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Summer 1980: When Comedy was the MCU

posted 9 days ago by roger1 (2843)
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The biggest hit movie in the summer of 1980, and of the year, was The Empire Strikes Back. The "Spielberg-Lucas" decade began with Lucas leading off. The next summer, 1981, Lucas and Spielberg together (as producer and director respectively) would take the summer and the year with Raiders of the Lost Ark. The next summer, 1982, the hit of the summer and the year -- and all time for a long while -- was Spielberg's: ET. The next summer, 1983, Lucas came back with his third -- and supposedly final -- Star Wars capper, Return of the Jedi. The next summer, 1984 Lucas and Spielberg together had Indiana Jones ready to go: Indiana Jones(name in the title now) and the Temple of Doom. But they didn't get the hit of the summer and the year. What beat it was interesting.

Yes, the 80s were the Lucas/Spielberg decade overall, but as it turned out , they were stronger in the FIRST HALF of the 80s. Lucas second half of the decade saw Howard the Duck, Willow and Lucas pretty much dropping out in the main for years to come. Spielberg's second half of the decade saw him trying to "go serious" with The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, and rather crapping out with "Always" a remake of "A Guy Named Joe." In 1989, at the end of the decade, Lucas and Spielberg would join again to bring us Indiana Jones "one last time"(ha) in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They didn't get the hit of the summer and the fall that time -- Batman took the honors.

..but back up to that summer of 1980.

Lucas had The Empire Strikes Back. Spielberg offered us nothing as a DIRECTOR, but he had a surprise in store.

And that surprise was part of the "comedy dominatiion of summer 1980" -- a pretty impressive takeover of the box office ASIDE from The Empire Strikes Back (and the other notable big one of summer 1980 -- Kubrick's The Shining.)

Comedy was King in the summer of 1980. You could say that "SNL was the MCU" that summer, but that would be wrong -- there were two SNL driven hits, and two non-SNL driven hits, and as a cumulatve matter, they ruled the summer and our catch-phrase ridden talk, and American culture.

Here are the four:

The two from Saturday Night Live:

The Blues Brothers. As I post this, Saturday Night Live is about to enter its 50th year after having given us scores(hundreds?) of comedy players over those decades. A comparatively small percentage of those players became bona fide bankable movie stars. Another group of them became "network TV comedy series stars." Others became supporting players in movies. And others went nowhere.

But in 1980, "the first class of SNL" (from its first season of 1975-1976, with one big one from 1976-77) had four bona fide male movie stars and all four of them ended up in two movies that summer.

The Blues Brothers paired John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in a full movie based on a recurring SNL "musical sketch" in which Belushi and Ackroyd --in black suits and ties and porkpie hats -- took a legitimate swing at singing blues hits. The sketch "took" and the next thing you know(it took about four years), Belushi and Ackroyd(as a comedy team they never took alphabetical order -- Belushi was the bigger movie star thanks to Animal House) as Jake and Elwood Blues had (1) a hit music album all over 1979 radio; (2) a 1980 US concert tour and (3) a movie.

"The Blues Brothers movie" did double duty as a comedy vehicle: it brought The Blues Brothers to the big screen and it was the follow of director John Landis to HIS influential (and very funny) big hit of 1978: National Lampoon's Animal House.

And therein lie a tale. Landis had been held to a tight budget and a tight schedule on Animal House, but when it hit big, he was given carte blanche on The Blues Brothers and you could tell: it went over budget and over schedule as Landis staged a sprawling movie with wall to wall car chases and a large number of big musical numbers(featuring black soul artists in a nod to counterbalancing white Jake and Elwood.)

I don't much think that The Blues Brothers was a good a movie as Animal House. The reason was the script. Animal House had been finely honed by National Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Chris Miller(from their college experiences) with a third very funny writer: Harold Ramis. The Blues Brothers was, in the main, a Dan Ackroyd script from his rather simple plot idea -- just less "full a meal." Director John Landis got a co-writing credit, but seemed a better director(the comedy timing of Animal House was his and his alone) than writer.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

No matter. The Blues Brothers rather overpowered its way to success -- the crashes, the musical numbers, John Candy's small role("Orange whip? Orange whip?") A certain amount of comedy from Belushi and Ackroyd(though Belushi, having to carry more dialogue and character than in Animal House, proved not quite up to the job). And a great catch phrase: "We're on a mission from God." Steven Spielberg showed up at the end in a cameo as a Chicago city records clerk. Was this Spielberg's big contribution to summer 1980? No, there was a bigger one. Anon.

Caddyshack: The SECOND big summer comedy hit with an SNL connection. But there was a twist. Whereas Belushi and Ackroyd were true friends and a comedy team -- the two SNL vets in THIS one -- Chevy Chase and Bill Murray -- actively hated each other and had had a fistfight backstage at SNL in 1978 when Chevy Chase (who quit the show early in the second season that Bill Murray started) came back to host the show and got in an argument with Murray(who was evidently put up to it by -- Belushi.) Reportedly, Murray yelled at Chase: "Medium talent!" and Chase reflected on the pockmarks in Murray's face, and Murray said somthing about Chase's wife. BOOM.

Bill Murray and Chevy Chase share one scene in Caddyshack -- and they are quite funny and improvisational in it -- but it evidently took money and Henry Kissinger level negotiations to get them to do it.

The rest of the time, Chase and Murray are in separate movies WITHIN Caddyshack and being quite funny in them.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

Chase became a star out of SNL first, but rather frittered his stardom away in too many bad movies. Murray who started his time on SNL as "the less handsome guy who tried to take Chevy Chase's place" -- would stun everybody by moving into the lead as the "Biggest SNL star" with these in a row: Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Tootsie and the Big One: Ghostbusters. During that same time, Belushi died from drugs(in 1982) and Chase struggled. One hit for Chase during this period -- National Lampoon's Vacation. A few too many flops. Chase struggled to another hit in 1985 -- Fletch, but then needed the Vacation series to stay afloat. One of them -- Christmas Vacation in 1989 -- has proved his most famous movie now, a perennial Christmas TV favorite.

Chase and Murray play to their strengths in Caddyshack. Chase is indeed handsome and suave, but also on a weird wavelength of his own, unwilling to really connect with the other actors or even to say his lines right half the time; it works for him. Murray here played purposely a lot more stupid than his later "hippest guy in the room" characters(Stripes, Ghostbusters) but came up with that brilliant and erudite speech about caddying for the Dali Lama ("He said that on my death bed, I will received total consciousness. So I got that going for me - which is nice.")

Murray also gets to duel with the robot comedy gopher. Producer Jon Peters -- Barbra Streisand's boyfriend -- wanted more of that gopher. He's funny indeed. But writer Doug Kenney -- who co-wrote Animal House -- was despressed by such slapstick kid-friendly additions to his hip script(co-written with Caddyshack director Harold Ramis -- who ALSO co-wrote Animal House with Kenney.)

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[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

In the "what's funnier? Animal House or Caddyshack?" debate, I'm team Animal House. Caddyshack has a bit too much "plot with the young caddies" and diverts away from the main comedy talent too often. Ted Knight is a much more sitcommish overdone villain than dead serious John Vernon as Dean Wormer in Animal House.

And then there is Rodney Dangerfield, who is in yet HIS separate comedy movie from younger guys Chase and Murray. Though there was this -- middle-aged, overweight, google-eyed Dangerfield might have been but he was EQUALLY hip and loved by young people as Chase and Murray. This movie is his comedy movie classic performance(giving him full leads in Easy Money and Back to School and other movies rather diluted his talent.)

Caddyshack probably came out of the Summer 1980 comedy mash-up with the most memorable lines, catchphrases ("Cinderella Boy! Its in the HOLE") and summer memories(that green golf course, those Florida coastal waters!) but it will always feel like a little too much of the screen time is taken away from the comedy guys we paid to see. It got a summer radio song hit, though: "I'm Alright" by Kenny Loggins. Lives on to this day.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

The two "Non-SNL" hits of the summer of 1980:

Airplane. Truly a sleeper hit. Nobody saw THIS coming, but it kept building an audience, week after week. Paramount made sure to put out a weekly Friday print ad in the Los Angeles Times and other papers to remind everybody that Airplane was STILL playing, STILL funny, STILL a big hit -- and more people came. And some people came back. The logo -- a cartoon plane twisted into a pretzel -- became the symbol OF the movie. It had no major comedy stars.

But it MADE comedy stars out of non-comedy stars: old-time straight laced macho TV actors(in the main) like Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Peter Graves...and Leslie Nielsen. Of those four, Nielsen became a FULL FLEDGED comedy star for the rest of his career(less one serious turn as the date rapist killed by Barbra Streisand in 1987's Nuts, a rather unfortunate casting mistake, people laughed.)

The writer directors of Airplane --David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker -- also known as "ZAZ" and composed of two brothers and another guy -- had been around awhile(Kentucky Fried Movie) but here declared their OWN, very NON-SNL comedy style. It was ten gags per minute, jokes in the corner of the frame, "MAD magazine on the big screen" stuff, with some verbal catcphrases that "took":

"Surely, you must be joking."
"I'm not joking...and don't call me Shirley."

Nielsen: This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
Stewardess: A hospital? What is it?
Nielsen: Its a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.

And you've got Peter Graves as the pilot, asking the young boy visiting his cockpit(at well paced intervals) questions like:

Joey..do you like gladiator movies?
Joey...you ever see a grown man naked?
Joey..have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

CONT

[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

"Airplane" got to make fun of the Airport movies in particular(particularly the one with the singing nun and the girl needing the kidney transplant), and the disaster movie trend(about dead by 1980) in general, and one particular air disaster movie -- Zero Hour -- in VERY particular (they lifted the plot about the food poisoning and recruiting the amateur pilot.)

What's funny about "Airplane" is that -- compared to the SNL comedies and the one more that I'm going to reach -- it was in some ways the most SILLY of them, the one most aimed at kids as well as adults. And yet, a lot of the comedy was a sophisticated as anything. At the same time, some of the jokes just bombed and I didn't have much use for the extended flashback sequence with "leads" Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty(a short-lived comedy darling, all fraility and innocence mixed with some savvy.)

The ZAZ team immediately put Leslie Nielsen in their ABC comedy series "Police Squad" -- it got great reviews and was cancelled after six episodes. Came 1988, they made a "Police Squad" movie -- just as funny as "Airplane" and in the same way, and Nielsen was fully launched with that movie series and some other comedies making the most of his deadpan stupidity.

Meanwhile, the OTHER stalwart TV guys had to satisfy themselves with being in a new classic -- Lloyd Bridges("I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue") Robert Stack ("Triple A bonds...the best investment you can make.") Peter Graves (who felt his lines were going to end his career.)

And let's not forget "Barbara June Cleaver Billingsley" talkin' jive with two cool black cats on the plane. It wasnt JUST all MALE stars of the straight-laced past.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

Finally:

Used Cars. "Used Cars" was the TRUE sleeper comedy of the summer of 1980, much more asleep than Airplane. Which is to say: very few people saw it. The lore is that it got the highest preview cards ever for a Columbia Pictures comedy and then the studio just sort of rushed it out with bad print ads and no fanfare and it was slaughtered by both the big-name SNL competition AND the surprise hit Airplane.

The cast was an issue. The lead was Kurt Russell, a former child AND teen AND young adult star for Disney, who had just played Elvis on TV very well. But he wasn't known for comedy. This movie would prove he could do it, GREAT.

Russell had no SNL support in Used Cars. His sidekicks were the sort-of funny Garrett Graham and the VERY funny Frank MacRae, and audiences simply had to discover those guys (MacRae had been with Belushi and Ackroyd in 1941 a few months earlier...but that was Spielberg's first flop.)

"Lenny and Squiggy" (David L Lander and Michael McKean) from Laverne and Shirley took different character names and roles in Used Cars and were very funny with what they got to do as "electronic TV wizards" who set up some ribald pranks for our used car salesmen to pull. Joe Flahterty from Second City TV at least brought THAT show to the movie(seeing as SNL didn't participate.) And skilled veteran Jack Warden showed his versatility by playing twin brothers -- one pale and frail with a heart condition, the other hearty and capable of beating up men half his age. The frail one is good, the tough one is bad, and the bad one has the good one murdered and Kurt Russell's team takes sweet revenge.

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[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

What remains odd about "Used Cars" -- flop though it was -- is that it turned out to have MAJOR talent behind the camera -- pals Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale("The Two Bobs") as writers, Zemeckis himself as director -- and Steven Spielberg as producer(THERE is Spielberg in the summer of 1980). Spielberg's credit is on screen now, but I think he took it OFF in 1980.

Zemickis would eventually part with Bob Gale, but not before they made Back to the Future for Spielberg and REALLY got big. And then Zemickis went off and did Forrest Gump and got his Best Director Oscar.

But the thing of it is this: likely Spielberg took his name off of "Used Cars" because -- compared to Back to the Future and Forrest Gump -- it is a pretty radical movie..its got sex jokes(with nudity), its got bad taste jokes(the fatal heart attack of Warden's frail good guy is played for LAUGHS...and gets them), its got bad language; its got racial humor...but it was then, and remains now... FUNNY. And mean, in a good way.

I saw Used Cars with low expectations in its week of release and laughed hard. My friends with me laughed hard. The audience laughed hard. A year later, I put together a viewing party when it was on HBO and the ROOM laughed hard.

So I ended up liking Used Cars better than the "bigger guns" of summer comedy around it: The Blues Brothers(too many car crashes, too little good dialogue -- Dan Ackroyd was not a great comedy writer), Caddyshack(too much "plot with kids" getting in the way of the comics), Airplane(a bit too juvenile and silly.)

Liked all four of them, though -- its just that Used Cars was the "adult" surprise of the group.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2843) 9 days ago

What's also interesting about those four 1980 summer comedies is how the seeds were planted for the entire rest of the decade in comedy. Bill Murray would dominate among the SNL vets(until Eddie Murphy came along on the big screen.) Ghostbusters would beat Indiana Jones in the summer of 1984. ZAZ had success with the movie of The Naked Gun(and they had a "sleeper" between Airplane and The Naked Gun, with the spy movie spoof Top Secret with Val Kilmer.) Spielberg would produce Used Cars, Back to the Future , and Who Framed Roger Rabbit for Zemeckis.

And yet...there were two sad losses for two of the success stories of the comedy summer of 1980. John Belushi died in 1982 and one of the first major SNL stars was simply "taken off the table."

And John Landis would join with Steven Spielberg to produce the 1983 anthology movie of "The Twilight Zone. Landis directed a segment. Spielberg directed a segment. Actor Vic Morrow and two Vietnamese children were killed by a helicopter in the filming of the Landis segment. Landis' superstar director career was over.

So..the summer of 1980 stands alone as its own promising and successful comedy summer. Great memories, great movies STILL to watch today.