My Cousin Vinny

1992’s My Cousin Vinny is widely regarded as a cinematic treasure and one of the top ten films of all time – well maybe not but it’s pretty funny.

On the surface this film is a “fish out of water” comedy where two kids from Brooklyn get swept up as murder suspects while driving thru the deep-south. After stopping at the ‘ol “Sack of Suds” convenience store, the clerk is killed and the kids were the last ones witnessed at the scene of the crime - case closed, right? So bring in Cousin Vinny, a car mechanic turned night student turned new lawyer “of almost 6 weeks” and the story begins.

My Cousin Vinny was actually intended and cleverly written to raise questions on capital punishment and class system in the American judicial system. As you might recall, there really is no antagonist character – not the prosecutor, sheriff, judge or eye witnesses – they’re all basically good people trying to do the right thing.

The film’s antagonist is the judicial system itself where well-intentioned people make mistakes. And in this case, those mistakes might send two innocent kids, Billy and Stan, to the electric chair. That is unless newly minted lawyer, Vinny Gambini, Esq., can pull a rabbit out of his hat. And he does with the help of Ms. “Oh ya, you blend” Mona Lisa Vito.

OTHER KOOKY FACTS…

If we know one thing and one thing only it’s that everyone in Hollywood is a genius – nobody but nobody wanted to direct this great low-budget film. Finally, Jonathan Lynn, an English lawyer/director signed on.
Fred Gwynne was not exactly the top choice to play Judge Haller – too typecast as Herman Munster. But Director Lynn, from England, didn’t know The Munsters and cast him for this classic role.
“Did You Say Yutes?” This classic line resulted from a pre-production meeting between Joe Pesci (New Yorker) and Director Jonathan Lynn (Brit). Pesci kept calling the kids “yutes” and Lynn had no clue what the hell Pesci was saying…”These two yutes” & “Did you say yutes” were written into the script from that meeting.
All-Time Greatest Opening Statement: “Everything that guy just said is BS!”

Fight Club

1999’s Fight Club, combines black comedy, satire, drama, action and psychological thriller genres in a fuel-injected red-sticky-snowball of sick, toxic joy. The Venice screening was not quite prepared for Fight Club and the film got panned initially.

DID YOU KNOW…

Author, Chuck Palahniuk, wrote the novel, Fight Club, after getting into a vicious fist fight on a camping trip. He came home and went to work with his face bashed in…and nobody asked any questions, ignored the damage and moved on. The premise of what goes on in peoples’ private lives spurred the book’s idea.

Where did the name “Tyler Durden” come from? Tyler was from an old Walt Disney story – Tyler Goes to the Circus. Durden was the name of Palahniuk’s former co-worker fired for sexual harassment.

Did you catch the subliminal glimpses of Tyler Durden in Act I? We see a one-frame shot of Tyler Durden, Jack’s alter-ego, first in the office scene by the copier, next at the doctor’s office and then again at the gymnasium support group meeting. We finally meet Tyler at the airport on the moving sidewalk.

Also, when Jack is at the hotel watching TV – he watches the hotel’s welcome channel. The screen shows hotel workers. You’ll quickly see Tyler Durden in the front row, far right.

Where did Jack’s support group made-up names (Travis, Rupert, and Cornelius) come from? They used a combination of Robert De Niro characters from the 1970’s and Planet of the Apes – go figure.