BIRDY (1984)
Director Alan Parker’s Birdy is the story of two lifelong friends who come of age together in Philadelphia and both suffer horribly from physical and mental wounds sustained in the Vietnam War. The movie begins in a psychiatric hospital where Al (Nicolas Cage), whose bandaged face has been disfigured from a bomb blast, is called in by an Army doctor to try to help rehabilitate his friend Birdy (Matthew Modine), who squats like a bird in his room, catatonic.
As Al tries to draw Birdy back from his disassociative state, we learn more about their relationship and history through a series of flashbacks. Al is a Philly street tough who befriends the introspective, eccentric Birdy, who is obsessed with the idea of flight. Birdy is a sensitive kid who sees flying as a means of escape from his surroundings. The two youths capture and train homing pigeons and support each other through the trials of adolescence. Birdy is obsessed with birds, has hallucinatory visions of flying, and eventually builds his own homemade flying machine.
When the two of them are separated and shipped off to Vietnam, Birdy finds himself in a terrible situation without Al’s support, a nightmare that he cannot fly away from. After surviving a helicopter crash and apocalyptic napalm attack, Birdy withdraws from reality and is hospitalized. Al, too, endures crippling physical and psychological wounds, and the two are reunited in a grim stateside hospital.
The movie is deftly directed by Parker, who also directed Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Angel Heart. Birdy functions equally well as a story about the transformative power of friendship and as an examination on the terrible toll that life and war can take on young men. Cage and Modine have great chemistry, and the flashbacks effectively engage the viewer and make you care about the outcome.
So that’s the set-up. Now I am going to ruin the movie for you by describing the F*@% Yeah moment at the very end. If you’re at all interested in experiencing Birdy’s genuinely surprising and cathartic ending, heed my SPOILER ALERT and read no further.
After numerous conversations, Al has been unable to fully pull Birdy out of his catatonia. Birdy has made some progress, but Al seems to be getting worse himself. The Army doctor who arranged their sessions together wants Al to return to Fort Dix. Despondent, Al gives up. “They got the best of us…” he says. “Maybe we should just stay here.”
Birdy suddenly snaps out of his fugue and says, “Al, you’re so full of shit.”
Al and Birdy make a daring escape. They reach the roof of the hospital, and Birdy takes off towards the edge. Al fears his friend’s obsession with flight and escape has returned in a suicidal way. “Birdy!”
Birdy reaches the edge of the hospital roof and jumps off. Al is horrified. “Birdy!”
Al runs to the edge of the roof – and finds Birdy standing on a second rooftop about six feet lower. Birdy looks up at Al and innocently says, “What?”
End of movie.
F*@% YEAH!
Some have complained that the sudden, almost comic ending is such a departure in tone from the rest of the film that it’s jarring, but I think it’s perfect. It’s a fantastic, triumphant catharsis. You know that in that one moment that Al and Birdy have in effect saved each other. When I first saw Birdy, it pulled an honest, relieved, unfiltered emotional response from me – something few movies ever do.
FEARLESS (1993)
Another movie that deals with post traumatic stress and the aftermath of a horrific incident is Peter Weir’s Fearless. Max (Jeff Bridges) and Carla (Rosie Perez) are survivors of a deadly airliner crash who are drawn together but have completely different reactions to their experience. Max is now utterly fearless, to an unhealthy degree. Carla is distraught and overcome with guilt by the death of her baby in the crash. Max develops a strange, intimate relationship with Carla, neglecting his own family. He begins doing foolhardy things like standing on the edge of a skyscraper roof, walking blithely through speeding traffic, and eating strawberries, which he is deadly allergic to.
Max tries but cannot convince Carla that the death of her child was no fault of her own. During a scene in which she’s absolutely despondent, a desperate Max comes up with a novel way to demonstrate her blamelessness and absolve her of responsibility – which brings us to our F*@% Yeah moment.
Again, SPOILER.
Max takes the grief-stricken Carla and places her in the back seat of his car, fastening her seat belt. He pulls a toolbox from the trunk. U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” starts up on the soundtrack, which may sound corny, but it totally works. Max puts the toolbox in her lap. “That’s your baby. Hold on to your baby.”
He jumps in the driver’s seat and guns the car. “Hold on to your baby!” he screams. He’s heading right for a wall. “Hold on to your baby! Don’t let go of your baby!”
The car slams full-force into the wall and the music stops.
The camera moves over Carla, then Max, both injured, then past the shattered windshield and crumpled, hissing hood, finally resting on the toolbox , which has smashed against the wall. There is no way Carla could have saved her baby.
F*@% Yeah!
Actually, it’s more of an “Oh shit!” moment, but it’s so powerful and memorable that I had to include it here. To be honest I haven’t see Fearless in ten years, but that scene still sticks in my mind. I hope I’m remembering the whole thing correctly.
******
Thus ends this week’s off-topic foray into some of my favorite F*@% Yeah moments. Thanks for playing. We now return our attention back to the comics, good and bad, that wait patiently for us in my long boxes.
Ness and Stone (Garcia) wait for the mobsters to arrive at the train station. It's almost midnight. Ness takes a position at the top of a huge flight of stairs and waits. Is that a mobster down below...? No, just some guy meeting his sweetheart.
While he waits, Ness notices a young mother struggling with a baby carriage, trying to pull it up the stairs. Ever gallant, Ness moves to help the woman pull the carriage up.
While he's pulling the carriage up he spots Capone's men. First one. Then another. Then another. He spots the bookkeeper.
A bandaged thug at the top of the stairs recognizes Ness... and IT IS ON. Ness pulls a shotgun from his overcoat, still holding the baby carriage, and blows Bandaged Thug away.
Chaos. Bullets start flying. Ness loses his grip on the baby carriage while shooting another goon, and it starts to careen down the stairs. A mobster at the bottom of the stairs starts shooting at Ness, who shoots a couple more bad guys. He's out of shotgun ammo.
He's got to save the baby! Ness pulls out a pistol and dives after the runaway carriage while mobsters shoot at him from all directions.
Bystanders are getting tagged left and right. Ness shoots at the guy at the bottom of the stairs, who ducks behind a pillar.
Shit, Ness is out of ammo again! He's screwed - the guy behind the pillar is reloading, and a wounded mobster on the stairs is still shooting at him.
Stone runs up, drawing two pistols. He throws one to Ness, who blows away the guy behind the pillar.
Stone does a sliding save at the bottom of the stairs, catching the baby carriage while drawing down on the last thug on the stairs. That's some cool shit right there.
Stand-off. Desperate, the wounded mobster grabs the bookkeeper and holds a gun to his head. The mobster says he'll kill the bookkeeper unless Ness lets them leave. "You got five seconds to make up your mind!"
"I got him," Stone says.
The cornered mobster is freaking out. He starts to count. "One--!"
Stone fires.
One shot, right in the head.
"Two," Stone says.
F*@% Yeah, and F*@% Yeah again!
Long dismissed by suckers as a pale imitator of Hitchcock, director Brian DePalma came into his own with this film, and in particular this legendary sequence, which is so perfectly choreographed and edited that it deservedly became a classic. When I saw it in the theater for the first time I forgot to breathe. In my mind, it’s one of the top ten action scenes of the 20th century. I am prone to hyperbole, it’s true – but you gotta recognize The Untouchables. You gotta recognize.
Willem? What say you?
Lone Wolf McQuade is like the meaner big brother of Walker, Texas Ranger. It’s a spaghetti western style saga of a maverick bad ass Texas Ranger who loves his dog, his truck, and kicking people’s ass. He reluctantly takes a rookie cop (Beltran) under his wing, beds Barbara Carrera, and runs afoul of a murderous arms smuggling ring led by Carradine. Much ass is kicked on the way, until the bad guys make a fatal error – they kill his dog.
Bad call.
McQuade can drink more than you, kick harder than you, squint longer than you, grow better facial hair than you, and dodge machine gun bullets better than you. His truck is better than yours, too – which brings us to today’s incredibly cool F*@% Yeah moment.
The bad guys have temporarily – temporarily captured Ranger McQuade, and beat him up pretty bad. David Carradine knows how to hurt a guy, so he’s going to kill McQuade and his truck, too by burying them alive. The bad guys back McQuade’s Dodge into a huge pit, throw the barely conscious lawman inside, and then bulldoze a bunch of dirt over the whole deal.
"We're going to kill you and your stupid truck, too."
Inside the truck, Lone Wolf McQuade wakes up, groggy. He’s in the shit now. He reaches down, cracks a beer, and pours it over his head to wake himself up. Turns on the engine. Hits the supercharger --
-- and fucking drives himself out of his own grave!
His Dodge erupts from the earth, red-and-blues flashing. The theme song blares. Angels cry. Dave screams F*@% Yeah!
There are more awesome scenes in the film, but Chuck Norris’ four-wheel drive resurrection is the high point of the film.
No, it’s the high point of film, period.
F*@% Yeah! I love that scene!
In the Heat of the Night was so popular that it led to a sequel called – you guessed it – They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, a TV show starring Carol O’Connor, and a series of TV commercials. “They call me Mr. Tibbs – by dialing 1-800-COLLECT!”
OK, I’m kidding about that last one.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Harper Lee’s classic (and only) novel was the inspiration for an equally classic movie starring Gregory Fucking Peck as Southern lawyer and widower Atticus Finch, who raises two precocious youngsters while defending a black client unjustly accused of the rape of a white woman. If you have not read the book or seen the movie, you are missing out BIG TIME and are probably a communist.
Again, this is a movie with more than one F*@% Yeah moment, but my choice is the scene where Atticus Finch gathers his papers into a briefcase and walks out of the courtroom. In the segregated South, all the black townfolk have to sit in the courtroom’s hot balcony, and as he passes below them, they all stand out of respect.
Let's do more tomorrow!
In 1993 DC Comics released a series of inter-related annuals called “Bloodlines” that followed a time-honored tradition in the television world: the spin-off. While most TV spin-off shows feature cast members from the original series (think Frasier or Angel or, if you must, Joanie Loves Chachi), some spin-offs come from stealth pilots.
What’s a stealth pilot, you ask? A guy that flies an F-117? Yes, but in this case I’m referring to the sneaky practice of incorporating a guest character into a regular series with the sole purpose of spinning them off into a new series of their own. The new series is only tangentially related to it’s progenitor. Stealth pilots are a sneaky way of testing the water and trying out new characters/concepts on a target audience before committing to a whole new series. In effect you’ve broadcast the pilot of your new series on an unsuspecting audience. Hence the term “stealth pilot.”
Lots of TV shows do this. Walker, Texas Ranger begat Sons of The Dragon and (I think) Martial Law. The Practice begat Boston Legal. The Golden Girls begat Empty Nest. And, of course, comic books do it, too.
Ever read Uncanny X-Men #261, featuring Hardcase and The Harriers, a group of tough, forgettable mercenaries? What about the Cyberforce and WildC.A.T.S. issues that Chris Claremont wrote featuring The Huntsman? Those are stealth pilots.
The most blatant example of the stealth pilot are the Bloodlines annuals. They should have just called them: “Do you like this character?”
In the Bloodlines books, a group of evil shapeshifting aliens who look like a cross between H.R. Giger paintings and cow skulls come to earth to suck the lifeforce out of the back of their victims’ necks. Some of their prey, however, are mutated into superhumans instead of dying. It’s a lame “just add water” approach to a superhero origin that is as lazy as it is unimaginative. Each of these suck-ass new superheroes debuts in one of the Bloodlines annuals and gets exposed to readers who might not otherwise take a chance on a whole new series.
In Green Lantern Annual #4, we’re introduced to Nightblade, a young man who loses his legs in an accident but develops incredible regenerative powers when one of the cow skull aliens tries to swallow his soul. His legs grow back, and he decides to fight crime or something. Through trial and error he discovers his regenerative powers, meaning some alien-possessed goons chop off his arm:
As somebody that can regenerate, he takes the obvious superhero name: Nightblade! I guess he can, um, throw steak knives, too. I’m to assume that if Nightblade had ever caught on and starred in his own series, he would lose a limb in damn near every issue so the reader can see how his power works. “Hey, Nightblade! Will you get this fork out of my garbage disposal for me?”
Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of Nightblade. Nobody has. If you look up Green Lantern Annual #4 in the Overstreet Guide, it will read: “1st appearance of what’s-his-face.” The beauty of stealth pilots like the Bloodlines annuals is that if the characters don’t catch on, no harm done. Nobody will remember the other Bloodlines characters like Layla or Argus or Ballistic. DC published a few mini-series featuring “Bloodpack” characters, but unless I’m mistaken, and I often am, the only character from this series to actually catch on and get a regular series was Hitman.
Oh, yeah.
Green Lantern is in this comic, too. I almost forgot.
In Coast City, Hal Jordan’s former girlfriend Carol Ferris is being stalked by one of the shapeshifting cow skull aliens. This one can turn itself into a hypnotic tramp in order to seduce people before sucking out their spinal fluid. Hal crosses paths with Nightblade and the two team up to stop the cow skull alien and her horde of demonic pawns. Wackiness ensues.
This issue was written by Gerard Jones, who was everywhere in the nineties, with art by Mitch Byrd and inker Dan Davis. Jones is a competent writer and I’ve always kind of liked Byrd’s work, so their work raises this annual above the other Bloodlines annuals, which mostly sucked ass. There’s a surprising amount of gore in the book, which has some strange sex/violence subtext going on. It’s all Comic Code approved, so enjoy kids!
Yikes. Somebody's seven-year old son got this back in the nineties and now they're a serial killer - all because of this book!
The cover is awful, but Mitch Byrd’s interior art is pretty solid. Byrd draws dynamic action scenes, the “camera” is always well-placed, and his figures look three-dimensional and real. His art has a distinctive look; all his characters have button-noses and seem a little over-rendered. Plus, he draws every woman with thick legs and plump butts. Mitch Byrd is the Ass-Man of comics, the counterpoint to Jim Balent’s breast fetish art. Seriously, the man is like Sir Mix-a-Lot with a pencil – he likes the flank steak.
Mitch Byrd’s not the only one who likes rump – check out Hal:
It’s his duty to please that booty! Watch out, Hal, she only wants you for your spinal fluid.
Big butts aside, the other noteworthy thing in Green Lantern Annual #4 is how many times Hal Jordan gets smacked in the head. I’m going to have to scan some panels and send them to Scipio over at The Absorbascon, who collects images of Hal getting brained. It’s actually kind of funny how many times he gets clocked in the noggin.
How embarrassing. What, he can’t set his ring to warn him about sucker shots? Ultimate weapon of the universe my ass!
Green Lantern Annual #4: the best of the Bloodlines annuals. That’s damning with faint praise, but it’s true. If only Nightblade had caught on… Sigh.
