10 Things You Didn't Know About FallingDown

[Music] Michael Douglas is not having a very good day and he's taking his frustration out on street gangs fast food restaurants angry golfers and just about anyone else who gets in his way released in 1993 and directed by Joel Schumacher in falling down Douglas plays William Foster a man on the edge who was about to succumb and snap into the insanity of a lethal mental breakdown as well stuck in an LA traffic jam on a hot sweaty day out of frustration he decides to leave his car and walk across the hot city on foot so he can make it to his daughter's birthday but along the way after several encounters Buster succumbs more and more to a violent rage what starts out as self-defense sees Foster to set in to anger frustration and destruction we learn that Foster's ex-wife is terrified of him and he's always been short-tempered and that for a while he's volatile ways have been increasing the only person who can stop foster is sergeant Martin Prendergast played by Robert Duvall an older retiring police officer who gets bullied and pushed around by his peers who in order to stop Foster must take a stand and defend himself against those who belittle him and his controlling wife in this movie that explores the dangerous effects of being pushed around and downtrodden by society in which both the Foster and Prendergast characters lose their shielded inhibitions of being social outcasts as their inhibition crumbles and falls down just like London Bridge so today we are going to join Michael Douglas for his not so peaceful stroll across Los Angeles as we look into ten things that you may not know about hauling down the Joel Schumacher movie with the strongest social commentary so let's check it out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] did you man how's the food I think we have a critic number ten story behind that haircut in falling down we see Michael Douglas Don an almost nineteen fifties military styled haircut this look was surprisingly suggested by Joel Schumacher's hairdresser however Douglas didn't need any convincing as he loved the look as he felt it made the foster character look out of time and you know the haircut came and all of a sudden the whole kind of character came together okay I had a sense of somebody with this military background maybe been in the service at one time some of you worked in the defense industry like he is from another era like the 1950s or early 60s a time with a great promise of the future in which those dreams never came true a man who went wrong in life despite working hard and couldn't quite figure out exactly how he went so wrong so to speak don't forget me [Music] and to be honest with that hair and fit glasses and style of white shirt I always felt that foster did look like he came from the 50s he doesn't blend in with the early nineties surroundings and looks like a character from a 1950s sitcom he kind of had it feeling that he came from another time where he wished he hoped for at a time when things made sense hmm so could falling down subliminally be a movie about a time traveler from the past who arrives into the 90s and hates it so much he cracks number nine rioting got in the way of filming falling down was filmed in LA in April 1992 during the LA riots in fact the rioting that took place got so intense it was considered too dangerous for the production crew so filming had to temporarily stop with the filming then taking place at Warner Brothers Studios instead the irony is falling down as a movie about volatile tension which was being filmed in a city which was in fact going through volatile tension in fact the riots were so full-on they even delayed the movie and the movies production and development as one week after leaving the city the crew tried to return to Pasadena to continue with some more filming but they were denied permission to do so which caused the movie's filming to finally conclude in June 1992 so I guess you've got to give the movies production credit for managing to film a movie in a city that's rioting without actually capturing any of the mayhem on screen well except from the Michael Douglas acting mayhem of course number 8 cameo by a celebrity siblings [Music] one of my favorite scenes in falling-down is where Foster enters a macdonald styled fast-food restaurant and completely loses it because they no longer serve breakfast and then further gets angry because his food doesn't resemble how it is advertised in the pictures something that I guess a lot of people can often relate to and get frustrated by you ever heard the expression the customer is always right the scene is both disturbing and funny in that he threatens the restaurant with weaponry but something so trivial however there is something rather unique about the actress who plays Sheila the smirking smug looking restaurant worker as she was played by DD Phi far who is in fact the sister of famed Hollywood actress Michelle Pfeiffer and yeah you can kind of see a family resemblance and to give her credit it couldn't have been easy for her to be looking so sure of herself while wearing a cheeseburger hat so kudos to her for pulling that off number seven the man behind the music falling down was composed by critically-acclaimed composer James Newton Howard providing a theme that gives tension and unease with appropriate shock and melodrama and I've always the perfect score to go with a review of this nature Howard has been composing movies since 1985 and had previously worked with Schumacher on his haunting supernatural thriller Flatliner z-- Howard had also previously worked on pretty woman and my girl however after falling down he would go on to score other memorable 90s movies such as the fugitive outbreak Waterworld Space Jam laiá laiá and The Sixth Sense however for other 2000s onwards is where he really made it big scoring for movies such as The Dark Knight trilogy and The Hunger Games film series yet James Newton Howard has that along expansive career with an interesting variety lineup of movies that he has conducted number six falling down is Michael Douglas's personal favorite movie Michael Douglas is an accomplished film actor whom has been starring in and producing movies since the 60s and you may think that one of his more well-known performances like that of Gordon Gekko in wall street all his performance in fatal attraction might be up there among some of his own personal favorite movies that he has started when in fact falling down is his favorite film that he has ever worked on and when you read Douglas and interviews he gave concerning the movie at the time you can tell that falling down really resonated with him and that he gave it his all worth even Douglas his father the equally acclaimed Kirk Douglas also supposedly agrees that falling down displays his son's best work so when it comes to celebrating the works of Michael Douglas maybe we need to take Wall Street off its high pedestal and give falling down some lava maybe when it comes to his performances in movies we should for once give less attention to his greatest good speech read and watch that scene where he fires or grenadier an LA construction site simply because he didn't want the workers to be there in fact falling down is pretty intense and badass I mean why hasn't it become as much as we remembered classic as it should have done number five the movie offers creative inspiration [Music] I've mentioned a few times throughout this episode that falling down has become something of a forgotten gem but that said the movie still seems to have inspired many people particularly mainstream bands case in point the Iron Maiden song man on the edge from their 1995 album the x-factor the lyrics from the song pretty much word-for-word describe the events from the movie from being stuck in a traffic jam to foster's briefcase which only contains his lunch to his retaliation to a hostile society heck the song's chorus is the words falling down repeated over and over again then there's the Foo Fighters 2011 song walk which also took inspiration from falling down particularly the songs music video which features Dave Grohl dressed up as the foster character and recreates imagery from the movie once again focusing on the traffic jam and the lone walk in the hot temperatures city and the hostility and violence that is met along the way the falling down homage in this music video is almost to the tier number for casting possibilities [Music] the character William Foster was originally written as a man in his late thirties however while filming falling down Michael Douglas was in fact 48 but regardless he was the perfect man for the job creating a character who's totally unbalanced and threatening along with unpredictability while also being strangely sympathetic however other actors who were considered for the role of foster but even turn the part down or were unavailable include Dustin Hoffman Harrison Ford Robert DeNiro Robin Williams Jack Nicholson Jeff Bridges and Mel Gibson all those actors are very talented but I'm glad Douglas got the part as he went all out and gave the character depth and heart with a spectacular performance as for the role of Lester Prendergast he was played by Robert Duvall as several actors that were considered for that part included Gene Hackman Paul Newman and Walter math all devolve did a great job of the downtrodden older cop who has to stand up to the younger bullies who mock and ridicule him if anything while the foster character's story is a tragedy the prendergast character's story arc is actually a triumph creating an interesting contrast between the two main characters number three the movie had a South Korean boycott the movie calls the stir with Korean viewers on the account of a scene where the foster character visits a grocery store and has a violent altercation with the owner who was a South Korean character who was incidentally played by Michael Paul Chan who played data's father in the Goonies and would go on to star another Schumacher projects including Batman Forever and Batman and Robin due to the treatment of the grocery-store character at the hands of the foster character many people pledged to boycott the movie in South Korea so the movie's release in South Korea was indeed canceled I totally and wholeheartedly understand the upsetting reaction that this scene caused however I think the scene was meant to be horrible and grotesque I don't think for one second the movie was suggesting that this is how people should behave it was saying oh my God look at this behavior isn't it terrible number two directing possibilities [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Joel Schumacher gets a pretty tough time in the social media sphere mainly for his two directional Batman movies well particularly his golden opus of awful itself Batman and Robin oh the bat nipples fear the bat credit card and gas but the ice puns however he is still a very accomplished director whom has a long list of popular and successful films that he has directed including the Lost Boys st. Elmo's fire 8-millimeter a time to kill and phone booth so he has some great movies under his belt it's just I guess the awfulness of Batman and Robin is just too overpowering however he does a great job for falling down his directing is fast and snappy which gets your adrenaline pumping as we join Foster and his descent into madness he also perfectly captures the dirty sweaty grit of a hot summer's day in Los Angeles so in other words falling down is a great directional effort by Schumacher however before Schumacher got on board Dennis Hopper was considered for directing falling down although Hopper is most well known as an actor he still has had some directing experience namely directing Easy Rider but for whatever reason he didn't get the job - its Schumacher took on the realms of filming falling down number 1 falling down was nearly a made for cable movie the script for falling down was written by a biro Smith who to the best of my knowledge hasn't got any other writing credits well when he was trying to get his script for falling down out there for someone to pick up originally no studio wanted a bar a bit despite the involvement of Joel Schumacher probably due to some of its confronting subject matter in fact the script got turned down so much Smith was ready to abandon the idea of falling down to be a Hollywood movie and instead pitched the script to cable channels in favor of making it a made-for-tv cable movie however it was when Michael Douglas got wind of the script that the ball finally got rolling pardon me but that's [ __ ] Douglas loved the script and the rest was history Douglas was originally going to take time out from acting at the time having made fatal attraction and shining free back to back which had left him exhausted and wanting to spend more time with his family but falling down was enough for him to change his mind and get in front of the camera and what is arguably the greatest performance of his life so there you have it if it wasn't for Michael Douglas we probably wouldn't have falling down or at least falling down as we know it I highly recommend it it's a very powerful movie that confronts us with some troubling issues and leaves us thinking about it long after the credits roll so I say definitely check it out anyway I'm in T and if you ever see Michael Douglas strolling across a golf field don't Michael ridicule him or start hitting golf balls at him or you will end up dead that's a recipe for instant no no soup right now yeah okay guys just to conclude this week's poll that I conducted on the minty comedic art social media pages was our movie fans on social media too hard on Joel Schumacher with the poll I wanted people to keep in mind that he has done other movies other than his two batman ones and wow the results seem pretty conclusive 47 people said yes eight said yes and no and by yes and no I mean there were comments saying he's done good movies but Batman robbing in particular was just too terrible and only six people said no they aren't too hard on him thanks for joining in guys if you want to join in the polls in the future then just join in the minty comedic art social media pages on Facebook Instagram and Twitter bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: Minty Comedic Arts

Views: 972,582

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Id: uOcBoIRbF1s

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018