Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Did THE BIG EASY invent Hollywood South?

I put it off, I made excuses, I kept moving it to the bottom of my queue, then forgot I had it when it arrived. Most movies about New Orleans are so obscure as to be discoveries, but I've been hearing shit-talk about THE BIG EASY (1987) since the day I got here, and I wanted no part of it.

Well, it ain't THAT bad.

As a film it's got a solid script from Dan Petrie Jr (best known to contemporary screenwriters as a President of the WGA and writer of BEVERLY HILLS COP) and Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin at the apex of their popularity and charm. There's a really interesting love triangle in the story's center: cop-boss-mom. Quaid's accent— often cited one of the worst ever—is not inaccurate so much as terribly inconsistent scene to scene (it's miles ahead of Kevin Costner's in ROBIN HOOD, to give it the World's Tallest Midget Award).  All in all it's a C+ with a few B+ moments and goes down painlessly.

New Orleans residents are tough on films. As they should be; perhaps they sense the real motivations of Hollywood productions— insincerity at worst, tourist depth of affection at best. But as fatalism is our native religion, being used comes with the territory. Gallows humor and eye-rolling are the main weapons of resistance… if we're not trying to get in on the lucre-flow our politicians laud. And we never see ourselves up there on the silver screen.

Where did this begin? To what moment can we draw a line from "Hollywood South" productions like THIS IS THE END, STOLEN, and so on? It begins with THE BIG EASY.

THE BIG EASY invented the template that Hollywood South is based on.

Consider— it was written for Chicago… and moved at the last minute for budget reasons. Its story has zero details, characters, settings, or devices that can only be found here. It is, basically, an "anywhere USA" story plunked into New Orleans to take advantage of cheap production value and lazy exotica.

What makes this different from other New Orleans films up to that point is the suitability of New Orleans to the setting. CAT PEOPLE (1982) is a mess but as a conceit New Orleans is the only American city it could plausibly take place in, and its sexual/horror vibe fits well. KING CREOLE (1958) is not an Elvis movie so much as a Hal Wallis film that Elvis got cast in, and as such was written around the city, not the King. Even ANGEL HEART (1987)— same year as THE BIG EASY and is based on a novel that takes place entirely in New York City— is about a subject matter (voodoo) that actually makes more sense here.

And maybe that's why locals hate the film so much— it opened the flood gates for thrillers in the 90s like HEAVEN'S PRISONERS that could have been set anywhere, which then led to the tax incentive program (third time's the charm!) that's given us bloated nonsense like 22 JUMP STREET and THE GREEN HORNET and GERIATRIC WORLD (er, JURASSIC WORLD) which cleverly funnels money into the pockets of out-of-towners and depletes film resources for indigenous films.

Then everyone wonders why the city hasn't produced a single successful filmmaker… or film. Thanks, THE BIG EASY!

…On the other hand, it was the first film ever sold at Sundance (true story). So we have THAT to thank it for, too. Maybe Pandora's Box was actually Ellen Barkin's.

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