Reading Material

The Joy of Sets: Interviews on the Sets of 1980s Genre Movies

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Aside from being a winking pun, The Joy of Sets hasn’t been named willy-nilly. Lee Goldberg’s collection of 11 preview articles, mostly for Starlog, indeed captures the feeling of reading about hotly anticipated movies in the blockbuster excess of the ’80s. One can sense the then-young film obsessive had to have felt with such access to the making of multimillion-dollar pictures. Some of his subjects exhibited joy, too.

Take John Drimmer, first-time scripter of 1984’s Iceman, who can hardly believe his luck. Watching the daily rushes “drives me wild. It’s just wonderful,” he told Goldberg. “I mean, here I am, sitting there, drinking beers and watching them create this make-believe world of mine.”

While not all of these Interviews on the Sets of 1980s Genre Movies (as the subtitle has it) entail movies worth watching, Goldberg’s reports never fail to entertain. As with his recent James Bond Films volume, one reason is revisiting a once-dominant type of film journalism; the larger is the in-hindsight delight of checking how forecasts panned out.

After all, you remember that beloved classic of 1986, Hyper Sapien: People from Another Star. No? Are you telling me producer Jack Schwartzman’s prediction regarding his E.T. rip-off didn’t come true? For the record, his quote to Goldberg: “If Keenan Wynn doesn’t wind up with the Academy Award nomination for Hyper Sapien, I’ll eat it.” (Nom-nom-nom, Jack.)

Horror icon Wes Craven fares far better, saying of A Nightmare on Elm Street, “I really feel this will be landmark film for me, my watershed film.” Dead on! More amazing is how forthcoming the Back to the Future crew is about scrubbing all the Eric Stoltz footage and starting anew. Would Robert Zemeckis do the same today? (No.)

For me, the most interesting account of the bunch belongs to Peter Hyams’ 2010: The Year We Make Contact. The admission of figuring out how to follow up Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey — while knowing they will not be able to match it — gives the sequel an underdog polish.

Still, I can’t resist going back to the chapters in which the interviewees fall flat on their face. After bad-mouthing his own Blade Runner, producer Bud Yorkin shares why audiences will line up ’round the block for his arms-dealing Chevy Chase vehicle: “People will come to see Deal of the Century because it’s a subject that is on the tip of everyone’s tongue. … The chase between the drone and something we call an F-19 will be a French Connection ride in the sky.”

Pretty embarrassing, huh? Wait, Deal supporting actor Vince Edwards has something to add: “I think this film is going to be a blockbuster. The best damn picture since Dr. Strangelove. No, it’s going to be better.”

Thank you, Mr. Goldberg, for documenting the joy of hype and bullshit. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

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Ever wonder how the most famous parody songwriter got his start? You won’t find the answer in Eric Appel’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking a walk on the wacky side.

Inspired by a fake trailer (think 2011’s Hobo with a Shotgun) Appel produced in 2010, positive reception led him and Yankovic to collaborate on a feature-length biopic. “Biopic,” of course, is used extremely loosely. The only semblance you’ll find of the artist is his hair, humor and accordion.

Weird isn’t a pioneer in satirical, musical biopics. Jake Kasdan did it back in 2007 with Walk Hard — just two years after the genre’s archetypal flick, Walk the Line. While Kasdan’s take pokes at the template to a T, Weird does away with that tomfoolery. Or rather, it does away with everything but the tomfoolery.

Al (Daniel Radcliffe) dreams of making beloved songs “better” by rewriting the lyrics, much to the frustration of his cookie-cutter parents (Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson). After rejecting his dad’s demands to work at a factory that makes something, Al’s mentored by his childhood hero, Dr. Demento (The Office’s Rainn Wilson). And then he dates Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood).

Following in the steps of Weird Al’s first movie, 1989’s UHF, the gags are relentless. Radcliffe is a natural to physical comedy, at times taking more of a beating than he did in Swiss Army Man. This is especially evident in his lip-synced performance of “Like a Surgeon,” complete with two muscle-bound dancers struggling to dance with Madonna-inspired cone bras.

And though Weird doesn’t make even the slightest effort to portray Yankovic’s tale, it doesn’t need to. Instead, it’s a showcase of his greatest hits, each paired with their own secret history. The backstories of “Eat It” and “Amish Paradise” are zany, outlandish and even touching. Thankfully, “White and Nerdy” is nowhere to be heard.

Anyone who wants to actually learn something about artist’s career are better off reading Nathan Rabin’s Weird Al: The Book. But if you want to experience what Yankovic intended — to laugh your ass off — it’s hard to go wrong with Weird. —Daniel Bokemper

Comedy

One More Saturday Night (1986)

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Being shot in suburban Illinois, One More Saturday Night looks like it could take place one or two neighborhoods over from the shenanigans of John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. The teen comedy could pass as an alternate-reality version, as it has direct counterparts for the Anthony Michael Hall and Justin Henry roles of, respectively, the geek aching to act cool and a precocious little brother. If only it thought to copy the laughs.

Produced in part by Dan Aykroyd, this unofficial Saturday Night Live movie marks the first — and last — big-screen vehicle for the legendary SNL writing/performing team of Al Franken and Tom Davis. Having helped change television forever, they aimed for the pictures, scripting and starring as co-leads of the touring bar band Badmouth. Franken is the one with the ’fro; Davis is the one with the ’fro. Both mainly just wanna smoke pot and get laid; both front the film’s least engaging minutes.

Luckily, One More Saturday Night is an ensemble comedy with multiple overlapping storylines. A sad-sack widowed dad (the great Chelcie Ross, Major League) has his first date in 23 years. His eldest daughter (Nan Woods, In the Mood) plans to lose her virginity. His youngest daughter (Nina Siemaszko, Airheads) throws a wild party while babysitting an infant. And so on, diverging, converging and interweaving until the sun rises, bygones become bygones, and everyone enjoys communal flapjacks.

Franken and Davis’ script quickly sets up the chessboard for maximum madcap antics that fall just shy of wringing no more than a couple of overly gracious chuckles. Here’s the thing: That’s fine, because One More Saturday Night is exceedingly affable, which many funny ’80s comedies are not. Ross and Woods each get nice moments that can’t help but feel real and tender. The movie’s shortage of laughs may account for why it barely played theaters. It contains nary a pair of stolen underpants, act of nonconsensual sex nor Asian stereotype.

Actually, it has no Asians at all. But it does have Black people and, remarkably for the era, they’re not made the butt of the joke. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Escape: Puzzle of Fear (2020)

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Of all the escape room movies I’ve seen, the obscure Escape: Puzzle of Fear seems the least interested in its exploitable concept. Directed by the basically and justifiably anonymous J. Jones, the film takes half an hour to get its vapid characters into one … and then, within minutes, out of it, switching gears so abruptly, it has to have damaged the clutch.

(To be fair, a brief prologue takes place in the desired environment. Harried contestants battle against the clock and say, “Oh, snap” and “Hey, I found another weird thing.” Yet this place isn’t the one Puzzle of Fear’s participants will tackle, so it reeks of “tacked-on in post.”)

Our main man is Matt (Tommy Nash, who also produced), a contemptible dude-bro talent agent we meet as he wakes in bed. Immediately, he gets blown by his girlfriend (Aubrey Reynolds, 2018’s Frenzy) and only reaches climax by thinking about a potato sack with eyeholes pulled over someone’s head — a weird fetish, if you ask me, but you do you, Matt.

Later that day, he’s mansplaining “escape room” to her when his Cuba Gooding Jr.-esque best bud (Omar Gooding, Ghost Dad) comes bearing tickets to the Escape Hotel. He hypes these tix like they’re for the Super Bowl sidelines or in the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards’ splash zone.

At the über-posh, white-gloved Escape Hotel, they play the “crime and justice room.” Objective: Find the two 8-year-old girls gone missing while trick-or-treating. It takes Matt a ridiculously long time to make the connection between the mission and a real-life event in his past involving two 8-year-old girls gone missing while trick-or-treating. When he does, you can see recognition wash over his face. I mean, what are the odds?

And what kind of trouble is two-time Emmy nominee Nicholas Turturro in that he has to take a sixth-billed part in this trash?

And why did scripter Lizze Gordon (#Captured) type the line, “Ew, it stinks in here. Did you do a wee-wee?” much less leave it in?

For narrative structure, story leaps, character behavior, infantile dialogue, atonal performances and much, much more, Escape: Puzzle of Fear is top-to-bottom baffling. Let me out. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery

Decision to Leave (2022)

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When a 60-year-old man is found dead at the bottom of a mountain, police detective Hae-joon Jang (Park Hae-il, Memories of Murder) has reason to suspect the deceased’s much younger wife, Seo-rae (Tang Wei, Blackhat), may be to blame. As in so many cinematic crime stories, from film noir to erotic thrillers, the more our protagonist investigates, the more he falls in love with this enigmatic beauty. Thus, a dual mystery forms: Did she or didn’t she, and will they or won’t they?

Despite drawing influence from so many films before it, Decision to Leave is hardly derivative — not in the hands of a top-shelf craftsman like Park Chan-wook. The South Korean filmmaker unspools this one at a dizzying pace that makes it as twisty as Oldboy and as visually sumptuous as The Handmaiden, to name two of his best in a long, distinguished career.

Even with those previous pictures setting the bar high, Decision to Leave clears it with seemingly little effort, although we know that’s not the case. Park is in total control of his material, matching the caution and preciseness Hae-joon does in examining crime scenes for clues; even when Hae-joon’s heart causes him to slip, the director never does. If anything, he grasps the reins even tighter as he weaves the remaining threads of a rich Hitchcockian tapestry of passion, peril and tragedy. Getting tangled within that is all too easy, for the characters and their viewers.

Like your Vertigo, the movie is oddly, even achingly romantic — a mix that wouldn’t work if either lead weren’t atop their game. Both actors are excellent, but Tang is the real surprise in a plot brimming with more than its share of them. Marked by masterful composition and transitions throughout, Decision to Leave is a spellbinding knuckle-cracker. Your loss, xenophobes. —Rod Lott

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