Vern Tell's It Like It Is #6 - Princess Mononoke
November 8th, 1999
Well damn man this is the problem I'm having. Apathy. Lack of participation. Nobody likes me. Etc.
Now don't get me wrong, I really really appreciate you motherfuckers who read the column. You know who you are. But it's hard when a dude pours his heart into a thing like this and nobody fucking cares.
Now okay, I can't make you care about an old ex-con who is currently facing a possible lawsuit due to an incident which occured on the evening of October 31st on my own fucking property. It's up to you to show a little fucking human emotion and caring, in my opinion.
What I'm asking is this though. I know there are like two or three of you motherfuckers who CLAIM you like my Writing. IF in fact that is the case you gotta help me out man. Now if I was Writing a book, or a fucking newspaper, or god help me a fucking talk show monologue - okay, if that was the case, you motherfuckers would be perfectly appropriate just sitting there on your ass not sayin nothing.
HOWEVER, this is the medium of THE FUCKING WEB which is about INTERACTIVE Writing and etc. It is not a passive medium in my opinion and anyone who thinks a web Sight should be the same as a newspaper I would like to talk to a motherfucker who believes that I have a few choice words for the little prick.
SO THEREFORE what you gotta do is you gotta send me some e-mail or sign the guestbook or whatever and let me know your out there. Let me give a few examples of where this did NOT happen:
1. when I asked you to tell me what you thought of that fucking cokehead walter leno's redesign of my web sight. Responses: none.
2. when I asked you what tv shows were good. Responses: none.
3. when i told you why a motherfuckers gotta eat. Apparently you didn't believe me. People who clicked reel.com banner: 7. People who bought something: zero.
well actually, thats according to reel.com, but i actually bought something through it and they didn't count it, so i have a few theories about those motherfuckers. so i'll let this one go.
4. When I tore my fucking heart out for you guys, by printing a page of my dream journal, just as many of you had asked me to do. Responses: none to speak of.
Point is you gotta let me know whats going on. How am i doing. What are you guys into right now. How can i improve. etc. If you guys don't do it its gonna be only the stupid motherfuckers who get a word in.
This is exactly the problem with politics too. The type of people who get off their ass and do something are exactly the type evil fucking creeps who use the system to screw over the poor, start wars with some motherfucker or whatever. And the ironic catch 22 oxymoron of the whole thing is that the type of people who don't vote are the type of people who really ought to be in charge, in my opinion, because the very fact that they don't vote AT LEAST shows that they hate those slimy motherfuckers who are running for office. which, if they didn't, obviously theres a little something wrong there.
same thing with cops. Okay, I am not a fucking anarchist. I agree that there should be rules (including the ones that landed my sorry ass in the joint). And if there are gonna be rules there are gonna have to be people to enforce them. BUT, you gotta be suspicious of the fucking prick who WANTS to be the guy to enforce the rules. I mean, what the fuck kind of personality gravitates you to that?
And of course, this also applies to prison. Okay, believe it or not the vast majority of motherfuckers in prison honestly are nice individuals. these are individuals who maybe robbed somebody or credit card fraud or whatever, okay, that was a weasely thing to do, but overall they are friendly and not out to hurt other dudes. If it were up to these dudes, the prison would be a pretty easy going, laid back type of place and everybody gets along.
BUT, then there are the vocal minority, who like to rape dudes or start the race gangs or whatever. And because these are the dudes who speak up and make their case, everybody has to go along with it.
And thats the same thing with my web site. If you don't tell me what you think all I got to listen to is a couple of these motherfuckers in my guestbook, and what they tell me is that I'm an idiot and i should stop. and to be frankly honest that is not what I want to do, you guys.
ANYWAY, fuck that man i'm gonna get down off my soapdish or whatever. this week there is a little flick by the name of Princess Mononke. Now what this is is a cartoon that the japanese make - now bear with me here - this is a type of cartoons that is for adults. A lot of people don't know this but in japan, the cartoons are made for adults. Well here I have learned its nerdy dudes in their twenties over here, but in japan its for adults. now what these movies are about generally is there is a demon that rapes a chick, or there is a robot, or whatever. But this one is better.
You may have seen a cartoon before that is from japan and not realized it, here is the secret to telling the difference. if it is an american cartoon, it is about animals and they are singing songs all the time. if it is a japanese cartoon, it is about a young girl and there is at least one spot where her dress flies up and you see the panties. If it doesn't have one of those two things, i don't know its probaly korean or some shit, i don't knwo for sure.
Now as far as princess mononoke, this is a different type of cartoon than i've ever seen before. It is sort of a love romance set against an epic backdrop. It is a legend or a fairy tale, dealing with the warring factions of humans in the last days of the gods. the gods are played by giant wolves, gorillas or even weird things like a deer with a guy's face and a giraffe for a neck. this is about the environment, with a hero who is slowly being eaten away by a demon just as the world around him is being devoured by technology. Its also about the way people relate to each other, the way they deal with the past, or about the sacrifices of "progress" in a civilization. It is rich with emotion and with a passion for detail. It has a distinct feel of japanese mythology and at the same time a universal, emotional feel.
I didn't know what the fuck was going on, actually. but I will definitely see it again.
Well I will that is IF it lasts long enough. You motherfuckers gotta go see this thing so it builds an audience. It's JUST like the prison system, my lack of e-mail, etc. You gotta speak up and say THIS is what i want, to experience another dude's culture through Art, not just watch YET another men in black sequel or whatever. You gotta get your fucking priorities straight in my opinion.
thanks guys
--Vern
VERN TELL'S IT LIKE IT IS #7: Vern vs. that punk ass weasel motherfucker Jailhouse Jim
November 15th, 1999
Let me tell you this column is hard for me to Write because I have tried hard since my emancipation from the confinement of prison to be Positive, to live a clean life and to avoid conflict as well as negativity, crime and armed robbery, etc. There have been exceptions such as the incident on Halloween in which I broke the little prick's ribs for smashing MY jackolanterns on MY property, but I'm not going to talk about that due to a pending lawsuit as far as I'm concerned. (By the way, allegedly broke the little prick's ribs.)
However there are some things that happen in a man's life where he really has no choice but to get REAL fucking angry and in these times it is only right for a motherfucker in this situation to express himself.
The motherfucker causing this particular situation is a pantywaist janey by the name of Jailhouse Jim, who has a web site called Jailhouse Jim's Convict Flicks. This dude is claiming to be an ex-con like myself and, like myself, claims to "tell it like it is" when he is, like myself, discussing the films of Cinema. He has even gone so far as to call himself "the original ex-con movie critic" although nobody has ever heard of this motherfucker before so he obviously came after yours truly.
Now what upsets me about this dude is not that he has no ideas of his own and sucks out the very heart of what I have worked so hard to accomplish and claims it as his own while giving no credit to the true creator. What upsets me is THIS MOTHERFUCKER IS A SLICK HOLLYWOOD BASTARD WHO IS MORE INTERESTED IN THE MONEY THAN IN THE ART OF THE CINEMA. He uses words like "boffo box office" and "box office dud" and "sizzles" and "cutie patootie" and as you can imagine I am going to cut this motherfucker's balls off when I find out who he is.
Now maybe some of you can't understand what I'm talking about but you see, i've been out of the picture for a while. So it wasn't until recently when I was released from the grip of the correctional facility system that I was forced to acclimate myself to the ugly ass commercial nature of today's modern Hollywood of the '90s on the cusp of the millennium.
To be honest I never really realized my true love and passion for the movies until recently, however as an american citizen i was familiar with what was going on in our culture as far as how movies are advertised. So you can imagine my surprise when I got out and discovered what kind of crazy shit is going on in the fucking entertainment media these days.
True story, i punched a hole through a wall when I found out there is these shows like Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and the entire channel E! Entertainment. These are shows made for, by, and about people who hate movies but pretend to love them. These are the motherfuckers who leech off of our emotions, culture and Art of the Cinema to make a buck. They have big smiles and hair dos and they know a lot more about how much a movie made than how it made them feel. They do not feel. They have no attachment to the movies in my opinion, only to the idea of getting close to fame. they are some kind of race of god damn lizard people with forked tongues and gucci tails and a little ribbon they wear that represents some lizard disease charity that they hardly ever think about.
Well I guess i don't really know where i was going with that whole lizard people thing actually, so just forget about that but please listen what I have to say.
These shows talk a lot of shit that they're about entertainment but like any common criminal they are really about business. Instead of talking about movies they have gossip, not only about movie stars or entertainers but also about OJ Simpson who apparently got into some kind of trouble while I was locked up although if I remember correctly he was a pretty good football player. but to be frankly honest i have not seen him in any movies in a long time so WHAT the fuck does this dude have to do with entertainment? I knew dudes in the joint who killed people too but these dudes could do stand up or play harmonica or some shit like that but you don't see these dudes on tv.
At the beginning of this show they say, "Later on ET, Ben Affleck's startling health struggle," and show a clip of this motherfucker walking past a camera in slow motion at the premiere of the shittiest movie coming from the biggest studio the next month.
Then they have a behind the scenes on the second shittiest movie coming from that same studio the next month, but all they talk about is what it was like to work with Ben Affleck. No shots of any of the motherfuckers that wrote or directed the movie. Just which ever star is considered the most fuckable.
"Still ahead on ET, Ben Affleck..."
Now they go for more shots of the most fuckable stars at the premieres for the shittiest movies. It is important to understand that the motherfuckers who make these shows are not interested in fucking these stars themselves, they are interested in figuring out which stars are considered more fuckable by the mainstream audience. It's not real lust as far as I'm concerned, again it is just business. just like a lot of the pimps i have known throughout my years the important thing starts to be the game, how much game they have and how many bitches in their stable, not how good the actual service is.
Three times throughout the show, they say, Tomorrow on ET, behind the scenes on next week's NBC movie event, some movie where Robe Lowe is the president during an earthquake or a killer bee attack or some shit like that. based on a true story. half of today's show is clips from tomorrow's show, the other half is the clips they showed from today's show on yesterday's show.
Finally at the end, they get to the ben affleck story, but its just the same thing they showed before, except they say that his mom has emphysema.
jesus christ, i can only imagine what these motherfuckers are gonna do when the oscars roll around. they'll probaly be doing round the clock coverage of who made the dress catherine zeta jones is wearing.
But what I hate most about these shows is every fucking week they show the top ten moneymakers as if its something important. This week's box office weiners. They got this on the magazine shows, they got it in the actual magazines, they got it on the local fucking news and in the newspaper and "the pretty newspaper" (USA Today) and on the radio.
Now the danger of this is that the more they keep showing everybody all the math and ranking the movies, the more important it starts to seem to some gullible motherfuckers. In a magazine its a milky discharge that drips from the box office charts to the reviews on the next page, then spreads eventually to the interviews and the fall preview and even the front cover. "Will this be jim carrey's comeback after the dud that only made $65 million domestic?"
So when all the pretty people on the magazine covers say its okay, suddenly you got motherfuckers like Jailhouse Jim writing reviews completely about whether or not this movie is going to be a hit, this one is too fuckin weird for the mainstream, by the way these are the stars unfortunately they have not proven to have box office pull, let alone box office muscle, box office clout, marquee power or opening power. And these motherfuckers who write this shit don't mind looking in the mirror. At least a pusher knows his mom ain't proud of him, he has some kind of shame in there somewhere. Not so for the box office pundit, he puts this shit on his resume and superimposes it on the screen when he's on tv.
Meanwhile you got people on the internet who got no connection whatsoever to the movie business trying to predict how much money somebody's gonna make on the fucking pokeyman movie that comes out that week. Then you got people looking back at the week before to try to figure out what went wrong in their predictions and what trends this might point to in order to predict the next week so that they will feel better the next time they look back at what went wrong. and worst of all you got some punk motherfucker (Jailhouse Jim) starts talking shit about some movie BASED SOLELY ON THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IT MADE OR WON'T MAKE and as far as we know this punk ass little bitch hasn't even SEEN the fucking movie what the hell he knows about cookies fortune.
This money thirst virus spreads across our culture and becomes acceptable, like that time in the '70s when date rape was really popular. Also I should point out that at the time I went down armed robbery was not considered as taboo as it is today. But just because it is a part of our culture doesn't mean its the right thing to do or at least that's what the judge said.
The same thing goes for the commercialization of the movie houses themselves. Recently I went to see The Messenger at a "regal" theater and before the movie they show a pepsi commercial, and within the pepsi commercial is a mini-access hollywood about what pepsi considers "the hot topics", some movie and some CD. And thats all I fuckin NEED is a commercial within a commercial within a commercial venture within a multiplex. But the regal chain says, "Well, everybody else is doin it so nobody will mind sitting through this bullshit." If i may be vulgar one more time i would like to point out that this defense never works in a court of law for gang rapists as far as i know.
I'm sorry i'm telling you guys all this shit you already know, but this really bothers me. Please guys, if you are truly my buds, you gotta believe me, and not these slick access hollywood pricks. For people like us, whose sole duty in hollywood is to watch the fucking movies, Cinema is a fucking ART before it is a business, and it always will be.
If you complain about a movie could have been better without that limp biscuit song and some punk defends it by saying they had to make it that way in order for the movie to be more profitable, what i want you to do is break this motherfucker's knee, then take the sharpened edge of an aluminum can and slit the back of his neck and tell him next time its the front, bitch. Movies may be only about money to some of the people that make them, but that doesn't mean we should respect that. If i had been into armed robbery only for the money i would have been laughed out of the fucking yard. It is an attack on our culture and it is not acceptable in my opinion.
The question I have is WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKERS that they disrespect the art of the Cinema in this way? They don't walk the walk. It's like a dude with a Harley tattoo that rides a ninja.
Don't these motherfuckers remember a time when they watched a movie and got excited cause they hadn't ever seen a movie like that and they wondered what this meant for the future of filmmaking (fight club)? Haven't they ever felt so entertained they could stand up and cheer (die hard) or so emotional they start to cry (fly away home but please remember i was on shrooms at the time)?
When you talk about "entertainment" could there be one fucking moment where a well told joke or a character that reminded you of yourself was more important than all the million dollars and profit projections and exit polls and new heads of marketing and designer dresses and fad diets and star studded premieres and private wedding ceremonies?
And when you talk about tv could you NOT fucking call it "the tube" ferchrissakes Jailhouse Jim, I mean what the hell kind of language are you speaking there jack? And although i don't approve of calling it a "flick" instead of a movie or a film, i fucking BEG you to call it a flick before you call it a "franchise" again you piece of shit.
Which brings me back to the main point, which is that I am going to find Jailhouse Jim, strut into his living room, rip the issue of US Magazine out of his hands, and pry his fucking ribs open to show his children that daddy has no heart. This dude has taken my life and my passion and has sanded it off, smoothed it out, tore out the emotions and ideas like so much pumpkin guts, and tossed its unidentifiable corpse onto the world wide web to be raped by soulless business men who could give a fuck about Art or Writing or human emotion unless theres a chance they can get points on the licensing.
Now i hope to christ i don't end up in the joint again over this, but sometimes god's laws are more important than man's laws in my opinion. and god says don't fuck with the fucking Cinema, asshole.
Thanks guys.
--Vern
VERN TELL'S IT LIKE IT IS #8 - Sleepy Hollow
November 22nd, 1999
This week what I saw was a piece by the name of Sleepy Hollow. This is what you call an old fashioned horror type movie based on that old story of the decapitated horseman. What he does is he goes around chopping off motherfuckers heads with an ax goin "Where's my head? Where's my head motherfucker give it back!" Or at least, that is what he's communicating through the medium of head chopping.
Now first of all, if any of you like me saw halloween 20 last halloween, your probably thinking the same thing I am - could it be... michael meyers is the headless horseman? Because remember michael also got his head chopped off with an ax. And yeah nobody ever taught him how to ride a horse but then nobody taught him how to drive a car either but he was doing very well last night. Anyway I don't want to give anything away but its not him unfortunately in sleepy hollow because it takes place in a different time period. SOrry.
Well obviously what you gotta do in a headless horseman type situation like this, even if its not michael meyers, you gotta figure out what the hell is up with this fucker and catch him. Let me tell you i'm glad this dude doesn't get locked up in the end, i would feel bad for the inmates that have to deal with a dude with no head, that's just creepy.
So anyway the dude who goes after him is kind of a sissy type fella by the name of Ichabod Crane. Apparently he's some sort of cop although without a uniform or a badge I'm just going to let it slide and say, okay, this dude is all right with me. Even if he's wearing some kind of lady's scarf which I guess was considered less taboo at the time this takes place.
Now you know I'm thinking it, so I'm just gonna go ahead and say it, this dude Ichabod would NOT last long inside. He's afraid of a headless horseman, afraid of a headless dead guy, afraid of a hairy spider. He hides under his blanket and won't come out of his bedroom he's so scared. I don't know what the fuck a pretty janey like this is gonna do when he has to shower with Mickey Deadly, a samoan dude with the devil tattood on his dick.
But I gotta be honest, this hiding under the blanket shit is something you don't see a whole lot in movies, so I gotta give it points for refreshingness. I don't want to see everybody start doing this in the movies, I'd rather have more walking bare foot on glass as in the film Bruce Willis's Die Hard. And if van damme tried the hiding in the bed he'd probably work in some kind of splits and that would just be kind of stupid. But this one time in sleepy hollow it's kind of cool, I like it.
You see, you can't expect Ichabod to be a fucking ANIMAL like a lot of these guys in prison, who lift weights EVERY FUCKING DAY and use rookies as punching bags and wouldn't be afraid of a rabid gorilla on PCP. That's just not Ichabod, Ichabod is one of these scientific rational type guys, trying to use an encyclopedia and a math chart to reduce life into a formula. He's always trying to think, trying to figure things out, deep in concentration in that brainy head of his. You might think this is an advantage he has since the motherfucker he's up against has NO head, but that's where there is an interesting twist.
You see the headless horseman, having no head, doesn't overthink things. He just overreacts. I mean you should see how many heads this guy chops off, its probably four times as many as I've seen in my entire life. What Ichabod has to realize (with help from a foxy gal in his dreams, possibly his mother) is that you can't just think about all this stuff. You gotta stop thinking, head off into the haunted woods with only a little boy to protect you, and look this little prick the horseman right in the stump.
And in order to do that Ichabod has to do what every man must learn to do at some time in his life, stop thinkin and start instinctin. I know this is what he did because somehow the dude figures out that somebody is controlling the headless horseman, and I don't know how the fuck he comes up with some random shit like that unless its instinct.
Instinct is what brings the best things in life. Its what told me to go see die hard the first time even though it starred a dude from moonlighting. Its what told me to become a Writer and to start a web sight about the films of cinema, despite the prejudices against ex-con film critics. And its what led ichabod to find the headless horseman's head and give it to him. This was a good trick because after it was proven he had a head it pretty much ruined his whole gimmick and he had to leave.
Now to be frankly honest as someone who is trying to be Positive and concentrate on my Writing rather than keep breaking people's ribs like on the evening of October 31st on my own property, I actually wish I could be as brainy as this dude ichabod (although with more masculine type clothes). I would like to have his type of knowledge as well as intelligence, however when it comes down to it all the know how in the world isn't worth jack shit next to the artistic fucking impulse.
Stop figuring things out, formulating, calculating and quantifying what makes sense and what it all means. Shut your mouth, get off your ass and do what comes naturally you jackass. Thats what ichabod would tell you and thats what the headless horseman would tell you, and thats what I'm telling you. And you should trust what us three are saying here because two heads are better than one.
Thanks guys.
--Vern
P.S. Two heads are better than one? Holy christ that was a despicable fucking joke, I have been reading too much of that jailhouse jim's sight (see last week's column). One more reason why I'm going to cut that motherfuckers balls off.
VERN TELL'S IT LIKE IT IS #9 - Toy Story 2
November 19th, 1999
Now correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Richard Pryor ALSO have a movie by the name of toy story. This was not one of mr. Pryor's better pictures in my opinion, its the one where a rich white kid buys richard as a toy. He says "a big train set won't do it for me dad, I need a famous black comic to degrade." The basic type of humor is Richard falls in the water and runs around in fast speed while the piranhas bite him in the ass. This may have paved the way for many of the Sinbad pictures I've seen on cable however in MY opinion it still is not one of the high points in pryors career.
Well I guess you can tell that I've been out of the picture for a while because i never heard of this other toy story and here i thought this was going to be the new Richard Pryor. To be honest I promised some dudes over on alt.horror I was gonna review the End of Days this week, but I'm afraid I let them down. Arnold (who by the way I strongly suspect is a kraut despite his front as an all american restaranteur type dude) probably lifts weights as much as a lot of the guys inside. However what Richard has is a quick wit and ability to transform himself into a thousand characters, even animals or inanimated objects (he could have easily played an etchasketch or yoyo in this movie, and convincing as hell too). This is a funny motherfucker with some great fucking stories and even is attempting to go clean for quite a few years. In my new positive life it is this type of intelligent talents that I must value over the muscles. Arnold unfortunately is not a funny motherfucker judging by the 15 minutes of Jingle All of the Way I watched on tv tonight. That is got to be one of the worst executed pieces of comedy i have EVER fucking seen, even if you count the web sight Rob and Marge's Laugh Central. Sorry arnold. Read a book.
Well as you probaly know by now if you've seen toy story 2, richard pryor isn't in it at all. What this is is a VERY fucking strange story where the toys such as a cowboy doll and a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear come to life when your not looking. There is a fat dude who steals the cowboy doll. This is a dude who collects cowboys and when he gets all of them he's going to sell them to a museum. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with this motherfucker he collects all this stuff and as far as I can tell doesn't even like cowboys. He doesn't have any cowboy toys in his house that he plans to keep and he doesn't even wear boots or own a horse. In my opinion this is the same type of dude who runs the movie studios today, who likes money but not movies but maybe got fired from the bank or the US mint or wherever people who have a passion for money work. So he controls the movie studio from a little different perspective than any normal person with a beating heart who loves and enjoys the Cinema artform.
Well I believe they had these cowboy dolls when I was a teenager but I sure never knew they had this kind of emotional struggle going on. It turns out all toys must face the fact that their owners will soon grow out of them, and they spend a lot of time brooding about this. There are many opinions within the cowboy community - do you stay in a box, in a museum, at least being looked at? Or do you get played with by a kid, almost feeling alive, but then get your arm torn off and sent to goodwill?
Now there are a lot of movies already made about the killer dolls. I like one called Dolls which is about the punk rockers and everything that stay at an old couple's house during a storm and get killed by dolls. Trilogy of terror is a scary one with a scary doll and Magic is about a creepy ass ventriloquist dummy. Then theres puppetmasters, which is basically the same type of thing except there are many different episodes including cowboys, mummies, nazi germany and not to mention Decapitron. To be frankly honest I haven't seen these movies but I've read the boxes. Apparently a box of little toys has become a gang of little terrors. However as a legitimate critic of the Cinema I will not tell you my opinion on this series until I have seen a few scenes from each.
Then of course there are the most popular, the Chucky pictures which unfortunately most critics will probaly compare this to. In my opinion we're talking applets and cotlets here, because this is the ONLY of the toy movies that thought to make an action adventure drama about these dolls instead of a horror. I love a good horror but for once, let's see some positive dolls who do not poke out eyeballs but do perform elevator stunts as an homage to Bruce Willis's Die Hard (1988).
Now I gotta be honest, I probaly would've liked this motherfucker even better if Richard was in it, but hey don't look a dead horse in the mouth jack. Also the cowgirl is kind of hot for a toy so I'm not complainin man.
If there's not a new chucky picture coming out soon, or even if there is, I would recommend this as one of the better killer doll movies, despite its non violent gimmick.
Thanks guys
--Vern
P.S. In the spirit of the season I'm going to be posting some new essays this week, about some of my favorite christmas movies. I don't want to give anything away but they all star Bruce Willis as John fucking McClane. Keep a look out bud
THIS JUST IN: "Comedian Richard Pryor guest stars on NORM this Wednesday night at 9:30, on ABC, playing a man in a wheelchair accused of attacking his nurses." I didn't know about this when I Wrote the column but I believe Disney and ABC are both owned by the same company, so as somebody that's been around the block a few times I wouldn't be surprised if they timed it this way on purpose for ratings.
VERN TELL'S IT LIKE IT IS #10 - The Comedy of Jokes
December 6, 1999
Well hell man here it is my tenth column that's a pretty fucking big deal in my opinion. I think it would be unfair to just review a movie for the tenth column. Also no major movies were released this week and to be frankly honest I don't want to see the Schwarzenegger after all. I read that he has a shootout with catholic priests and that's pretty fucking funny but otherwise it just looks like its yet another copy of the whole ghostbusters tongue in cheek horror thing.
You see I happen to like humor as well as jokes, when it is good. One of my buds Jeff McCloud Writes to me just about every week and this week to be honest he Wrote that I didn't understand comedy. Well I am here to prove that is not the case.
As I told Jeff, maybe Jay Leno, Bob Hope, all these guys, to be frankly honest it's true I DON'T understand what's supposed to be so funny about these motherfuckers. I mean yeah I understand clinton got a blow job, white guys don't know how to dance etc. but I think for me comedy is a dude that tells a good funny story. That dude is of course Mr. Richard Pryor.
I wrote about Richard last week and I also mentioned he was going to be on a tv show "Norm." Well I watched it and in my opinion it was not richard's best work although better than Toy Story part 1. Richard was in the opening scene playing a dude in a wheelchair. Now what he does is he has a couple lines and then he jumps on norm's back.
Now I did not know this but it turns out Richard is in a wheelchair in real life. I don't know if this is related to his freebasing accident or not however that wasn't really him jumping on Norm's back. And in my opinion, you don't get richard fucking pryor to appear on your tv show and then have a stunt double for half his scene. So that is why i think this show should be cancelled.
Another young dude who was once said to be the new Richard Pryor is Mr. Eddie Murphy of Saturday Night LIve. Now Eddie used to do standup movies like Richard and once even had a non standup movie that had Richard in it (Harlem Nights). Unfortunately these days his career seems to have gone pretty much in the crapper.
At one time Eddie was doing movies where he is a wisecracking cop who lies all the time, pretending to be a pool cleaner, photographer for Rolling Stone magazine to take pictures of Michael Jackson or whatever. He can pull all kinds of shit off but he's vulnerable, he's just a fuckup when it comes down to it, but a good one. Not unlike Bruce Willis in my opinion as far as a serious action movie but with laughs.
But one fateful day Eddie did a movie called Coming To America about he was an African prince trying to find a wife in America or some shit like that. Unfortunately in this film is contained a scene where Eddie plays all of the dudes in a barber shop, wearing makeup and speaking in different voices.
Now don't get me wrong, it was funny the first time, but there comes a time in a man's life when he's got to start doing something new. Eddie is getting older and he still keeps remaking this one scene. Vampire in Brooklyn. Bowfinger, he plays two characters. The worst of all is Nutty Professor, one of Eddie's more serious movies about how he's a fat dude. In this movie Eddie plays a fat dude, an old lady, an old man. Although there are almost no jokes in the movie as far as I noticed there is some comic relief about how the fat dudes fart all the time and stuff M&Ms in their mouth.
I don't know about you but I know a lot of Samoan dudes that would like to have a few words with Eddie about this one. I think he was trying to make the movie as a tribute to fat dudes, but it sure didn't come out right.
However recently I rented a movie starring Eddie which I appreciated a little more and I think you know what the movie is - Life.
In Life, Eddie and Martin Lawrence play two black dudes who get framed for murder and, as you might guess, get life. So the movie mostly takes place in prison and some of you may not know this but I am an ex-con so I know a little about this type of setting.
Now this is not necessarily the greatest depiction of prison life that I have seen. At times it seems like these characters just live in the yard and don't even have their own cells. But it does do a good job of showing the way motherfuckers are constantly scheming to escape, and better yet the friendship and bond that can develop just from being locked up together. Although there is little depiction of the gangs and rape and that sort of thing it does show the Positive side and the family atmosphere that develops.
What I like about this movie is Eddie's character, back to the old charismatic hustler. He is likable because like you or me he is a dude that can fuck up every now and again, and like you or me he knows the ins and outs of the prison system. He is not one of these Eddie Murphy romantic leads of the '90s and he is definitely none of this fat dude shit.
However ultimately the film falls apart. For one thing, I think it is a copout to have these dudes be framed for the murder. I mean they are small time hustlers anyway why not put them in the joint for a crime they really did commit. We should still be able to feel for these dudes in this situation and wouldn't have to have this routine cop show type ending where they find the cop who framed them and get their revenge.
But particularly the movie fails in the end when once again Eddie succumbs to his makeup fetish and plays an old man still in the can. Now okay I like the idea of telling the whole story of these motherfuckers life sentences, but lets be honest here. Neither of these motherfuckers looks or sounds like an old man. Now maybe this is what passes for jokes these days but I'm not standing for it. Eddie wants to wear makeup even if its gonna ruin a movie, and that is his weakness, just like Mike Meyers (the comedian, not the Shape) has the weakness that he wants to be a rock star so he has to have a band or sing in all of his movies.
Now in prison there are plenty of dudes that like to tell jokes. These are what you call a clown or a smartass or a "you think your funny motherfucker?" However some of them you must admit know how to tell jokes. I'm not talking on the level of a Richard Pryor although some of them show the promise of perhaps a young Eddie Murphy or Johnny Carson.
In my opinion comedy is all about timing and these motherfuckers have a LONG FUCKING TIME to get the timing down. Unfortunately the correctional system is not a good environment for a comic, and almost seems designed to keep them down. A comedian who practices the timing of one joke endlessly may eventually master the comic timing, however he will also annoy his neighbors and get shanked pretty quick. Therefore there is little room for perfectionism or rehearsal in the can. That is why very few successful comedians other than Tim Allen and Drew Carrey are ex-cons.
So you see the point is, I do understand comedy in my opinion. But they just don't make good ones anymore. If you know of any good ones, or if you know who the new Richard Pryor of the '90s is, please e-mail me.
--Vern