lazyfatbum Wrote:My favorite Steve Martin role was in Plains Trains and Automobiles for personal reasons
God yes, this. I watched this for the first time a few months ago, and if you can stomach some good ol' fashioned John Hughes sentimentality, it's one of the best movies of its year. I find myself looking up scenes from it on youtube sometimes (such as "You wanna hurt me?" and the scene where Steve Martin flips out on the car rental clerk), similar to how a person can listen to a good song more than once and still enjoy it.
Quote:I bet you'd love Agoraphobic Cowboy
Most unexpectedly, there's not enough demand out there for there to be any torrent seeders for this.
:(
I didn't know the Rick Moranis was Canadian, but somehow it makes perfect sense. Having a gaydar is apparently common, but I've never met anyone with a Candar. He's just mousy enough to be one of'em, and not the buff French Lumberjack kind.
I don't know about Jim Carrey to replace Steve Martin, I don't think he could pull it back enough. Maybe if Jim Carrey coached Sam Rockwell to do it, I think that would strike a good balance. I don't know if Rockwell alone can be manic enough.
Quote:I thought the parallel of the affection he gave to the plant was interesting because the plant was literally his 'work'. The more lonely and the more attention he put in to 'work' the more he was noticed (getting Audrey's attention too), but then his work became all he was and the plant, with actual ROOTS was solidifying him in the ghetto and doing the opposite of what he was hoping to accomplish (then his 'work' was going to spread out of the ghetto, but leave Rick's character behind).
You're close with the roots part, sorta. Little Shop of Horrors is a story about race relations and Black Power. You've got an exotic plant that's from a place far from our own, a jungle-like brush with a tangle of vines that sprout from a bulb that talks with an obvious black accent. It comes to our world during a solar eclipse, a darkening of our skies and our atmosphere, snuffing out our bright white beacon. It comes from outer space, where dark, black matter is dominant and faint white stars are the minority.
It comes to claim what rightfully belongs to it, but does so in a sneaky fashion. It enters show business as a nonthreatening singing and dancing minority, a monkey to dance for the white man, who in turns receives money and fame of his own. Indeed, this theme is puncuated throughout the movie with a cute trio of black girls who sing and dance to us, perhaps to lull us into a false sense of security so we can warm up to a no-nonsense talking Mr. T of a plant who's after our houses and our jobs.
At the very beginning, though, it's clear that the roles are oddly reversed in this model of ringmaster and elephant, that the plant is a vampire that lives off the blood of his master, not vice-versa. As the star attraction, he comes to call the shots and manipulate his keeper.
While the other african american folks in Skid Row have roots in the community, so does the exotic and alien plant stick in its own roots, this is a literal idea that's thrown in to help you understand the underpinnings of the story.
In the original screenplay (and indeed you can see deleted scenes of this on youtube, in black-and-white no less), the plant ends up prevailing and taking over the world, restoring the rightful owner of the universe, dominating and destroying the former king of earth, the white man.
Quote:I didnt understand the importance of electrocuting the plant tho
It's a callback to capital punishment against a negro plant for getting uppity.
You're right about Ellen Greene having an awesome voice, I love how in Suddenly Seymour she sounds so shy and quiet, then nearly mid-verse starts belting it out. She plays a Mary-Sue type girl who can't survive without a man, she wants to be a stay-at-home wife and mother in the suburbs. She's a woman who knows her role, purpose, and place, below a man, which is why she goes with Steve Martin. She accepts his abuse until she realizes she could be subjugated in a more non-violent and traditional "family values" manner. She finds a man who laughingly shows her the folly of her irrational female ways so he can pat her on the butt to go bake some muffins.
The plant represents a threat to those family values with its urban lifestyle, it represents a threat to the status quo, and the last surviving plant you see in the closing shot is an indicator that you can move to better neighborhoods but the bottom feeders will still always find a way to get back, doing all they can to chip away at your empire.
It can also be interpretted as mother nature, the plant is perhaps has some feminine characteristics, its yawning mouth is like a bloodthirsty vagina. Its kills by grabbing, absorbing, consuming. It kills Steve Martin first, who uses start-of-the-art phallic-shaped dental equipment to probe and torture smaller mouths (maybe these are vaginas who aren't so bloodthirsty because many belong to children and by this token Bill Murray is as much of a masochistic drag queen in this as he is in Ed Wood). It's man vs. woman, technology/science vs. nature, not unlike some themes you could pick up from Jurassic Park. Man defeats woman and domesticates her as a ho-hum gawky housewife at the end.