Picture Show Pundits

24 August 2008

Observations From Behind the Popcorn Bucket:

The Techomedy Movement

by Macabre Stalker [Ray Bonilla]

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 26, 2004:

Recently I've found myself ruminating over comedy films of the 1980s. The '80s found theatrical comedies at a high point of sorts, not necessarily of quality, but most certainly of quantity. In the '80s, it was nearly impossible to keep up with all of the comedies that found themselves being embraced by their American audiences. Whether they featured members of the Brat Pack or Eddie Murphy in his heyday or whether they were zany, farcical spoofs from Zucker, Abrams, and Zucker or romantic comedies sporting Dudley Moore and copious amounts of whisky, we as a movie-going country slipped into a love affair with the comedy genre.

'Tis a far cry from the present, when the drama has reclaimed its throne to entertainment and is joined in reign by the ever-evolving action film. Nowadays, the greater part of cinema's comedic output seems comprised solely of uninspired or over-indulgent Teen Comedies and safe and formulaic Romantic Comedies. And few contemporary comedies really make the type of splash so many of their '80s counterparts did back in the day.

Back in the '80s, though, we had the school comedies, differing in tone and plot from high school to college. We had the buddy cop films, which blended action, drama and often healthy doses of comedy served up by the likes of Tom Hanks, the aforementioned Murphy, and, yes, even Arnold Schwarzenegger. We had stoner comedies, sports comedies, coming-of-age comedies, and a comedy based on a murder mystery board game. All of that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Something else of interest began to take hold throughout the '80s though. The genre of science fiction, always hard pressed to become mainstream, started being infused into these various sub-genres of comedies. It was as if some Nerd Muse flitted around and whispered into the ears of Robert Zemeckis, Harold Ramis, and Mel Brooks every idea and line of technobabble penned by H.G. Wells, Gene Roddenberry and everyone in between. Throw a little Time Machine into a comedy about a high school kid dealing with bullies, trying to get his act together, and trying to understand his family and you've got Back to the Future. Take your standard buddy cop romp about a group of guys out to save the day, replace a cop car with a decked out antique ambulance, give the guys armfuls of dubious scientific equipment and a barrage of fun technical terms to explain the paranormal and you've got yourself some Ghostbusters.

Thus, the Techomedy was born.

Don't Know Much About Science Books

While the science dreamt up in John Hughes' Weird Science was fishy even in its day, and downright silly today, there has always been a certain wonder... a certain magic to it. Sure, the technological achievement Gary and Wyatt execute on Wyatt's Memotech MTX512 (a 4 megahertz dinosaur) violates countless laws of biology, physics, and computer sciences in one fell swoop, but hey, man has never fully explored the ramifications wearing a bra on one's head so I'll allow my disbelief to be suspended whenever I watch the movie. These days, a filmmaker is likely to be textually lynched by geeks all around the Internet if they depict ludicrous and unrealistic hacking in their films, but back in the '80s, most of us were so naïve in regards to the quickly looming cyber age that we couldn't help but be dazzled by angry pixilated skulls and trippy color graphics as two high school nerds infiltrated high-security government databases and wreaked total havoc from behind the soft blue glow of a monitor.

Weird Science delivers a standard high school tale of two unpopular and awkward guys, girl crazy and obsessed with sex, that are put into the position to overcome their inadequacies, stand up to bullies, break free from their parents, loosen up, mature slightly and finally try to get their respective dream girls. The method in which the two find themselves in their situation is wholly unique however as the two kids create a woman out of thin air using a computer one strange and stormy evening. This woman, who they name Lisa, is physically everything they have ever desired, but beneath the surface she is more than they bargained for. She is intelligent, all-knowing even, and she possesses seemingly unlimited powers. Despite these intimidating features, though, she has the best intentions for her creators and hurls them into a whirlwind of entertaining and off-the-wall predicaments in an attempt to bring out the best in them and raise their confidence.

What makes Weird Science such a success aside from the clever way it implements its plot is Hughes exemplary choice in a cast. Anthony Michael Hall is hilarious as Gary, the geek who just can't come to terms with his social outcast status. He has a sharp tongue and makes every effort to appear cool, but always comes up short until Lisa comes along. His best friend Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) is his practical and whiny counterpart. Wyatt obviously comes from a privileged home where he is considered a near perfect son, but he is socially inept and he knows it. Together, Hall and Mitchell-Smith have a great chemistry, though Hall steals the show through most of the film. Say whatever you will about Anthony Michael Hall, but in his early films every line he delivered and every expression or action he made was funny when it was supposed to be.

The supporting cast has bits of brilliance in it too including Bill Paxton and Robert Downey Jr. in their first fairly large roles. Downey plays one of the high school jerks Gary and Wyatt must deal with, but Paxton strikes gold as Wyatt's hard-assed and manipulative older brother, Chet. There is a certain pleasure one derives from watching Paxton, complete with crew cut and cigar, tormenting his little brother. He carries the same air about him that he would later have in Aliens, making him one of the most memorable characters in that film as well. But even the minor characters in the film like the patrons the guys encounter at a blues bar or the killer mutant bikers at the end of the film are well cast and bring in a good laugh.

The star of the film, however, is Kelly LeBrock. I find it amazing that she started out as a mere model and never really stuck with the acting. She has a superb style as Lisa, combining a fiery attitude and irrevocable charm. No doubt she is beautiful and sexy every moment she's on camera, but she plays a marvelously devilish angel throughout the entire film and that is what makes her performance so successful.

Prior to Weird Science, John Hughes had made a name for himself with two back-to-back teen comedies, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Both are beloved to this day, both have a great deal of heart to them, and both are quite funny at times. Both also feature more lovably scrawny and nerdy Anthony Michael Hall before he fell off the face of the Earth only to resurface as the buff and creepy Michael Hall we see in "The Dead Zone" on USA. It is also a pretty safe bet that at least one of these films (The Breakfast Club) is a much better movie than Weird Science. Still, because of the dose of nonsensical Sci-Fi administered to the heart of the film, the story is allowed to unfold in a series of wild and outlandish scenarios a more straight-up comedy would not easily allow for. The result is a more raw comedic effect, producing huge laughs in response to the characters' reactions to the amusing but unbelievable occurrences going on around them.

Lab Credits

The natural progression from high school comedy is to college comedy. And the natural progression from Weird Science is to Real Genius with Val Kilmer. Real Genius sheds the concept of geeks trying to get girls for something befitting higher education: one-upping your villainous classmates and professors. As all college comedies before and after, Real Genius features colorful students, pranks aplenty, and rebellion against the establishment. One of the geeks in question does in fact have a love interest, but it is a minor plot point and the love interest herself provides great humor.

Some might question my application of Sci-Fi to Real Genius, and I admit I am being very loose with the definition in this case. The fact remains, we have a slew of geniuses working heavily on scientific experiments and the events that unfold are far too crazy to be anything but fictitious. The film does a good job at making its technological flights of fancy seem realistic, but I put about as much faith into the movie's science as I do the idea that a real, functional lightsaber will be invented in my lifetime (Go ahead and chuckle. I hear the military's working on it!).

Specifically, we have the story of a 15-year-old genius, Mitch Taylor, being accepted into an academic program for incredibly bright students. He is one of the most gifted students ever brought under the wing of Professor Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) and he is assigned to work on the development of a super laser with a small group of fellow students. Mitch is the setup for the film and we watch him adjust to the tumultuous life as a genius among geniuses, but the real main character of the film is Mitch's roommate, Chris Knight (Val Kilmer). Knight was once Professor Hathaway's golden boy, but in order to prevent himself from cracking under the tremendous pressure he was put under, Knight has adopted a slacker lifestyle. Now in his senior year at the university, Knight goofs off, plays the clown and uses his vast intellect for pranks and his own amusement.

Knight is forced to straighten up his act when Professor Hathaway informs him he will not be graduating if he does not come up with a way to successfully get their laser up and running. Hathaway's motives go way beyond the academic, however. The student's five megawatt laser, unbeknownst to them, has already been sold under the table to the military and if the professor does not yield results, he'll be in a great deal of trouble.

So Mitch and Chris buckle down and finally overcome all of their design obstacles, creating Hathaway's laser. They are understandably overjoyed, until they are tipped off to Hathaway's intentions. Outraged, the duo and their quirky friends orchestrate an elaborate scheme to get revenge on Hathaway and his student underling, Kent.

With a script full of artful one-liners and a virtual Rolodex of quotable quotes, Real Genius depicts brainiacs as capable of being cool, even if they are exceedingly eccentric. Characters like Hollyfield, the number one genius on campus who snapped and is now living in a lair underneath the school, and Jordan, the hyperactive love interest of Mitch that is constantly inventing, add to the party nicely. The highlight of the film, of course, is young Val Kilmer. Kilmer may receive a mixed bag of appreciation for his years of work from critics and the like and some are outright nasty in regards to the man, but one thing is for certain: He has charisma. They may not be his most memorable roles, for better or for worse, but his first two feature film roles (Chris Knight here in Real Genius and Nick Rivers in Top Secret!) are easily my favorites from the man. He exhibits the perfect blend of bright and dumb, scathing and pleasant, suave and goofy that makes him so enjoyable in comedic roles. In recent years, he has delved into darker and more serious works and I respect his decision to do so as he obviously takes acting very seriously, but I wish I could tell him there's something to be said for making people laugh.

Real Genius is likely the most obscure film I would lump in the Techomedy Movement. As I discussed the notion with friends and colleagues, it was the movie most oft unknown. Would the film have been so fun without the hi-tech elements it boasted? As crafty as the dialogue was, without the tech driven plot and the creative intellectuals wrapped up in it, Real Genius would have been real mundane. Is the technobabble uttered throughout the film complete balderdash or not? I cannot really say. I'm no chemist or physicist. I'm not any sort of "ist" actually. The closest I ever came was a linguist...maybe even an archaeologist, but neither would have qualified me to say whether or not you can synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix. The fact remains; Real Genius is an intelligent comedy without being too stuffy to seem out of place with its school ties.

In Physics, You Don't Have To Go Around Making Trouble For Yourself -- Nature Does It For You

I have a deep love for the concept of time travel. I may be vehemently opposed to the idea of actually employing said concept if our technology ever becomes capable of it, but I still enjoy mulling over the vast possibilities inherent in altering a timeline. I get a big kick out of films that deal intelligently with time travel like the Terminator series and 12 Monkeys. With Back to the Future, Robert Zemeckis gave his audience another smart time travel movie, but one that was light-hearted and family oriented. I would note that as delightful as the sequels to the film are, they're a bit sloppier with the timelines, effectively destroying the universe, but let's not split hairs.

Back to the Future tells the story of young Marty McFly, played by then heartthrob Michael J. Fox. Unlike the main characters in our previous Techomedies with school settings, Marty isn't a geek. He may not be the coolest kid on the block, but he's got a gorgeous girlfriend (Played first by Claudia Wells, and in the sequels by Elizabeth Shue. Lucky S.O.B.), he's got a rock and roll band, he eventually has a sweet ride (two if you count the De Lorean), and people generally like him. Unfortunately, despite all of this, Marty has only one real friend, his musical career seems tenuous at best, the principal of his school thinks he's a slacker, and life just seems horribly lacking. Marty's greatest social stigma, it seems, is his family. The whole lot of them: brother, sister, mother, and most definitely father-- they're the nerds.

Marty's father, George (Crispin Glover), lives a veritable life of servitude to an old high school rival, Biff Tannen. Marty sometimes thinks life could be very different, that if his family wasn't so screwed up, maybe things would turn out a little better for him too, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards. That's when Marty's one friend enters the picture.

Emmet Brown, or Doc as Marty affectionately calls him, is a peculiar and wild-haired old inventor. How he and Marty came to be friends is never revealed throughout any of the movies, but you never really question it either. Outcasts seem to find one another. One day Doc (Christopher Lloyd in the role he'll always be remembered for) asks Marty to meet him that night at the local mall. There he reveals to Marty his latest invention, a time machine... made from a De Lorean and powered by plutonium stolen from Libyan nationalists. Doc puts on a demonstration and then, without warning, the Libyans show up, shooting Doc down in cold blood and forcing Marty to escape in the De Lorean.

Marty escapes to 1955.

Unfortunately for Marty, the trip wasn't kind to the car. The plutonium is all used up and it appears as if he has no way to get home. He decides to hunt down the younger version of Doc Brown and hopefully convince the man to help him, but before doing so, Marty inadvertently alters the event where his mother, Lorraine, and father first meet. Now, not only does Marty have to find a way home, but he also has to avoid his mother's advances and try to mend time by getting George and Lorraine back on track or he'll be erased from existence.

Marty proves to Doc that he's not merely some crazy kid by describing to him the "flux capacitor" in the time machine which 1955 Doc had already envisioned. Doc informs him that the only way to power the flux capacitor without plutonium would be a bolt of lightning. Finally, luck is on Marty's side as history has documented the exact moment in 1955 that a lightning bolt struck a local clock tower, stopping it for good.

So as Doc prepares to send Marty back to the future, Marty endeavors to bring his parents back together, changing his future reality left and right, sometimes by accident and sometimes not. The change he strives hardest to pull off is the rescue of future Doc Brown, but young Doc refuses to hear any hints about his future. The climax of this adventure is one of the most thrilling series of scenes any of us have ever had the chance to see on film as George stands up to Biff, Marty plays guitar at the dance, multiple mishaps nearly trap Marty in the past forever, and Marty races back to his present time mall in a futile attempt to rescue Doc. Then, as Marty finds himself back in his own time, he also discovers just how much his life has changed.

Time travel movies, as a rule, are intrinsically Sci-Fi in nature. There are exceptions to that rule, certainly. A year after Back to the Future, Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married was released and it toyed with time travel without flashy special effects or curious devices. Time travel movies are rarely comedic in delivery though. Those others that we would think of first (Austin Powers, Army of Darkness) came after this classic, and those that came before (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Time Bandits) do not have the overwhelming appeal Back to the Future is blessed with, nor are they as comic.

Yet even the Sci-Fi facets of Back to the Future are funny in their over-the-top existence. A time machine built from a failed automobile; powered by plutonium, lightning, and garbage respectively that can only travel through time at 88 miles per hour took a clever, batty mind to be invented. There's no asking whether or not Back to the Future would have been as spectacular as it was were it not for the Sci-Fi or comedy genres being melded together. The film simply never would have come to pass without it. Zemeckis showed great ingenuity by telling Marty McFly's story, and Back to the Future is a prime example of what a creative writer and director willing to shed conventions can accomplish. Zemeckis has repeatedly shown such innovation with films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, Contact, and Cast Away, but his foray into the world of time travel stands as an early triumph and a favorite in many homes.

Unlicensed Nuclear Accelerators! Get Yours Today!

And now we come to the pièce de résistance of the Techomedy Movement. Not only is Ghostbusters the crowning achievement of Sci-Fi/Comedy hybrids, but it is a ruler by which all other comedies can be measured.

Early in Ghostbusters the three scientist friends that will become the film's paranormal bounty hunters, Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis), and Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) take a tour through an old fire station, considering it for their place of business.

Peter: What do you think, Egon?

Egon: I think this building should be condemned. There's serious metal

fatigue in all the load-bearing members, the wiring is substandard, it's

completely inadequate for our power needs, and the neighborhood is like a

demilitarized zone.

Ray: Hey! Does this pole still work?

[Ray slides down the fireman's pole]

Ray: Wow. This place is great. When can we move in? You gotta try this pole.

I'm gonna get my stuff. Hey. We should stay here. Tonight. Sleep here. You

know, to try it out.

[Pause]

Peter: I think we'll take it.

This brief scene perfectly illustrates how well Ghostbusters plays out from start to finish. The characters are so distinct and separate in their behaviors, their dialogue is so craftily written, and the actors' responsiveness to each other glides along so smoothly that the film is one monstrous and well-oiled comedic machine.

Ghostbusters' splendidly combines a perfect blend of Second City and SNL humor, along with good old New York humor, slapstick, and the unique brand of "comedy a la camaraderie" initially created by Murray and Ramis in Stripes.

The movie starts with a wonderful idea: pit a team of unconventional heroes against creatures from the ethereal plane and eventually have them do battle with a Sumerian god with incredibly dangerous positron colliders that resemble exterminator's equipment. Essentially, I imagine the story started out as a seedling of an idea and grew phantasmagorically out of control as technological and fantastic wonders burst forth from Aykroyd and Ramis' fevered minds. Events like this rarely happen twice in a writer's career.

There are countless details in the movie I would love to address in adoration. Comedies of this vein simply must have a detestable human antagonist hell-bent on gumming up the main character's work for one reason or another. Enter Walter Peck of the EPA played by none other than William Atherton of Real Genius fame. Oh the coincidence is delicious. And there is Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver in a massive change of character from her famous role in Alien), the Ghostbusters first client, the key to their greatest interdimensional foe, and the woman Dr. Venkman stubbornly tries courting from the moment they meet.

The film made unexpectedly gigantic strides in the special effects department and I still debate with myself if Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom really deserved the win over Ghostbusters at that year's Oscars. A memorable soundtrack, an absorbing collection of Big Apple locations, and astounding artistic concepts from costumes to monsters to crazy vehicles all exponentially increase the magic of this beloved film.

It is odd how much of an impact Ghostbusters has had on our culture. It is a comedic artifact, the comedy version of the Ark of the Covenant, you might say. It stands as Ivan Reitman's finest film, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis' best work acting and writing, and easily one of the greatest displays ever of Bill Murray's ability to make us laugh. Yes, films like Stripes and Animal House would be quickly cited by their devoted fans to dispute this, and they have their charm, but none have the chemistry, brilliant writing, and unbelievably imaginative plot Ghostbuster touts.

Ghostbusters, in all its absurdity, has one of the most original plots ever put to film and every wacky technical reference, every glorious ghost busting toy, and every supernatural monstrosity makes the heroic bunch of clowns in brown overalls funnier and more exciting. Ghostbusters will forever be a fascinating accomplishment as something so goofy and rife with dork paraphernalia rarely comes off as so intelligent, witty, and spectacular. Even its sequel, while imperfect, ran off enough mythos created by the original to effectively be far better than most of its fellow comedies of the same era. Ghostbusters, proton packs, Zool, Gozer, Stay Puft, Egon, Ray, Venkman, Winston, ectoplasm are all practically household names. The film contains all of the merits I have already praised in our other Techomedies, but tenfold. The assortment of actors and design of the characters is nothing short of phenomenal. The story shows more creativity and vision than most of us could muster on our best days. And great dialogue and quotes? You bet. Ghostbusters is to comedic film what Casablanca is to dramatic film: a virtual treasure trove of memorable and oft uttered lines.

There are movies which cinemaphiles cling to out of nostalgia. For my generation, the '80s is an overflowing graveyard of films we loved but are hesitant to watch again as we get older for fear they may have lost their sheen. The comedies in particular suffer from this syndrome. Even Real Genius and Weird Science suffered slightly from diminished grandiosity as I took the time to view them once more in order to write this piece. They were still a hell of a lot of fun, but I saw chinks in the armor that I was oblivious to as a younger fan. Ghostbusters remains impervious to such aging. As years go by and the film is played in abysmal pan-n-scan glory on television time and time again, it falters not once in keeping me enraptured. As I read through its classic dialogue, I snort out laughs as the scenes paint themselves in my minds eye. The movie is timeless. The movie is superb.

So just remember, dear reader: When someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes.

"Back Off, Man. I'm a Scientist"

There you have it. The Techomedy Movement-- kind of like the Dadaist Movement without all that nihilism baggage. These are by no means all the examples of Sci-Fi/Comedy films in the '80s. You have the Dennis Quaid and Martin Short vehicle, Innerspace, which plays out like Fantastic Voyage on goofballs. You have Mel Brook's Spaceballs. While not Brook's first foray into spoofing Sci-Fi, it was certainly his most obvious. Why, they even decided to spruce up the droll senior citizen flick with *Batteries Not Included, which was basically a more cute and whimsical answer to Cocoon.

Since then, though, the movement has petered out. Perhaps it is simply in hibernation. Who's to say? 1997 gave us Men In Black, which was indeed a hysterical Sci-Fi joyride, but in following the formula Ghostbusters invented, Men In Black missed the boat to be something truly fresh and lasting. 1999's Galaxy Quest had a stellar premise and I recall it being fairly amusing, but I had completely forgotten about it until I went searching for post-'80s Techomedies.

What triggered the movement, I cannot say for certain. Of all the movies I've touched upon, Ghostbusters was indeed the forerunner, and I certainly wouldn't argue with anyone if they claimed Ramis and Aykroyd ushered in the era of great sci-fi driven laugh fests. Naturally, the grip serious science fiction cinema had on the youth of America in those days helped the cause. What filmmaker wouldn't want to throw his chips down on that table, even if the use of hi-tech gadgetry and scientific principles were not conventionally considered to mesh well with making people laugh? Hey, Einstein came up with the theory of relativity and he was a funny guy.

For now, the movement is over, but it made its mark in cinema. And on top of that it gave the De Lorean Motor Company a thriving underground sales and restoration business... well... more thriving than it was before 1985 at least. Maybe in time, a new line of filmmakers will pick up the smoldering torch and try to rekindle its flame. For now, Michael J. Fox on a hoverboard will have to do.