T/S: John Hughes vs. Judd Apatow

This whole thread's bullshit about how John Hughes should've made all his characters good liberal role models is ridic.

this is kinda missing the point, film characters are not role models and criticism isn't centered around some silly paternalistic "oh think of the children, save them from this evil they may imitate" kind of bullshit.

But why is criticizing a film's politics not legitimate? Do you just watch films without thinking at all about what kind of viewpoint they're espousing? Are you cool with a film being completely fascist (300), or racist (Birth of a Nation), or mysognistic, or whatever...? Not saying "this film should have been made THIS way", just that I don't agree with the positions some films take, and it impedes my enjoyment of them.

I mean on a basic level, for example, I disagree vehemently with Mel Gibson's politics and I'm not going to give him any money to see his movies because I don't want to financially support an asshole I disagree with.

"Teen comedies" have never done much for me. The teen age is a wretched and somber time of life.

As for the Hughes movies, their POV is the same as the main characters', which is never very stimulating.

I'm skeptical about calling Bueller on being a manipulative trickster, since the wish-fulfilling all-powerful trickster kid was such a mid-80s archetype -- Bueller is surely a heavy influence, since he predates a lot of them (say, early Mike Seaver), but is he really the first of this type? I'm guessing it descends from the college-aged pranksters in early-80s slobs vs. snobs movies -- and then it trickles down the age bracket until every show about kids or teenagers from like 1983 to 1992 is all about the smug wily omnipotent kid.

Sure, this does seem fairly tied to and representative of the Reagan era. But more than that, it seems to about the idea that kids are stuck working within a defined, bureaucratic system -- parental authority, educational authority, social authority, etc. -- and they like the idea of being the ultimate insider, basically another popular 80s genre: the spy, a secret agent who can manipulate the entire system. It's basically the only way they can claim authority themselves: subterfuge. Half of Bueller is built on his doing comical cloak-and-dagger stuff -- he's got voice processors and odometer rollback plans, he hacks into the school computer system, and he comes to pick up sloan in a trenchoat and fedora.

I'd be wary of reading the kid-as-spy thing as particularly Reaganite -- it may have had big currency around then, but it'd seem to still be hanging around as a basic staple of kid fantasy.

Ha, what's also weird is that the whole movie has Bueller tricking his way into shit that characters in teen movies today would just DO: the kids in 00s teen movies would just go eat at the fancy-ass restaurant with no static, they'd have the awesome cars for themselves from the beginning, and instead of sneaking onto floats in parades, they'd just have some giant expensive party of their own to go to (token black male character will be DJing).

Yeah, there's a lot of distinctly 80's movie/TV tropes that reflect the era's politics in sketchy ways, no doubt, but I feel like we can talk about that without using it as a stick to beat John Hughes movies with. Am I "cool with a film being completely fascist (300), or racist (Birth of a Nation), or mysognistic, or whatever"? Uh, sure! I'm cool with people making them, I'm cool with people criticizing them on those grounds, and I'm cool with watching them if they're entertaining in ways completely seperate from their politics, as 300 is. Why shouldn't I be?

That said, Brazill does have a point that Apatow seems to get way too much credit for F&G considering that Paul Feig was the one who actually created the show and wrote most of it.

That is a fair point, but since F&G, Apatow's been making great movies, while Feig has been making crappy movies. (Although I didn't see Unaccompanied Minors, maybe it was great.)

i wonder if feig was the one who knew how to write interesting chix

I am sort of beginning to suspect that, A B C.

S'true, 'cuz the 40 Year Old Virgin was fucking god-awful from that standpoint.

Well, obviously Apatow's pre- and post-F&G career's been more distinguished, which again, is probably why his name gets mentioned in relation to it more often than Feig's. But that doesn't change who created the show, based on his personal experiences, and did the lion's share of the writing. (xpost good points also)

i know unaccompanied minors wasnt very well recieved but i am gonna check it out from the grocery store rental box, i bet it's worth a dollar if it's good enough for fez and little chris rock to appear in it

Apatow's view of women seems to actually still be that of his youngest characters -- i.e., "I have no idea what they're thinking or why they want to be around us at all, but god bless them for it." It really would be a giant improvement if he could keep his characters thinking this way (which is perfectly true-to-life and interesting) while actually, you know, answering those questions from the other side.

Pitch to Apatow: comedy about serial dater who breaks up with woman after woman because he can't figure out why they like him and is therefore suspicious of intimacy; is forced to eventually figure out how women work as humans in order to maintain relationship; starring Paul Rudd's ass

I really like Apatow, but I think he might only be capable of bromance. Rudd + Rogan = nu-Hepburn + Tracy.

I would really enjoy seeing a full-on bromantic comedy about how two adult men become friends!

that's pretty much the central romance of Knocked Up, I think!

"I have no idea what they're thinking or why they want to be around us at all, but god bless them for it." It really would be a giant improvement if he could keep his characters thinking this way (which is perfectly true-to-life and interesting) while actually, you know, answering those questions from the other side.

Denby beat Apatow about this in his hysterical why contemporary romcoms suck.

yeah, but Denby's article was riddled with problematic, "if we could only go back to when women were really 2nd class citizens, then we'd get spunky female characters back"-nostalgia. he was right about the problems with female characterization in Apatow's work, though.

I really like Apatow, but I think he might only be capable of bromance. Rudd + Rogan = nu-Hepburn + Tracy.

And these days since art is more comfortable with homoerotics or suppressed same-sex feelings, he may be able to make something interesting out of them. What he delineates is strong enough to incorporate the disapproval of his female characters; that's why Denby's remarks were true only in the most glib way.

oh, I see what you're saying. I thought you were a fan of Denby's article. I hate that fucking guy.

I don't always mind Denby, and this particular article was somewhat enjoyable to read (even if I didn't agree with him), but I'm getting pretty tired of the "oh, will nothing ever match the golden age of cinema?" crap.

3/4 of the article was pushing that line.

I accept the purported shallowness of his female characters because (so far) his casting instincts have been tip-top. As a critic it was difficult for me to say that he ignores women whe he's got two terrific actresses opposite Rogan and Rudd.

they're so boringggg

i liked catherine keener and her sassy kid in 40yov even if i'm not entirely sure why she fell for him

"purported"?

he doesn't ignore women, he just doesn't write his female characters well. or at least, I don't think the Heigl character was written well. nor the Keener character in 40 Year Old Virgin.

its more baffling that he writes such flat women when his wife is a really good and funny actress

yeah, I feel like he should have just talked to a pregnant lady in order to write a more plausible Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up?

Basically, Knocked Up needed more scenes of Rogan and Rudd making out, sober.

xpost

I had some slight complaint with it, actually: he seemed too quick to criticize that quality -- the "I am not sure why they bother with us" mentality -- whereas I think it taps into something people experience, something significant, something that could go someplace. (It's not an arrangement that's in any way limited to Apatow, either.) I don't know what would happen if you actually countered that mentality with substantive stuff from the other side, about the female characters' thoughts and failings and insecurities -- just having them in there might complicate things to the point where the comedy becomes not so funny at all, but it'd certainly be interesting.

(xpost - it's not that his female characters are "shallow" so much as that ... well at least in Knocked Up she's largely seen from the perspective of the male lead, as kinda perfect, glowing, more knowing, more poised, and of a better world than him, all of which requires him to become more of an adult in order to keep up with her. Her own qualities are fairly stock and boring. I don't think Keener's character in 40YOV was particularly bad, not in any way I can name, but you do end the thing with her left way less vivid and coherent than any of the guys working in the store.)

Ha, basically the woman in all of these is a Maguffin!

most otm line in Knocked Up was when Rogen said, of Rudd, "look at him! don't you just want to grab that face and kiss it?" or something like that.

Ha, basically the woman in all of these is a Maguffin!

yeah.

"Teen comedies" have never done much for me. The teen age is a wretched and somber time of life.

a-ha. see, i think most people who have a problem with bueller are upset by the notion that for some/many people it is neither wretched nor somber, and they pretend that the refusal to deny this is right-wing.

no, it's just libertine.

nabisco OTM. While other directors ridicule the women they can't help but turn into goddesses, Apatow genuinely believes in them; his male characters might actually consider sacrificing buddydom for it, albeit reluctantly.

most otm line in Knocked Up was when Rogen said, of Rudd, "look at him! don't you just want to grab that face and kiss it?" or something like that

half the guys in the audience chuckled uncomfortably at this; they all seemed to recognize that they've fantasized about making out with their best friends at least once.

I thought the character played by Apatow's wife in Knocked Up was pretty good, actually, it might've come off a little shrill/unflattering at points but in the 2nd half I feel like it really gave a real, honest viewpoint about what a wife has to put up with in even a fairly stable marriage and made Rudd's character look more like an asshole than her.

Well if yr best friend were PAUL RUDD, hell yes --

I almost feel bad criticizing Apatow about the airy symbolic female leads, though, since it's only the relative depth of his male characters that makes you notice this! Your average comedy woman is surely worse than Apatow's on this front, but nobody is all like "hey, Mary Jane in Half Baked is just a two-dimensional symbol used to make Dave Chapelle decide to stop smoking weed!"

using the woman as the Maguffin is potentially extra-annoying in a movie that involves pregnancy, I think. I saw this movie with a friend who was really annoyed by that, which made me realize that I had preemptively adjusted my expectations fairly low for the Heigl character beforehand. (I still think she did a good job.)

the Leslie Mann character was a sharper characterization than Heigl's, yeah. I love the scene where she freaks out on Rudd after discovering his fantasy baseball meeting.

it's only the relative depth of his male characters that makes you notice this!

not really. it's more, hmm, 90 minutes have gone by and this pregnant lady hasn't touched her belly, all weirded out by their being a thing in it yet that makes you notice it.

Granted that pregnancy ups the ante on that one significantly, but how do you think this would compare with, like, Nine Months, or something? (I had to look that up on IMDB to even be reminded that Julianne Moore was the woman in it.)

I feel like Apatow's nods to pregnancy as an actual experience rather than a plot device were pretty perfunctory and about a pregnant body as experienced from the outside rather than the inside, cf. Heigl freaking out about being "huge."

I really do like this movie, but I get why people I know had major problems with it.

xpost okay, fair enough. I'm holding Apatow to a higher standard because I think he's better than who the fuck ever directed Nine Months.

if Julianne Moore was my wife, you can bet I'd be playing fantasy football every night.

I don't know what would happen if you actually countered that mentality with substantive stuff from the other side, about the female characters' thoughts and failings and insecurities -- just having them in there might complicate things to the point where the comedy becomes not so funny at all, but it'd certainly be interesting.

this might very well be true.

It was Christopher Columbus, so ... yeah. That "higher standard" was all I really meant -- all the stuff Apatow can do really well leaves a big obvious stink around the things he's just par at.

xpost - It's weird to wonder whether substantive character stuff on BOTH ends can be fitted into rom-coms! The answer should totally be yes, and yet it seems difficult enough that people mostly tend to succeed from one point of view or the other. We need some sort of thread to find and list romantic comedies that do the best job of splitting the viewpoint.

we had a version of this conversation in the Chicago thread and Eazy suggested Before Sunset, but that's not a comedy. I think the comedy part is what makes it hard, because so much of comedy trades on traditional gender stuff.

(P.S. Julianne Moore film I must now see: sLaughterhouse II (1988) ... aka Abbatoir d'amusement: La vengeance du Pigsby)

It's weird to wonder whether substantive character stuff on BOTH ends can be fitted into rom-coms!

Sturges came closest, no? Within the context of farce, of course.

well, Sturges is great, but his comedies depend on a gendered social framework that doesn't obtain anymore. I'm interested in movies trying to do this now.

(I mean, I'm totally willing to accept David Denby's thesis that female characters in classic Hollywood movies were often "better" than characters like Heigl's. The content of the examples he cited, though, was inevitably a strong-willed woman running up against the constraints of a sexist society. And then he seemed to be critiquing characters like Heigl's because she had her shit together, basically. The problem he wasn't quite articulating was, "I don't know what a strong female character looks like when she's not being directly belittled by a sexist dude.")

or "I don't know what a strong female character looks like who doesn't have Joan Crawford linebacker pads."