Taverns on the Screen: The Top Ten Barroom Scenes of Cinema (Part Deux)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a fine example of the way lazy, excessive reliance on ridiculous CGI (and CGI monkeys) can ruin an otherwise passable movie. And there’s no finer argument for the good ol’ fashioned non-CGI pleasures of real world filmmaking than the Nepalese bar sequence in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. To recap: winsome badass Karen Allen (oh, Hollywood, HOW did you ever let her get away?) drinks a yak-herder under the table, then her flaky ex-boyfriend shows up while she’s all full o’ rotgut and she slaps him in the face and sends him on his way. And THEN, creepy Nazi torturer Toht (a.k.a. Mr. Melty-Face) shows up with a bunch of evil minions and things really get interesting. What follows is a master class in cinematic action, pacing, camera placement, stuntwork, pyrotechnics, performance and editing...all without a bluescreen (or hangover) in sight.

ON_LINE (2002)

Okay, so maybe I’m biased, given that I co-wrote this one (with director Jed Weintrob), but I’ve always had a soft spot for the scene in this under-the-radar internet sex comedy where neurotic shut-in John (Josh Hamilton) goes to an odious, overpriced Manhattan nightclub on a disastrous double-date with Jordan (Vanessa Ferlito), the wild cybersex enthusiast he picked up on the internet, his oversexed roommate, Moe (Harold Perrineau, Jr.) and Moe’s pill-popping, manic-depressive girlfriend (Isabel Gillies). But don’t take my word for it: in a Salon review that (almost but not quite) made up for any number of really quite nasty reviews of the film, the extremely cultured and discerning Andrew O'Hehir summed up the appeal of the scene thusly: “John's nightclub internal monologue, as he watches Jordan dance and reflects on how hot she is, how shallow he is for thinking that and how little chance he has of actually getting in her pants in the off-line world, is probably the movie's high point.” Thanks, Mr. O’Hehir...I couldn’ t have said it better myself!

BLAZING SADDLES (1974)

Before that dastardly Hedley Lamar (played with nefarious gusto by the late Harvey Korman) decided to run the railroad through it, the hamlet of Rock Ridge in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles had everything an Old West town needed: a church, a hoosegow for when Mongo came to town, and proximity to the Hollywood Hills. And, of course, it had its own saloon. But unlike most of the filthy, rowdy joints in the history of westerns, this particular saloon was always kept nice and clean, thanks to the stewardship of the unfortunately named Anal Johnson. All that came to an end, however, with the arrival of the Teutonic songbird Lili von Shtupp, played with Dietrichian élan by the Oscar-nominated Madeline Kahn. Lili’s world-weary act, sweet set of curves, and foul-mouthed stage patter (“Why don’t you get your friggin’ feet off the stage?”) brings every rough rider in the county, but it’s her love of that delicious schnitzengruben that leads Lamar to hire her to seduce and abandon Bart, the new sheriff in town. In one of the most memorable scenes ever set in an Old West saloon, Lili sighs out “I’m Tired” before being carried off, James Brown-style, by her backup dancers and deposited in the arms of Sheriff Bart – who, it turns out, has more schnitzengruben than she can handle.

THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (1980)

It’s a scene we’ve watch play out a million times in a million action movies: a nameless bar in the middle of nowhere is taken over by a generic group of bikers, who wreak havoc in the place until they push the wrong guy just a little bit too far. But William Peter Blatty’s disturbing cult hit The Ninth Configuration is no typical action movie, and the bar fight won’t play out in a typical way. The set-up to the scene is more complex than it seems: mentally disturbed former astronaut Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), disillusioned that sensitive psychiatrist Col. Vincent Kane (Stacy Keach) has turned out to be a blood-soaked Marine Corps commando, escapes from an asylum and seeks refuge in liquor at the nameless biker bar. A combination of booze, despair and a smart mouth enrages the boss bikers (the unstable brute Stanley and the cunning, sadistic Richard, played by the gaunt, devil-faced Richard Lynch), who abuse Cutshaw until Kane arrives to rescue him. Kane, who has forsaken violence and taken up the mantle of the caring, well-meaning shrink in order to bury his own murderous past, attempts to come to a peaceful resolution, but finally he can take no more. The scene that follows is one of the most stunning bar fights every captured on film – although to call it a fight ignores what truly happens: Kane utterly annihilates the biker gang in a matter of seconds, killing a number of them. It’s an astonishing scene, and even more astonishing is the fact that it’s not even the climax of The Ninth Configuration.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)

In an audio commentary track recorded for the French Connection DVD, Gene Hackman described Eddie Egan, the real-life model for Hackman's obsessed narc "Popeye" Doyle, as having been "flippant" to a degree that he'd never encountered before in a human being. It's easy to imagine the conversation among the patrons of the Harlem bar that Popeye raids after he's stormed in and out like a hurricane: "That fellow was certainly flippant, wasn't he? I'm a fervent supporter of our boys in blue, but speaking as an amateur observer of the law enforcement process, I can't help feeling that some of that flippancy was unwarranted! Here, help me tie off this tourniquet?" The raid, which is actually a cover for a meeting in the men's room between Popeye and an informant, establishes Popeye's adversarial relationship to the city's civilian population, his casual racism, and the gleefully sadistic tinge to his brutality. (Obliged to rough up his informant so that no one will suspect the guy is a rat, Popeye asks him, "Where do you want it?" The man thinks about it for a second and points to his right cheek, and Popeye slugs him on his left. The blow looks hard enough to crack the guy's jaw, but this is Popeye when he's just playing.) In a recent interview in Reason, Ed Burns, the twenty-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department turned TV writer whose HBO series The Wire dismantled the logic behind the nation's "war on drugs", called the scene "iconic" and blamed it for instilling the wrong mindset in a generation of cops by "put[ting] out the idea of this guy who cracks heads," Popeye set police work back by reinforcing the idea that cops should act like swaggering badasses instead of establishing a functional relationship with their communities. So if you're a fan of The Wire -- a not uncommon condition among Screengrab writers -- then give it up for Popeye Doyle; without him, The Wire might not have been necessary.

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CGI Must Die: Five Reasons Why

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Screengrab Pub Crawl - The Top 15 Bars of Cinema (Part One)

Screengrab Pub Crawl - The Top 15 Bars of Cinema (Part Two)

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Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Plastic surgery is a good metaphor for CGI (a.k.a. "computer-generated imagery"): it works best when you’re least aware of it, adding value without calling attention to its glaring, unnatural fakery. A little and you’re marveling at the natural, age-appropriate sexiness of Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, wondering “did she or didn’t she?” with regard to nips, tucks and nose jobs. Too much, and you’re recoiling in horror at that freakish Cat Lady lady, gasping in shock over missing noses and airbag lips, or wondering why Nicole Kidman keeps wearing that creepy Nicole Kidman mask.

Hollywood has developed an unhealthy addiction to both plastic surgery and CGI, preferring the obviously fake to the convincingly real, whether in the form of grotesquely disproportionate rock-hard breasticles or pixilated atrocities like Speed Racer, the cinematic equivalent of watching other people's birthday brats play video games at Chuck E. Cheese for an endless 135 minutes.

Did Jar-Jar Binks teach us nothing? Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer a little special in my special effects: cinematic images that make me go, “Oh my God, how’d they do that?” rather than, “Dude, that reminds me of this awesome World of Warcraft battle I just posted on YouTube!”

If you’re one of the CGI addicted who think all non-pixelated movie effects are inherently “cheesy,” consider the following clips an intervention as we here at the Screengrab present five examples of amazing movie moments that had (almost) nothing to do with computer-generated imagery.

Just about any Buster Keaton movie

See that car falling apart while Buster Keaton is driving it? See the front of that house falling and nearly crushing him? See that bridge collapsing with the train on it? All that shit actually happened in real life, not in post-production!

The Road Warrior

Why are high speed car chases with actual cars (and trucks and motorcycles and gyrocopters) better than computerized car action? Gee, I don’t know...maybe the same reason sex with an actual human being is better than internet porn?

The Thing (1982)

Sure, the shape-shifting alien action in John Carpenter’s The Thing may look as fake and unbelievable as CGI...but the viscous, tactile ooze has an icky, organic quality that's very hard to duplicate in the shiny world of greenscreen ones and zeroes.

Altered States

CGI scenes all tend to have a similar look, not unlike the legions of aging Hollywood starlets sporting “trout pout” and Spitting Image puppet faces after one too many visits to the neighborhood Botox dispensary. Directors and special effects coordinators forced to get a little more creative, however, may come up with distinctive, fucked-up and memorable images like those found in this one-of-a-kind Ken Russell phantasmagoria.

Star Wars

And speaking of tactile...one word: models. The star destroyer in the opening scene of Star Wars (along with all the nooks and crannies of all the ships in 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien) were and remain more iconic and dramatic than all the CGI pod-racers, Naboo royal cruisers or Trade Federation frigates the computers at Skywalker Ranch have ever rendered.

Don’t get me wrong. CGI has achieved some amazing things: the bullet-time sequences in The Matrix, Gollum and that buck naked Angelina Jolie in Beowulf. But enough is enough, people. It’s time for Hollywood to go cold turkey.

For the betterment of all humanity...CGI Must Die.

The Screengrab : CGI

Taverns on the Screen: The Top Ten Barroom Scenes of Cinema (Part Deux)

CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why