Whither, Brothers Hughes?

First, a paean for the welcome surprise I received this morning upon opening Psychedelic Kimchi and finding not one, not two, but three new posts from the illustrious -- and handsome -- PK braintrust. Shit made me feel warm and tingly. Like hearing Martin Scorsese speak and being mesmerized by His furry eyebrows, it gave me a feeling of safety, of familiarity, and of love.

(Ahem.)

It's no big secret that I'm a sucker for love, and nowhere is this more transparent than in my unabashed remembrances of youth, whether musical, literary, or Claudia Cardinale. I don't own an MP3 player, preferring to, when I'm commuting or taking walks alone, reminisce on the past. It's meditative, and it's essential for my sanity. Not to get too Murakami Haruki on you bitches, but I find myself trying harder and harder to hold on to the memories of my youth these days, as though they're slipping through my fingers like grains of sand (how's that for a cliche?). Par for the course, I suspect, for people my age, but unlike most (or so it seems to me), I'm desperately clinging to the unravelling threads of the young man I used to be; mostly, I believe, because I still resemble -- perhaps eerily so -- myself when I was 10 years younger, maybe more.

It has worked thus far (Long live Walter Jameson!): I feel like Peter Pan, Oskar Matzerath and Tommy Lee rolled into one. Sure, I may bellyache from time to time (rinse, lather, repeat) that I feel old, but that's all a ruse: I only do so to keep up the appearance that I'm moving along in time like everyone else, when the truth is that I'm in a mental stasis contradictory to the unbaised flow of Père Temps.

I'm recalcitrant, bellicose, that my fondness of times long gone slip away. Not gonna let it happen. "Mierzwiak! Please let me keep this memory, just this one," Joel Barish pleads in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Fuck that; I want to keep them all, and retrieve all the ones I've lost. If I can't, then what's the point?

Which is all a lengthy, verbose way of saying that I miss the Hughes bothers, Allen and Albert. Originally planned as an argument on why The Last Unicorn is perhaps the greatest animated children's film ever made (my apologies to The Secret of NIMH ), serendipitously hearing Isaac Hayes's rendition of 'Walk On By' earlier this evening caused me instead to think about two modern film classics, Menace II Society and Dead Presidents (the most underappreciated Vietnam-era film made, by the way), and lament the strange disappearance of the Hughes brothers from filmmaking.

Look, in the pantheon of 'Hood movies there can be only two which stand head and shoulders above all else (and "all else" encompasses a lot of shitty movies): Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society. Not taking anything away from John Singleton's masterpiece, but Menace has it beat like street.

The Brothers Hughes next picture, Dead Presidents, showed and proved -- at least artistically, if not commercially -- that they possess raw talent and an innate storytelling ability. Word to Slick Rick. Menace and Dead Presidents are films of accomplished merit, among the best films released in the 90's.

So what happened? The Hugheses made a certified stinkbomb (From Hell), and, ostensibly*, that's all she wrote.

Really? If dropping a single cinematic dookie is all it takes to receive persona non grata status in Hollywood, why then is it that M Night Shyamalan -- and I use him only as one example; truth be told, I love the fuck out of his first three films -- has dropped two pieces of shit in a row yet still receives diplomatic studio immunity? Sure, money has a lot to do with it, but The Departed notwithstanding, how much coin have Marty Scorsese**'s films raked in in the past? A fair bit, maybe; but certainly not Michael Jackson Thriller numbers. Did Hollywood simply give up on the Hughes brothers, or did the Hughes brothers give up on Hollywood? Inquiring fucking minds want to know.

In conclusion (and my 12th grade English teacher's gonna love this), the Hughes brothers are great filmmakers who went against the status quo and totally kicked ass until they made a film starring Johnny Depp. I think Idealjetsam knows what I'm talking about in that regard.



* I'll stop doing it when you stop laughing.

** Cuddly eyebrows?