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REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

32 Things We Learned From the ‘Requiem For a Dream’ Commentary

Before he taught Mickey Rourke how to wrestle or Natalie Portman how to Adagio, Darren Aronofsky was showing Jared Leto how to shoot up. Requiem For a Dream was the director’s second feature film – Pi came out in 1998 – and his position as an auteur began to grow from there. Some consider Requiem Aronofsky’s best film. Regardless if you find it engaging or grotesque, there’s no denying the man’s direction on the film is something to be appreciated. Even studied.

So let’s take a few minutes and hear what Aronofsky had to say about Requiem For a Dream. There’s bound to be wonderful anecdotes about the director skipping with Marlon Wayans down the Coney Island boardwalk or buying ice cream in the Central Park with Jennifer Connelly. Surely this commentary can’t include anything too serious. The movie has a giant refrigerator that dances and sings. It may be gnashing and screaming, but it’s all how you look at it, right? Anyway, let’s get into it. The uppers are about to kick in, anyway.

Requiem For a Dream (2000)

Commentators: Darren Aronofsky (writer, director), MUCH love for Ellen Burstyn (deserved)

• Aronofsky starts out by saying how proud he is of Requiem For a Dream. After Pi‘s success, the director was offered the chance to do whatever he wanted. He knew right off that he wanted to adapt Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel. Everyone told the director he was crazy. He refers to getting Requiem For a Dreamcompleted as a “war.”
• The film begins just like Selby’s novel. As Aronofsky points out, the first line of the book is, “Harry locked his mom in the closet.” As soon as Aronofsky read this, he knew it would be a powerful way of opening a film. Aronofsky appreciated how subjective Selby’s novel was – something the director strove for with Pi. Aronofsky wanted to capture the subjective tone for Requiem, to put you in the viewpoint of the main character, which is why the opening sequence is a split-screen. Both Harry and Sara Goldfarb are the focal points.
• During the scene where Harry and Sara (Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn) are arguing, you can hear an orchestra tuning up. “The idea was that it’s an orchestra tuning up, because what we were about to see was a requiem.” Aronofsky states that the main focus with the film was in creating a musical composition, one that climaxes throughout the film’s run-time.
• Aronofsky states that, other than Ellen Burstyn, Kronos Quartet were the most inspirational artists he worked with. Think Aronofsky is a 30 Seconds to Mars fan?
• Aronofsky’s introduction to Hubert Selby Jr. was “Last Exit to Brooklyn.” He discovered the book in his college library, because the word “Brooklyn” attracted his eye. “When you’re from Brooklyn or you see anything about Brooklyn, you’re immediately fascinated,” he says. The book changed his life. He kept it out for a year, reading it numerous times. Once he entered film school, Aronofsky took inspiration from Selby to make his short films. Fortune Cookie, one of Aronofsky’s student shorts, was based on one of Selby’s short stories. When “Requiem For a Dream” was released in 1978, Aronofsky got a copy but could only read halfway through. The novel had several story ideas he had had, but, as he states, “they were written by a much better writer 20 years before I was even writing.” It was Eric Watson, Aronofsky’s producer and co-writer on Pi, who convinced him that Requiem should be his next film. Selby was very open to Aronofsky adapting his novel.
• Aronofsky and Watson optioned “Requiem For a Dream” for $1,000. Aronofsky remembers that, at the time, coming off of Pi, this was a huge amount of money for them.
• Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald) is a character Aronofsky created that isn’t in Selby’s novel. In the novel, Sara Goldfarb mostly watches soap operas and game shows. Aronofsky wanted the film to be timeless and knew the programs they had the character watching could easily date the film. Tappy Tibbons was a character in a screenplay Aronofsky wrote after film school, inspired by self-help gurus like Tony Robbins. Over the years, he developed the character as well as the Month of Fury infomercial Tibbons hosts.
• According to Aronofsky, Tappy Tibbons’ Month of Fury is a self-help plan. The plan consists of three things you have to do in order to revolutionize your life. 1) no red meat. 2) no refined sugar. Aronofsky doesn’t give away what the third step is. He says you have to search on the Internet to figure it out. If you have theRequiem For a Dream director’s cut DVD, go to the chapter selection menu, go to the Chapter 21-24 tab, hit up twice, then hit enter. A hidden Tappy Tibbons informercial begins playing. The third thing is…spoiler alert…no orgasms. This one drives people crazy.
• Selby’s novel took place in Brooklyn instead of Coney Island. Since Aronofsky grew up in Coney Island, he wanted to include locations and events – Harry and Marion (Jennifer Connelly) breaking onto the roof of a building was not in the novel – that were personal to him. Selby didn’t mind the change thinking it still captured the same culture.
• “You could give her five or six notes, and she just bounces and bings between them and just completely hits each one on the nose, and, at the end, she’ll just do a little, extra corkscrew that will just completely screw you up, but it’s completely great and completely blows your mind even though you don’t really know what it is that you saw,” says Aronofsky on Ellen Burstyn. He mentions she lost 40 pounds for the role. She wore several different prosthetic pieces (some which took 4 hours to apply), wigs, and makeup throughout the film and never complained about how arduous it all was. Plus, there are several moments in the film where Burstyn will act in a way that hides the lines on her prosthetic pieces from the camera’s view.
• Aronofsky was not interested in Requiem For a Dream as a junky movie or a film about drug paraphernalia. He was more interested in the before and after of drug use. One of his influences while working on animated shorts in film school was Jan Svankmajer, a Czech animator who, according to Aronofsky, uses a lot of “before and after photos.” Aronofsky used Svankmajer as an influence when attempting to create a film about what drugs do to you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
• The way Tyrone C. Love, played by Marlon Wayans, mixes styles both in the way he dresses and the way he talks is another instance where Aronofsky wanted the film to be timeless, that it should be about addiction regardless of the time period in which it actually takes place. ”Ultimately Requiem For a Dream is about the lengths people go to escape their reality, and that, when you escape that reality, you create a hole in your present, because you’re not there. You’re chasing off a pipe dream in the future, and then you’ll use anything to fill that vacuum.” Aronofsky explains that the film is about addiction to anything, not just illegal drugs. It could be addiction to coffee, TV, or even hope.
• Aronofsky mentions there are about 150 digital effects in Requiem For a Dream. He and friends from film school formed Amoeba Proteus, a digital effects company designed to create smaller effects that would go unnoticed. The company has done digital effects on all of Aronofsky’s films.
• The only direction Aronofsky gave Peter Maloney, who plays Sara’s doctor, Dr. Pill, was to never look at Ellen Burstyn. Maloney later told Aronofsky it was the most difficult direction of his career.
• The editing style and the way Aronofsky creates montages in the film is something the director refers to as “hip hop montage.” It’s a technique he’s been developing since Fortune Cookie. He was inspired by hip hop music he listened to throughout the ’80s, and hee would take images and sounds and tell a story by cutting rapidly between them all. He made sure to use the technique across all the stories in Requiem to indicate it was about all drugs and all addiction, not just one. There are also moments for each character where the montage isn’t used – specifically when the character is reluctant to take whatever drug they’re addicted to. It indicates them questioning for only a moment what they’re doing to themselves.
• While filming the scene between Tyrone C. Love and his girlfriend, Alice, played by Aliya Campbell, Aronofsky remembers Wayans performing it very seriously. Not getting what he wanted and knowing the time crunch they had to get the scene done, Aronofsky told Wayans to stop acting
  “like a serial killer.”
• “Once again I prove to the world that I’m more of a pornographer than I am a filmmaker,” says Aronofsky as the film fades into the sex scene between Tyrone and Alice. The director notes he really enjoyed shooting the scene mainly because of the actors. “Sex scenes can be fun to shoot,” he notes. This is the man who would go on to make Black Swan. Apparently, he still holds onto this philosophy.
• Aronofsky says the scene where Harry goes to visit Sara was his favorite scene in Selby’s novel, it was the scene that ultimately motivated Aronofsky to make the film, and it is his favorite moment in the finished film. Aronofsky feels this scene is representative of the whole story, how it’s about the difficulty addicts find connecting with the people they love. The scene has three sections: the light side when things are pleasant at the beginning; the dark side when the two begin to argue after Harry finds Sara’s drugs; and back to the light side when Sara makes her confession at the end. Aronofsky sees Ellen Burstyn capturing this performance in this scene as his proudest moment. Aronofsky notes all of Burstyn’s performance in the confession moment was from one, single take. She actually did three takes, but she did each take differently. They couldn’t be combined or cut together. Burstyn is actually out of frame at one point at the end of the take used. Aronofsky was pissed when he noticed this during filming. He went to cinematographerMatthew Libatique to see what had happened. Libatique had tears streaming down his face from Burstyn’s performance. He had fogged up the lens and couldn’t see to properly frame it.
• After filming had completed, Burstyn told Aronofsky that it might happen only once during a stage performance where she would feel like she had completely become the character. She told him that it had happened three times while filming Requiem For a Dream. One was the “confession” scene. The next scene is when Sara has lost it and is trying to explain herself to the TV production company. The last is the very end dream sequence where Sara and Harry come together on Tibbons’ show. This moment was filmed on the first day of filming. The only way Aronofsky can describe what Burstyn is doing in Requiem is that she’s “surfing the character.” He also compares the actress to Michael Jordan in that they both completely lose themselves in the job they’re doing.
• Aronofsky mentions how much he loves playing with sound design. “My favorite device on the mixing board are those little joysticks where you can actually move the sound to different speakers. If you give me that in the editing room, you’ve got to add an extra two days to the budget. Don’t tell the producers that, though.”
• Sean Gullette got upset with Aronofsky on the day they shot the scene between him and Jennifer Connelly at dinner. Gullette had prepared a lot for the scene, but Aronofsky felt the only thing the scene needed, even more important than the dialogue, was Gullette’s character eating a steak. He doesn’t indicate if he’s exaggerating or not – which would lead me to believe that he’s not – but Aronofsky says Gullette ate five and a half steaks while filming this scene. On that day, food won.
• Aronofsky points out the “Snory-cam” shots where the camera is essentially strapped to the actor and held completely in the middle of the frame while the background moves around. Aronofsky wanted each, main character in Requiem to get a Snory-cam shot. The production couldn’t afford what he had planned for Harry. He won’t explain what the shot is, because he intends to use it in a then-future film. It might involve Harry jumping off the top rope of a wrestling ring, but probably not.
• When Marion returns to the apartment after sleeping with Arnold, Sean Gullette’s character, she and Harry sit on the couch quietly, not touching each other. In the uncut take, Connelly and Leto actually did make contact at one point, but Aronofsky cut that moment out of the finished shot not wanting there to be any kind of connection between the two.
• Most of the extras during the grocery store scene are actual junkies brought in off the street. Aronofsky remembers one extra who had to leave at 3AM during filming to pick up heroin as well as some people shooting up on set. This was also the night Jared Leto had his mom and grandmother come to visit the production.
• Aronofsky wanted Florida to become a character in the film. In Selby’s novel, a lot of text and inner monologue is devoted to the characters’ desires to get to Florida, believing it to be the answer to their prayers. Unable to include inner monologues and unwilling to throw in needless exposition, Aronofsky added little moments here and there that make you think of Florida. The Florida orange on the side of the semi-trailer truck is just one. There are several other instances scattered throughout the film.
• The sequence where Sara Goldfarb hallucinates that her apartment becomes the Tappy Tibbons infomercial set was an arduous scene to create and shoot. Aronofsky notes the storyboard document for the 5-minute sequence was 56 pages long. “When people ask me what directing is about, the best metaphor I give it is conducting, because I think you basically have an orchestra of all these different instruments and you basically have to get them to play together to play a single musical piece.”
• Before production began, Aronofsky and Clint Mansell listened to several different requiems from different composers. They picked out their favorite moments in each. Mansell took these, sampled them into a drum machine, and played them percussively. Kronos Quartet added their own notes with sharp violins. All of this was culled together and used for the film’s last act.
• “The film is constructed to build to a climax. It’s that climax which caused all the rating problems with the MPAA.” Aronofsky recognizes how intense Requiem For a Dream is, but he also understands the moral it tells. He believes a rating system is important in the film industry, and  he recognizes that people need to know what they’re going to see and what they’re children are going to see in a movie. “But there’s clearly a big, big hypocrisy on what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable in movies. The fact that you can show as much gun violence as you want in a PG-13 movie as long as you don’t show blood I think is completely backwards thinking.” Aronofsky believes it’s much more important to show teenagers the violence guns can cause if mishandled rather than what he calls “A-Team fantasy” where people fall down dead but bloodless after being shot. “The way I look at the world is that guns and violence is bad and human sexuality is good.”
• Selby’s first day on set was when they were shooting Sara getting the feeding tube pushed into her nose. The author lasted 10 minutes before breaking into tears because of Burstyn’s performance. Selby also plays the prison guard who is taunting Tyrone near the end of the film.
• The final 10 minutes are where, as Aronofsky states, all hell breaks loose. He wanted the culmination of all four stories to be as insane as possible. For the scene where Sara gets shock treatment, the director had everyone set up for the shot. He then brought Selby in and had him read that chapter of his novel to Ellen Burstyn as a way to prepare her.
• During the “ass-to-ass” scene, Aronofsky mentions – kind of casually – that it’s based on something he experienced first-hand. No details are given. Not that there need to be any.
• When Aronofsky reached the end of Selby’s novel, he wasn’t sure if Harry lived or died. He asked Selby about the character’s outcome. The author answered, “Of course, he lives.” When Aronofsky asked why he said “of course”, Selby responded that the character had to suffer more. The director remembers some debates about trying to give the movie an upbeat ending. He mentions how his generation was raised on TV shows like The Brady Bunch and Magnum P.I. where every story is wrapped up nicely by the end, how everything works out fine in most movies and TV shows. “As we all know, it doesn’t always work out in the end. Anyone who’s lived 20 years on this planet knows that things get fucked up, and they stay that way.” The director didn’t want to undermine Selby’s message with his version.

Best in Commentary

“When we were amoebas in the primordial soup we were searching for carbon molecules to get high off of.” – Aronofsky on the timeless theme of addiction.

“I really wanted to capture the visual style of Selby’s writing. What that entails is entering the subjective mind of his characters, because, what’s great about Selby’s characters is that you don’t know always where the dreams start and where the dreams end and characters float in and out of ideas.”

Final Thoughts

Aronofsky’s commentary track for Requiem For a Dream is a very interesting listen. The director has a very subdued voice, thick with a Brooklyn accent making it very distinct. He recorded this track by himself, so there’s no bouncing off another commentator about how something worked out or how a particular day of shooting went. He doesn’t need someone to bounce memories off of. He handles it all well by himself here dishing out insight into his vision for the film, the technical side of completing it, and really getting into what it was like filming some of the more harrowing and unforgettable sequences.

He sticks very heavily to Ellen Burstyn and her stunning performance. He also speaks on Marlon Wayans, Jared Leto, and Jennifer Connelly’s performances, though the time and detail given to them is nowhere near as interesting as what he has to say about Burstyn. Nonetheless, the Requiem For a Dream commentary track is absolutely one you should check out. That goes double if you like the film, triple if you’re an overall fan of Aronofsky’s work.

VINTAGE STAR TREK

Watch Vintage ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ TV Spots Restored In Glorious HD Daren R. Dochterman, a concept and storyboard artist and production illustrator, has worked on many notable feature films from recent years, from David Fincher’s breakthrough movie Seven to the 2010 sci-fi sequelTron: Legacy. But as a visual effects artist he supervised the updating of the effects work for the 2001 Director’s Edition DVD restoration of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Most recently Dochterman has undertaken an ambitious high-definition reconstruction and restoration of the television spots from the original theatrical release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which he has been uploading to his YouTube channel. You can watch the eight restored TV spots uploaded so far here below. Star Trek: The Motion Picture has been getting flak for decades due to its campy acting, ponderous tone, and glacial pace, but it remains one of my favorites of the Star Trek movie series. It’s not a perfect film (that honor would go to the 1982 sequel Wrath of Khan) and yet it has it still has the power to draw me in after all these years. Maybe it’s Jerry Goldsmith‘s magisterial score (one of the late composer’s finest works) or the brilliant visual effects (Spock’s journey through the interior of V’Ger is one of my favorite FX sequences in cinema) by such celebrated technical artisans asDouglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner) and John Dykstra (Star Wars). The 2001 Director’s Edition was created to fix some of the poorly-executed visuals and tighten up the pacing, both flaws made evident by the rushed post-production and locked-in release date imposed on director Robert Wise. The result was a vastly improved film that shames all the “Special Edition” releases that somehow found it necessary to make unnecessary alterations to movies that were perfect to begin with. I get goosebumps watching these television spots with the Goldsmith score and narration by the late, great Orson Welles (who also provided the voiceover for the wonderful teaser trailer). Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in December 1979 and I was only nine months old at the time so I envy those who were watching television at the time and saw one of these spots that promised a cinematic viewing experience unlike no other. Before I die there are a few films I would love to see on the big screen, and this is one of them. They should re-release it in IMAX next year before Star Trek 2 hits theaters. You can keep up with Dochterman’s restored Star Trek: The Motion Picturetelevision spots by subscribing to his YouTube channel. Videos

JUNKFOOD CINEMA 22

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; we take our Coffy black…and with six spoonfuls of Häagen-Dazs. You have just stumbled Across 110th Street and Hit! the internet’s most Boss bad movie column like a Hammer, and there’s No Way Back. Every Friday (Foster), we Drum up another Jive Turkey, becoming Mr Mean as weSavage! and Slaughter the movie right In Your Face.

But then, as if we were a Thing with Two Heads we lay aside all our Hangups to tell you why we think the film is actually Super Fly. Then, for The Final Comedown, we’ll offer a Big Time delicious themed snack food item for you to cram down your food Shaft.

This week’s big score: Hell Up in Harlem

Alas it is time once again to bid farewell to Blaxploitation History Month, and this third incarnation in which we’ve focused on the best of the best worst blaxploitation sequels. We may not have broken any new ground or radically advanced the medium of irreverent film journalism, but some how, against all odds, we managed to undeniably not get sued. So please enjoy this chicken we just counted well before it hatched.

What Makes The First Film Bad?

Hell Up in Harlem is the sequel to Black Caesar starring one of my absolute favorite blaxploitation icons: Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. How it took Williamson eleven Blaxploitation History Month entries before he was spotlighted is beyond explanation, but I’m sure I’m owed one prescription-strength punch to the mouth from Dr. The Hammer. In Black Caesar, Williamson plays Tommy Gibbs, a streetwise gangster who systematically usurps power from many of the Italian crime families in New York. Black Caesar is essentially a Warner Brothers gangster film with an African American in the role traditionally reserved for the likes of James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson; right down to the pinstripe suits and (appropriate) tommy guns (womp womp). For the first two and 3/4 acts, Black Caesar is one of my favorite blaxploitation films. But in its last moments before the credits, it completely shits the bed…then shits it again…then sets the bed on fire…then topples the building housing the bed which is also made of shit.

You see, The Hammer had rules for his onscreen personae. That’s right, the man was so unstoppably badass that casting him in your movie meant conforming to alternative filmmaking commandments with the understanding that breaking them would find you on the loosing end of a game we like to call Hide-n-Go-Count-Your-Teeth. The rules were pretty simple: 1.) Hammer always gets the girl 2.) Hammer wins his fights and 3.) You can’t kill Hammer. Black Caesar violates the last edict by killing Hammer at the end. Not only does Hammer (as Tommy) get killed, he gets shot in the middle of a busy street, chased to an abandoned lot, and beaten to death by a group of youths. The film then pans to the skyline and throws the arbitrary date, August 20th, 1972, onto the screen. What the what what when what? Is that the date of the first day of production on Black Caesar or the director’s niece’s birthday? Or was the writer perhaps just severely broken up over the death of Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations during the attack on Pearl Harbor? Naval history predilections notwithstanding, it is easily one of the worst film endings I’ve ever witnessed that, AGAIN, violates Sir Hammer’s rules.

What Makes The Sequel Bad?

My guess is that, and mind you this is not based on fact but rather how it plays in my head like an Unsolved Mysteries reenactment on an infinite loop, director Larry Cohen thought he could pull one over on Ol’ Freddy Hammer by convincing him Tommy would survive the hit, and then, using creative (read: fart-brained) editing, dared to kill him off without Williamson being any the wiser. But upon seeing the film, Hammer became enraged with rage, marched right down to Cohen’s office and repeatedly introduced his face to his own desk. Then, as crimson human-sauce poured from his quivering, split lip, Cohen promised to write a sequel that brought Tommy back despite the fact that he very definitely killed him at the end of Black Caesar.

Enter Hell Up in Harlem.

Hell Up in Harlem begins as should any good sequel released within the same year as the first, by recapping the events of the end of its predecessor just in case we forgot. We get to see Tommy shot AGAIN and watch him try to escape AGAIN. Only this time, he gets away, steals back the crucial ledger full of the names of corrupt police and politicians (A Slaughter’s Big Rip Off Rip Off? No, idiot, shut up), and then calls his dad. His pop then meets him at the lot instead of that group of youths we very clearly saw kill him. It’s the pinnacle of “don’t worry about it” writing in which Cohen recaps the things we saw at the end of Black Caesar, and then just rewrote the elements that would preclude a sequel like, you know, that whole being beaten to death by a group of children thing.

From there, Cohen fills in the blanks (and by that I mean the sea of blankness in the script after the first two pages) with nothing but violence. There’s not really a story per se, as much as there is a never-ending series of vengeance montages filmed independently of thought or context. We see people getting shot hither and thither or car bombs exploding never-introduced thugs into pieces which end up hither, thither, and over there. The plot is incidentally forced in while Tommy reloads. It’s the Rocky IV of gangster films. What few plot elements the film feels appropriate to share with the audience are haphazardly communicated  through voice-overs, cutaway shots, and ADR; as much an afterthought as a belated birthday card from an estranged father…who thought for sure you died at the end of Black Caesar. Otherwise, the only cinematic language this film speaks is MuzzleBlastese, and it has a nasty stutter. It’s the very definition of run-and-gun filmmaking, in that all they are really concerned with is crowding the screen with as many shots as possible of Fred Williamson running and firing a gun.

It’s probably best that the film has as much trouble standing still as a sugar-snorting kindergarten class after a sixteen hour nap. If we were given the opportunity to stop and think about what little is unfolding before us beyond the hit parade, we’d probably find it difficult not to notice what a giant bag of dicks Tommy Gibbs has become since the first film. He kidnaps and redistributes the children of the woman who sold him out (and then later freaks out when someone else kills her), he calls a nun a hooker before promptly bedding her, and punches police officers in the face before peacefully complying with their simple request (not the corrupt cops mind you, but the ones sent to bring him in for routine questioning). He also refuses to believe his own father, you know the one who somewhat very much saved his life earlier in the film, over the word of a cracked-out hobo. The only thing he doesn’t do is get a preacher killed…oh wait he totally does that too. I hate to say this, but I feel like Tommy really paints a negative portrait of the ruthless black gangster.

Hell Up in Harlem suffers on a technical level from a see-saw of an overly-specific soundtrack and a thoroughly confused sound design. First to the latter, the film’s sound designer was evidently handed the scripts to eight separate new projects requiring of his talents. Then, in a moment of pure DickVanDykeitude, he tripped over an ottoman and faceplanted on the floor; scattering the pages of the scripts in a festive fit of clumsiness. This may explain h0w Hanna-Barbera sound effects make their way into the opening chase sequence or why Shaw Brothers-style dull meat-slaps accompany one of the big brawl scenes. I could be wrong of course, perhaps it’s merely that Tommy Gibbs studied under the master of the flying guillotine and is entrenched in a blood feud with Barry Rubble. It is also conceivable that the production of Hell Up in Harlem was sponsored by Budweiser, as at one point in the film a group of four approaching men in the park sounds like a thundering herd of Clydesdales.

Then there’s the soundtrack which, as near as I can tell, is specially designed to tap into the super niche demographic of blaxploitation fans who are also, how shall I put this, blind. The lyrics to the underscoring songs are born not of the “write what you know” school of songwriting as much as the school of “write exactly the things you see in front of you with no figurative license whatsoever.” When Tommy begins his date with Jennifer by buying her a rose, the song ‘Jennifer’ begins with the lyric, “a rose for you.” Which of course leads to the scene of Tommy spending Sunday at the zoo with his son to the eerily cryptic tune ‘Sundays at the Zoo with My Son.’ Tommy’s release from prison is accompanied by the catchy, supposedly rhetorical, ‘Don’t It Feel Good to Be Free?’ I was waiting for the chart-topping hit ‘These People Made the Movie’ to play under the end credits.

Why I Love The Sequel!

The existence of the second film makes the first less insulting and therefore upholds the greatness of its first two acts. If Black Caesar was really the sole chapter of the Tommy Gibbs story, the film’s ending would sour me to it forever. But the fact, albeit a contrived and brain-mocking fact, that Gibbs survived for the sequel makes that abysmal final curtain in the first film null and void. I don’t even necessarily care that Hell Up in Harlem is the hopelessly padded out mulligan for that first ending; they set out to correct a five minute misstep with a ninety-four minute film. And I’ll be an avenging disco godfather if this thing doesn’t have more ill-conceived insulation than my house’s attic…which I tried to weatherproof with cotton candy and Swiss cheese. At one point, Tommy’s rival flies to L.A. to escape his wrath. We not only see Tommy chase him to the airport, but then also subsequently purchase his own ticket, go through security, take off, land, and then collide with his rival at baggage claim. All that’s missing is the ten minute scene wherein Tommy heatedly argues with the gate agent who informs him that his overly bloated story device will have to purchase a second seat.

Luckily for us, Tommy does plenty more in this film than just negotiate the trivialities of air travel. As we previously might have hinted at, he also kills enough people to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with corpses. He’s not so much as gangster anymore as he is a superhero granted superhuman badassitude by accidental exposure to Hamma’ radiation. He shoots drug dealers in broad daylight, snipes fools from a scaffolding high above Times Square, and even kills a dude with a beach umbrella. Tommy is so badass that his remarkably inappropriate turtle neck and polyester pants beach attire does nothing to hinder his ability to move undetected through the crowd. He’s such a spectacular hitman that by the end our desire to see him execute a hit supersedes our need to know who his targets are and how they fit in with the “plot.” Hell, he’s so unburdened by the laws of reason in his assassinations that I’d even believe he could outrun a police car on foot, which is good because he honest-to-Dolemite outruns a goddamn police car on foot! Gibbs finishes off his biggest foe by slowly hanging him from a tree using a makeshift noose he hastily fashions from a pair of neckties. Apart from racial implications of this kill, with all the flack given to the 70s for its hideous fashion, I’m just glad Larry Cohen at least stuck up for the durability of those fabrics. Tommy even leads a major siege on the island manor of the mafia commission! Oh my good burger, that siege.

So the covert task force approaching from the water are about as covert as an elderly ladies’ swim class at the Witchita YMCA. Luckily however, all the guards stationed around the manor are apparently being paid to stand at the shore and stare…at the house. Yeah guys, I think you’ve fundamentally missed the point of guarding the house; intimidating the house itself into remaining still is not what they meant. So Tommy and his men snorkel up to the shore like a squad of Navy SEALS, well not SEALS necessarily; more like surprisingly buoyant manatee carcasses. Then they somehow activate their sleeper agents inside the house and all the black maids pull revolvers to take out the first wave of guards. Now, full disclosure, I haven’t read or seen The Help yet, but I’m almost 100% sure it ends in much the same way. The siege ends in an inexplicable victory for Tommy’s guys who then have the maids serve up a big soul food feast for the bosses. It is quite possibly one of the most racist things I’ve ever witnessed in a blaxploitation films. It’s not so much that the maids offensively cluck off the contents of the feast as if Al Jolson was their acting coach, but the mobsters react to all this delicious food as if they’ve just been asked to eat their own parents.

As much as I rip on the music  in this film for being too on-the-nose, in it’s defense, it is absurdly on-the-nose. But it also features a killer theme song, as is common practice for this genre. The theme song has the requisite funk beat and is belted by a near-shrieking soul singer to emphasize both the titular hell and the location in which it is up in. Oh, by the way, that singer is none other than Edwin Starr. Starr of course is the man who gave us the most fundamentally flawed Army recruitment song ‘War, What is it Good For?’

Junkfood Pairing: Hell Up On Hotdogs

Bear with me here, I’m not crazy. Granted, it is nearing sunrise and I have been drinking my signature scotch and (baking) soda cocktail while cramming jellybeans up my nose for the last seven hours, but still not with the for crazy.

Get yourself a bottle of Hell Sauce (trademark symbol) and pour it liberally (read: unwisely) over a hot dog you bought from a vendor in the park. You now have Hell up in your hotdog. Hopefully you’ll avoid the fate of the mobsters in the movie and won’t die with half a hotdog hanging out of your gob. Hopefully. Hell Up on Hotdog

I HAD A DREAM 3

HUMZA

HEROES FOR HIRE

Heroes for Hire – Variant Covers for the Heroes for Hire Series created by Philippines based artist Harvey Montecillo Tolibao.

Harvey Montecillo Tolibao was born in June 1981 and raised in Malaybalay, Bukidnon, Philippines. At the age of 10, Harvey dreamed to become a comic book illustrator. He grew up collecting Pinoy Klasiks such as ALIWAN Horror Komiks, Tagalog Komiks, Romance, Kick fighter, Kidlat, Terminator, etc. He likes collecting foreign comics like Jim Lee’s X-Men, which also serves as one of his inspirations.

He moved to Cebu City and studied Information Technology in College, but he was not able to push through with his studies due to financial restrains. With that, he decided to work as a furniture designer, cartoonist, graphic artist, illustrator and a tattoo artist for 2 years as he struggled to find his luck.

But Harvey was determined to pursue his dream of becoming a comic book artist. So he moved to Manila and started working as a web design artist and a messenger. This didn’t stop him from fulfilling his dream. He started as an assistant artist of Stephen Segovia on Tokyo Knights and MITH under TOPCOW. He then worked as a background artist for Carlo Pagulayan in Emma Frost, Unlimited X-Men, Fantastic Four and Planet Hulk. He did the same thing with Roy Allan Martinez and Leinil Yu.

Harvey got his first break in the comic industry on Robert Jordan’s NEW SPRING and Chuck Dixon in a book published by the Dabel Brothers. Dark Horse then saw his work on Anakin Skywalker for Star Wars which got him the opportunity to draw Star Wars: Knights of the Republic. This was also published by Dark Horse.

In 2007, Marvel gave him his big shot – to do Iron Man Annual. Since then he has been working as a freelance artist for Marvel Comics.

 
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