The Simple Power of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

I. “Each man’s life touches so many other lives.”

When it comes to movies and television, I’m not much of a crier.

Most people I know take to weeping when something overwhelmingly sad or despondent occurs on screen, especially when it’s a situation that hits close to home (“I’ve been there!” or “oh god, she reminds me of my mom”).  It just doesn’t happen for me that often, even when I can empathize or sympathize with the poor characters.  I can definitely feel the punch in my gut, and the most affecting emotional moments in cinema can stay in my head for days and days.  I just don’t ever really cry.

Even onscreen deaths don’t do a lot for me.  I definitely take most fictional deaths with something resembling disappointment, especially when it’s a character I really like.  But there’s just this wall I often have that keeps the corners of my eyes from actually producing water.  Maybe it’s because death is used as such an emotional crutch in film and TV and we’ve seen it over and over and over and over since the first time we saw BAMBI as little kids that it loses its impact; it now needs to be a really well-earned moment for it to resonate for me, especially once you start experiencing the loss of real people in your life.

I don’t bring this up as a boast of superiority.  This is not a smug “look at all those pathetic little humans out there reacting to fiction; don’t they know this is all made up?” observation, I promise.  I’m genuinely jealous of those who are able to absorb visual storytelling to the point of it feeling real.  It’s an ability that makes art so much more accessible, so much more alive.  This wall of stone in front of me has worried me at times, like I’m watching movies the wrong way or something.

However, I know that I’m not a total monster.  There are a couple of moments in fiction that get me every single time, where the mere thought of them can get me going if I’m in a particularly vulnerable state of mind.  They just need to be moments of triumph rather than catastrophe, moments of joy, often depicting characters realizing they’ve done something they didn’t even know they could do.  That they matter.

I’ve mentioned this one before, but…in the middle of a much longer article, I mentioned how much I loved the seventh episode of the second season of THE BEAR, titled “Forks”.  I didn’t divulge then and, in the interest of hoping you all out there who haven’t watched it yet will take the plunge soon, I won’t really detail it out now (this isn’t an article about THE BEAR, after all).  Suffice to say, though, that the episode takes a character that was often very frustrating (to the point of almost actively being a problem for the show) and redeems him so completely and totally and imbues him with such purpose that he instantly became my favorite.  It’s a story that proves it’s never too late to reinvent yourself.  A story about how every second counts.  A story so well told that I can no longer hear the opening jangle of “Love Story” anymore without wanting to start running around the room. 

Another moment…this one is slightly more embarrassing to admit, but Christmas is about sharing, so…..

I admit that I get got by the ending of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2.  The Ravager funeral hits me very time.  There, I said it.  It’s for several reasons: for one, the death of Yondu meant the MCU lost Michael Rooker, one of the more overqualified and too-interesting actors in the entire franchise.  For two, it’s Rocket Racoon’s realization that people still cared about Yondu, even when he spent his life pushing everyone away and pretending not to care (a lesson that resonates with our favorite talking raccoon).  For three, it’s the fact that, despite his fears at the beginning of the film, Yondu didn’t let the Ravagers down!  Sylvester Stallone said so!  It’s another redemption story, this time for a gruff character that spent a lot of time acting like he didn’t care only to show, in his final moments, that he absolutely cared, to such a degree that at least one of the living is forever altered.

They’re both moments of men proving that they matter.  That they have (or had) worth.

Look, I have a type.

This brings us to the ending of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, an iconic and oft-parodied moment in a movie that’s almost exclusively filled with iconic and oft-parodied moments.  You probably know it without ever seeing it.  “To George Bailey, the richest man in town”.  Auld Lang Syne.  “Attaboy, Clarence”.  That whole thing.  Like much of the film, its final scene wears its heart so strongly on its sleeve that its arm threatens to come off.  It’s borderline manipulative.

And goddamnit, if it doesn’t make me cry.  Every single fucking time.  It’s as much a Christmas tradition as the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Naturally, I wanted to write about it as a little holiday treat. so, let’s jump into IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE!

II. “George Bailey is not a common, ordinary yokel.”

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a movie that became a Christmas classic mostly because it was free.

The fact that the 1946 Frank Capra drama was not exactly a box-office dynamo upon its release (essentially breaking even on its $3 mil budget) is one of the more famous things about it.  However, what gets lost in all that is that it was still liked by many in its time.  Its reviews were solidly mixed, yes, but consider that it was also nominated for Best Picture during the 19th Academy Awards, with Capra and James Stewart snagging Best Director and Best Actor nominations, respectively.  It won only a technical achievement award, but the film garnered respect from its peers even upon its release.  It even ruffled some feathers: its blatantly anti-capitalist themes prompted the FBI to issue a memo implying the film was Communist propaganda.  Not bad for a movie that is often dismissed as sentimental!

* for its simulation of falling snow, a technique considered unique for its time.

Every single person on the planet probably knows the story of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE but, just in case….it tells the now very well-known story of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), a young man living in Bedford Falls who’s at the end of his rope.  We learn exactly how he got there by going through his life, as told to his guardian angel (Henry Travers).  We see George as a child saving his brother Harry (Todd Karns) from a watery death.  We see him as a boy working for a pharmacist, Mr. Gower (H.B. Warner).  We see George as a recent high school graduate, eager to go off to college and see the world.  When his father (Samuel Hinds) suddenly passes away, George must put his ambitions aside and run the Bailey Building and Loan, a people-oriented institution constantly under attack from the miserly and profits-first Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore).  Along the way, he courts the loving Mary Hatch (the inimitable Donna Reed) and begins to raise a family.

Mr. Potter is finally able to bring the Building and Loan to its knees, essentially by seizing an opportunity to steal eight grand from the loyal, but wildly forgetful, Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell).  With a bank audit about to begin, George finally has nowhere to turn.  A man once full of life is about to plunge himself off a bridge to his death.

Enter Clarence!  The wingless angel launches the most famous section of the film by granting George his wish to never be born so that he can see for himself just the impact he had on his loved ones, and the world at large, as well as just how much worse the world would be if he hadn’t been there.  If he hadn’t stood up against the greedy and cold Mr. Potter.  If he hadn’t fought for the people of Bedford Falls.  If he hadn’t started a life with Mary.  If he hadn’t saved his brother’s life.  George refunds the value of life and runs off to face another day, just in time for everyone in town to raise the money to cover the stolen eight grand…and then some!  The Building and Loan lives on, Clarence earns his wings, and the hearts of everyone in the audience grows three sizes that day.

Alas, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE came and went like a good majority of movies did in the times before television, home media and streaming.  Some have pointed out that the movie was not quite as optimistic as post-war audiences were hoping for in 1946 (and it is bleaker than you might remember), which might explain why it didn’t connect with audiences right away.  It became a movie somewhat lost to time, and it was certainly no holiday classic.

Then, the 1976 Christmas season came.

Thanks to a clerical error, National Telefilm Associates neglected to renew the copyright for the film in 1974, and it more-or-less entered the public domain soon after.  Starting with 1976, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE aired constantly on television, which led to people discovering it all over again.  By the 1980’s, it was as much a part of the holiday television schedule as Rudolph and Charlie.  There’s an overwhelming chance the first time you ever saw it was on TV.

For me, it was a movie that I was introduced to in stages.

For many, many years of my life, I knew it as “that movie that came on after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” (yes, there was a time where it wasn’t the dog show!).  My mom usually worked on Thanksgiving, so I got to know the first forty-five minutes of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (with commercials) really well.  12:45 pm was about when my grandfather would pick me up to take me over to grandma’s house to start prepping for the day’s festivities.

After a couple of years, I started getting kind of curious about what else happened in this movie, specifically when we got to the angel making it so that Jimmy Stewart was never born.  I started having the TV turned on to NBC in that brief period between getting settled at Grandma’s and having other family start to trickle in.  I think my grandparents liked that I was getting into older movies.  Yet, I never did make it to that damn bridge.  This was easily the most famous thing about the movie, and yet, I never managed to watch it long enough to ever see it.

Finally, a family member loaned me a cheapie VHS copy of it and told me to enjoy.  I finally sat down and watched the dang thing one November in the early 2000’s and finally, finally got to see Clarence arrive and alter George Bailey’s existence.  Shockingly, this most parodied element of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE doesn’t occur until around minute 100 of a 130-minute movie.  I kind of considered most of what came before it to be a little overlong and a little boring, I’m afraid.  Too much focus on loan management, on housing, on bank examiners.  George Bailey should have tried getting into video games or something.  At least, that’s how I felt at the time; if it weren’t for the film being so intertwined with my still-forming holiday traditions and memories, I might have never thought about it again.

The funny thing about IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, though, is how much it opens up once you become an adult yourself.

III. “Why’d we have to have all these kids?”

Look, one of the joys of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is just how fakey Hollywood it can often be.  There’s a lot of “pause for the punchline” kind of moments, where background characters emerge from the ether to say an old-timey one-liner like “why don’t you kiss her instead of talkin’ her to death!”.  Where the presence of a bottle or a shot glass in a character’s hand represents a fall from grace.  Hell, there’s a fucking black crow that starts flying around whenever shit is about go down at the Building and Loan.  It’s not subtle, and it’s often pretty goofy.

My favorite little detail of the whole movie is how, throughout the course of what has to be one of the most stressful Christmas Eves a movie character has ever experienced (after Potter steals the money from Uncle Billy, George threatens Billy with prison before coming home and roasting the house, his wife, his wife’s family, his kids, his kids’ teacher and the song his kids are playing), he goes from being clean-shaven to developing a five-o’clock shadow.  What a day!

And, yeah, it’s got all the hallmarks of an “old movie” with possible “old movie problems”, depending on your point of view.  There’s a scene of George and Mary flirting in a way that might be considered uncouth now; George withholding her robe from her as she crouches naked behind a bush is pretty obviously meant as a playful give-and-take, but I imagine it may bump some today.  And, like basically all movies made between 1931 and 1956, there’s a black maid character that you kind of just have to get through*, although Annie (Lillian Randolph) isn’t the butt of a joke as often as I had remembered.

*My method of dealing with racism and sexism in old media: I visibly shake my head and audibly say “oh, that’s not okay”, even if nobody else is in the room.  This then absolves any guilt or unease about continuing to enjoy the movie from there.

And, of course, the movie is littered with that “old-timey movie” accent.  IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is filled with oft-quoted lines of dialogue.  But, for me?  My favorite line to quote to myself is one from the alternate George-less present.  It’s when Sheldon Leonard, playing the titular owner of the bar Nick’s, starts laying down the law to Clarence Oddbody after he orders something a little too, um, colorful: “we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don’t need any characters around to give the joint ‘atmosphere’!”  Watch it again sometime and tell me that’s not a satisfying thing to recite.

But I think all the Hollywood artifice contained within IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is actually a charming addition to the movie, not a cheap detraction.  Because, honestly?  The movie is often unbearably, shockingly dark.  And somewhat cynical.  And, yes, anti-capitalist enough to prompt a response from the fucking FBI.  And displaying the darkness alongside a magic movie world just makes it that much darker.

For context, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE contains a grief-stricken shop owner battering his child employee until he bleeds from his ear.  A young man dies of influenza.  A father yells at his kids after lamenting ever having them in the first place.  Our hero tearfully prays to God before drunkenly crashing a car on his way to commit suicide.  It just goes on like this.

More than anything else, though, it contains the story of a dream deferred, of a man who constantly gets beaten down by the levers of his country, of his god, of life itself.  And, for the most part, the story doesn’t cut any corners in regards to its slow, steady depiction of George getting beaten down.  

Whenever something can go wrong for George Bailey, it does.  It must.  His father suddenly passes away.  The Building and Loan must survive a bank run.  His brother, the heir apparent to the B&L, gets married and hooked up with a great job elsewhere.  And every single time, he must put others before him.  For better or for worse, he has a driving sense of nobility within him.  He knows exactly what is good with the world: his father, the family’s B&L, his wife Mary, his brood of kids, keeping citizens with roofs over their heads even if payments are late, community, society, loyalty.  Keeping one’s word.  He also knows exactly what’s wrong with the world: Potter, the richest man in town.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE makes it very clear: the rich are the enemy.  Potter drives people into slums, or maybe the streets.  He owns almost every utility in Bedford Falls, and spends most of the movie trying to take down the Bailey Building and Loan.  He eventually finds his chance by stealing money from Uncle Billy, the fateful envelope that leads to George’s follicle miracle on Christmas Eve.  Potter is never to be trusted.  He’s loyal only to himself.  And that’s why he nearly wins.

This movie never, ever stops putting the screws to George Bailey.  For the first 100 minutes (and even really the next 20 after that), it’s George getting his ass handed to him by life.  He never gets to go and travel around the world, or to get his education, or even to leave his damn hometown.  And, y’know, that’s the thing about being an adult.  This happens to almost all of us to some degree.  I’m guessing almost everyone who’s ever seen IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE can relate to some aspect of George’s plight to some degree.  How could you not?  I won’t turn this into a screed about the state of the American worker, but I will let you search within and do the math yourself.

Even when Clarence finally takes human form and shows him what life would have been like if he had never been born, George kinda eats shit the whole time.  He’s informed by everybody he’s ever loved that they don’t know who he is.  He’s thrown out onto the street.  People are constantly dismissive, and at least one is outright scared*.  And, yes, it turns out life is now a dystopia named Pottersville.  Nice going not being born, George!

*That would, of course, be the now-matronly Mary, whose “unwed librarian” status is indicated by putting her hair up and fitting her with glasses.

It can be a difficult watch if you let it be.  It’s a story of how you can live as nobly as you possibly can, and believe in people, and treat everyone well, and put everybody else around you before yourself, and you can still get chewed up and spit out by a rich fuck who decides you’re in his way.  And that’s kind of all there is to it.  And when you’re watching it happen to one of the most beloved movie stars to ever grace the silver screen?  Yeah, it’s brutal.  By the time George sits on a barstool at Martini’s, praying to God to help him if he’s out there….it’s panic-inducing.

IV. “No man is a failure who has friends.”

All of the above is why, when the movie does kind of pull off some Hollywood razzle-dazzle by getting us to that magic ending?  Where everything is okay at the end, once George realizes his life meant something?  Where even the fucking bank examiner starts contributing money to the George Bailey Relief Fund?  Where the most powerful choice that George is ever provided turns out to be to choose to keep on going?  That he matters, and always has, warts and all?  How could it not be genuinely rousing?

Yes, it’s schmaltzy.  It’s corny.  One might even call it manipulative, were they so inclined.  Because it’s leaning on all the old tropes that all stories do.  Friendship and love, it turns out, is all you need.  Now let’s sing a song to the new year!  Christmas!

But, goddammit, it hits.  Because it’s the perfect conclusion to this melancholy story.  It turns out that George has not been defeated.  He ultimately wins the day by having the one thing Mr. Potter never did.  He has friends.  He has people that love him.  He’s touched their lives.  Everyone is emotionally better for having been in George Bailey’s life; one angel now has his wings because of him.  George Bailey is better for being alive.

It all culminates in one of the only movie moments that honest-to-god makes me cry every time, even if I just think about it.  Harry Bailey, the war hero, comes home to raise a toast to his brother George,

“The richest man in town.”

Merry Christmas, everybody.

THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT: A (Shane) Black Christmas Continues

Jennifer Lawrence recently got into trouble with the Twitterati due to a quote from her Actors on Actors video with Viola Davis for Variety in which she allegedly claimed that prior to THE HUNGER GAMES, “nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie” before. People were quick to point out that this is a literally untrue statement, citing such past female action icons as Ellen Ripley, Leia Organa and Sarah Conner (although it should be said that everybody seemingly mentioning the same three characters over and over isn’t the “epic clap back” as people are intending it to be).

In context, this dubious quote from Lawrence seemed more like a misspeak than anything else, with her intent being more in regards to studios’ heavy reluctance to trust in the box office power of a female-driven action film than some sort of unearned claim to history; she cited nerves in the moment to her bungled quote, although it really did little to change Lawrence’s current location in the Internet-build-up-then-tear-down cycle.

Regardless of what she did or didn’t mean to say or not say, even if Katniss Everdeen isn’t the literal first female action hero, it’s undeniable that studios are often still so unwilling to move forward with these kinds of films (even though people seem to like them and can list them off at the drop of a hat!). More to the point, they seem to so often undercut them when it comes time to market them. It’s a shame, too, because there’s lots of fun examples of the kind of female-led action film that quite frankly should be way more normalized than they are.

Once again, enter Shane Black.

Black’s career had been going swimmingly since the box office success of LETHAL WEAPON. Since then, he penned the story for 1989’s LETHAL WEAPON 2 and the scripts for 1987’s MONSTER SQUAD, 1991’S THE LAST BOY SCOUT, and 1993’s LAST ACTION HERO. Yep, even by 1993, the macho blockbuster was already entering its “ironic meta-parody” era.

Then came 1996’s THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, the kind of movie that you would think audiences would have been starved for at the time. In a decade and a half dominated by greased-up muscle guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Sylvester Stallone, here comes an action movie starring….Geena Davis! It’s the perfect type of genre subversion, the kind of thing that makes you turn your head at the poster going, “Huh? Thelma’s packing heat again?”

As it turns out, audiences really didn’t care, at least not as much as many of the film’s stakeholders were hoping for. The movie kinda came and went after about a month. There are lots of reasons as to why (a big one being that Geena Davis was currently one of the faces of one of the biggest Hollywood flops of all time; more on that later!), but the movie’s relative failure had some pretty significant consequences for the trajectory of the action genre at large.

For instance: if you take a look at Black’s filmography after 1996, you’ll notice almost a decade goes by before he made another film. This is because THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT was considered a major shortcoming by his standards. After that, a confluence of culture shifts and bad timing kept him on hiatus well into the 2000’s, until a new confluence of culture shifts and good timing brought him back to the top.

That’s all a story for another time. For now, does THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT deserve its sort-of-bomb status? Not on your life. If anything, I think more people would be surprised how fun it is if they gave it a shot.

I think you would be, too. Let’s get into it.

THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996)

Starring: Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Brian Cox, Craig Bierko, David Morse

Directed by: Renny Harlin

Written by: Shane Black

Released: October 11, 1996

Length: 121 minutes

In many regards, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is a movie that works best if you know as little as possible about it going in, so if you haven’t watched it, you may want to consider knocking it out before reading this. Or don’t! It’s Christmas time, who am I to tell you what to do?

The starting conceit: Samantha Caine (Davis) is an ordinary housewife that has been living in a nondescript town in the Upper Midwest with her daughter and a long-term boyfriend for the past eight years. What was she doing before then? Well, she doesn’t know. The first memory she can recall is being found pregnant on a New Jersey beach. That’s it; anything before then is completely gone. She’s tried to get some insight via a series of private detectives, but to no avail. Maybe the newest one, Mitch Henessey (Jackson), will have more luck.

One night, near Christmas, Samantha gets into a car accident and suffers a concussion. When she comes to, she discovers she suddenly has a ton of skill with a knife, both cutting and throwing.

As it happens, it turns out Samantha Caine used to be “Charly”, a highly trained, platinum blonde CIA assassin who went missing eight years ago. From there, it’s up to Samantha/Charly and Henessey to determine why she disappeared in the first place, as well as what the people who are now after her are up to. By the way, what the hell is “Project Honeymoon”?

THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is a movie with excess on its mind, although it should be noted that the explosions and wild knife stuff is paired with an extremely functional screenplay that only gives you as much information as you need at any given point, and a plot that all hangs together, but can either be tuned in or out of as you please. At its core, the two leads have a dynamic not unlike the one between Murtaugh and Riggs in LETHAL WEAPON, but with some significant subversions, which we’ll talk about in a second. The movie is comfortable, but also keeps you on your toes. It also threatens to collapse at any moment.

The reason that it doesn’t is because of Geena Davis.

Davis’ career had already been marked by an ability to play any type of role, appearing in such diverse genres of films as TOOTSIE, THE FLY, BEETLEJUICE, THELMA & LOUISE and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, the latter two juicing her early 90’s career peak. The pivot to action star, though, was a relatively new thing for her, fueled a little by her recent marriage to director Renny Harlin.

I genuinely don’t know if THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT would have worked without her grounding it (at least, as much as it allows itself to be grounded). Yes, you definitely buy her way more than you think you will as the CIA assassin. But without you COMPLETELY buying her as a beleaguered housewife in the movie’s opening act, this whole thing might have been dead on arrival. As it happens, Davis gives you both, infusing this jacked up action hero with a palpable maternal sense. The end result is a genuine cult classic.

Another thing that makes THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT so much fun (and sneakily subversive) is its complete swap of the traditional gender dynamic. In this film, Samuel L. Jackson and Geena Davis are more or less “buddy cops”, which is sort of fun considering they’re not really cops, and they’re not really buddies, at least not at the start. But, as it goes along, you start noticing that Henessey is the damsel-in-distress here, the character that gets proposed to be bait for the bad guys, the one that needs to be rescued by the macho action hero. Davis, on the other hand, is constantly the one “in charge”, the “man with a gun”. She’s even given the action-hero physique; take a look at her arms in the surprisingly harrowing torture sequence where she’s tied to the water wheel; she looks jacked.

Looked through this prism, then, it’s no wonder it’s so exciting whenever Charly gets to take over, leaving Samantha the housewife (and all that she represents) in the dust.

THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is also a surprisingly prescient movie. “Project Honeymoon”, the bad guys’ big bad evil master plan, turns out to be a plot to conduct a false flag operation, with the idea to detonate a chemical bomb at Niagara Falls and blame it on Islamic terrorism. If you think that particular storyline sounds far-fetched, run it by your weird cousin at Christmas later this week and see what he thinks.

Finally, it’s also littered with people you like from other things. The always great Brian Cox (aka the guy from that HBO show I haven’t watched yet) is in a key role as Nathan Waldman, the man who trained Charly to be the efficient killer she once was. David Morse appears in a small but crucial part as a former mark. After some thinking, I even realized I recognized Samantha’s daughter, Caitlin. She’s played by Yvonne Zima, who I knew as Rachel Greene’s daughter on the first half of ER. A killer lineup!

The only thing really holding THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT back from true greatness is that it feels a little long. It’s SO excessive and adrenaline-fueled that you’re totally wiped by the end. The 80’s/90’s action blow-’em-up blockbuster was starting to show its limitations just a bit in the middle of the 1990’s (which undoubtedly left it open to criticism from folks waiting for their chance to strike).

“But, Ryan, what about the Christmas factor???” So glad you asked. If anything, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is even more Christmassy than LETHAL WEAPON. No longer set in the warm valley of Los Angeles, Black sets this one in the snowy land of Honesdale, Pennsylvania (the fictional home of Schrute Beets, don’tcha know). The inciting incident is a giant small-town Christmas parade. Add a plethora of string lights and some diagetic holiday music, and you’ve got maybe the Christmassy-est non-Christmas movie of the entire goddamn 1990’s.

And yet, as mentioned, the movie was considered something of a failure at the time, making it to only third in the box office on opening weekend. THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT only managed about $33 mill in the United States and about $62 mill internationally for a combined total of $95, compared against its budget of…$65 mill. Yeah, it surprised me to learn that, for all the hand-wringing, the thing actually made money. It just wasn’t nearly enough as everybody was hoping.

Why was this? Well, there a few unique mitigating factors, perhaps none bigger than the fact that THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT was the second Renny Harlin-Geena Davis collaboration in about a year. The first was released the previous Christmas, a little movie called…..CUTTHROAT ISLAND, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box-office bomb of all time. Bad time to get back on the horse.

Some, including Harlin himself, also put blame on the bad marketing, which I can’t speak a lot to: the trailer seems pretty straight-forward. There’s also something to be said to the fact that audiences and the media were starting to grow weary of “macho Hollywood”; the tide was starting to turn against guys like Black, who were perceived to be overpaid relative to the quality of his output. This was personified by a strange hit-piece from Variety’s Peter Bart after the script was sold in 1994. He sounded pretty pissed! People were hungry for a change, at least in the media.

However, Shane Black posits that it perhaps THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT might have been more successful had the gender roles been more traditional:

It might have made more money, they told me, but it had to be a woman. The lead had to be female.'

In the end, it’s probably a mix of all of the above. The fact is that it’s been proven to be enormously difficult to generate a fully original female-led action flick that is profitable enough for the studio that financed it (again, it should be noted that THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT made money, just not enough; it’s worth considering if the standard would have been so high if Sam Jackson had been in the lead).

For what it’s worth, Jackson himself has looked back on it pretty fondly, going so far to say that it was his favorite movie of his to re-watch. Given he makes 400 movies a year, that’s quite the praise. I’m surprised he didn’t say FARCE OF THE PENGUINS, but no matter.

Regardless, the damage was done. As mentioned, Black essentially went on a decade-long hiatus after this, becoming more well-known for his extravagant parties than FOR writing anything at all. Was it the fallout of the tide starting to turn on him (it should be noted that 1993’s LAST ACTION HERO wasn’t exactly a box office success, either)? Was it the end result of many bad production experiences with studios over the prior decade? Was it just another period of low productivity from a man known for such bouts of writer’s block? Probably a mix of it all.

It also marked a steady decline in Davis’ film output; the only role she played after this until 2009 was as Stuart Little’s mom in the STUART LITTLE trilogy (actually, it’s worse than that, she was voice only in the direct-to-DVD STUART LITTLE 3: CALL OF THE WILD). To be fair, she began to focus on TV after the turn of the century, headlining her own self-titled sitcom, as well as playing the president in 2006’s COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. But, you know, both those shows ran for a combined 40 episodes. Not great.

It’s hard not to read between the lines. Her pivot into the male world didn’t do as good as we decided it should, you’re now on the wrong side of 35…..see ya later.

It’s why I find it hard to muster up a lot of hatred for Jennifer Lawrence’s words earlier this month. Yes, she completely misspoke, but we’ve forgiven all kinds of gaffes from public figures before, at least from ones we’re not angling to tear down in that moment. The underlying intent and sentiment behind what she was trying (and failing) to express in the Variety video couldn’t be clearer once you really break it down.

It’s still damn near impossible to come up with more than a handful of female action characters that exist as wholly original creations, and not part of some previously existing intellectual property. It’s why it;s crucial we appreciate the ones we do have, even if they were considered underwhelming at the time.

This Christmas, consider taking a trip to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, won’t you?