I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2006, Sylvain White)

 

* 

Someone learns about something bad that a different someone did 12 months prior.  

Starring  Brooke Nevin, David Paetkau, Torrey DeVitto, Ben Easter, Don Shanks

Written by  Michael D Weiss

Produced by  Neal H Moritz, Erik Feig, Nancy Kirhoffer, Amanda Lewis

Duration  92 minutes   

 

Years ago, I worked with someone who confessed to always reading the last page of a book first.

"Why?" I asked her, incredulous. 

"Because I can't stand the suspense, I have to know how it ends," came the reply.

This struck me as plainly ridiculous. Not that there would have been any point me arguing with her – in the words of Bobby Brown, that was her prerogative. But certainly it's not something I would ever do myself.

(Although I did once watch a fan edit of PULP FICTION where the scenes had been reordered chronologically. It wasn't as good.)

Here's the thing. One of the least-heralded but most-important aspects of writing is structure. I'm not necessarily talking about nonlinear narratives, or MEMENTO-style trickery. More like, in what order does the audience learn things? Are certain events shown or not shown? How long do we linger over particular incidents? Stuff like that.

The writer (or, since this is now film we're talking about, writers plural) must make these decisions. They make them to serve the story and what they want the impact on the viewer to be. They've chosen to arranged things this way, out of the millions of other possible alternatives; that's their prerogative, their right as an artist.

So, messing around with the structure is kind of disrespectful, in my opinion. I wonder if my ex-colleague also used to skip her DVDs ahead to the final chapter? Shudder.

When it comes to a series of films, that's a structure too. You're supposed to go original first, then any sequels. Sure, some people have come up with other orders to watch things, like with prequels/sequels rosta of the STAR WARS universe, but that's mostly kept to the realms of hardcore geekdom.

I have done it, but not usually by choice. ALIENS and TERMINATOR 2 were both considered to be less intense than their predecessors, so as a youngster I was allowed to watch them years before the originals. And the first HALLOWEEN I saw, round a friend's house, was the controversially Michael Myers-free third one, SEASON OF THE WITCH. And I didn't even realise at the time that it wasn't the first film, so for years I was one of the rare people who didn't associate the franchise with its famous bogeyman.

So, on viewing I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, I tried to imagine I'd watched this film first. If so, would I have gone back and sought out the earlier ones? And to what extent does this reference those films? The answers are 'no' and 'slavishly', respectively. Or, as you'll see if you read on, I should probably say disrespectfully.

We begin in a carnival, like the start of another slasher threequal, FINAL DESTINATION 3, following the predicable gaggle of teenagers. Soon it's all:

"Have you guys heard of the Fisherman? Every fourth of July he gets out his hat and slicker, he sharpens up his hook and runs wild. But only on teenagers, ones with dirty little secrets."

"So he's like Santa in reverse? He goes after the naughty kids?"

In the slasher tradition of THE BURNING, PROM NIGHT, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, et al, it's a prank gone wrong that prompts the later killings. Our bland teens want to exploit the Fisherman legend by faking one of their friends receiving death by hook. But it goes wrong and he dies for real, and they make a pact to keep it to themselves.

We jump to next summer and our thinly sketched youths are feeling guilty about their dead buddy, especially lead/final girl Amber. Then everyone starts getting those ominous 'I know' messages, and before you can say 'mind your own business, mate' we get: a succession of kills and near-kills; Fisherman sightings and non-sightings; guilt and defiance. Rinse, repeat.

The cast is populated with unknowns, kids who were at the same auditions as those who made it onto shows like One Tree Hill and The OC, but who had to then watch on jealously as their peers achieved stardom while they instead popped up in things like I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.

Clearly, the third entry in this almost-franchise isn't a direct follow up. Parts one and two had the connecting tissue of Jennifer Love Hewitt and were released fewer than 12 months apart. No JLC here, and nearly a decade has passed this time.

But I also can't help wondering: when is a sequel really a remake? Because when you get something like this, where it seems like they just dug out the original script and gave it a rewrite, how can you say it is actually a continuation? Yes, the characters are different and so is the location and some details. But that often happens in remakes, too.  They did add a supernatural element this time – but so what? The fact is, we still have the same basic structure and plot beats.

It's like they took a house, stripped off all the wallpaper and threw out the furniture and then redecorated. Except, they used lazy college kids to do the work and went to the local skip for supplies. And in terms of films that blur the line between sequel and remake, this does the opposite of going from EL MARIACHI to DESPERADO or when they redid THE EVIL DEAD as EVIL DEAD II: lower budget, fewer stars, less imagination and flair and filmmaking confidence.

There is a lot of what used to be called MTV-editing, now sometimes labelled 'Avid farts', an expression credited to online critic Outlaw Vern, Avid being the industry-standard editing software. It's not just cutting often to leave micro-short shot lengths, it's also adding white flashes and 'woosh' sounds to manufacture some excitement. Usually without success.

OK, to be fair, there was one sequence in I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER that impressed me. Not really the execution, but the concept. One of our teens, the blond not-Ryan Philippe one, is swimming alone at night. The Fisherman turns up, as is standard, and immediately hooks our boy’s ankle while he's trying to splash away. So, it’s like the Fisherman is actually going fishing!

I'd also like to think that the character name 'Amber Williams' is a tribute to the EVIL DEAD series’ Ash Williams, played by Bruce Campbell.

The only thing I can genuinely recommend I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER for is a drinking game. Do a shot any time someone denies the existence of the killer or you hear the words 'I know'; whenever the edit lets out an Avid fart, down your drink. After about 10 minutes, you won't know who knows what about anything anymore.

One star out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  God, please, please.

What would a movie called I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID FIRST SUMMER be about?  I’m sorry, I can’t. I just … I just can’t get my head around it. Sorry.

 

Previously:  THE LAST MOVIE

Next time:  LAST THREE DAYS

 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST MOVIE (1971, Dennis Hopper)

 * * 

An American movie crew finishes shooting in Peru and then this one guy hangs around for a bit instead of going home.

Starring  Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Michelle Phillips, Dean Stockwell

Written by  Stewart Stern

Produced by  Paul Lewis

Duration  108 minutes

 

Bruce Willis, HUDSON HAWK. Eddie Murphy, HARLEM NIGHTS. John Travolta, BATTLEFIELD EARTH. Mariah Carey, GLITTER. Steven Seagal, ON DEADLY GROUND. Michael Flatley, BLACKBIRD. Sylvester Stallone, PARADISE ALLEY. Vanilla Ice, COOL AS ICE.

You know what's fun? Listing movies that were embarrassing vanity projects. Especially BLACKBIRD. Wow.

Yes, this is when stars get so big that they are given carte blanche to make their dream project. Of course, they headline it. Often they (supposedly) contribute to the writing. Certainly they have some kind of producer's credit, and many make it their directorial debut: for the likes of Murphy, Seagel and – yes – ‘the Lord of the Dance’, it's been their sole turn behind the camera.

Research suggests that the ultimate vanity project is Jackie Chan's CHINESE ZODIAC (2012). According to Guinness World Records, it has the most credits for a single person in one motion picture, with a staggering 15. Chan is credited as writer, director, actor, producer, executive producer (?), cinematographer, art director, unit production manager, catering coordinator (??), stuntman, stunt coordinator, gaffer, composer, propmaster, and theme tune vocalist.

(Chan's movie – and truly it is his – also holds the title of Most Stunts by a Living Actor. Presumably the record for dead actors is a lot less hotly contested?)

All the vanity projects I mentioned above were critical and/or commercial disasters. But that's not always the case. Think Robert Duvall's THE APOSTLE, or Kevin Costner's DANCES WITH WOLVES. And Prince with PURPLE RAIN, although he did push his luck by subsequently directing UNDER THE CHERRY MOON. Um, wait a sec ... Costner went on to make THE POSTMAN. And Duvall later released something called ASSASSINATION TANGO, for a meagre box office return of $1.013 million. Maybe the trick is to only cut the ego loose once and then rein it back in again.

Anyway, that brings us to THE LAST MOVIE. In 1969, Dennis Hopper, alongside fellow counterculture icon Peter Fonda, unleashed EASY RIDER upon the world. It was an instant classic, defining a (dying) cultural movement with insight and cynicism, and raking in a whopping £60 million from a budget of £400,000.

EASY RIDER was Hopper's directorial debut, and with that level of success (it made 150 times what it cost) he had Universal Pictures clambering to throw £1 million and full creative control at him to make whatever he wanted next.

What he wanted to make was THE LAST MOVIE.

Dennis Hopper directed seven films in his lifetime. That's enough to be considered a body of work. Of course, he was an actor first and foremost, with over 200 credits. His directorial debut came at the relatively young age of 33, after only a handful of movie role and certainly before any as the lead. The final film he directed was 25 years after the first.

And yet despite this, I don't think many people think 'Dennis Hopper: The Director'. It's kind of hard to imagine him actually doing it, to be honest. You can accept EASY RIDER as a wild and loose one-off that didn't need, didn't want a steady hand. But it's hard to picture the spangled photographer in APOCALYPSE NOW or unhinged Frank Booth from BLUE VELVET as the calm, accountable figure in charge of running a movie set.

So, you'd assume THE LAST MOVIE is going to be bad, or at least a mess. Potentially as calamitous a follow-up as Duvall, Costner and Prince managed after their own lauded debuts. And for years, its iffy reputation suggested exactly that.

But wait. There's a twist. THE LAST MOVIE is one of those films that's had a critical reappraisal. No one rated CITIZEN KANE, BLADE RUNNER or THE SHINING on first release. THE THING was a flop. HEAVEN'S GATE was a disaster. Each is now held in high regard. (All correct except for HEAVEN'S GATE, which is still boring. And just for the record, I like THE POSTMAN.)

As ever, I had to watch this thing myself and make up my own mind. And it's fair to say that THE LAST MOVIE didn't convince me.

The signs weren't promising from the get-go. It starts by dropping us into an interminably long parade on the streets of a Peruvian town. Dennis is there, in the lead role (natch), and the poor sod looks as confused as we are as he wonders around among all the chanting and, um, parading. I'd say that the film has lost the plot, but that would be inaccurate, since there's not yet been any sign of one.

Somehow, it feels a bit like a Sam Peckinpah movie in this early stretch, the beginning of THE WILD BUNCH especially. Come to think of it, Hopper's image was pretty similar to Peckinpah's: the hard-drinking, drug-taking, live-wire rebel. He also looks as dishevelled and out-of-sorts as vintage Big Sam, and shares his affinity for shooting south of the border.

And in fact, now that I'm warming up to this kind-of hypothesis: since here our Dennis is playing a filmmaker, maybe THE LAST MOVIE is really some kind of indirect Peckinpah biopic? There's even some of the punctuating moments of slo-mo that the great man loved. And here's something else Peckinpah was known for: westerns. Which THE LAST MOVIE basically is. The dusty, wood-building town. Those shoot-outs. Horses. Hats and ponchos.

But, um, it’s also not. After all the western imagery, we pivot to funkadelic 1970's disco dancing. Someone gets their ear pierced. There's a general free-love, hippy vibe, with much singing along to acoustic guitar – sometimes as strummed by Kris Kristofferson.

Then I realised: the western bits are just the movie that Dennis's character is shooting! Oh right, OK, got it now. The town they're filming in looks like it's from a bygone era, but maybe that's just because it's Peru? Wait, wasn't Peru where Butch Cassidy and Sundance were trying to get to? Is that significant? Probably not.

But this isn't some kind of film-within-film thing. Because after 25 minutes of (pretty interminable) screen time, the movie being filmed wraps and the crew buggers off. Except for Dennis's character, who seems to have fallen in love with a local girl. They go for long walks in mountains straight out of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, including stopping off to romp under a waterfall where we are, um, treated to the sight of our director/star's bony white bottom. Thanks for that, Dennis old chum.

So he gives up his career as a ... whatever job he had on the film crew, to hang around with her, decked out in his ever-present hat/poncho combo. Mostly this involves the couple wandering around town or more mountains while holding hands. It goes on like this for quite a while. 

And as for the last hour of the film, I'm going to let Wikipedia do the work for me:

 

He [Hopper] thinks he has found paradise, but is soon called in to help in a bizarre incident: the Peruvian natives are 'filming' their own movie with 'cameras' made of sticks, and acting out real western movie violence, as they do not understand movie fakery.

It's kind of an interesting idea, I guess? If a bit patronising. But it doesn't really go anywhere. Instead, some vacationing Americans come to town and it becomes a hangout movie. Hopper and his lady start to argue, trouble arriving in paradise. He takes solace in helping the locals make their fake movie. I guess he's retreating into fiction to avoid facing a less-than-perfect reality? Is that the message?

That would probably be giving THE LAST MOVIE too much credit. Because suffice it to say, this is 100% another disastrous vanity project. And in terms of sophomore efforts, sadly director Hopper's is no PULP FICTION. Or THE TERMINATOR. Or SEVEN. Or, I don't know, even UPSTREAM COLOR or THE TOWN or something like that.

Two stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’? Clearly not, either for Hopper or wider culture.

What would a movie called THE FIRST MOVIE be about?  It was that one with the rocket hitting the moon, right? Or the train coming towards the screen and making the audience lose their shit?

Previously:  LAST DANCE 

Next time:  I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com