{"id":3946,"date":"2013-12-16T23:13:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T04:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3946"},"modified":"2013-12-23T05:20:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T10:20:51","slug":"rocky-vs-raging-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/rocky-vs-raging-bull\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocky vs. Raging Bull"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"grudge\"
\n

\nSince Hollywood decided to do Rocky vs. Raging Bull<\/a>, I figured I’d do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stories are a template. For practical purposes, the story is the plot (it actually isn’t, but just bear with me). A story is only as good as the way it’s told. Rocky<\/a> has a decent story, a story we’ve heard a million times, but it\u2019s told with care and craftsmanship.\u00a0 Rocky, the story, executed as the film Rocky, is transcendent\u2014whereas Rocky, the story, executed as the film The Mighty Ducks<\/a>, is okay I guess.\u00a0 Raging Bull<\/a> is not a story\u2014it’s information about a guy, dressed up stylistically. That doesn’t make it bad<\/i>, but, it makes the two difficult to compare.
\n
\nIf we look at Raging Bull\u00a0as what it is\u2014an experimental biopic\u2014it’s pretty good. It’s just boring though, because the guy it’s about is boring.\u00a0 Rocky, on the other hand, is about things larger than its characters.\u00a0 It’s about obstacles and determination, love and friendship.\u00a0 The \u2018plot\u2019 of Rocky is the structural nuts and bolts\u2014the \u2018story\u2019 is those nuts and bolts, plus thematic strokes laid on top.\u00a0 Raging Bull’s strokes are separate from its nuts and bolts.\u00a0 And the nuts and bolts don’t follow a structure\u2014they follow a chronology.\u00a0 There is no \u2018inciting incident\u2019 in Raging Bull.\u00a0 There is no \u2018conflict\u2019.\u00a0 There are just fights.<\/p>\n

The genius of Scorsese is that he uses the tools of cinema to evoke emotion. He knows how to make you feel something by moving the camera, how to put you in a room with his sound design. But, because he only<\/i> does that, whenever he does it it\u2019s noticeable. When other directors do it, it goes unnoticed, because they’re doing it to serve the story.\u00a0 Scorsese isn’t interested in stories\u2014he’s interested in cinematic emotions.\u00a0 And that’s cool, because he’s very expressive at it.\u00a0 And when his style is matched with a great script, like Goodfellas<\/a> or After Hours<\/a>, the results are transcendent.\u00a0 But, often, as a result of him simply not being interested in telling stories, you end up with Raging Bull, a bunch of footage about a mean guy who says stuff sometimes.<\/p>\n

John Alvidsen\u2014a guy you’ve never heard of unless you’re a bonafide movie geek, even though he made fucking Rocky and The Karate Kid<\/a> and Lean on Me<\/a>\u2014is a stylist, just like Scorsese.\u00a0 But his style is designed to enhance and express the story.\u00a0 Rocky is a common story, elevated by delightful minutia.\u00a0 Ebert was in love with the tiny, cute detail of Rocky naming his pet turtles Cuff and Link.\u00a0 That’s just one of a billion examples in the film.\u00a0 Stallone\u2019s script for Rocky is perhaps the most underrated of all time.\u00a0 He wrote it living under more dire circumstances than the character.\u00a0 He was living with Butkus, the dog in the movie, in a half square foot apartment in Philly.\u00a0 He showed the script to Irwin Winkler at an audition, and they made the movie for five cents on the streets it takes place on.<\/p>\n

The irony of it all is that Rocky is much grittier and more independent than Raging Bull, however, cultural perception would tell otherwise. While Rocky cemented itself as a touchstone, Raging Bull became an art house classic (because way less people cared about it, and it’s in black and white). But Rocky was made for far less money by a group of unknowns, whereas the star of Raging Bull had already won an Oscar.<\/p>\n

Rocky has become thought of as mere Hollywood gloss, by virtue of being so popular.\u00a0 Oscars, critical acclaim, box office success, sequels, and most notable, the fact that it has become fully ingrained into our lexicon and cultural ideals.\u00a0 Franchising has tarnished the memory of the gritty realism and intimate, poetic detail of the original.\u00a0 Nowadays, people think Raging Bull is the \u2018gritty, realistic, boxing movie\u2019\u2014not Rocky.<\/p>\n

Raging Bull is nothing more than an A&E biography, sans the interviews. If it was a straight documentary with talking head interviews and the fight scenes used as dramatizations, it might be one if the best documentaries ever made. But trying to be a story is just needless and confusing. The main character, Jake La Motta, has no direction, and therefore, no arc. He begins as a sleazy, mean-spirited, dumb guy, and ends that way, never learning a thing about himself or changing at all.\u00a0 \u2018Well that’s the point\u2019, you might say.\u00a0 But why?<\/i>\u00a0 The problem with that being the point is that it isn’t an idea.\u00a0 It says nothing about the human experience.\u00a0 Jake is not trying to do anything<\/i>. he’s just a bad person who sometimes boxes.\u00a0 He’s an abuser and a meathead.\u00a0 When he’s upset about taking the dive, we don’t know why.<\/p>\n

Protagonists do not have to change.\u00a0 Marty Mcfly and Indiana Jones, two of the great film protagonists, don’t really change.\u00a0 In fact, Indiana Jones has no real effect on the downfall of his antagonists at all. But in Raging Bull nothing even happens. <\/i>Indiana Jones and Back to the Future are adventure stories lead by obstacles.\u00a0 We understand exactly what Marty and Indy are trying to achieve and why.\u00a0 We are on their side.\u00a0 Raging Bull is beautiful to look at\u2014even beautiful to listen to\u2014but it\u2019s a multi-million dollar sleeping pill.<\/p>\n

It’s true that Jake\u2019s only obstacle is himself.\u00a0 That idea is supposedly expressed in the meticulous photography and editing of the fight scenes.\u00a0 But how?<\/i>\u00a0 The fight scenes are technically well done, but to what end?\u00a0 How does a dramatic slow motion shot, cut quickly with quick punching and elephant sound effects, express anything other than the brutality of the fight?\u00a0 You can make up all the reasons you want for how, but at the end of the day, they are just that\u2014made up.\u00a0 I’ve heard Scorsese say a million times how Jake is fighting himself and how hard they worked on the fight scenes in order to show that.\u00a0 But, how is he fighting himself?\u00a0 And why?<\/i>\u00a0 He never wants to be a good person, changes his ways, or even really accomplish anything in boxing.\u00a0 He basically just grimaces and grunts stupid things like “Let\u2019s be friends” after his arbitrary outbursts.<\/p>\n

In contrast, I don’t think I even need to explain the story elements in Rocky.\u00a0 Even if you’ve never seen it ,you know what it’s about.\u00a0 If you haven’t seen Raging Bull, you might assume it’s vaguely similar, but they couldn\u2019t be farther apart.<\/p>\n

The shots in Rocky actually express things, which is partly why it’s so beloved. Expressive shots give the audience something to grab onto and understand.\u00a0 There’s a great moment in Rocky when Mickey, the great opportunist, sees his chance at the limelight and wants to manage Rocky.\u00a0 Rocky sees through it and kicks him out.\u00a0 But, as Mickey is leaving, Rocky keeps yelling, and while he does, he realizes that Mickey actually does have something to offer.\u00a0 Mickey is out the hall and down the street by that point, and Rocky catches up to him and relents.\u00a0 We’ve seen this moment a million times before, and will see it millions more.\u00a0 So how do you depict something like this in an appropriate way and in the best way dramatically?\u00a0 In Rocky, Alvidsen stays in the wide.\u00a0 When Rocky comes outside and catches up with Mickey, we’re in the wide shot, and the elevated subway train passes by just as they shake hands.\u00a0 A lesser filmmaker would’ve cut to the coverage, gone in for the close ups.\u00a0 But in Rocky, we don’t even hear the dialogue. The visuals tell you the dialogue, so that we don’t even need to hear it.<\/p>\n

There is more life and humanity, more filmic ingenuity and genius in that one small moment than in all of Raging Bull. So yeah, Rocky wins. Duh.<\/p>\n

As a little side note:\u00a0 Grudge Match<\/a> isn\u2019t the first time Stallone and De Niro have shared the screen.\u00a0 They were both in James Mangold\u2019s vastly underrated little gem from 1997 called Copland<\/a>.\u00a0 Both are acting against type, and they shine, especially in scenes together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"grudge\"
\n

\nSince Hollywood decided to do Rocky vs. Raging Bull<\/a>, I figured I’d do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stories are a template. For practical purposes, the story is the plot (it actually isn’t, but just bear with me). A story is only as good as the way it’s told. Rocky<\/a> has a decent story, a story we’ve heard a million times, but it\u2019s told with care and craftsmanship.\u00a0 Rocky, the story, executed as the film Rocky, is transcendent\u2014whereas Rocky, the story, executed as the film The Mighty Ducks<\/a>, is okay I guess.\u00a0 Raging Bull<\/a> is not a story\u2014it’s information about a guy, dressed up stylistically. That doesn’t make it bad<\/i>, but, it makes the two difficult to compare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,17],"tags":[583,3435,65,37,3434,576,3432,3433,564,567,1611,1003,699,3430,104,185,3436,3431,3429],"class_list":["post-3946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-gregsessays","tag-after-hours","tag-copland","tag-goodfellas","tag-greg-deliso","tag-grudge-match","tag-indiana-jones","tag-john-alvidsen","tag-lean-on-me","tag-martin-scorsese","tag-raging-bull","tag-robert-de-niro","tag-robert-deniro","tag-rocky","tag-rocky-vs-raging-bull","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-sylvester-stallone","tag-the-karate-kid","tag-the-mighty-ducks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3946"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3955,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946\/revisions\/3955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}