Writing the Comedy Blockbuster. Keith Giglio
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of Pink Panther fame, Shampoo, and Foul Play.
Meanwhile, the rating code allowed film comedy to become broader and naughtier, with more F-Bombs, nudity, and raunchiness. M.A.S.H. was an edgy comedy set against the backdrop of the Korean war and featured guys peeping on the girls’ shower. Shampoo was a political comedy set against the backdrop of the Nixon election and featured a hairdresser pretending to be gay. National Lampoon’s Animal House helped college enrollment and informed America about how to throw a good toga party. Everything was fair game in the movies. Lots of tops came off.
Remember those TV writers from the 1950s? They come of age in the 1970s.
Carl Reiner directs Steve Martin in The Jerk. He directs Oh, God!
Mel Brooks writes and directs Young Frankenstein. He is nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Neil Simon, the amazingly successful playwright of The Odd Couple, is nominated for an Oscar for his best original screenplay for The Goodbye Girl.
Larry Gelbart is nominated for an Oscar for his adapted screenplay for Oh, God!
Woody Allen owned the 1970s: From the broad futuristic Sleeper and winning Best Picture with Annie Hall to Manhattan.
THE SCREENING ROOM
Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
The Jerk
American Graffiti
The In-Laws
A New Leaf
MATERIALISTIC 1980S: LOOSEN UP YUPPIES!
The age of the yuppie! Money was made. Money was lost. And most of the time characters on the screen were making or losing it. Paul Mazursky remakes the classic French film Boudu Saved From Drowning, turning it into a contemporary indictment of the rich with Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
In Trading Places, a rich man (Dan Aykroyd) and a poor man (Eddie Murphy) are forced to switch places. In the end, they team up and turn the tables to bankrupt the greedy billionaires who put them in this mess.
Risky Business was Tom Cruise’s break-out movie. He played a teenager who turns his home into a brothel. Not only did he get the girl, but he also got the money to fix his dad’s car and buy back his family’s “egg” — and he gets into Princeton!
John Hughes wrote and directed the classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles, in which an uptight yuppie played by Steve Martin is stuck on the road with a crazy salesman played by the late, great John Candy. Years later, Due Date would mine this same comic river.
John Hughes was also responsible for the rise of the teen comedies. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off touches on the idea that money can’t buy you happiness, but most of the teen comedies dealt with real teen issues — love, alienation, cliques. From Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink to The Breakfast Club. During his free time, Hughes was able to write National Lampoon’s Vacation and National Lampoon’s European Vacation.
The romantic comedy began its resurgence toward the end of the decade with Moonstruck and When Harry Met Sally. This trend would continue into the 1990s.
THE SCREENING ROOM
Back to the Future
Bull Durham
Ghostbusters
Airplane!
Splash
1990S COMEDIES — GROSS!
Cable explodes. The Internet expands. The gross-out comedy comes into vogue. A remake of The Shop Around the Corner, You’ve Got Mail is the iconic AOL email greeting and a movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Meg Ryan is America’s sweetheart, with Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, I.Q., and French Kiss.
Julia Roberts will run neck and neck as box office champion with her string of rom-coms: Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill, and Runaway Bride.
Saturday Night Live continues to produce lower ratings on television but huge stars on the big screen. Adam Sandler hits it big with Wedding Singer. Bill Murray stars in What About Bob? and the now-appreciated Groundhog Day. Dana Carvey and Mike Myers will turn Wayne’s World, a Saturday Night Live sketch, into a successful franchise.
Jim Carrey becomes the champion of big, broad, outlandish comedies. Beginning with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Carrey enjoys a decade of success as America’s box office champ with The Mask, Dumb & Dumber, Liar, Liar, and his portrayal of comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon.
Behind the camera, the Farrelly Brothers proved just as funny — and even more outrageous! Never ones to shy away from a disgusting, over-the-top, laugh-invoking sight gag (zipper scene anyone?), the Farrelly Brothers will write and direct Dumb & Dumber, the underappreciated Kingpin, and the classic There’s Something About Mary.
The four quadrant movie hits. Four quadrant movies are designed to appeal to men and women over and under twenty-five years old. I think of them as movies that parents as well as their kids will enjoy. Home Alone becomes one of the biggest comedy blockbusters of all time.
THE SCREENING ROOM
City Slickers
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Office Space
The Big Lebowski
Y2K: WHO LET THE BOYS OUT?
The ladies got off to a good lead in the early 2000s. Reese Witherspoon burst onto the scene with Legally Blonde and continued the rom-com success with Sweet Home Alabama. Sandra Bullock, who had success in the 1990s with While You Were Sleeping, rebounds with Miss Congeniality. But then the boys began to rule the day. The romantic comedy shifts to the man’s point of view. Helped by a strong crew of male comic actors and their frat-like determination to help each other succeed, the man-com is born.
From Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall to Knocked Up — the question is: Will the man grow up? Will he find love?
The comedies of the male-driven late 2000s featured a group of male comedians appearing in each others’ movies, most of the time R-Rated comedies.
• Jack Black in School of Rock
• Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., and Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder
• Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents with Owen Wilson
• Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn in Dodgeball
• Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers
• Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, and Will Ferrell in Old School
• Will Ferrell in Anchorman with Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd
• Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Paul Rudd and Seth Rogan
• Seth Rogan in Knocked Up with Jason Segal
• Jason Segel in I Love You, Man with Paul Rudd
• Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall with Jonah Hill and Russell Brand
• Jonah Hill and Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek
But the ultimate box office, R-Rated comedy, the winner and still champ (sorry, Mike Tyson) featured none of those guys: It was The Hangover.
So what comes after the man-child? Well, lots of femaledriven