the groundhog day project

Let's just start with a frank, honest truth. Roger Murtaugh is not black. And, I don't mean to be a smartass about the color versus the race, that "black" people are generally shades of what we'd call brown or whatever. I mean that, in Shane Black's script, race is not mentioned. Except for the title of today's entry (and one other instance I'll get to in a moment). Alfred says that to Murtaugh. And, the line may resonate a little more in the script because Murtaugh is not said to be black. He's just... Murtaugh. In fact, race is not an issue at all in the course of this film. Murtaugh just happens to have been cast black. Burke--the guy who tells Murtaugh he's breaking in a new partner--is only described in the script as "Rail-thin, nose like a beak." The actor cast as Burke just happens to be black. Okay, maybe not "just happens to be." Maybe the casting director, Marion Dougherty, deliberately chose to cast black actors...

A few questions must be answered before moving on to bigger things. For example, the obvious one: why Christmas? (And, I need to get my nitpicks out of the way early with this movie because they are actually few.) Shane Black has a tendency, as it were, to set movies around Christmas (from Lethal Weapon to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to Iron Man 3 ). Ivan Radford at Vodzilla last year, said it like this: In 1987, Lethal Weapon blew Christmas wide open. It turned out that Christmas films didn't just have to be festive and feel-good; they could be both of those things and feature guns, swearing and prostitutes too. Happy fucking holidays. First, a nitpick: Lethal Weapon does not feature any prostitutes. One prostitute, Dixie, has a couple lines at the beginning of the film. That's it. Porn stars and strippers get some screen time, but not really prostitutes. But, moving past that, yeah, a Christmas movie doesn't have to be festive... Except, allow me to nitpick again. Thi...