TOP FIVE: A Exploration of David Spade

I set off to write about David Spade’s 1999 movie Lost and Found, because I am an unabashed David Spade fan and I completely bought that he could date both strippers and French cello players. And run a restaurant.  And be a reluctant mentor to Artie Lange. There is nothing my David cannot do, and I won’t be convinced otherwise. Until I tried to watch Lost and Found again, because that movie does not hold up well. You know what? I am undeterred in my belief that David Spade is an underappreciated thespian who, if the world were fair, might end up being my third husband. I present to you, a top 5 list of movies (NOT including 1995’s Tommy Boy, because that’s obvious and we aren’t lazy) where David Spade is perfectly enjoyable:

1.      1.Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987) – This is David’s first acting credit, and at the tender age of 23 he simply sparkles as Kyle, a troublemaking skateboarder who is recruited to be one of the aforementioned “Citizens on Patrol.” Look at his hair flipped in full 80s/Farrah Fawcett glory.  Fun trivia fact: Tony Hawk was fired from being David’s skateboarding stunt double because he was too tall. So much charisma in such a small package.

1.       Reality Bites (1994) – I know what you’re thinking – “wait, was he even in that?” The answer is yes, uncredited in one scene. True, it’s not exactly a David Spade vehicle, so much as an amuse-bouche of the charming sarcasm that he would come to be known for. As the Manager of a well-known hotdog chain, David puts Winona Ryder in her place. You can tell she thinks she is too good for the job, and his witty banter quickly lets her know that her degree in Media Studies is as worthless as we all know it is. I’m also left wondering about this character. What are the hopes and dreams of this hot dog vendor Manager? That’s a movie, and a classically American story, I’d like to see.

1.       The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)  - Yeah, I was 19 and saw this cartoon in the theater just because David Spade was the star. Maybe you’re the one who needs to find something better to do with her life.  There’s not a lot of story here: Emperor wants to build a waterslide on peasant’s house. Ertha Kitt turns Emperor into a llama. Peasant helps turn him back into an Emperor, and the waterslide gets build on the next hill over. I’m going to dock points because this film obviously lacks historical accuracy, but playwright David Mamet has said he considers the script for this film to be one of the most brilliantly innovative which Hollywood has produced in recent years. You be the judge.  

1.       Joe Dirt (2001) – I like this film, because Spade veers off the well-worn road of biting sarcasm into naked earnestness. His mullet is visually stunning, and David Spade and Fred Wolf are master wordsmiths. This film holds up, and teaches a few lessons along the way. Life’s a garden, dig it? You can’t have no in your heart. 

1.       Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) – Why Hotel Transylvania 2? Because Netflix doesn’t think it’s necessary that I see the original, so this is all I’ve got. It’s another ensemble movie, but there’s just enough David Spade sprinkled in that when my kid insists on watching in for the 300^th time, I’m game. He plays the invisible man, so he has only his voice to convey the depth of his character.

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FUNNY FARM (1988)

Once upon a time there was no one funnier on this Earth than Chevy Chase.  Feel free to disagree with me, but when you look at his work on Saturday Night Live, Vacation, Caddyshack, etc., he shaped what a lot of people find funny. 

Strictly speaking from my limited point of view.  Maybe you're slamming your fist into the desk reading this going, "Dammit, Carrot Top was waaaaay funnier."

To each his own then.

This movie was nothing but empty promises. Not only was it not particularly funny, but at no point is anyone ever on a farm.  Just because you have geese who occasionally break into your place, does not make it a farm.

The premise this movie gives is that Chevy Chase is a sports writer who moves his wife to the country so he can write a novel and get his wife pregnant - not necessarily in that order. They settle into a house in a small town that seems idyllic, BUT YOU GUYS, ITS NOT. That's where the funny comes in, get it?

Chevy's character is goofy and affable and not flexible but he pretends to be. His wife is...well, she's his wife. She reacts appropriately to things.  When he makes a joke, she laughs.  When they look around the house, she smiles.

When she enjoys a banana, we're given a whole scene to let that happen.

Chevy Chase is someone that you know he's going to go off the rails at anytime...

Like when he realizes his wife has eaten the last banana.

We're introduced to all the crazy characters who contribute to Chevy's steady descent into madness, which has possibly affected modern day Chevy Chase, but results of that theory are still pending.  There's a crazy mailman who throws mail, a lazy sheriff who's role in the town I really wasn't sure about.  Also, there's this lady...

She's the town operator and if you want to make a call, you have to have a payphone in your house, where you feed it five cents. If you don't, she won't put through the call.  Does this make any sense? Nope. Does the movie's heroes ever solve this problem or does it shrug and expect us to laugh along? Do we need to ask?

Its one of many things that make no sense and that the screenwriters felt didn't really deserve a point, just something to say, "Hey, isn't this crazy?"  There's a dead body in the house and the town wants to charge our heroes a fee to bury it. Why? Well, its not really explained, but our heroes go along with it. Because that makes comedy?

Seriously, asking for a friend.

 They get a dog. Because that's a great formula for comedy. He can't hear or see anything, so the producers had a laugh about that.

The story takes an interesting twist.  Chevy gives Mrs. Chevy the first chapter of his book to read and she hates it. Like, HATES it, hates it.  She cries and its awkward and didn't think it was funny (perhaps our hero was the author of this movie?)  He tries to take it well, but its eating him alive.  The darkness consumes us all.

To make things worse, not only is the lack of his wife's approval crippling his mental wellbeing, but she wrote a book on the sly - a kid's book about a squirrel and it's getting published. He's supportive in that he allows her to live in the house, but you get the feeling that this might be the 80s answer to In Cold Blood.

What happens next might surprise you, that is if you walked into a movie expecting a realistic character arc. Chevy Chase loses his mind and becomes obsessed with his own failures at life.

The movie reaches its tipping point, when his publisher stops into town (do publishers really do long distance stop ins? Anyone we can ask for a point of reference?) He's greeted with Heart of Darkness style Chevy:

...as he's trying to murder the local mailman.  The publisher ignores this behavior and passes it off as "artistic genius" and says, "Hey, where's that book you promised us?"  Chevy's response is hand him his wife's recent manuscript (possible titles are  Boys and Squirrels, Squirrel with the Dragon Tattoo or Squirrel, Interrupted). Publisher takes it, says good day.

Wife does catch on to the ruse as the publisher can't wait to send Squirrel on Fire to the presses on Chevy Chase's name and demands a divorce.  So the baby prospects also get put to a halt.

If they're going to get a divorce, they have to sell the house and go their separate ways. In any other situation, the couple would sell the house cheap or apply to be on one of those renovation shows on HGTV, just to get away from each other (see also, The Money Pit)

Instead, they go to a Town Hall, and bribe the townspeople to act like a Norman Rockwell painting to help sell the town. Weirdly, everybody's into it.

This begs the question - no one put up these shenanigans when our heroes bought this house, the house and scenery did the job for them. But, to answer these questions, we would be watching a much better movie starring other people. So, moving on.

A couple comes and looks at the house, has no problem finding the place and automatically falls in love. Our heroes are told, "Tomorrow morning, expect an offer."

Our heroes could easily smile and say, "Thanks, that's great," but no. Instead, they respond with, "You should spend the night and find out why we hate this house." (Blogger's paraphrase, not a direct movie quote.)

Oh, is everything going better than expected? Time to quit while you're ahead.

Our heroes could have saved boatloads of cash by just letting the prospective owners go to a hotel for the night. Also, if you're not growing crops or raising livestock, then stop calling your property a farm.

In a move that surprises no one on this side of the screen, one of the townspeople goes off the rails and assaults Chevy Chase.  Everyone laughs except for the prospective house buyers, but they're weirdly still into buying this house.

The next morning, the house buyers have their checkbook out, they're ready to make a deal, but something in this overly complicated and unnecessary ruse has made our heroes rethink everything and it turns out that not only do they love the house and the town, they're just in love with each other.

Wife apologizes for overreacting when her husband tried to steal her work and pass it off as his own, sending the fight for equality and dignity for women back about a hundred years.

She'll keep writing her Squirrel, You Know Its True saga and Chevy's going to settle for being the towns sports writer, covering the one softball game they have in the summer.  Not the emotional powerpunch ending of Cop and a Half, really more like a shrug from the writer and director alike.

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A Star is Born (1976)

You may find this post controversial and I've made my peace with it.  Some view this film as a classic and some hold it proudly in their Barbra Streisand shrine.  However, I recently viewed this film and felt the need to post about it as there were just way too many elements that couldn't be ignored.

Fact: this is the THIRD remake of this story (a fourth is slowly rolling around in development. You can read about it here).

Fact: this is the first movie I've blogged about on this site that's both a Oscar and a Golden Globe winner for the song "Evergreen".

Fact: I have long since made fun of the lyrics to the song "Evergreen" without realizing it was a) from this movie and b) a Barbra Streisand song.  You can't sing a lyric that compares love to a easy chair and not expect me to mock it.

So we meet John Howard Norman, a big rock star who's late to everything, drinks a lot and has Gary Busey personally shove cocaine up his nose.

No one in this movie ever calls him just "John".  Its always "John Howard" or "John Howard Norman". This may have been because the filmmakers felt that no one would accept a hero named John, leading to theater attendees storming out of the theaters in protest.

Fact: John Howard Norman never sings a whole complete song. He starts songs, then always interrupts and we as an audience have no idea why people even bother going to his shows to begin with.

Here's what someone should have prepared me for. No one knows how to wear shirts in this movie.  Shirts are really more of a suggestion or an opinion.  So as a result, they're maybe buttoned or worn halfway or in this case, Kris Kristofferson just forwent the shirt entirely and skipped to the vest.  To each his own, I suppose.

After an evening of kind of singing parts of two songs, he leaves his own show and goes to a club where we're introduced to Barbra Streisand aka "Esther Hoffman".

She's in a singing group that call themselves "The Oreos."  The less said about this, the better.

So they're singing, and Barbra is being Barbra.  However, every romance movie needs a "meet cute" and we get with this moment...

"John Howard Norman" (I guess we'll follow the movie's instructions to always call him this) gets into a shouting match with some bar customers and Barbra gets ticked and confronts him about it. 

Now, lets put this situation in "real life" shall we?  In movie life, Barbra sings at a club and she hears a drunk guy shouting and getting drunker. She confronts him, he's charmed by it, chases her down and begs to date her.  She kind of plays coy and allows him to bring a pizza to her house at 7am the next day.

In "real life", Barbra would have finished her set, gone backstage, complained with the rest of The Oreos (sigh). Had "John Howard Norman" come slurring her way, a bouncer would have steered him to his car and he would have woken up ten hours later not remembering anything.  Roll credits!

But they have breakfast and are super cutesy about eating pizza and him guzzling down a whiskey and a few more beers for breakfast, so he invites her to come to his show.

Another show where he starts a song, mumbles through it, then goes and finds Barbra...

...sings from a vantage point where no one can see him...

...takes a fan's motorcycle (which begs the question, do people still bring a motorcycle inside arenas? Also, where can I get the "I'm Spoiled Rotten" shirt?)

...and this inevitably happens...

...where you know, everyone's going to have to file back out and spend three hours in their cars wondering what on earth they just saw.

Meanwhile, "John Howard Norman" gets put in an ambulance, everyone takes off, leaving Barbra stranded at a arena.

In "real life", Esther Hoffman would have been angry and annoyed, spent hundreds of dollars on an Uber getting back to her house and written an interesting op-ed piece to Rolling Stone on what a tool John Howard Norman is.

Instead, she finds it cute that he stalked her at a studio and follows him home to his house where they make sweet music together...

...and then sweet, sweet love.

So many beer cans in this scene.

Naturally, he brings her into the studio and she sings whole and complete songs, which blows everyone away. He realizes that she is a unicorn and they make glorious creative plans.

He does yet another show, where he starts to sing a song and people are into it, but he stops barely into the first chorus and goes, "Hey guys, you paid to see me, but you'll be fine letting my girlfriend of two days taking over, right?"

So Barbra comes out in an outfit that makes her look like she's about to do everyone's taxes and performs two whole songs.  Turns out the crowd loves it when you come out and do a song that has a beginning, middle and end. They go nuts and officially, "a star is born."

Roll credits.

In the frenzy of the show, Barbra proposes to "John Howard Norman". JHN gives her a very solid reason why this is a terrible decision. Namely that he's an awful person who's life is a total mess. Never mind, she knows what she wants and thats that.

The movie clearly has very little to do between now and JHN's inevitable death (spoiler alert) so it does that thing that only bad movies do...there's a montage. And it has everything that a '70s love montage needs...

 Picture perfect moments in the middle of nowhere. This is always followed by sex in the most uncomfortable setting imaginable.

Being silly in the middle of nowhere.  This movie was made by Warner Bros who also holds the rights to Superman which I guess makes this scene okay.

Wearing Indian blankets as if that counts as clothes.  (Fact: It does not)

Enjoying your '70s house with more rugs.

Maybe one of you fakes your death?

And at the end of a long day of holding each other and staring into each other's eyes, you recline on pillows that vaguely look like Swastikas.

At some point, you have to come back to reality.  After all, Esther is a big star now (sure, its been a week maybe) and JHN is dealing with the fact that his career is over. Now this movie gets it into gear.

People are really digging her. She's up for a Grammy! She shows up to her shows! She finishes songs! She wears shirts!

Speaking of which, she wins a Grammy for Best Female Vocal. She insists JHN go up with her, despite the fact that he almost didn't make it and that he's super trashed.  No, no, no, she drags him up there where he slurs something about art, all while Tony Orlando and Rita Coolidge seem horrified.

And, this movie dares to wave its codependency flag again, when Esther goes to calm down in the bathroom and is followed by JHN.

He makes another really good case for why this marriage isn't going to work out, but she won't have it.

This movie is begging for the opening credits to Intervention to come on at any moment.  I would have fully welcomed it.

During a photo shoot, he tells her that she'll have to tour on her own.  She's horrified.

He doesn't show up for things when she needs him to, but instead of processing the links between addiction and unhealthy relationships, she puts on more drapey clothes and wonders why as she literally stares at empty glass vessels that used to hold alcohol.

While she's gone however, a sexy journalist breaks into their home and begs for an interview with Esther.  She'll do anything.

ANYTHING.

And he obliges.

Of course they're caught.  The journalist gets huffy and walks out, while Esther thinks things over and has this reaction to the whole situation...

Frankly, at this point, I won't blame his addiction, I'll just blame the '70s. Neither of them are clearly ever going to learn anything at this point.

So the universe takes over. He gets up early, drinks a lot of beer and has a fatal accident.

And Esther gives the performance of a lifetime where she cries and hopes he's looking down on her.  I'd cry too, but then I remembered he was a reckless and selfish alcoholic who possessed really bad judgement.  The good news is that she got a career out of it and the rest of The Oreos had to find another white lady to lead them.

PERFORMANCE OF A LIFETIME.

Should you care to delve deeper into this, you can watch this movie on Amazon, HBO GO or in physical disc form from Netflix.

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