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In the Fall From Grace series we'll expose former cultural icons who have run out of innovative and talent-filled ideas and have parlayed their fame and notoriety in to a money grab cum desperate attempt to hang on to their quickly fading celebrity.
We recap some the CP recipient's glory days and then try to pinpoint exactly when it all went wrong and lay their transgressions out for all to see and end it all with swift and hearty groin chop.
These are the hardest smacks to hand out. It's like seeing an old lover who spurned you and confronting them with all of your pent up feelings of rage and betrayal. This isn't someone you have always wanted to Rochambeau. It's an old friend, a trusted adviser and someone you relied on for entertainment and cultural import. But, now the fire is gone and it's time for retribution.
STING
WHAT HE GOT RIGHT:
Well, let's start at the beginning. The Police are plain and simple a terrific band. During their run, they managed a string of incredible consistency and artistic growth. In just a six year span they released five very strong records, including capping off their discography with a work of brilliance in Synchronicity. They forged a sound that was all their own and continued to grow and develop throughout their career up to their (initial) break-up in 1983.
After the untimely demise of the Police, Sting didn't rest on his laurels. He trudged off in a new direction and kept growing as an artist and songwriter. He recruited a troop of crack jazz musicians and formed a new group and crafted a new sound. The formation of that group was documented in a fantastic film called Bring On The Night, directed by Michael Apted. This new group (with slight lineup changes in between LPs) put out two tremendous records: 1985's Dream Of The Blue Turtles and 1987's Nothing Like The Sun.
WHERE IT WENT WRONG:
To put it simply, The Soul Cages. This is 9 full tracks of Sting channeling Kenny G through his own vocal cords and then finding a way to drop it one more notch down the easy listening ladder. The people at Muzax heard The Soul Cages for the first time and started talking about how they could beef it up to make it less weak for when they sold the instrumental versions of those songs for the speakers in the ladies' underwear section of the K-Mart locations on the eastern seaboard.
Now that he was a new-aged easy listening God, Sting decided to help the masses with more than just the limpid sounds of his schlocky new sonic schtick. He preached to them of the glorious ways of tantra. Now he was Sting, the slightly bearded lord of alto sax solos, Jaguar commercials and sex that went on for half a fucking day but never ended in climax. This was better, he said. The climax was internal and massive. If internal bleeding is bad for you, I can only imagine how rotten the insides of Stang must be.
The records after the Soul Cages just got progressively worse. Lame attempts at Eastern European folk met with Middle Eastern whirling dirvish concoctions that seemed more like the aural version of the menu options at Epcot Center than any real attempt at music. Every Sting album sounded like he was having an "ingasm" whilst he was warbled away over the top of a backing track that seemed more appropriate for a an English lady having her 100th birthday party at Sotheby's auction house than a pop/rock record.
WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE:
Neil Young said it best, "Everybody knows this is nowhere". Sting tried to reunite with the Police and it was a financial boom, but a musical bust. The shows were critically panned and severely over-priced. Plus, his band mates had the same problem they had 30 years ago, he's a dick and they grew quickly tired of spending time with him. If you hadn't had a good (actual/external) orgasm in 20 years, you'd be a prickly bastard too, right? So, the shows seemed much more like a sad reminder of what was than what could still be. What did you expect for your $200 mezzanine seat?
In the Fall From Grace series we'll expose former cultural icons who have run out of innovative and talent-filled ideas and have parlayed their fame and notoriety in to a money grab cum desperate attempt to hang on to their quickly fading celebrity.
We recap some the CP recipient's glory days and then try to pinpoint exactly when it all went wrong and lay their transgressions out for all to see and end it all with swift and hearty groin chop.
These are the hardest smacks to hand out. It's like seeing an old lover who spurned you and confronting them with all of your pent up feelings of rage and betrayal. This isn't someone you have always wanted to Rochambeau. It's an old friend, a trusted adviser and someone you relied on for entertainment and cultural import. But, now the fire is gone and it's time for retribution.
EDDIE MURPHY
WHAT HE GOT RIGHT:
For a few years in the early and mid-1980s, Eddie Murphy had the world by the short ones. From his brazenly glorious run on Saturday Night Live to a pair of stand-up comedy films that shaped an entire generation of comedians to a film career that included highlights like Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours and Trading Places he was a comic pioneer and a blitzkrieg of ingenuity, fire and was simultaneously accessible and shocking. Nothing was off limits and nearly all of it was hysterical and groundbreaking.
WHERE IT WENT WRONG:
In 1996, Murphy released The Nutty Professor and from there it was all down hill. Not only was this cinematic abomination not funny, but it helped to set a precedent for two horrific trends in Hollywood: 1. It made it seem like a good financial decision for a producer/director/actor to remake a film based on a bad film that wasn't worth watching the first time around. 2. It reinforced and gave new life to the idea that dressing up as numerous people (and letting all of them fart loudly on camera) in a film was entertaining. For the record, it's not. So, now you know where to look for blame when you get stuck watching one of Tyler Perry's dreadful movies on an airplane or ponder why anyone would think it was a good idea to remake The Stepford Wives or to let Steve Martin take a turn as Inspector Clouseau.
From there, Eddie just ran around cashing checks for cinematic nuggets like Norbit and Meet Dave, anything vaguely Shrek related, and a freaking movie based on an amusement park ride.
WHERE IT GOES FROM HERE:
The list of films on IMDB that Murphy currently has in development only further this god awful trend. They include the following . . .
The Misadventures of Fluffy
This is a quasi-buddy film that comingsoon.net describes as "a road trip film through New York featuring talking animals". So, Lethal Weapon meets Dr. Doolittle?
Beverly Hills Cop IV
Were there story lines and character depths that just never got plumbed in the first three films of this franchise? The first one is great and the second one is watchable for a few minutes, but even Sylvester Stallone thinks another one of these things is unnecessary.
Fantasy Island (Remake of 1970s TV show)
According to cinematical.com, not only is this again a remake of a terrifically awful idea, but Murphy is in talks to play Tattoo. That's right, the little guy who shouts: "De plane! De plane!" during the opening credits. Must be the script for the film version of Diff'rent Strokes wasn't quite ready yet.
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Has no one delivered an original script to Murphy's house in the last 18 months or is he just too lazy to read them, so he only accepts projects where he can watch the original show/movie and say yes from there? If Eddie wants to see some shrinking he should take a look at the dignity and self-respect factors of his body of work.
Untitled Romeo and Juliet Project
This I might have to see. Maybe we can snag Lindsay Lohan to play Juliet and Chris Brown can play Mercutio and they could film a reality show on the set of the film. Oh wait, maybe Eddie can play all the parts by himself and we can get Brett Ratner to direct it. The DiCaprio/Danes version of Shakespeare never seemed so inviting as it does now.
Mr. Murphy we have no choice but to chop you down and pray you stay down long enough to get act your act back together. Try being funny again instead of rich.
As we turn the calendar over to 2010, it seems a good time to reflect on a series of once talented, funny and innovative people who have now twiddled and twaddled their way to sub-mediocrity. With their creative ingenuity behind them, these money grubbers have continued to flabble their bilge water all over the poop deck of American culture so they can keep on earning a paycheck.
We're calling this collection of has-beens the Fall From Grace Series.
