the groundhog day project

Shane Black's Los Angeles is "a bargain basement Promised Land." He likes sunny days and rainy nights. He likes to juxtapose domestic normalcy with the seedy underbelly. And, he likes to put flawed men at the center--these are the damaged angels for which the city is named. In Lethal Weapon we have two of these men as our protagonists: Roger Murtaugh and Martin Riggs. RM and MR. Mr short for Mister, but one must wonder is Black suggesting that Martin Riggs or Roger Murtaugh is the quintessential male, or at least the quintessential 80s male, or at least the quintessential 80s action male. The interesting thing is, as the story goes, in Black's script--I don't know what draft I have, but it's not the first--a little more than in the film, Murtaugh becomes a little more like Riggs along the way and maybe, just maybe, Riggs becomes a little more like Murtaugh in exchange. Imagine the partnership if Mr. Joshua and the General had managed to kill (after perhaps ra...

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...