The movie
Show notes
Send us Fan Mail Season 17’s Hack 4x4 continues as predictable as the weather in the City of Angels (no relationship to the previously covered film, and host Ken’s favorite motion picture remake, see S4,E4 for more on the Nicholas Cage movie with this sobriquet for a title) with this week’s third entry in the Mick Jackon canon: L.A. STORY (1991). Written by and starring Steve Martin at the arguable pinnacle of his comedic film stardom (Father of the Bride would be released the same year), L.A. Story is the flick that immigrated Jackson to the States after Martin had seen Jackson’s acclaimed British dramatic television series subsequent to the success of Threads (S17,E1). Jackson, who had no background in nor ever directed a comedy, initially declined the offer, believing the script too good and having too little knowledge of Los Angeles (and likely the SoCal, California, U.S., & North America regions). Yet Martin and his producer believed Jackson’s latter objection an asset; he’d have an outsider’s perspective on what’s been described as a satirical love-letter to the eccentricities of L.A. The comedy follows Martin in the role of a wacky bachelor weatherman in a zany Los Angeles full of neon and plastic surgery, and this was the extent of the movie that Thomas (who picked the director and his four for the 4x4) knew prior to this, his first watch. Between its mixture of Zucker Brothers’ and Mel Brooks’s absurdist and sight gag humor with the occasional Groucho Marx-level clever wordplay is a love story between Martin’s weatherman (((“meteorologist”))) and Victoria Tennant’s first-time visiting L.A. British reporter (((“journalist”))) as Martin shows Tennant’s character around L.A., guided by a sentient variable message highway traffic sign (((“WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT”))). As this romantic comedy proceeds with Shakespeare references, including an appearance of the sexiest man to ever grace the screen Rick Moranis as a Hamlet-esque gravedigger, but also a r
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