weekend at bernies: pure genius

just hired it out for a little trip down memory lane and to see if a certain scene was as i remember.

its the scene where "Tawny" comes running in to bernie' s opulent beach house on the "top o' the dune" just after andrew mcarthy and jonathon silverman have arrived. you know, just after jonathon silverman looks up at the wall and says: " good god thats a lichtenstein!" and andrew mcarthy exclaims: "where? where?" and silverman says: " no, not the piano, the painting!" silverman goes on to say: "this is what you could have with hard work" and mcarthy, ever the working class hero, replies, while opening a bottle of bubbly and putting his feet up, "my old man worked hard and all they ever gave him was more work."

anyway, bernie has already been given a lethal injection by the mob hitman guy and is, rather pleasently, dead.

in my memory the scene went like this:

"Tawny" pronounced Tonny (in real life this "actress" is a former playboy miss april and a songwriter, no less) comes bouncing into the beach house, like pamela anderson, beclade in nairy a stich save her hi slung g-sting bikini, massive fake tits, apple pie hi tops and thick white socks.

i remember her saying this: " hi Im tonny" and andrew mcarthy replying: "hello Tonny, Im horny"

of course the reality was a little different

Tawny comes in casually. Says: "hi is bernie around? if you see him, just tell him that tawny borrowed the keys to his boat"


........


you know when you think something might make a good blog entry and the story will be interesting and you do a draft and then leave it for a bit and then come back to it and realise that you dont give a shit anymore?


well thats whats happened here.


i guess the point that im trying to make is that rarely are the great moments from your childhood , your formative years, or whatever, as you remember when you revisit them. and isnt it funny when you revisit your primary school or even your high school as an adult how little everything is.

the things you remember and relish you embellish and form into something that they simply are not. they grow and morph, they grow wings, or tenticles or horns and bear feet.

the tiniest things become huge and magical. the kind of funny things become the funniest things ever and then you go back and they' re not funny at all. contexts change. experience colours judgement. paradigms shift. people die. accidents happen.


i still think weekend at bernies is pure genius. its irreverence harks back to french farce or commedia dell arte. its stock characters and slapstick situations make it almost classic and timeless. moreover, its a snap shot of a time, when decadence and greed ruled the earth and guilt free hedonism were the order of the day and, whats more, its a scathing critique of those mores. It owes most of its success to a theatrical tradition rather than a cinematic one, or if it does owe anything to cinema then its the cinema of buster keaton and charles chaplin.

"troy" is in the dvd player right now.


its better than "troy".