The Dark Night of John Landis

https://travsd.wordpress.com/2021/08/03/the-dark-night-of-john-landis/

True comedy film auteurs have been so rare since the 1930s (NOT hyperbole) that the loss of any one of them, be it through their own misdeeds or some other cause, can only be regarded as a misfortune. That’s my feeling on the subject of John Landis (b. 1950). He was one of Hollywood’s top directors in the late 1970s through the late ’80s. Then, by the late ’90s, he was through. The copycat scribes of the internet continue to parrot the shibboleth that his criminal negligence during the 1982 shoot for Twilight Zone: The Movie, in which three people died, is the reason for his long sojourn in Siberia. That of course is nonsense. Hollywood is the most immoral town on the planet. Dealmakers there don’t care if anyone gets killed, raped, tortured, abused, or baked in a pie, so long as the ticket-buying public doesn’t care. The Twilight Zone accident was big headlines in its day. Then Landis went on to direct another dozen movies and numerous tv shows over the next 15 years. He only became a pariah after a series of critical and box office failures — the time honored avenue.

Interestingly, Landis’s career as a movie director also sank permanently around the time the internet came into being. The internet is beyond powerful. For the first time in pop culture history, your scandal NEVER DIES DOWN. There is stuff up there permanently, like a billboard, to remind people, “Oh, right, he killed those kids”. So I think the tragedy became a factor too. But believe me, if studios could keep the story quiet as they used to do so well, and if they thought Landis could still make money for them, he would never have stopped being hired as a director. And that’s why he kept working as long as he did.

He did it to himself of course. Never for a moment do I imply that he deserves something he isn’t getting (with the exception of greater punishment). But I still mourn the absence of a great comedy director. Unlike, say, Harold Ramis or Ivan Reitman, his peers and colleagues whom you will frequently hear me castigate, I think Landis directed several movies that can deservedly be honored with the too-loosely used term “classic”. Landis has a pictorial eye, a knack for shot composition. Not just for aesthetics, but for which angle is funniest. He has a mind for gags. He brings out lively, focused performances from actors. And he has an encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood film, often quoting beloved moments to rewarding effect. At his peak, even Steven Spielberg was copying him (recall 1941). I have already written about his work in the horror genre. I held off posting on his comedy films until I could get around to seeing those ill-reputed films of the ’90s, most of which deserve their notoriety.