Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

The school bells ring in the distance. My summer students have piled my desk high with finals. We have time for but one more quick camping adventure. We’ve visited the land of science fiction, and then fantasy. Now here we are, pitching our tents on a night of mist, lightning, and echoing cackles. We’re here to be scared.

Sort of.

Remember, we’re thinking about campy movies as good ol’ Webster defines it:

campy

adjective

ˈkam-pē 

campier; campiest

Synonyms of campy

: in the style of camp : absurdly exaggerated, artificial, or affected in a usually humorous way

Or, we can use this definition by my daughter Blondie:

“It’s so campy, you could roast marshmallows on it.” -Blondie

Honestly, I think I’ve saved the best for last, folks…

Death Becomes Her!

Oh my goodness, is this treasure from the 90s fun. Everything’s a wonder: from the casting to the music to the plot to the setting and everything in between. I could just say, “Watch it!” and get back to grading, but at the very least we should go through what can be learned here!

You have Bruce Willis playing the meek, cuckolded, easily manipulated Ernest, who’s caught up in the years-long frenemy battle between Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep. I mean, even the names here are a great touch: the friends Helen and Madeline call each other “Hell” and “Mad.” Ernest is always eager to please until…well.

Okay, let’s just start at the beginning here. Hawn is engaged to Willis, and they go see Streep in her Broadway show. This song is horrendous–downright campy, I’d say!–and nearly the whole audience shows their disgust…all but Willis, who is entranced.

Before you know it, Streep has taken Willis away from Hawn, and Hawn snaps to the point of spending time in a psych ward. Years pass, and we see the marriage has driven Willis to alcohol; no longer a celebrated surgeon, he’s a popular mortician among rich families. Streep is desperate to maintain her youth, especially when Hawn reappears on the scene, all full of beauty and vigor and success. Under the recommendation of her beauty clinic’s owner, Streep seeks out the mysterious Lisle, who gives her a magic potion that returns Streep’s body to her voluptuous youth. But at the same time Hawn has enticed Willis to help her murder Streep, only for things to go wrong and…well. Things escalate rather quickly from there.

What makes this movie campy to me? It has such beautiful over-the-top moments in it. If you watched the video of the opening scene, the model town of NYC gave me a touch of Flash Gordon vibes for a moment, for we’re entering a story-world, aren’t we? The musical number about how amazing Streep is bites at the narcissm we see among celebrities while also poking fun at musical culture. Willis is constantly panicked, and while that could get tiring in some stories, the audience is right there with Willis, in over his head, absolutely bewildered by all this unknown. These over-the-top emotions lead to terrific lines like Streep “seeing right through” Hawn’s gunshot hole in the above video, as well as Willis freaking out when he hears his wife was taken to the morgue (“The morgue?! She’ll be furious!”). To the everyday human being, that sounds ridiculous, but in Willis’ situation? We empathize! And really, I’d be terrified of the hovering nuns, too.

The core of this story is the relationship between Streep and Hawn–not just because of who married Willis, but how they’ve been treating each other for decades. We’ve all been in relationships like that, but we haven’t all had to literally bash each other with shovels or throw javelins at each other in order to sort out our feelings. But that’s what it takes for these two “friends”: they literally kill each other (again) in order to work through their conflict. Their duel with shovels is one scene of many that showcases just how impressive the special effects are here. No wonder they won multiple awards, including the Oscar!

I have to give a special shout-out to the score, too. I adore the music here, and was happily surprised to find out none other than Alan Silvestri crafted this soundtrack. This theme is timeless with its menace, mischief, and mayhem all kept just subtle enough so you’re not sure which of those m-words will hit you first. Mix this with all the dark and stormy nights where people cry out to the heavens about miracles or it’s alive or living forever or “Oh my God, she’s dead again!” and you have a delectably dark, campy comedy.

What’s a Writer to Get Out of this Camping Trip?

There’s a reason we revise. This movie is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of tight storytelling. Every single scene not only propels the plot, but the character development, too. Take our first scene of Streep and Willis after seven years of marriage. The maid first wakes up Streep with a spew of compliments, and it’s noted Willis slept upstairs (again). That room is a shabby “man-cave” of a room where Willis sleeps on the floor, clearly having fallen out of his chair. The maid wakes him with a Bloody Mary, he demands more vodka, and uses a shaking hand to throw a scalpel at a dartboard, off by a mile. It’s just a minute, but that scene tells us aaaaaaaaaaall we need to know about how their relationship is going. Heck, we meet the characters, establish the conflict, raise the stakes with Willis switching women, and watch Hawn lose her mind in less than fifteen minutes. That is concise, effective storytelling on page or screen no matter how you look at it. Could we have seen more moments of Willis’ slow decline out of plastic surgery, Streep no longer getting acting roles, or Hawn giving up on her writing career? Sure. But we didn’t need them to know the story. The right scenes will share plenty of information, allowing the plot to keep a quick pace an audience can still follow with ease.

There’s a reason we show instead of tell. Hawn’s breakdown is sad and humorous all at once. There’s a flair of camp here, as Hawn’s apartment is nothing but cats, cat food, and empty containers of frosting because that’s Hawn’s diet now. But there’s a marvelous bit of storytelling here, too: she’s rewatching a movie starring her frenemy Streep. Why? Because in it, Streep is murdered on screen. And Hawn can’t help but watch it over and over and over, even as the police drag her away.

The next scene has Hawn in a psych ward for group therapy, and the moment she says she wants to talk about Streep, the whole group has a meltdown. We are shown Hawn’s been doing this for a long time. No one had to say it. We just saw it in a matter of seconds. Again, that’s tight, effective storytelling at its best.

There’s a reason we don’t explain everything. Who is this mysterious Lisle? What’s this potion that she has that helps everyone live forever? How’s it work? How did Lisle get it? We don’t know. Zemeckis never requires the story to tell us, and honestly, that’s okay because Lisle isn’t in the core of the story. She’s a catalyst to the next level of escalation. Lisle embodies beauty and youth in defiance of “natural law,” a phrase that comes up time and again in a movie where we the audience know that aging is a part of life.

Streep and Hawn use Lisle’s potion in order to defy that law, and they’re determined to drag Willis into immortality with them. The backgrounds of Lisle and the potion do not impact Hawn and Streep’s relationship; therefore, they’re not relevant to the story and stay off-screen.

But when we bargain with that which we do not understand, we set ourselves up for some eternal consequences. Eternally hilarious, glorious, campy consequences. And those we get to see.

There’s a reason we mash the unlikely together. Bruce Willis was one of the great action stars in the 80s. To see him in the early 90s as this meek little yes-man who screams like a girl is hilarious to an audience because we know what Willis is capable of. But it’s a great reminder to us as storytellers that unlikely combinations can make for some fascinating characters and situations, like a giant police officer posing as a kindergarten teacher or kindly spinster aunts sweetly killing off old men and burying them in their basement. I know tropes are popular for a reason, but you really, really don’t have to follow them. It’s okay to have some characters that have VERY different traits mashed together because that is how are we are, each and every one of us a mish-mash of interests, quirks, talents, and fears. And such eclectic natures promise a compelling journey to growth, something all audiences love to see.

Whew! I’m sorry this couldn’t have been a bit longer, but I am glad we could enjoy all one last camping adventure together. But let’s get away now before the mosquitoes decide they want an early breakfast. The sun’s gross, the humidity’s gross, everything’s gross. Blech!

Next time we’ve got a podcast to go through, a resource spotlight, my own publishing conundrum, and of course some interviews and spooky things, too, for Fall is on the way! Hooray!

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!