible.  All the computer stuff is hilarious.  “We found a coded message on the internet Max is planning a heist” followed by Tom Cruise looking on the “internet” and trying to find it.  Ultimately successfully emailing max through this technique.  

[RPM 26319]

Just about any movie or TV made pre-cell phone is ridiculous. Got to reach somebody fast or they are going to die? That involves high speed driving on crowded streets instead of just calling their cell.

[TexasHooch 5122]

Just re-watched Iron Eagle with my son last week.  While it's true that it doesn't hold up for me, I can say unequivocally that my 10 year-old son loved it every bit as much as 11 year-old me did when it came out.

Coincidentally, he's a huge fan of Cesnas too, so I was really excited to have been able to find this shirt for him.

Edited April 17, 2021 by TexasHooch

[mulletpelini 5211]

Did he ask you what that square thing that he plugged headphones into was?

[Eskimohorn 5635]

Just about any movie or TV made pre-cell phone is ridiculous. Got to reach somebody fast or they are going to die? That involves high speed driving on crowded streets instead of just calling their cell.

Not exactly the point of this thread.

You don’t watch Westerns and think, “why are they riding horses. where’s their cars?”

[Underdog 28623]

^ You obviously haven't watched Blazing Saddles all the way through.  

[Bender Bending Rodriguez 1678]

On 6/6/2018 at 1:17 PM, ScottishHorn said:

I watched a documentary on the making of Caddyshack.  It was basically a wild and crazy party for 6 straight weeks.  It's amazing the movie was even made.  I dont think there was much of a script either.  They basically wrote it as they were making it.

A funny story about the production, (shot in south Florida in 1979) was that the studio was alerted to possible drug abuse on set when all the cast members started requesting their per diems in cash. 

[Apep 645]

Recently re-watched 48 Hours. Great cast. As an eight year-old, I really loved all them titties flopping around. As an adult, everything just feels off. The forced racial slurs. Eddie Murphy kicking ass. Was it always so self-satirizing or am I just that far removed from the time period?

[RPM 26319]

Just now, Apep said:

The forced racial slurs. Eddie Murphy kicking ass.

It was a different time...

[Guest Lobo]

Curious y'all mentioning 48 Hours.  Few weeks ago, I watched it all the way through for probably the first time in 25 years.  It's not as funny as I remember and doesn't hold up as well as I was hoping.  But holy shit, Eddie Murphy was a really good actor.  That was his first feature film, he was just 21 years old.  He was obviously very funny, but he played a decently wide range in the film and nailed almost every scene.  I forgot how awesome he was once.  Not just comedically, but all-around.  He was brilliant in 48 Hours and several movies thereafter.  And then?....the bad years/decades.

[Lhorn 4913]

30 minutes ago, RPM said:

It was a different time...

We call them “The good old days.”

 

j/k

Edited April 15, 2021 by Lhorn

[Beantown Express 2.0 6559]

51 minutes ago, Bender Bending Rodriguez said:

A funny story about the production, (shot in south Florida in 1979) was that the studio was alerted to possible drug abuse on set when all the cast members started requesting their per diems in cash. 

Another funny story is the character Mr. Wang.  My best friend's mother was a professor at Florida Atlantic University and friends with "Mr. Wang" who was also a professor there.  He was in the crowd while they were filming and Rodney Dangerfield saw him and decided to add him to the scenes as his friend, Mr. Wang.  The rest is history.

[Wade 464]

On 4/30/2018 at 6:43 PM, Billy Pilgrim said:

I tried to watch the original Amityville Horror a few months ago which scared the hell out of me when I was a kid- found out that it was a really shitty movie. My wife who, who scares easily from horror movies, was rolling her eyes at the "scary parts".

Saw that at the theater when it came out, was about 14.  Scared the shit out of me, too.  After movie we stopped by my friend's house cause he had to grab something or other.  He had one of those side entrances where you could go down to the basement or up to the kitchen.  Jerk sent me down to the basement to wait while he went upstairs to do his thing.  Didn't turn the light on.  There was a little light coming in through the basement windows, but it was terrifying right after seeing that movie.

[pops 6984]

4 hours ago, Bender Bending Rodriguez said:

A funny story about the production, (shot in south Florida in 1979) was that the studio was alerted to possible drug abuse on set when all the cast members started requesting their per diems in cash. 

Just having Chevy on the set could have alerted them to that. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Horror movies don't often have a long shelf life.

[Kennythetiger 9380]

On 6/11/2018 at 4:45 PM, Liquor and Poker said:

WTF??

You realize that Starship Troopers is meant to be satirical, right?  It's actually a sendup of militarism and military culture.

I get that it has no real connection to the book, which is militaristic and reactionary itself.

Plus boobs. 

[Kennythetiger 9380]

On 6/7/2018 at 9:52 AM, Brisketexan said:

What I like are the ones that go full circle: you thought it was awesome at the time, and now see that it’s SO bad...that it’s awesome.

See: Iron Eagle.

Tremors. 

[MoJames 8244]

9 minutes ago, Kennythetiger said:

Tremors. 

[Brisketexan 105121]

34 minutes ago, Kennythetiger said:

Tremors. 

That was ALWAYS awesome because it was bad which made it awesome so it was always awesome.

[Apep 645]

4 hours ago, Lobo said:

Curious y'all mentioning 48 Hours.  Few weeks ago, I watched it all the way through for probably the first time in 25 years.  It's not as funny as I remember and doesn't hold up as well as I was hoping.  But holy shit, Eddie Murphy was a really good actor.  That was his first feature film, he was just 21 years old.  He was obviously very funny, but he played a decently wide range in the film and nailed almost every scene.  I forgot how awesome he was once.  Not just comedically, but all-around.  He was brilliant in 48 Hours and several movies thereafter.  And then?....the bad years/decades.

What's the cut-off? I haven't seen all of his movies, but I remember the Distinguished Gentleman was pretty funny. Nothing much beyond that looked good.

[Parliament 14258]

Tremors. 

I'm not gonna neg rep you, but come on.

[Gatorubet 30233]

Phlegm on morphine would be the greatest posting in Surly history.

How could we tell it from normal Phlegm posting?

[Brothahorn 10087]

Pulp Fiction. 

 

Tarantino dropping N bombs was problematic and unnecessary, then. The inside joke of having a black wife would be accepted now.

[atomheartbevo 89659]

Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, is tough to watch these days - it’s like they shot it on 16mm or something.  Also the editing sucked.  Felt like it could use a Snyder Cut or something.   

[ztejas 43420]

51 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

Pulp Fiction. 

 

Tarantino dropping N bombs was problematic and unnecessary, then.

I've had a similar take recently. It doesn't age well. And not because we're more PC or it's a different environment or whatever - I'm the opposite of PC. It's just cringy.

I'll see if I can dig it up - may have posted it here. 

[Eskimohorn 5635]

I've had a similar take recently. It doesn't age well. And not because we're more PC or it's a different environment or whatever - I'm the opposite of PC. It's just cringy.
I'll see if I can dig it up - may have posted it here. 

Its also because hes a bad actor. Stoltz pulled it off better (Inglewood) but it was still jarring back then. And unnecessary.

[ztejas 43420]

6 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:

Its also because hes a bad actor. Stoltz pulled it off better (Inglewood) but it was still jarring back then. And unnecessary.

I'm just speaking on the movie as a whole. And some of his other works. 

Again, I'm pretty sure I laid my thoughts out on this recently. Give me a sec to find it.

[South Austin 52490]

8 hours ago, Brothahorn said:

Pulp Fiction. 

 

Tarantino dropping N bombs was problematic and unnecessary, then. The inside joke of having a black wife would be accepted now.

Same. Even when I saw this in the early 90s I thought the Tarantino character’s use of the word was more deliberate than authentic.

But I think that’s a cringy aspect to a movie that otherwise still holds up.

[T’Boo Ted Marshall 2732]

What's the cut-off? I haven't seen all of his movies, but I remember the Distinguished Gentleman was pretty funny. Nothing much beyond that looked good.

Boomerang

[yoladu 4094]

On 5/2/2018 at 6:51 PM, slorch said:

Movies about social moods are bigger stretches than technological pioneers, IMHO

Red Dawn, not that it was great acting to begin with, but I have often had trouble conveying to younger people what the Cold War was like.

Philadelphia, similarly, it is difficult to convey the mindest of a nation and world who were simultaneously shocked, scared, and mortified while others were apathetic or worse, filled with hate in the face of HIV and AIDS.

Breakfast Club.  Maybe it's just me, but the environment in schools is a lot different now... and there's virtually no way the multiple scearios would be possible today which landed our beloved cast in detention on a Saturday( GASP!)

 

+1 on Seka and porn bushes.

How many Dads are going to wait patiently in the car to let some hoodlum finish sticking his tongue down his teenage daughter's throat?

Edited April 16, 2021 by yoladu

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2073]

7 hours ago, South Austin said:

Same. Even when I saw this in the early 90s I thought the Tarantino character’s use of the word was more deliberate than authentic.

But I think that’s a cringy aspect to a movie that otherwise still holds up.

Same with Reservoir Dogs.  Still holds up, but Buscemi’s repeated n bombs seem cringy and forced. And because he’s a good actor, you know it isn’t just Tarantino’s bad acting that is off putting. 

[Scooter Monzingo 820]

On 4/15/2021 at 3:05 PM, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

Another funny story is the character Mr. Wang.  My best friend's mother was a professor at Florida Atlantic University and friends with "Mr. Wang" who was also a professor there.  He was in the crowd while they were filming and Rodney Dangerfield saw him and decided to add him to the scenes as his friend, Mr. Wang.  The rest is history.

That is a great story. 

[GhostOfTomJoad 9324]

21 hours ago, Apep said:

What's the cut-off? I haven't seen all of his movies, but I remember the Distinguished Gentleman was pretty funny. Nothing much beyond that looked good.

If you haven't seen Bowfinger do so immediately. It's damn funny, primarily due to the great writing by Steve Martin (co-stars in the film). When you've got a great script and cast (Heather Graham and Christine Baranski are fantastic; likewise Terence Stamp) and a solid director (Frank Oz) the results are excellent. Chubby rain!

 

[Apep 645]

On 5/2/2018 at 6:51 PM, slorch said:

Movies about social moods are bigger stretches than technological pioneers, IMHO

Red Dawn, not that it was great acting to begin with, but I have often had trouble conveying to younger people what the Cold War was like.

Philadelphia, similarly, it is difficult to convey the mindest of a nation and world who were simultaneously shocked, scared, and mortified while others were apathetic or worse, filled with hate in the face of HIV and AIDS.

 

For Cold War movies, we shouldn't start with Red Dawn. It would be better to start with both Patton and The Hunt for Red October. IIRC, Patton depicts the general wanting to continue east to fight the Soviets. Or maybe I'm wrong and it would be a good post-movie conversation starter. Red October offers great insight into the 1980s mindset. Follow those up with some Vietnam war era movies. (Forrest Gump and the Watchmen would suffice.) Then show Red Dawn as a what-if riff on the Cold War.

I was actually talking to my 17 year old son about Philadelphia the other day. I asked if he'd seen Forrest Gump and then we started talking about Tom Hanks' amazing run in the 1990s. I think I told him to watch Philadelphia and ...And the Band Played On to get some insight into just how deeply scarring the AIDS epidemic was for Gen Xers and Boomers.

 

 

3 hours ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

Same with Reservoir Dogs.  Still holds up, but Buscemi’s repeated n bombs seem cringy and forced. And because he’s a good actor, you know it isn’t just Tarantino’s bad acting that is off putting. 

I always thought they used it so much because those two movies were homages to the '70s, when its use in feature films was common.

[Apep 645]

50 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

If you haven't seen Bowfinger do so immediately. It's damn funny, primarily due to the great writing by Steve Martin (co-stars in the film). When you've got a great script and cast (Heather Graham and Christine Baranski are fantastic; likewise Terence Stamp) and a solid director (Frank Oz) the results are excellent. Chubby rain!

 

So yeah, I watched the trailer and I was dying. I now recall ads for the movie from when I was in college, but I had better things to do back then. Actually, I only remember the part of the trailer where Heather Graham takes off her top and Eddie says, "You're gonna be a star."

[Underdog 28623]

And he was right. 

[workswithseed 2103]

On 4/15/2021 at 6:38 PM, Parliament said:

On 4/15/2021 at 3:48 PM, Kennythetiger said:

Tremors. 

I'm not gonna neg rep you, but come on.

 

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2073]

On 4/16/2021 at 4:52 PM, Apep said:

On 4/16/2021 at 1:15 PM, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

 

I always thought they used it so much because those two movies were homages to the '70s, when its use in feature films was common

He wrote True Romance too, with the Dennis Hopper scene. I think that was just how he wrote dialogue. 

[Guest Lobo]

He also wrote Natural Born Killers.  

Tarantino has written ubiquitous scenes of mass murder, torture, battery, robbery, assault, larceny, anti-semitism, and sexual assault...and everybody's cool with it.  But some infrequent mild racism?  Oh, no sir!  Not up in here!  No you don't! 

[Richard Kimball 1494]

Comedy has trouble standing up over time, cause what we find funny is constantly changing, and comedy timing is also changing. 

When I was a kid, everybody talked about how fast paced Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In was. Watch one now, and it feels really slow. 

Steve Martin's movies, The Jerk and The Man With Two Brains can feel kinda cringy, but they still have their moments. I can still watch them anytime, cause Kathleen Turner and Bernadette Peters in their primes.

Also, a caution. This is why you don't marry for looks alone...

 

[Butch Had Not 2969]

On 6/12/2018 at 7:32 PM, 686 said:

One more comment on the poor lost souls that keep mentioning Starship Troopers as not holding up: there is so much going on in the coed shower scene, that ~2 minutes is just masterful, peak Verhoeven. Here’s an essay reflecting on it 20 years after release:

 

“One of the more good-humoredly fascistic scenes in Starship Troopers is the coed shower scene. Like a lot of on-screen ’90s nudity, this was a key talking point in a long-ago era before you could google any sex act that anyone has ever imagined. From the director of Showgirls and Basic Instinct, it vibed transgressive. The rumor was that Verhoven had been naked behind the camera while his cast was naked up front, a fact confirmed by Verhoeven himself in a 2012 interview with Empire. This sounds prurient, but the effect of the scene isn’t really voyeuristic, and it’s certainly less weird than all those times Michael Bay introduces female characters underbutt-first. The nudity might even be part of the movie’s illusion: a way of getting you to focus on everything besides the point.

The shower scene arrives early in the movie, after apparent lead character Johnny Rico (Caspar Van Dien) has joined up with the Mobile Infantry, the sci-fi army that fires cool future weapons and does awesome space stuff. “JOIN THE MOBILE INFANTRY AND SAVE THE WORLD!” is how one newsreel advertises this career option, which sounds like funny only-in-satire hyperbole until you remember that 1998 ad where a marine fights a lava monster with an Arthurian super-sword. “SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP!” is the odd postscript to that newsreel, one last advertisement promise that sounds more insidious every time you hear it.

 

It’s tantalizingly unclear what a “citizen” is in the movie’s context. The original Robert Heinlein book went more in-depth, but Verhoeven barely read the book and hated what he did read, so don’t get too hung up on canon. Johnny’s parents don’t want him to join the army and seem to be doing just fine for sub-citizens. Actually, they live in Buenos Aires, a fact that’s only strange because Johnny and all his friends are played by Americans so white they all had guest arcs on Beverly Hills, 90210.

It’s possible that the beginning of Starship Troopers is meant to be a fun utopian future, where the world peacefully formed a global government and then decided to make American english the lingua franca. All that military drapery makes you doubt that anything was peaceful, though. You start to wonder: Are Johnny and his friends growing up in some long-established totalitarian uber-regime? Is this what daily life would look like in some 400-hundred-year-time-jumped Man in the High Castle where America used its brief span as World’s Only Superpower to take the whole thing over?

This is the stuff of dark-future terror, but part of the fun of Starship Troopers is how Verhoeven keeps recoding our perspective. There are visual references to Leni Riefenstahl, and half the hero’s plot depends on a high school romantic triangle. The upper-level government spooks wear uniforms that recall the SS, but the different branches of the military have no-bull gender equity (Space Captain Brenda Strong!!!) Actually, the most immediately despicable soldier is Jake Busey, a white dude so white-dude-ly that he was in Shasta McNasty.

Busey’s just been abused by a drill sergeant, taught a lesson that involved a knife going through his hand. The scene that follows is, broadly, the “getting to know the squad” scene, plot-sacred since the days of Sands of Iwo Jima, introducing all the soldiers who might die gloriously in the fifth reel. Team chatterbox Kitten (Matt Levin) walks into the group shower, clearly the sarcastic one. “We all have one thing in common,” he moans. “We were all stupid enough to sign up for the Mobile Infantry.”

He goes around the horn, asking his squadmates what led them to sign up. A farmboy wanted off the farm. A dude smart enough to get into Harvard needs scholarship money. A woman named Djana’D (Tami-Adrian George) says, “I’m going into politics, and you know, you gotta be a citizen for that, so here I am.” Another women named Katrina (Blake Lindsley) says, “I want to have babies,” which earns an eyeroll from Djana’D, but nobody blinks an eye when this second woman says, “It’s a lot easier to get a license if you serve.”

And then Kitten asks Johnny why he joined the Mobile Infantry, and Johnny refuses to say why, but his old high school pal/acrobat-football teammate Dizzy (Dina Meyer) knows he joined because he wuvs service-obsessed Carmen (Denise Richards), so she tells the squad Johnny’s here for a girl, and all the naked young soldiers laugh like this is the most hilarious thing they’ve ever heard.

But two big statements were just said here, which fly by so quickly that you’re still trying to understand them when someone slaps Caspar Van Dien’s butt. You need a license to have babies? Running for political office requires some time in the armed forces? “You gotta be a citizen for that,” we’re told, and what else do you gotta be a citizen for? This sounds like a full-blown military dictatorship we’re looking at, or at least a government where federal service grants you power that mere civilianhood cannot, which in the long tail of history equals out to around the same thing.

But this is also, weirdly, a reflection of a peculiar strain of ’90s action jingo. In Independence Day and Air Force One, Bill Pullman and Harrison Ford played presidents with enough military background to fire missiles at aliens and beat up British Russians. Both films reflect the ever-lingering influence of Top Gun, which mixed the vaguest Cold War propaganda with the most sanitized version of the MTV style and helped to redefine patriotism as a swagger-y performance of action hero coolness.

Top Gun‘s influence is basically everywhere — actual American presidents have taken PR cues from it — and you can maybe watch Starship Troopers as a kind of far-future direct sequel, all the tough young lovely soldiers fighting unknowable antagonists. The enemy MIGs in Top Gun are precisely as nefarious and vague as the bugs in Starship Troopers, and both pairs of uniformed good guys receive their missions like dutiful, unquestioning gamers anxious for the next level to begin. We’re done with the Top Gun program and now we have to fly here to shoot these guys in black helmets? Got it, cue the music. An insect race from across the galaxy with no apparent spacefaring ability fired a meteor through a wormhole at Buenos Aires? Sure thing, boss, that sounds plausible. We’ll nuke first and ask questions later!

Weirdly, though, nothing in the Starship Troopers coed shower scene is half as sexy as the volleyball scene from Top Gun. It’s kind of cute, actually? All these badass co-worker people bantering about 10-year plans, sans clothes, like they’re citizens of a commune that only accepts Highly Effective People? (The badass space soldiers of Aliens were casually coed too, but didn’t seem to have career ambitions.) That wasn’t the intention, maybe. In that same great Empire interview, Verhoeven said that the weird nonchalance of the scene was part of the subtext.

“The idea I wanted to express was that these so-called advanced people are without libido,” he said. “Here they are talking about war and their careers and not looking at each other at all! It is sublimated because they are fascists.”

Maybe? Verhoeven bangs the drum a lot for his films’ deeper themes, maybe recognizing (like Hitchcock in his later years) that there’s a young generation hoping to enrich the culture of their youth with the philosophies they learned about in college. And stamping “Fascism” across Starship Troopers genuinely enriches the film’s later parts, when the triumphalist military tries to stage a battle like the kind of heavily mediated aesthetic “event” that could make Brian Williams lick his lips while Baudrillard does whatever the French do instead of crying. The film will end with the great big battle still ongoing, like a distant Middle East conflict or whatever they’re fighting about in the new Star Wars trilogy. “THEY’LL KEEP FIGHTING, AND THEY’LL WIN!” is the final onscreen promise of the movie — a tease for a sequel, or a hint that all franchises depend on a state of neverending battle, on a world where all that matters is that there is a new enemy to fight.

But so weirdly, the coed shower scene is the most human moment in Starship Troopers. Someone wants to go to Harvard, someone wants to make a difference in politics, somebody wants to crank out dem babies, and somebody just hates farming. Nobody seems to care about whatever the Mobile Infantry’s mission is, and maybe this suggests some deeply embedded fascism, or maybe this implies all the possibilities life can offer when there’s no world-ending nemesis to focus on.”

 

 

Do you want to know more?

 

http:// https://ew.com/movies/2017/11/07/starship-troopers-shower-scene-fascism/

 

Posted today by The Critical Drinker. Worth a watch. 

[Bateshorn 9927]

Verhoeven is such an interesting director.  The run of movies he had from Robocop, Total Recall, and Basic Instinct is incredible. I suspect Starship Troopers has nearly as many BFA thesis papers as Citizen Kane.  I'm not sure there is a more prescient film than Robocop.  His last film, Elle, was a huge critical smash.

But he also has Show Girls and Hollow Man just sitting there as total turds. 

Edited April 20, 2021 by Bateshorn

[Guest Lobo]

I agree on Trading Places.  I said, "brilliant in 48 hours and several movies thereafter."  There was great stuff all the way thru Boomerang.  He was still funny in the shit after that, I just thought the movies themselves don't hold up well.  He's still had a great career, I just assumed as a kid after "Delirious" and "Trading Places" and "Coming to America", that Eddie would just be cracking me up every year for the rest of my life.  But I thought I'd be jamming out to Guns 'n Roses every year forever as well.  

but so many Eddie's movies hold up well.  Whatever happened to those rumors he was going back on the road for standup?  

[Underdog 28623]

On 4/18/2021 at 10:58 AM, Richard Kimball said:

Comedy has trouble standing up over time, cause what we find funny is constantly changing, and comedy timing is also changing. 

When I was a kid, everybody talked about how fast paced Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In was. Watch one now, and it feels really slow. 

Steve Martin's movies, The Jerk and The Man With Two Brains can feel kinda cringy, but they still have their moments. I can still watch them anytime, cause Kathleen Turner and Bernadette Peters in their primes.

Completely agree with The Jerk, hadn't watched in some time and sat down to several years ago and couldn't finish it.  

[Beau Vine 54218]

On 4/15/2021 at 1:41 PM, Lobo said:

Curious y'all mentioning 48 Hours.  Few weeks ago, I watched it all the way through for probably the first time in 25 years.  It's not as funny as I remember and doesn't hold up as well as I was hoping.  But holy shit, Eddie Murphy was a really good actor.  That was his first feature film, he was just 21 years old.  He was obviously very funny, but he played a decently wide range in the film and nailed almost every scene.  I forgot how awesome he was once.  Not just comedically, but all-around.  He was brilliant in 48 Hours and several movies thereafter.  And then?....the bad years/decades.

Beverley Hills Cop got a GG nom for Best Picture and an Oscar nom for Best Screenplay.

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, and I include that movie in the part of my sentence that says, "48 Hours, and several movies thereafter."  It was a funny/good movie.  It's not until 1993, Eddie starts shitting the bed IMO.  I clearly state I like his movies immediately after 48 Hours and for some time after that.  You're like the guy putting Kools out on my floor man.  

[Bender Bending Rodriguez 1678]

I never realized until recently that there was an Eddie-Landis feud. This is from a Playboy interview in 1990:

Spoiler

PLAYBOY: You could have directed Coming to America but didn't. Why? 

MURPHY: I wanted to help out [the director, John] Landis. I figured I'd give this guy a shot because his career was fucked. But he wound up fucking me. 

PLAYBOY: What happened? 

MURPHY: As it turned out, John always resented that I hadn't gone to his Twilight Zone trial. I never knew that; I though we were cool. But he'd been harboring it for a year. Every now and then, he would make little remarks, like, "You didn't help me out; you don't realize how close I was to going to jail." I never paid any mind. 

PLAYBOY: Did you think he was guilty? 

MURPHY: I don't want to say who was guilty or who was innocent. [Pauses] But if you're directing a movie and two kids get their heads chopped off at fucking twelve o'clock at night when there ain't supposed to be kids working, and you said, "Action!" then you have some sort of responsibility. So my principles wouldn't let me go down there and sit in court. That's just the way I am. If somebody in my family was guilty of something, I wouldn't sit there for them in a courtroom and say, "You've got my support." Fuck that. The most it would be is, "Hey, you go work that out. I still love ya; I'm still your friend." 

PLAYBOY: So you hired Landis out of friendship despite thinking he'd been irresponsible? 

MURPHY: Yes. He'd done four fucked-up movies in a row and I knew he'd spent a lot of money on his trial. I went to Paramount and said I wanted to use Landis. But they had reservations: His career was fucked up. But I said, "I'm gonna use Landis." I liked the guy. I used to always say that the one fun experience I had with a director--and I've worked with directors I really liked: Marty Brest, Walter Hill, Tony Scott--was with Landis, because he plays around a lot on the set. I made Paramount hire him. 

PLAYBOY: Was he grateful? 

MURPHY: He came in demanding lots of money. Paramount was saying, "Hey, come on, Eddie, we're getting fucked here," but I made them pay his money. They bent over backward. But after he got the job, he brought along an attitude. He came in with this "I'm a director" shit. I was thinking, Wait a second, I fucking hired you, and now you're running around, going, "You have to remember: I'm the boss, I'm the director." 

One of his favorite things was to tell me, "When I worked with Michael Jackson, everyone was afraid of Michael, but I'm the only one who would tell Michael, 'Fuck you.' And I'm not afraid to tell you, 'Fuck you.'" And sure enough, he was always telling me, "Fuck you, Eddie. Everybody at Paramount is afraid on you." 

PLAYBOY: But Landis just gave you grief? 

MURPHY: It got worse and worse. What first put a bad taste in my mouth about him was when, after he hired [co-star] Shari Headley and all these other people, I said I wanted to take everybody to dinner. I didn't know anybody. But Landis grabbed Headley and said, "You stay away from Eddie. Don't go near him, because he's gonna fuck you and ruin my movie. He just wants your pussy." I'm thinking, Wait, ooohhh, nooo, that has nothing to do with being a fucking director. He's control freak. Just assuming that I was trying to get the pussy is one thing; and even if I was trying to get the pussy, for him to try to stop me from getting it because he was directing the movie.... He's got a lot of nerve. Plus, it wasn't even about pussy. 

 

[Bender Bending Rodriguez 1678]

The rest of that interview. Yeah, they didn’t get along. 

Spoiler

MURPHY: I kind of ignored it. But every day, it was a new "I told Michael, 'Fuck you'" story. 

Then, one day, I had these two writers who did the screenplay for Coming to America with me. They were writing a TV show called What's Alan Watching? that my company was producing. They were at our location in New York, and Landis was asking them, "Why are you guys here?" They said, "We're working on something for Eddie." And he said [strongly], "The production's not picking that up." And they said, "No, we're working through Eddie's company. Right now, we're waiting for the deal to go through." And Landis said, "So you're not being paid yet? That company should be paying you! Don't come to New York unless you're being paid." 

The whole crew was standing around--extras and actors--and Landis started screaming. "Don't be afraid to ask Eddie Murphy for his money. You go up and ask for your fucking money!" I walked in and he said, "Eddie! Your company is fucking these guys out of their money! Guys, don't be afraid to go up to Eddie and say, 'Fuck you!'" He's screaming about my deal making in front of the cast. 

PLAYBOY: What did you do? 

MURPHY: I playfully grabbed him around the throat, put my arm around him and I said to Fruity, one of my guys, "What happens when people put my business in the street?" And Fruity said, "they get fucked up." I was kind of half joking. Landis reached down to grab my balls, like he also thought it was a joke--and I cut his wind off. He fell down, his face turned red, his eyes watered up like a bitch and he ran off the set. Fuckin' punk. 

PLAYBOY: Did you go after him? 

MURPHY: Nah. He came to my trailer later and made this big speech. His voice was trembling. And it all came out: that he didn't think I was talented, that the only reason he did Coming to America was for money, that he didn't respect me since I hadn't gone to his trial and all this bullshit. All this fucked-up shit. Called me ignorant, an asshole. 

PLAYBOY: How did you take it? 

MURPHY: I'm sitting there shattered; I'm thinking, This fucking guy. I bent over fucking backward to get this guy a job. He probably won't even acknowledge what happened. He didn't realize that his fucking career was washed up. So I told him, "The next time you fuck around with me, I'm gonna whip your ass." His Hollywood shit came out then: "What do you mean, 'whip my ass'? That's not in our deal." So I said, "You're gonna have to give me either some fear or some respect. I want one of them, because this is my shit and you're working here. If the only way you can fear me is knowing that the next time you fuck up, you're gonna get your ass whipped, fine." But Landis was fucked up: "Is that a net or a true-gross ass whipping I'm gonna get? What kind of ass whipping is it?" 

PLAYBOY: Would you have whipped his ass? 

MURPHY: If he had fucked up again, I would have beat the shit out of him. 

PLAYBOY: Even considering the consequences of a lawsuit and criminal charges? 

MURPHY: The thing about an assault charge is that if you're gonna do it, make it worth it. If it had come to that--me whipping his ass--there wouldn't have been some headline like "EDDIE MURPHY PUNCHES JOHN LANDIS IN THE FACE." I'd have beat the shit out of him, put him in the fucking hospital, almost killed him. Then, when the headline read "EDDIE BEING SUED FOR ASSAULT," I'd have said [humbly], "Yeah, I did give him a horrible ass whipping; he deserves some sort of compensation, because I did beat the shit out of him." 

Anyway, it worked. He was afraid of me. He'll probably never admit it, but the motherfucker was on his fucking toes for the rest of the show and didn't fuck with me for the whole rest of the picture.