Episode 192 - Striptease: LIVE!

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

 

 

As for Carl Hiasen, I've always felt he was the poor man's Elmore Leonard, in that he could create some pretty off the wall and humorous stories mixed with crime and thriller elements, but he could never really sew it so perfectly like Leonard could.

 

Thats why I kept thinking about Big Trouble when I was watching this movie. Both this and Big Trouble are the direct result of two people less talented than Elmore Leonard attempting to emulate his writing style.

[RyanSz 3140]

 

Thats why I kept thinking about Big Trouble when I was watching this movie. Both this and Big Trouble are the direct result of two people less talented than Elmore Leonard attempting to emulate his writing style.

What's odd is the Tim Allen character in Big Trouble is kind of based on Dave Barry who was a journalist in Miami for many years before becoming a novelist and nonfiction writer. I haven't read his work but what I've heard from my patrons is that his nonfiction work is actually pretty good because he's just making humorous observations on things happening around him rather than trying to create the situation himself.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

He's been doing his non fiction books for ages I remember seeing them every time I was in the comedy section in the bookstore when I was a kid.

 

Both of these movies were trying so desperately to be the next Get Shorty but neither are anywhere clever enough to be seen as real comparisons.

 

But to be fair, Be Cool also attempted to be as good as Get Shorty and it failed equally.

[Smigg. 509]

I was about to post a similar thing because I've had the privilege of meeting a number of porn stars, male, female, and trans, who have so far been nothing but incredibly nice and informative about their work and outside lives. One in particular actress I talked to was in Las Vegas while one of the adult conventions was going on and what I had originally wanted to know was what made her decide to go into the industry. She said that her husband and she talked about it for a while, and felt that since they were already swingers and fairly open about their sexuality, why not get paid for doing something they loved. She said after a couple years in the business she decided to increase her size and that her doctor recommended the gradual growth, rather than instantaneous because it could damage the skin and also the implants could come out basically looking like they did in the 80s as awkward boulders in her chest. She did say the only real complaint she had was having to buy custom bras know but it was a small price to pay for further enjoying her body and her work. I had asked if she wanted to go bigger, to which she did say yes but that the only place she would be able to do it was in South America because many states have laws one the amount of the implant solution a person can have in their body, and most doctors won't go much bigger than what she was already at, but she also said she wasn't going to risk her health and safety by going to an unregulated doctor to get the size she was thinking of.

 

Have you ever talked to Mercedes Carrera? Because she has a similar story about going into porn. She was previously in Aerospace Engineering, but decided she would be much happier, and much better off financially, doing porn.

[RyanSz 3140]

 

Have you ever talked to Mercedes Carrera? Because she has a similar story about going into porn. She was previously in Aerospace Engineering, but decided she would be much happier, and much better off financially, doing porn.

No but Shy Love had interesting stories about being a CPA and when I had met Olivia O'Lovely she was in the midst of was in the midst of getting a degree in psychology if I remember correctly as she wanted to start her own practice.

[ChunkStyle 1160]

The limo driver reading the L. Ron Hubbard book jumped out to me to me as well. Except I am here to tell you that was no L. Ron Hubbard book!

 

He was reading the 9th (out of 10) books in the Mission Earth series. My friends and I read the series in high school. They are extremely pulpy sci-fi. Dumb fun that should only appeal to a boy in high school. They were mixed with a healthy dose of his Dianetics views which I didn't know at the time. The cover art made a big deal throughout the series that it was going to be a giant 10 volume masterwork. It is said to be the last thing Hubbard finished before he died.

 

I was the last in the group to read them and my friends warned me that Hubbard didn't actually finish them. He died first and because the Church of Scientology wanted the shine from him having written this 10 book series they brought in a ghost writer to finish them. This was my friends' own pre-internet theory based only on having read the books. I thought they were full of crap until I read for myself. Half way through book 8 it slams into a brick wall. It goes from being good bad writing to just extremely bad. Books 9 and 10 are an absolute slog to finish. Whoever they brought in was hired only for their ability to keep a secret and writing ability was a distant second.

 

I haven't figured out yet how this ties into Striptease. Maybe a message from the 2nd unit director about who should really get credit for the movie.

[Smigg. 509]

There is actually a better version of Striptease. It's the video for "Turn the Page" by Metallica.

 

It stars pornstar Ginger Lynn who, in the video, plays a stripper. But, interspersed throughout the video, she'd do these talking head interviews, in character. So, at the start of the video, she says, in an upbeat, and peppy way, "I've always been an exhibitionist. I would say I've always wanted to be in the entertainment business without really realising it... and I am now"

 

Then the song starts, and you see her in a dump of a motel room, with her daughter, so it shows that this is the only way that she can support her daughter, getting ready to go to work the day shift at the strip club, while her daughter waits backstage, trying on feather boas and whatnot. Then just before the song breakdown, she says, in a much sadder tone than she was at the start of the video "I do it for the money, and I can change my life, and I can be what society wants me to be, and I can raise my daughter just as good as anybody else can!"

 

Then, when the harder bit kicks in, she heads out for the evening to work as an escort, and she goes back with a real piece of shit, that roughs her up, and throws the money at her and leaves, and her daughter that comes in from the next room hugs her.

 

She then does her final talking head and says "If I could start my life over, I would make the EXACT same choices!"

 

It's a devastatingly sad music video, but it shows that there shouldn't be shame attached to anybody who chooses to do it.

 

I would post the video, but I think it's a little to strong to put on here, so if you have a spare 5 minutes, go check out it, it's one of the best music videos I've seen.

[Smigg. 509]

 

Well, I've talked about the song, I should just share the audio at least.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

He's been doing his non fiction books for ages I remember seeing them every time I was in the comedy section in the bookstore when I was a kid.

 

Both of these movies were trying so desperately to be the next Get Shorty but neither are anywhere clever enough to be seen as real comparisons.

 

But to be fair, Be Cool also attempted to be as good as Get Shorty and it failed equally.

 

I'm a member of my local

library's Friend's associations (the people who volunteer but we are fancy and have to pay dues to get a really ugly tshirt) we ALWAYS have at least 3 of his books in the comedy section no matter what sale it is and god knows how many others in fiction. He's apparently quiet prolific.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

Ok so it's really small but when Shad's in the video store he's really pissed off someone STILL hasn't returned Free Willy. We all know that it's his disgusting whale lover boss keeping that tape right?

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Ok so it's really small but when Shad's in the video store he's really pissed off someone STILL hasn't returned Free Willy. We all know that it's his disgusting whale lover boss keeping that tape right?

Holy fucking shit.

It seems so obvious now.

 

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Thats why I kept thinking about Big Trouble when I was watching this movie. Both this and Big Trouble are the direct result of two people less talented than Elmore Leonard attempting to emulate his writing style.

What's odd is the Tim Allen character in Big Trouble is kind of based on Dave Barry who was a journalist in Miami for many years before becoming a novelist and nonfiction writer. I haven't read his work but what I've heard from my patrons is that his nonfiction work is actually pretty good because he's just making humorous observations on things happening around him rather than trying to create the situation himself.

 

I wouldn't say that Dave Barry is less talented. It's just that his niche is 800 words of offbeat absurdist musing, and so his long-form fiction can tend to become a bit of the slog because you're just trying to make it through long sections of his Dadaist dad humor, which shall henceforth be called Dadadadist.

 

I read Big Trouble and Tricky Business back-to-back one summer and really preferred TB to BT. He had gotten that first book out of the way, which you know he'd been polishing and fretting over in his own head forever. Then, once he finally got a chance to start anew, he did a little bit better.

 

But for sure, his crime fiction in comparison to Elmore Leonard, who is much more invested in crafting a good story that in building a story around his sense of humor.

[EvRobert 1684]

Is Tricky Business about the band on the off shore gambling cruise ship and the storm? Because if so I remember that being quite a bit better than Big Trouble

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Is Tricky Business about the band on the off shore gambling cruise ship and the storm? Because if so I remember that being quite a bit better than Big Trouble

That's the very one.

[Cameron H. 23786]

I know at the end of the movie she’s kind of flying by the seat of her pants, but I think a pretty major flaw in Erin’s plan at the end of the movie is that she wants her husband to sign over custody...at gunpoint. Considering how insidiously unsympathetic the law has been to her thus far, I have trouble believing that anyone is going to accept a legal document signed under duress. Even if a gun isn’t in play, if a person feels like they’ve been coerced into signing a something against their will, it’s going to void that contract. And you just know that her scumbag husband would jump at the chance to use that against her in court.

[Cam Bert 8145]

I want to talk about the names of the strippers in the film for a moment. On the podcast they talked about the horrible puny names of Gaza Strip and Urbana Sprawl and what a dumb idea it was to dance under your real name in Erin Grant's case. However, there is one more name that I think needs a little more attention. The one dance that does the baby girl number at the start is named "Monique, Jr." There's not really anything punny about it and when you say it "Monique Junior" there is nothing odd about it, but we see on the sign in front of the Eager Beaver and there is clearly a comma after Monique. Why is that comma there? Is her name suppose to be Monique (pause) Junior? The only time we use commas in names is when listing last names first like Bond, James. Does this imply that her name should be Junior Monique? Is that her real name and she flipped flopped it to get her dancer name? Why is that comma there?

[Cameron H. 23786]

In the event that my lifeless body is ever found floating in a lake, I really hope the person who finds it can refrain from calling my bloated corpse a “son of a bitch.” Look, I’m sorry if I ruined your vacation, but of the two of us, I think I’m the one having the worse day.

[grudlian. 4725]

I want to talk about the names of the strippers in the film for a moment. On the podcast they talked about the horrible puny names of Gaza Strip and Urbana Sprawl and what a dumb idea it was to dance under your real name in Erin Grant's case. However, there is one more name that I think needs a little more attention. The one dance that does the baby girl number at the start is named "Monique, Jr." There's not really anything punny about it and when you say it "Monique Junior" there is nothing odd about it, but we see on the sign in front of the Eager Beaver and there is clearly a comma after Monique. Why is that comma there? Is her name suppose to be Monique (pause) Junior? The only time we use commas in names is when listing last names first like Bond, James. Does this imply that her name should be Junior Monique? Is that her real name and she flipped flopped it to get her dancer name? Why is that comma there?

I could have sworn I had seen commas in some names for people with Sr. or Jr. in them. It turns out this is the traditional way of doing it but seems to have fallen by the wayside. It looks like it depends on which style guide you adhere to. MLA says to do it. Chicago Style Guide said not to starting in 1993. Associated Press says to not do it. I would say it's up to the person whose name it is.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

I know at the end of the movie she’s kind of flying by the seat of her pants, but I think a pretty major flaw in Erin’s plan at the end of the movie is that she wants her husband to sign over custody...at gunpoint. Considering how insidiously unsympathetic the law has been to her thus far, I have trouble believing that anyone is going to accept a legal document signed under duress. Even if a gun isn’t in play, if a person feels like they’ve been coerced into signing a something against their will, it’s going to void that contract. And you just know that her scumbag husband would jump at the chance to use that against her in court.

Yes, this! And I also was baffled that this movie treated being a police informant as the kind of thing about which you could throw your weight around in court, as though you weren't ratting out your criminal cohorts as a last ditch effort to keep your own ass out of jail. Not to mention you can't just secretly record a conversation and get that to stand in court. This movie was written by a teenager whose parents watch Law and Order.

[RyanSz 3140]

There is actually a better version of Striptease. It's the video for "Turn the Page" by Metallica.

Swear to god, my mind's eye was picturing "Until it Sleeps" when reading the title, and the whole time I was thinking to myself "Ginger Lynn wasn't in that video." Then I reread it and felt foolish.

 

 

I'm a member of my local

library's Friend's associations (the people who volunteer but we are fancy and have to pay dues to get a really ugly tshirt) we ALWAYS have at least 3 of his books in the comedy section no matter what sale it is and god knows how many others in fiction. He's apparently quiet prolific.

Same here, we have at least five on their bookstore shelves, and at least twice that on the regular library shelves at my work. I haven't seen one get checked out in years, but every time I walk past that section there seems that there are more there than there was before.

 

Ok so it's really small but when Shad's in the video store he's really pissed off someone STILL hasn't returned Free Willy. We all know that it's his disgusting whale lover boss keeping that tape right?

Every time I saw the boss I just imagined this joke from Family Guy.

 

Correction: The Middle Eastern dancer wasn't named Gaza Strip she was called Ariel Sharon, and the DJ is clearly saying in her intro that she was Ms. Gaza Strip, as in she won a beauty pageant in her home country, which she confirms when she is introducing herself to the snake dancer.

[pomattovich 75]

While I would never defend this garbage movie, I will say that Carl Hiaasen's original novel is quite good. It's very funny, makes its villains far less ridiculous and bumbling, and has Erin as a much more professional stripper. She is passionate about her work and genuinely enjoys it. None of this reluctant "i'm just doing this for my daughter" act. And she doesn't look down on her industry or co-workers. It's been years since I read the novel. I remember having very high hopes for the movie. Burt Reynolds actually would have been great casting if he had been directed to be more like the character in the book. It's a shame the adaptation was such a disaster.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

The editor of this movie is one Anne V. Coates:

First off, yes, this of all movies was edited by a woman (who later went on to edit Fifty Shades of Grey)! But she's also the legendary editor of Lawrence of Arabia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ccB1KTzr9o

Some of the less distinguished titles in her filmography have also been previously featured on HDTGM, like Congo and Masters of the Universe, so I'm surprised nobody's mentioned her yet.

 

RogerEbert.com's Peter Sobczynski is probably right that the bad movies she edited would be even worse without her contributions (I'm less sure why he doesn't classify Striptease among the "outright junk" - both of the other HDTGM movies he mentions are conspicuously more watchable in a dumb-fun sort of way):

One of the keys to Coates’ brilliance as an editor was her versatility. Coates cut epics (“Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines," “The Adventurers”), serious dramas (“Becket," which earned her a second Oscar nomination); comedies (“I Love You To Death” “What About Bob?”, “Striptease”), action spectacles (including “The Eagle has Landed," “Raw Deal” and “In the Line of Fire," for which she earned her fourth Oscar nomination); erotic dramas (“Unfaithful," “Fifty Shades of Grey”); horror (“The Legacy”), and yes, even some outright junk (“Masters of the Universe," “Congo"). Though not all of the movies that she worked on were masterpieces, her contributions were almost always solid, and one shudders to think how some of them might have fared without her deft touch.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

The limo driver reading the L. Ron Hubbard book jumped out to me to me as well. Except I am here to tell you that was no L. Ron Hubbard book!

 

He was reading the 9th (out of 10) books in the Mission Earth series. My friends and I read the series in high school. They are extremely pulpy sci-fi. Dumb fun that should only appeal to a boy in high school. They were mixed with a healthy dose of his Dianetics views which I didn't know at the time. The cover art made a big deal throughout the series that it was going to be a giant 10 volume masterwork. It is said to be the last thing Hubbard finished before he died.

 

I was the last in the group to read them and my friends warned me that Hubbard didn't actually finish them. He died first and because the Church of Scientology wanted the shine from him having written this 10 book series they brought in a ghost writer to finish them. This was my friends' own pre-internet theory based only on having read the books. I thought they were full of crap until I read for myself. Half way through book 8 it slams into a brick wall. It goes from being good bad writing to just extremely bad. Books 9 and 10 are an absolute slog to finish. Whoever they brought in was hired only for their ability to keep a secret and writing ability was a distant second.

 

I haven't figured out yet how this ties into Striptease. Maybe a message from the 2nd unit director about who should really get credit for the movie.

 

When the New York Times reviewed the first book in the series, they said that "the characters were thoroughly obnoxious (although not in any interesting way)" - that could very well be it! It's definitely not the title of the particular book in the series the driver was reading at the time: "Villiany Victorious" in a movie whose antagonists are about as pathetically inept and ineffectual as, well, Terl in Battlefield Earth. Which I'm surprised you didn't mention - the Mission Earth series achieved the distinction of being even worse received than its infamously reviled predecessor. Admittedly, I am impressed by the driver having the dedication to have read all 3,249 pages of the 8 volumes in the series preceding Villainy Victorious - over 3 times more than the 1,050 pages of Battlefield Earth!

 

The ghostwriter/editor of Mission Earth HAS in fact gone public about the experience, with this lengthy account full of the gory details. Ironically, "Villainy Victorious" was the one title for a book in the series that was the idea of Hubbard and not the ghostwriter:

http://www.lermanet....issionEarth.htm

 

Oh, and the Mission Earth books have a soundtrack! (As did Battlefield Earth, but it wasn't even subsequently made into a movie that would have music.) As you might guess, the music isn't exactly Annie Lennox quality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=522hrnzve0k

 

(PS: I haven't read that ghostwriter's account in ages - probably last around the time that the Battlefield Earth movie came out! - and I had misremembered it relating the ghosters/editors creating a lot more of the books from whole cloth, rather than just the "previously on..." introductions to volumes 2-10. But in a sense it is way more L. Ron Hubbard's megalomaniac style to actually write more than a million words of a manuscript, and then allow subordinates to make as few changes as possible, rather than lazily doing an outline and hoping that they'd flesh it out. Although it could very well be that he was losing it as he got toward the end of the original unedited version.)

Edited July 8, 2018 by JoelSchlosberg

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

I could have sworn I had seen commas in some names for people with Sr. or Jr. in them. It turns out this is the traditional way of doing it but seems to have fallen by the wayside. It looks like it depends on which style guide you adhere to. MLA says to do it. Chicago Style Guide said not to starting in 1993. Associated Press says to not do it. I would say it's up to the person whose name it is.

 

 

 

[ChunkStyle 1160]

 

When the New York Times reviewed the first book in the series, they said that "the characters were thoroughly obnoxious (although not in any interesting way)" - that could very well be it! It's definitely not the title of the particular book in the series the driver was reading at the time: "Villiany Victorious" in a movie whose antagonists are about as pathetically inept and ineffectual as, well, Terl in Battlefield Earth. Which I'm surprised you didn't mention - the Mission Earth series achieved the distinction of being even worse received than its infamously reviled predecessor. Admittedly, I am impressed by the driver having the dedication to have read all 3,249 pages of the 8 volumes in the series preceding Villainy Victorious - over 3 times more than the 1,050 pages of Battlefield Earth!

 

The ghostwriter/editor of Mission Earth HAS in fact gone public about the experience, with this lengthy account full of the gory details. Ironically, "Villainy Victorious" was the one title for a book in the series that was the idea of Hubbard and not the ghostwriter:

http://www.lermanet....issionEarth.htm

 

Well it definitely sounds like the whole series was a group effort. But whatever the real story was something changed drastically towards the end of the series. The books went from being funny (to an idiot 16 year old) to the worst thing I have read. I almost didn't finish the series even after investing all that time up front.

 

I never bothered reading Battlefield Earth.