April Fools…
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Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Pranks from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to Carrie, Robert Zemeckis is here, IATSE closes more tentative agreements, Lynne Ramsay's Arctic and a bad piano.
Let’s go!
APRIL FOOLS' DAY AND THE CINEMA OF PRANKS
Happy April Fools' Day.
I wanted to take a second to celebrate some great movie pranks, ranging from the hilarious to the horrific:
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Dir: John Hughes
Prank: Matthew Broderick pretends to be the Sausage King of Chicago to snag a VIP reservation
Home Alone 2 (1992)
Dir: Chris Columbus
Prank: To stop the hotel staff from peaking into his room, Macaulay Culkin sends them running by playing a gangster movie
You filthy animal clip
Borat (2006)
Dir: Jason Woliner, Larry Charles
The movie is one big prank with Sacha Baron Cohen skewering American values by pretending to be from Kazakhstan
7 best Borat pranks.
But the most shocking movie prank of all time is in Brian DePalma’s supernatural horror Carrie (1976). Carrie, played by the innocent and haunting Sissy Spacek, gets covered in pig blood during the prom.
What’s so crippling is that this moment arrives at the apex of Carrie’s dreams.
The film begins with Carrie being socially ridiculed for her freakish immaturity (she has her period in the gym shower, and the girls throw tampons at her). Later, when one of the popular boys in school asks her to the prom, Carrie can’t believe it.
On prom night, a series of tremendously validating moments occur:
Carrie has her first kiss on the dance floor
Carrie’s date calls her beautiful
Carrie wins prom queen
And it’s at this climactic moment on stage, being crowned, that Carrie gets drenched in pig blood.
At this moment, she unleashes supernatural terror onto the prom, burning it to the ground and killing everyone inside. She is forced to commit this ultimate act of revenge because she cannot escape her social position as a pariah.
This prank defines her downfall and uprising.
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