Yesterday afternoon, restless and unpredictable after a worrisome nap, and after what seemingly was an inconceivable amount of time, I finally clicked on Eddie Murphy’s way-gone, way-lame 1980s, ‘Coming to America,’ via Netflix.
Maybe near two decades since I’d seen it — the kids growing up watched a lot of movies, and I sat amongst them — but I couldn’t really remember much of it. Only real memory is indirect — the plot/outline-scandal involving the humorist Art Buchwald.
Anyway, a pretty-blah movie with only one outstanding, real-neat sequence: When this guy at left tries to rob McDowell’s Hamburgers armed with a shotgun and the word, “fuck.”
(Illustration found here).
Paying maybe half, maybe less, attention by this time in the movie — a scene where Murphy’s prince tries make funny with his US princess-to-be (Shari Headley) at the hamburger joint — when all of sudden a robber enters the place and orders the cashier (played by a most-youthful Louie Anderson) to hand over all the money.
Stunned in the recognition. Quickly I blurted out to my empty apartment, words to the effect: “That’s motherfuckin’ Samuel L. Jackson!”
Sure enough. Jackson’s given cast credit name is “Hold-up Man.”
This guy let’s it fly (via here):
Hold-up man: Everybody shut up and do what I say.
Get the money out! Stay cool, nobody gets hurt.
Take the money out! All of it.
Don’t stall me, fat boy. Let’s go. Come on!
You’re wasting my time. Come on!
Anybody move, I’ll blow your fucking head off.
What are you looking at, buddy? Come on! Stop stalling. Come on.
Don’t stall me. All of it! – Come on! –
Of course, here the hero steps in:
Prince: Excuse me for a moment. It would be wise for you to put the weapon down.
Hold-up man: Who is this asshole?
Prince: Please refrain from using any more obscenities in front of these people. I’ve warned you. I’ll be forced to thrash you.
Hold-up man: Fuck you!
The prince easily produces a quick-cut, Jackie-Chan move with a mop handle to subdue the hold-up man — end of movie.
Or it should have been. Wasted Murphy’s crazy-talents, along with antics of co-star Arsenio Hall. What happened to Murphy since — a load of real-shitty movies.
Yet that tiny segment uploaded Samuel L. Jackson — probably the first time he’d a gun in his hand and the word, “fuck,” on his lips, origins maybe in a kind of motif he’d present in a not-so-distant future. I next remember him as food for raptors in ‘Jurassic Park‘ (1993), and about that same time, a glimpse into a possible pattern with the Quentin Tarantino-penned, ‘True Romance.”
But it was Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction‘ the following year that presented Jackson with one motherfucker of a thematic element. Since then, Jackson’s line is “…stop those motherfuckin’…(fill in with whatever, from snakes to high-charges on a credit card),” and produced a most-excellent career. And he’s a most-excellent actor, too, one of my favorites, one of those guys able at least make-watchable a shitty movie.
And introduced the word ‘fuck,’ in a more broad-based, more part of the norm kind of way — although it’s still enough of a so-called ‘bad word’ when it’s blurted out in public.
Just last week, actress Sandra Bullock made headlines upon dropping the “F-Bomb” on TV. She’d just won Best Actress for action in ‘Gravity’ at the Critics’ Choice Awards.
Via Hollywood Life:
“I would first like to thank Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude von Damme, for teaching me everything I know,” she started her speech at Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport.
“It’s not easy doing what we do, people.”
However, after that she got cut off by a strange voiceover sound that said loudly “Critics’ Choice Awards.”
Sandy turned around, looking shocked and totally said, “what the f-ck!”
It was hysterical and although the show is live, luckily there is a delay so it was edited out.
“I’m an action hero,” she continued laughing.
“You do not do that do an action hero!”
It was so awesome how she made the joke and while dropping the f-bomb isn’t exactly the classiest way to resolve a malfunction, it totally shows how she’s a real woman — we all blurt things out when we’re caught off guard!
Oh,oh,oh…might give us the vapors.
None of the numerous news stories I read on the incident carried the full word, ‘fuck,’ even online, and instead mimicked good manners and society with ‘f-ck,’ like the one directly above, absent one letter, or, ‘f**k’ removing two — and are we as readers not “real woman/man” because we can’t handle the whole word spelled out in its entirety?
WTF!