The punter, or most of them, want — no, they demand! — predictable. They want to see the same storyline over and over again. Give them something halfway original (as in all that dubious European art stuff) and many just run scared: the punter wants to see the world (which is usually just the American corner of it) on the edge of destruction saved by the love of a good woman for a man. Furthermore, they want that man to start out as a coward, but one who is able to find the brave core he did not suspect was there because of that woman’s love. Or something like that.
Cliches are great both for directors and writers and for moviegoers, and work for both. Cliches mean that neither the director, the writers nor the moviegoers have to think at all. All they have to do is fill in the boxes and trace the story from A to Z. They are not required to use their nut one little bit.
To be fair, if the wind were to blow in the opposite direction and the moviegoing public suddenly decided it will settle for nothing less than pure originality and good writing, there is certainly enough talent in Hollywood that could supply that demand. But back in the real world a growth in demand for originality is as likely as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth ditching Phil the Greek and shacking up with Pope Francis. Thus the cliche rules and rules supreme.
Naturally, cliches do move with the times because they have to — the ‘good girl holds back from being bedded’ routine would be risible in a modern film. Now it is de rigueur for ten minutes of no-holds barred sex pretty much from the outset. Yet essentially the cliches are the same, but in newer clothes.
I happen not to like cliches. After a lifetime working in newspapers, I have had it to here with cliches. At first they amuse, then they amuse because their use is so predictable. Finally, they irritate as little else can irritate once you allow it to do so.
One Hollywood cliche I spotted years ago, an evergreen that is about as entertaining as a day in the rain without a coat is the one when ‘old timers’ — whether soldiers, football players, mercenaries, an ageing band or what the hell you like — are summoned to come together for one last time and prove they can still cut it. And of course they always can. ‘There's life in the old dogs yet’ is the message, and ageing, geriatric cliche-loving moviegoers leave the cinema relieved that they aren’t quite yet dead (which, of course, they are, but . . .)
Invariably, the old timers in the ‘old timers’ films are themselves old-timer actors whose day came and went long, long ago, but who, like the old-timer characters they portray on screen, want to prove to the up-and-coming young turks that they can still cut it — ‘you snivelling upstarts, make no mistake, we’re still around!’
Well, of course, they aren’t at all really ‘still around’. They are nothing but old lemons out of which Tinseltown wants to squeeze the last of the juice in one last film before dementia carries them off and TV rushes in to make those mawkish ‘bios’ in which we are assured by other old timers not yet scythed down by Death just how fabulous they were and how we’ll never see their like again.
Such old-timer films in which the dried-up old lemons are squeezed ever more remorselessly are — for me at least — as embarrassing and pitiful as watching your grandad on the dance floor and realising he has no idea how bloody ridiculous he looks.
The film that always comes to mind when I think of the ‘old timers’ cliche is The Wild Geese (1978): in it old-timers and time-served ‘stars’ Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, Hardy Krüger and Stewart Grainger strut their stuff as mercenaries who — would you know it! — are called out of retirement to make more money for the Hollywood moguls. But there are others.
They all, again even Scorsese, simply parody themselves. Quite apart from all of Scorsese’s stylistic tricks, we get De Niro’s wry smile, we get his menacing smile, we get his rueful smile; we get Keitel’s menacing snarl, his menacing one-liner; we get Joe Pesci’s menacing calm, his menacing frustration; we get Pacino chewing the carpet, Pacino being wry, and on it goes.
The problem is that we are just too familiar with all their schtick. It is no longer fresh, charming and new, not by a million miles. And we sit there — well, this viewer did — with that rictus smile we employ so as not to hurt feelings when some old relative bores us rigid with an ‘amusing’ anecdote she or he has told us a thousand times before.
It certainly doesn’t help that all of them, Pesci, De Niro, Pacino and Keitel look way, way over 70, even when in flashback they are required to portray the young thugs on the make they once were — the digital whatever just does not work, and someone with a little integrity should have told the producers before this abortion was completed. Oh, but silly me: why bother with integrity and doing the right thing and wasting a good pay check?
In many ways the worst offender is Scorsese: he has proved time and again that he is an intelligent filmmaker, and he really should have known better. But he apparently didn’t, and so he pretty much serves up a parody of a Scorsese film: if you’ve seen Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Casino, you’ve seen The Irishman.
It has the lot: his ‘trademark’ tracking shots, his convoluted storyline, his freeze-frame to give a brief biographical outline of a newly introduced character, his ‘cool’ violence, his voiceover — it’s all there and it’s all more than a bit sad in that what was once exciting is now terrible, terrible old hat.
OK, you might be part of the 99pc who like their cliches served lukewarm and who is only too happy to applaud a faded nightclub singer warbling off-key and forgetting lyrics because you are nostalgic and you liked his hits when you were younger. That’s not me.
With all respect to Scorsese and the other old-timers, they really should have known better: it’s all very well having to make a living, but I can’t imagine any of them is on his uppers and needs those extra dollars. It can only have been vanity.
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