THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996) – the $4 Million script!

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Bradley Crain

Shane Black wrote a couple of my favorite action movies during my teenage years, LETHAL WEAPON and THE LAST BOY SCOUT. His scripts are characterized by strong violence balanced out by a healthy amount of comedic banter. That lethal (pun intended) combination made Shane Black a star in his own right, with his work being very much in demand. In 1994 he sold his script for THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT for the unheard price of $4 Million. After hitting this payday, Black would go dark for the next decade and not release another screenplay until 2005’s KISS KISS BANG BANG, which was also his directorial debut.

THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT opens with Samantha Caine playing Mrs. Claus in her small town’s Christmas parade. She has a nice boyfriend, an 8 year old daughter, and she’s a member of the PTA. This is pretty good for a lady that doesn’t remember a damn thing about her life prior to 8 years ago. After celebrating her friends at a Christmas party, she’s driving a soused old man (Alan North) home when she hits a deer and flies right through the window and lands on a snowbank. This wakes up some of her memories and she starts having a few quick flashbacks and some odd dreams from her past, including the name Charly Baltimore. She also learns that she can easily break a buck deer’s neck and handle knives like a champ! Around this same time, low-rent private detective Mitch Hennessy (Samuel L. Jackson) who has been paid a retainer by Ms. Caine to be on the lookout for any clues related to her past, gets lucky and finds a letter from Caine to a supposed former lover. He heads her way to give her the update. When a local news program shows the beautiful Ms. Caine in the parade, some enemies from her past see the story and head to town to try to kill her. Surviving the attempt on her life, and now with Hennessy by her side, Samantha leaves to find out who she really is and unravel the secrets of her past. Is she a chef? Is she a school teacher? Is she a badass hit woman named Charly Baltimore? The fun is in finding out!

Geena Davis is so good in her role as Samantha Caine / Charly Baltimore. She’s simultaneously beautiful, funny, sexy, cute as a button, and badass. She was married to the director, Renny Harlin, when the film was made and they both went all out to create a strong, female action hero. I think they succeeded admirably. Samuel L. Jackson is just so good in this type of role. He’s sarcastic and funny, a little sleazy, and very much a reluctant hero who does the right thing when he has to. In 2019, Jackson would go so far as to tell late night host Jimmy Fallon that Mitch Hennessy is his personal favorite role. The remainder of the cast is fine, with Brian Cox particularly standing out. His declarative statement about the ultimate results of a small lapdog continually licking his asshole really hit home for me and is reason enough alone to watch this film.

Ultimately, even though I personally went to see it during its theatrical run, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT underwhelmed at the box office in 1996. It grossed around $90 million worldwide on a budget of around $65 million. But that’s fine to me, I enjoyed it in 1996, and I enjoyed it again when I watched it today!

A Blast From The Past: The Day My Kid Went Punk (dir by Fern Field)

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First produced in 1987, the short film The Day My Kid Went Punk tells the story of Terry Warner (Jay Underwood), a clean-cut teenager and aspiring violinist who lands a summer job working as a daycare counselor at a luxury hotel.

Feeling that he’s been neglected in favor of his high achieving older brother and his younger sister, Terry acts like a typical middle child and decides to change his image right after leaving home for his job. (It worked for Jan Brady!) He decides to become a punk. (Jan Brady never went that far.) Could this have something to do with his mother (Christine Belford) being the nation’s leading expert on the “Punk Syndrome,” that is terrifying parents everywhere? Or could it just be because Terry knows that he’ll never be as cool as his father (Bernie Kopell), who might claim to be named Tom Warner but who is obviously just Adam Bricker living in the suburbs? Every time Tom looks at his “punk” son, you can just see him dreading the thought of word of this getting back to Captain Stubing.

(Incidentally, the family in film is clearly named Warner but, in all of the advertisements that I’ve seen for this special, including the one at the top of the post, they’re identified as being the Nelson family.)

Needless to say, Terry Warner is, in no way, a convincing punk and judging from the film’s dialogue and plot, it would appear that the film doesn’t really know the difference between punk, goth, and heavy metal. Everyone at the hotel is a bit taken aback by Terry’s appearance but he proves himself to be a good worker and the kids absolutely love riding horses with him. I guess the message is that you shouldn’t judge someone based solely on how he looks. That’s a good message except that it’s ultimately undercut by Terry himself and his decision abandon his punk look as soon as it inconveniences him at school. So, I guess the message is that teens should dress the way they want unless it keeps them from winning first chair in the school band and parents shouldn’t worry because teenagers are so shallow that they’ll abandon anything after a month or two. The film suggests that Punk is less of a syndrome and more of a fad that whiny middle children go through during the summer.

(Myself, I’m not a middle child. I’m the youngest of four and I’ve never felt particularly ignored, even if there were times when it seemed like being left alone would be a nice change of pace. That said, I definitely went through some phases while I was growing up. During my junior and senior years of high school, I always made sure that I was wearing at least one black garment and I wrote emo poetry under the name Pandora DeSaad.)

Anyway, Halloween’s approaching and this very (and I do mean very) campy short film feels like a good way to welcome a month that encourages everyone, young and old, to think about putting on costumes. Here is The Day My Kid Went Punk!

Insomnia File No. 17: The Suburbans (dir by Donal Lardner Ward)

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were still awake at 3:45 in the morning, you could have turned over to Starz and watched the 1999 comedy, The Suburbans!

And, in all probability, you would have fallen asleep before it was over.

This film tells the story of four guys who used to be in a band. The name of the band was The Suburbans and, in 1980, they had a hit with a song called … wait … what the Hell was that song called? See, this is an example of how slapdash The Suburbans was. The whole point of the film is that they had a hit song but the movie goes off in some many different and random tangents that I can’t even remember what the name of this very important song was. All I remember is that the song didn’t really sound like it would ever be a hit (no, not even in the 80s) and that the four guys really didn’t seem like they would ever be rock stars.

Anyway, The Suburbans only had that one hit and now, nearly twenty years later, all the band members are leading conventional lives in the suburbs. Oddly, they all appear to live in the same suburb and they’re all still best friends. Craig Bierko is the former lead guitarist, who is now a doctor of some sort. Will Ferrell (yes, that Will Ferrell) is the former bass player who now works with computers. Tony Guma is the overweight drummer who is at the center of a lot of scenes, presumably because Guma co-wrote the script. Donal Lardner Ward is the former lead singer. Along with starring in the film, Ward also directed it. That might explain why, despite not being a very interesting character, everyone in the film is portrayed as being in love with him.

The Suburbans briefly reunite to play at Ferrell’s wedding. A music executive (Jennifer Love Hewitt) happens to be at the wedding. It turns out that she used to love The Suburbans and their one hit! (The problem is that Jennifer Love Hewitt was only 20 when this film was made, which means that, when the Suburbans were famous, she would have only been a year old.) She arranges for The Suburbans to reunite for a pay-per-view special and…

…and then a lot of stuff happens. And I do mean a lot of stuff. But what’s odd is none of that stuff adds up to anything. Ward’s girlfriend (played by Amy Brenneman) is briefly threatened by Hewitt but, fear not — Donal Lardner Ward is the world’s greatest guy! Occasionally, one member of the Suburbans might argue with another member of the Suburbans but fear not — they’re all great guys!

What’s funny is that, after spending 81 minutes with these characters and listening to their oppressively relentless quippy dialogue, you still don’t feel like you know a damn thing about any of them. You never even find out how The Suburbans first got together or what inspired them to write their one hit in the first place. Nor do you find out why they broke up. They’re just sort of there and we’re supposed to care.

I guess I should mention that Ben and Jerry Stiller are both in the film. They play Hewitt’s bosses and it’s painful to watch both of them. Apparently, the director just said, “Ben, say something funny!” and the result was an endless scene of Ben Stiller saying whatever popped into his head.

(I should also probably mention that J.J. Abrams produced this movie. Yes, that J.J. Abrams…)

If you track down the Suburbans on DVD, you’ll notice that the cover art is pretty much centered around Jennifer Love Hewitt and Will Ferrell. What’s funny is that neither Hewitt nor Ferrel really get to do much in the movie. (That said, Ferrell’s performance is enjoyably odd, even if it does feel totally out of the place.) The entire movie is centered around Tony Guma and Donal Lardner Ward. After all, they wrote and directed the damn thing. So, I guess if you’re a Tony Guma fan, The Suburbans is the movie for you!

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