by Chris Neumer
Director Ivan Reitman's 1981 film Stripes is one of the true classics of modern comedy along with Caddyshack, Animal House and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It is also one of the seminal films of my youth. Stripes was the first movie that I had a friend tape off of cable for me. Such were the hardships of growing up in a household that only had free TV.*
* It should be noted that my parents still don't have cable. Or a TV that has a picture tube that still functions as it should, but this is neither here nor there.
I hadn't seen Stripes in probably fifteen years though I quote it almost weekly. "I just shouldn't have drunk so much cough syrup," and "You're ready for the Special Olympics," are two frequently used favorites. I saw a mention of the film while reading a recent interview with its star, Bill Murray, and decided to revisit the movie. I pulled the Extended Edition DVD off of my shelf and sat down to watch.
Three things became crystal clear during this viewing: 1) A lot of people were very high on drugs at the time Stripes was made, 2) it's a good thing that this movie is already deemed a classic, because if it didn't have this historical status going for it, new audiences could tear it apart with a rancor and fervor normally associated with right wing groups denouncing Barack Obama for being a terrorist. Almost every major plot strand in the movie is a head-scratcher. It's almost as if everyone writing the movie was stoned out of their minds… and 3) Studio executives sometimes are beneficial to projects, as evidenced by the collection of scenes that were deleted from the theatrical release and restored here intact. Yow, are most of them bad.
The plot of Stripes is simple: Bill Murray and Harold Ramis join the Army, make wisecracks and end up taking on the Communists and kicking ass. Granted, they wouldn't have had to take on the Communists if they'd been following orders in the first place, but trying to find logic and common sense in eighties comedies is an effort in futility. And we begin:
:16 The font of Stripes' opening credits is Cooper Black. If there is a more dated, awkwardly retro, late-seventies font than Cooper Black, I don't know what it is.
:52 Copywriters for the Army's ad campaigns have gotten considerably better since 1981. The commercial for the Army in the opening scene of Stripes includes the following bit of voiceover: "The Army is many things… it's softball and low bridges."
3:20 Harold Ramis co-wrote and stars in Stripes. His hair in the opening moments of Stripes is simply beyond comprehension. It's a jewfro, but it's an early eighties jewfro. You know those cartoons where a character would accidentally stick his finger into an electrical socket and his hair would frizz out several feet in every direction? Ramis' hair does that all the time… on purpose.
It almost looks like Ramis is a cheesehead, except with hair.
5:35 While I understand the scene with John Winger (Bill Murray) taking the rich, old lady to the airport in his cab is amusing and necessary to move the plot of the film along—it explains how he loses his job—the scene does not work on any level of reality with which I am familiar. In the middle of a fare to the airport, Winger starts pretending he's drunk and high on cough syrup. He then turns around in his seat and tries to take pictures of the woman in the back seat. He swerves in and out of traffic before ultimately stopping his cab (across both lanes of traffic) on the Queensboro bridge. He then proceeds to get out of the cab and throws his car keys into the river below.
In retrospect, I should probably go back and underline the word 'amusing'.
9:33 Elmer Bernstein's score to Stripes is surprisingly good. It's simple, it's clean, it's in a minor key and it's decidedly catchy. The score adds a level or two of class to this production that it genuinely does not deserve.
9:45 Winger's soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Anita (Roberta Leighton) makes her first appearance, shirtless. It is a scene that was burned into my eighth grade brain when I first saw the movie in 1987. At that time, I couldn't wait to grow up so that I could have a crappy job, sleep until noon and still live in a really nice apartment with a good looking girl who walked around naked. Life has, naturally, turned out to be quite a disappointment for me.
9:50 Trying to figure out the details of the back story of Winger's relationship with Anita is quite entertaining because of the many incongruous elements there are at play. It doesn't seem as if anyone on the production cared that the Winger/Anita coupling makes absolutely no sense.
This is what we know:
• There are large, black and white photos of Anita all throughout the apartment that Winger (and possibly Anita) lives in.
• Anita is upset with him for not showing initiative, even though it's noon on a weekday and she's padding around the house in her underwear. • Despite his incredibly low paying job, Winger has decorated his apartment with bronze busts, bongos, a basketball hoop, a fake fireplace and more Pottery Barn-esque knick-knacks that you can imagine. There are also a lot of plants around.
My best guess as to what's going on? Anita is a somewhat famous model who is inexplicably slumming and dating Winger, possibly to get back at her father. The apartment is his; otherwise his plaintive and pathetic argument that she not leave him because "all the plants are going to die" would be moot. If it's her apartment, he doesn't have to worry about her watering the plants later. It also explains why, when Anita does leave, she only takes a few things in a duffel bag; she doesn't live there. It does not however begin to shine any light on why Murray would have dozens of plants around his apartment that he can't/doesn't take care of.
For a while, I suspected that the apartment was Anita's. If true, this fact would explain why there were so many plants and trendy decorations scattered around that a cab driver couldn't afford and why Winger later tells Russell Ziskey (Ramis) that he lost his apartment. But this can't be true; when you break up with a person in your own apartment, you're not the one who then leaves.
There's also the possibility that, in an effort to save money, Stripes shot this scene in Leighton's real life apartment and decided to just keep it the way she had decorated it. Frankly, this would make more sense than either of the other proposals.
I have officially spent too much time thinking about this.
11:00 "You can't go, all the plants are going to die!"
12:17 Winger announces that he's lost his apartment. Even though I'm viewing the extended edition of the film, there still seems to be a scene missing.
12:47 The Army copy writers strike again. "The Army can make you fell a lot of ways: tired, challenged and drained." Where do I sign up?
15:19 In this bonus scene, Winger is humorously arguing that the Army will turn him into a black belt. Murray makes this funny. Why this scene was cut out is anybody's guess.
16:51 Continuing to preach the benefits of joining the Army, Winger explains that Ziskey could be a general in a year.
THE QUESTION: I saw Hollywoodland recently and realized that the title of the movie was a reference to the original Hollywood sign. What happened to the last four letters of that famous sign? - Justin H. via e-mail
THE ANSWER: The Hollywood sign is the most famous landmark in Los Angeles. It’s one of the few groupings of letters anywhere in the world that actually has its own web-site, www.hollywoodsign.org… not that you can find any noteworthy information on said site, but I digress. The Hollywoodland sign was originally constructed in 1923 as an advertisement for the Hollywoodland housing development. No one really figured that the sign would be around for that long and it was not built to last.
The initial sign had thousands of light bulbs on it so that it could be seen at night. In 1939, the real estate developers who had erected the sign sixteen years earlier decided to stop maintenance on it. Roughly two years later, a drunk driver ran into the ‘H’ and it came crashing down. By 1949, the once glamorous sign was run down and ready to be sold as scrap. This was when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce (HCC) decided to step up to the plate and take control of the sign. The HCC agreed to take financial responsibility of the sign and repair it, but under one condition. In order to keep their costs more manageable, the Chamber wanted to remove the last four letters of the sign. And like that, the L-A-N-D of the Hollywoodland was gone.
Since very few people are aware of this bit of Hollywood trivia, filmmakers have occasionally offered their own interpretation of the removal of the L-A-N-D. Steven Spielberg had John Belushi’s Wild Bill Kelso crash into the last four letters in 1941 and Joe Johnston had flaming debris from a blimp explosion knock them down in his movie, The Rocketeer.
Given the timeline of the Hollywoodland sign—namely that it no longer existed in 1949—it’s strange to consider that Universal titled their film about events taking place in 1959, Hollywoodland.
