Intolerable Cruelty

[libertango]

sneerpout has a comment thread where Intolerable Cruelty came up. She was saying how she likes the Coens, but the combo of Catherine Zeta Jones and "everyone say(ing) it's crap," was keeping her away from the film. Here's what I said, over two posts:

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I liked it. Ulrika liked it.

I wouldn't classify it as a screwball comedy at all. But when the house lights came up, I turned to Ulrika and said, "I wonder if anyone north of the Tehachapis will get that?" -- Meaning, anyone not in or from LA. It strikes me as a very LA movie... Not unlike Steve Martin's LA Story, if with considerably more bite.

Put it to you this way: Many of the characters I either went to school with, or saw their parents.

Or, to put it a slightly different way, have you ever seen Swimming with Sharks? Kevin Spacey, Frank Whaley, Michelle Forbes? Very funny if one knows anything at all about Hollywood, and probably impossibly over-the-top if one doesn't. Trouble is, it isn't over-the-top -- it is, if anything, restrained.

The one thing nobody gets if one hasn't been close enough to Hollywood is this: I don't care what you've heard about star tantrums. They're all true, or true enough. But studio executives are the most childish people on the studio lot. The most extreme star comes nowhere close to a studio exec.

This is why people look at The Player, or Intolerable Cruelty, or Swimming with Sharks, and think they're caricatures... when, really, they're understated character studies.

Anyway, this horse is now thoroughly dead, but... there it is. :)

Comments

[eleanor.livejournal.com]

I loved it, and I"m very not from LA.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

I would expect you to like it, but then, you fascinate me...

(and, god, wasn't clooney's delivery of that line straight out of o brother?)

Hm.

I guess I'm not saying it's necessary to be from LA to like Intolerable Cruelty... But there's a lot of texture there if one is.

Or something. {insert wildly generalizing hand-waving gesture here.}

[eleanor.livejournal.com]

See, the Coen Brothers know classic screwball, have clearly studied the timing of the classics, and do it perfectly, so even if a person (such as me) loses some texture because she doesn't know LA, there's enough from knowing the source movies. And "You fascinate me" (in the context of I.T., not something you'd say) doesn't sound so much out of "Oh Brother," but in my head, I hear Hildy Johnson in "His Girl Friday."

Have I mentioned the profound level of respect I have for really good comedy?

Come to think of it, a Merchant/Irory porn movie might be a hoot and a half.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, a Merchant/Irory porn movie might be a hoot and a half.

Just so long as Morgan isn't chewing the vibrator.

[eleanor.livejournal.com]

Morgan and I have had a chat. She has promised to leave my vibrators alone, and I've promised to keep her supplied with pig's ears.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

I now really want to come up with a good joke involving a silk purse and vibrator... But while the spirit is willing, the wit is weak.

[eleanor.livejournal.com]

While I value your wit, I will happily overlook the lack of such comments.