The producer and star of the TIFF film “Red Alert,” Sloan Avrich, tells Anne Brodie of Monsters and Critics about the film and working with Richard, who talks about Hollywood’s flame haired stars in the short film. Read the article HERE!
See the movie here:
Red Alert at TIFF:
Public Screening 1: Sunday, September 7, 3:45PM @ Isabel Bader Theatre (Isabel Bader)
Public Screening 2: Wednesday, September 10, 2:15PM @ The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
Press & Industry 2: Thursday, September 11, 1:00PM @ Scotiabank 11
The Brady Bunch is pop culture’s most famous blended family.
The story of a “lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls,” and a “man named Brady with three boys of his own,” who “would somehow form a family,” ran for fives seasons on TV, endlessly in reruns and even spawned two movies.
“The Brady Bunch is a live-action modern fairy tale of family,” says Christopher Knight who played Peter Brady on the original show. “In this context it’s less odd that it’s lasted for over 30 years; and why it may last in some respects as long as Mother Goose!”
He may be optimistic on the eternal appeal of his show, but he’s not wrong to imply that the idea of blended families could remain the subject of stories and movies for years to come.
This weekend “cinematic soulmates” Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler reunite for a third time, following The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, for Blended, a romantic comedy about the mixing and mingling of two families.
Hollywood has been blending screen families for years. The grandfather of these blended family stories has to be Yours, Mine and Ours.
Based on the memoir Who Gets the Drumstick? by Helen Beardsley, this 1968 Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda film sees a widow with eight kids and a widower with 10 children (including Mike, played by Tim Matheson 10 years before he found fame in Animal House) become one big (almost) happy family.
The film was produced by Ball, who became so friendly with the Beardsleys she treated all 20 of them to a trip to Disneyland. ABC and Paramount Studios were so impressed with the film they gave the green light to the similarly themed The Brady Bunch show.
The same year, movie legend Doris Day made her final big-screen appearance in With Six You Get Egg Roll, a blended family story about a widow with three sons who marries a man with a daughter. The kids don’t see eye to eye, but soon figure out a way to live together. Released so soon after Yours, Mine and Ours, Eggroll got good reviews, but, as Roger Ebert wrote at the time, “would probably seem funnier if it didn’t suffer by comparison.”
Finally, Step Brothers is an R-rated look at extreme Peter Pan Syndrome. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play 40ish men who become bunkmates and reluctant stepbrothers when their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) marry. The familiar reprimand “Grow up and act your age” fell on deaf ears with these guys. It’s like watching two overweight, foul-mouthed 10-year-olds with thinning hair going at each other, but it is good vulgar fun.
Jerry Lewis didn’t find Lucille Ball amusing. Not only that but the man who, ironically as it turns out, made a career of spastically yelling, “Laaa-dy!” at every opportunity says he doesn’t “like any female comedians.” Doesn’t find them funny
Jerry meet Tina Fey.
Jerry meet Kristen Wiig.
Jerry meet… I could go on but I think the point I’m making is that old Jerry is about as right about this as he is funny. Which is to say, not so much.
This summer has seen the release of two movies headlined by women and aimed at the funny bone. Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher, which premiers this weekend, both take the tried and true recipe of mixing vulgar jokes with sentimentality and heart—the boys have been doing it for years in movies like The Forty Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up—and folds in female characters that are used as more than set decoration.
Women have yukked it up on the small screen since the beginning of the medium. The aforementioned Ball gave way to Marlo Thomas, Betty White, Cloris Leachman, Sarah Silverman and others, but on the big screen women have often been simply regarded as an attractive foil for the male star or given what Modern Family’s Julie Bowen calls the “finger shaking role.”
Women frequently headline big screen romantic comedies, but there is a reason why the word romantic comes first in the genre description. Sure Kathryn Hiegl or Kristen Bell will be allowed to do a pratfall or two in movies like 27 Dresses or When in Rome, but when it comes right down to it are there to deliver the romance and leave the chuckle-grabbing to their costars.
It’s rare to see comedic women front and center in the movies, but Bridesmaids had six of them and is already a hit and depending on the audience appetite for Cameron Diaz’s return to her There’s Something About Mary-esque comedic roots, Bad Teacher might usher in an era of funny female flicks that rely on chuckles and not C cups.
In an article called Why Women Aren’t Funny Christopher Hitchens wrote “women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing.” I would suggest Mr. Hitchens have a look at the food poisoning scene in Bridesmaids and rethink his position.
I would also suggest everyone take a gander at Lake Bell, an actress who shares initials and comedic style with Lucille Ball, and who never fails to make me laugh, which is more than I can say about Jerry Lewis.
The producer and star of the TIFF film “Red Alert,” Sloan Avrich, tells Anne Brodie of Monsters and Critics about the film and working with Richard, who talks about Hollywood’s flame haired stars in the short film. Read the article HERE!
