Melanie’s review of 1980s cult musical Little Shop of Horrorsthrough teenagers’ eyes finally gives me a chance to loop back, not only to the 1960 original directed by Roger Corman, but also to the director/producer himself, who arguably became one of the greatest masterminds of copycatting any movie hit within his own production universe. Roger Corman was running his own, wildly successful shop of horrors – actually a big, bold, fiercely independent venture of horrors, thrills, and other exploits!
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a conventional yuppie who, if you look at him from the right angle, reveals a streak of disaffection with his life bumps into a free-spirited young woman. She introduces him to the wild side of life, and they embark on a whirlwind romance. All together now: can you say “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”?
If you rolled your eyes at this, rest assured: that was pretty much my first reaction to Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild – so much so that after about half an hour I ejected the Blu-ray and watched something else instead. For those first 20-30 minutes, I felt more and more that I really didn’t need yet another take on that particular well-worn cliché. Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels) and Lulu (Melanie Griffith), as she calls herself to begin with, weren’t endearing to me: I found them and their idea of what breaking free from convention looked like grating. It’s one thing to watch teenagers who believe they’re the first ever to break free from the bonds of social mores; it’s quite another to watch two supposedly grown-up people behaving like those teenagers. There’s something to it that is smug and self-satisfied and, frankly, a bit boring.
Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness.
Of all the novels that the vast majority might deem unfilmable, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, released in 1987, would make their top ten. There are movie versions of so-called difficult texts such as Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, but not yet of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, although the rights have been sold long ago, so there might not be any unfilmable text anymore. And I have seen theatre students turn Shakespeare sonnets into short plays, so there. I am certain that Beloved would have made my list when I read it for the first time. And yet the movie exists.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 