10 Memorable Marquees In The Movies

Regular visitors to this blog (there must be a few, right?) may be aware that I have a bit of a thing for movie theater marquees. I regularly post pictures of local theaters like the Colony Theater and the Rialto Theater’s marquees here in Raleigh on the sidebar (in the old days it would be the Varsity Theater in Chapel Hill when I lived there), and I have them collected on Facebook in the “Movie Theater Fun File!” section of my profile.

So since it’s been a while since I've put together a good ole Film Babble Blog list I thought I’d get back in the game with this top 10 of memorable marquees that have appeared in the movies throughout the years:

1. THE SORROW AND THE PITY in ANNIE HALL

It was a running gag throughout Woody Allen's 1977 Oscar winner ANNIE HALL that protagonist Alvy Singer (Allen) would drag his girlfriend (Diane Keaton in the title role) to see Marcel Ophüls' THE SORROW AND THE PITY (1969). The marquee shot above comes from the end of the film, after the couple has broken up, when Allen runs into Keaton coming out of a screening of the four hour documentary about Nazis at the Thalia Theater, which used to exist on 95th Street off Broadway (it's an apartment building now). It's a long shot so it's easy to miss that Allen's date is Sigourney Weaver, in her first film appearance. A bonus Woody Allen marquee appears at the top of this post.

2. FAMILY PLOT in DAZED AND CONFUSED

This is one of hundreds of well chosen details that helped Richard Linklater's 1993 cult comedy drama classic DAZED AND CONFUSED so convincingly recreate a day from May of 1976. Hitchcock's final film, released a month earlier, appears in a few early shots on a standing marquee for a drive-in in the background of the film mostly set in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. It works as both a piece of a time capsule capture, and a shout-out to the master of suspense.

3. PLAY MISTY FOR ME in DIRTY HARRY

This, and #4, are inside-jokes. In Don Siegel's 1971 cop classic DIRTY HARRY, Clint Eastwood's iconic Harry Callahan character enters a San Francisco burger joint in one shot in which a marquee advertising Eastwood's previous film, PLAY MISTY FOR ME (also '71) can be seen around the corner. Nice plug, Clint!

4. THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

The same type of thing happens in David O. Russell's SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK from last year. While leads Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are arguing in front of a theater midway through the film, a marquee advertising Ryûhei Kitamura's little seen 2008 thriller THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, which starred Cooper, is fairly visible - partially obscured but still obvious.

5. PLATOON in THE NAKED GUN

During a very funny falling-in-love montage set to Herman Hermit's “I’m into Something Good” in David Zucker's 1988 comedy classic THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD, Leslie Neilsen and Priscilla Presley exit a Los Angeles movie theater laughing their asses off. The camera pans up to the marquee:

It's a cheap laugh, but still always gets me.

6. A double feature of A BOY'S LIFE and WATCH THE SKIES in GREMLINS

The fictitious film titles on this marquee seen in Joe Dante's 1984 classic GREMLINS are Spielbergian in-jokes. A BOY'S LIFE was the original title of E.T. and WATCH THE SKIES was the early working title of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, so the fake double bill presents a double nod to the film's executive producer. This marquee has been mentioned before on this blog as has:

7. SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY in KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE

This marquee for the phony film SEE YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY (previously covered in “Film Within Film Follow-up Fun” 7/13/07), seen in the 1977 ZAZ sketch comedy movie THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE is part of a running gag through many of the films of John Landis. It comes from a line from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that the director liked enough to feature in the form of billboards, posters, and more than one marquee.

8. A double bill of DEEP THROAT and MEATBALL in SLAP SHOT

This marquee glimpsed in the background of a parade shot on the streets of Jonestown, Pennsylvania in George Roy Hill's classic 1977 hockey comedy SLAP SHOT proudly displays a double feature of Gerard Damiano's 1972 pornos DEEP THROAT (possibly the most famous porn film ever) and his lesser known, but presumably just as filthy MEATBALL.

9. JAWS 19 in BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II

I also featured this one before (“10 Self Referential Or Crossover Moments In The Films Of Lucas And Spielberg” 5/20/08), but couldn't resist including the marquee of JAWS 19 that Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) encountered in the future in Robert Zemeckis' BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (executive produced by Spielberg) here because, you know, hologram shark! Also the fact that the director of the 19th film in the JAWS franchise is credited to Spielberg's son Max Spielberg (born in 1985) is a nice touch.

10. THE WHITE HELL OF PITZ PALU in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

I'm including this one because I used to climb up a ladder and change the marquee a lot at the Varsity Theater in Chapel Hill when I worked there from 2004-2009. So I appreciated that Quentin Tarantino's and Eli Roth's revisionist World War II romp, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, included a scene in which Mélanie Laurent's character Shoshanna is taking down the lengthy line of letters that spell out “German Night Leni Riefernstahl in Pabst's THE WHITE HELL OF PITZ PALU.” Thankfully, I rarely had to put up that many letters.

Post note: I should definitely note the cool blog Marquees in Movies, which houses a collection of screenshots from movies showing movie theater marquees. I, ahem, borrowed that great screenshot of SLAP SHOT from them.

More later...

The Children Of AIRPLANE!

As I talked about in my last post, it looks like the next few months will be a sucky season filled with sequels. With every genre represented, and every cliché exploited, it is going to be a long hot summer.

One genre that I’m really sick of is represented by the arrival on DVD of SCARY MOVIE 3. You know the genre, the AIRPLANE!/Mad Magazine-derived joke-a-minute spoofs that seem to appear every several months and have inane scatalogical humor in place of real satire. So let’s take a look at the chief offenders in this increasingly lame genre in a mini-guide to:

The Children Of AIRPLANE!

For those of you just tuning in, fellow comedy writers/performers Jerry and David Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams created a franchise around a bunch of cheap jokes and lame sight gags. 

It started when the Zuckers and Abrahams (ZAZ for short) took their stage show from the Kentucky Fried Theater in Milwaukee to Hollywood to make the crude but hilarious sketch film  THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE in 1977.

KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE begat AIRPLANE! 
(Dirs. ZAZ, 1980) which begat: 

Police Squad! (ABC-TV Series, 1982) After his straight-man to a perfection performance in AIRPLANE!, Leslie Neilsen starred as Detective Frank Drebin in a ZAZ's dead-on parody of '60s and '70s cop shows. Unfortunately this blueprint would soon be bred dry.

TOP SECRET! (Dirs. ZAZ, 1984) 

File this under "what were they thinking?!!?" I mean the idea was to mix Elvis movie musical fluff with Nazi spy dramas, right? RIGHT?!!? I dunno, but Val Kilmer does his earnest best to fend off prison anal sex jokes, and a misguided BLUE LAGOON take-off.

At least it has that one surreal sequence with Peter Cushing, otherwise what a collection of misfires! 

THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! (Dir. David Zucker, 1988)
THE NAKED GUN 2½: THE SMELL OF FEAR (Dir. David Zucker, 1991)
NAKED GUN 33⅓: THE FINAL INSULT (Dir. Peter Segal, 1994)

Detective Drebin (Nielsen) returns from sitcom cancellation purgatory in three movies that get progressively worse and are sadly most remembered for having O.J. Simpson appear as Drebin's cop partner punching bag in all three.

Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban, Anna Nicole Simpson, and Robert Goulet chime in with pop culture icon plug-aways, and the jokes - hit or miss - just keep coming.

The first NAKED GUN movie is the only one I’d recommended.

HOT SHOTS! (Dir. Jim Abrahams, 1991)/ HOT SHOTS! PART DEUX (Dir. Jim Abrahams, 1993) 

While the Zucker Brothers did other less jokey projects (GHOST, RUTHLESS PEOPLE) Jim Abrahams never left the always go for the funny fold. 

Abraham's Charlie Sheen fronted TOP GUN spoofs took on RAMBO, NO WAY OUT, BASIC INSTINCT among countless other targets to better success than a number of later day Zucker efforts. Surprisingly both flicks hold up today - on a silly stupid level, mind you. Bits like the Saddam Hussein look-alike casting kills, and add a clueless war-time President played by Lloyd Bridges and you'll get sucker punched into the next decade.

HIGH SCHOOL HIGH (Dir. Hart Bochner, 1996) Hip hop high school dramas like DANGEROUS MINDS get a beat down in a movie that actually lets Jon Lovitz take the lead, a romantic heroic lead at that. Problem is the plethora of cheap throwaway gags, but in 1996 who was even paying attention? Only David Zucker of ZAZ was involved here as a co-writer. 

Some of the ZAZ team appear as writers or producers of the following offspring of AIRPLANE! but some titles are unrelated hangers-on or copycats. Most notably Ken Finklemen's AIRPLANE 2: THE SEQUEL (note the lack of an exclamation point) which ZAZ not only had nothing to do with - they made a pact never to see it. Despite some genuine laughs it was a blatant cash-in much like the majority of movies here:

YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE
(Dir. Garry Marshall, 1982) 
One of the first to use lame slogans like "in the tradition of..." or ad copy along the lines of "does to soap operas what AIRPLANE! did to disaster movies." Wishful thinking. This Gary Marshall directed hospital farce didn't even come close despite the talents of a post Laverne & Shirley/pre-Spinal Tap Michael McKean and Sean Young (she was in BLADE RUNNER the same summer this came out).

JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY (Dir. Amy Heckerling, 1984) This time out it's '30s-'40s gangster movies getting the joke-a-minute treatment. Try joke every 30 minutes more like.

I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA (Dir. Keenen Ivory Wayans, 1988) The Wayans Brothers pre-In Loving Color take on Blaxploitation movies from the '70s using the ZAZ mold.

FATAL INSTINCT (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1993) The less said the better.

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S LOADED WEAPON I (Dir. Gene Quintano, 1993) Ditto.

No, I'm just kidding. This send-up of the LETHAL WEAPON movies, starring Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson had its fair share of funny gags, one of which included Bruce Willis in a cameo as his DIE HARD character, John McClane.

JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA! 

(Dir. Jim Abrahams, 1998) 

Abrahams should've known better. At least the exclamation point was back.

The genre was dead as door-nail by the late '90s, but crap kept coming:

BASKETBALL (Dir. David Zucker, 1999) This ill-fated collaboration with Trey Parker & Matt Stone of South Park fame is barely a blink on the comedy radar. Remember it? I didn't think so.

SPY HARD (Dir. Rick Friedberg, 1996) & WRONGFULLY ACCUSED (Dir. Pat Proft, 1998) Leslie Nielsen cashes in on his ZAZ-created non-persona. Why not? 

Most recently, David Zucker took over the SCARY MOVIE franchise (originally helmed by Keenen Ivory Wayans) for SCARY MOVIE 3, now out on DVD. Wayan's movies stole heavily from the ZAZ style in their slapdash spoofery of the SCREAM movies and the modern horror genre so the takeover makes sense. If only it made laughs.

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