Today, we shall be taking a look at a Great Moment in Literature for the 5th time....
Previous entries in this time-honored series:
1. Bob Backlund
2. Stan Gable
3. Piccolo
4. Washington
Great Moments actually started tongue in cheekingly as a joke to stuffy people who don't consider certain mediums as art. I remember hearing Roger Ebert claim that no video game will ever be as art-like as a movie... and thinking ... well, why not?
Art is art. You know? Video games can be as good as movies, wrestling can be as good as classical literature, Japanese cartoons can invoke the deepest passions of the human experience, B-movies can be as memorable as A-movies.
Today's article will focus on a great character from movie history ... Murray Futterman.
As you may know the fellow who portrayed Murray, Dick Miller, passed away yesterday at the age of ninety.
Murray Futterman
Kingston Falls, an idealistic town, full of word-by people who live honest and by their word, is the setting for Gremlins One. Peaceful, serene ... American as apple pie and as vintage cars. Happy families living the American way. My my, what a beautiful and hospitable place.
Unfortunately looming like a curse upon this quaint hamlet is a scourge of miniature and almost-loveable monsters who will turn Kingston Falls into a nightmarish wave of violence. No one saw it coming ... no one. Except for Murray Futterman.
Murray is a grumpy old man who thinks foreigners are putting "gremlins" in his car. He is seen as a whacky but likeable old fool. No one takes him seriously. His warnings of dire situations are passed off as the ramblings of an old soul who's brain isn't what it used to be.
His foretellings of Gremlins are not heeded ... and Kingston Falls pays the price as the foretold Gremlins come to be and wreck havoc amongst the citizenry. Hoy Axton (this guy wrote songs for ELVIS!), his son, and that super-super-super hot chick from Fast Times at Ridgemont High now have to spend the rest of this family Christmas film ... fighting monsters!
Why did they not heed Murray's sagely advice and expect this and lock themselves away in their homes and barricade themselves in pillow forts made from couch cushions? Nobody knows.
To add injury (and death?) to insult ... Murray Futterman is mangled in the teeth of a snow plow driven by the aforementioned Gremlins. The good always die young, n'est ce pas?
Luckily, Billy (Hoyt Axton's son) and Phoebe Cates (who's also in Drop Dead Fred with the late/great Rik Mayall) ... manage to expose them to sunlight and all the Gremlins melt into some green sludge which is very cool.
At the end of Gremlins 1 it is assumed the heroic Futterman died in battle against the Gremlin horde ... but could a Gremlin operated snow plow really spell the end for someone as great as Murray Futterman? The audience is left to ponder this for six entire years as they feverishly awaited the release of....
Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Billy Peltzer, the so-called protagonist of the Gremlins films, has moved from the idyllic confines of beautiful Kingston Falls to the hustly and bustly Big City to get a metropolitan job in a great big sky scraper of a concrete tower in the downtown core.
The times? The times they are a changin'. The Big City 'aint Kingston Falls, Billy. You better acclimate yourself quickly to concepts such as "Take Home Pay" and "Amortization" and "Metro Sexuality" ... how is a small town kid to cope with such concepts? Not only that ... but lest we not forget that Billy's office building is ... INFESTED WITH GREMLINS! Oh no!
Poor Billy... he already survived one dance with a Gremlin horde and now they are back for round two. Is there any hope at all? How much more can they pound on top of this poor soul? How much more can he take? He moved away from his hometown, he's homesick, he's trying to acclimate his small town self to the Big City ... trying to make a living ... and now ... he's gotta do a second tango with a mess of Gremlins!
There's a knock-knock-knock on Billy's apartment door, he has a visitor. But who? Who could it be....
.....It's Murray Futterman!
The snow plow didn't get 'im! He's as fit as a fiddle! He's rip, rap, and ready to rock! You think something like getting mashed up by a industrial snow plow is gonna stop Murray Futterman? He survived World War II! You think he's gonna be done in by a plow? I don't think so!
This time it's personal between Murray and these stinky, idiotic, gross, slimy Gremlins! In one Futterman scene, a Gremlin tries to scratch up his face, but Murray 'aint foolin' around. He sends that monster in a free fall for a slow ride down a long elevator shaft and lets that slimy Gremlin know something that the audience already has figured out ...
"Don't mess with Murray Futterman!!"
-M. Futterman, Gremlins 2 (1990)
Play time? Play time is over ya Gremlins. Play time is Over. Next time the camera shines on our Hero he is kicking ass and taking names ... and the name of his next opponent? Bat Gremlin.
The highly respected Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies, an educational foundation devoted to research into Gremlins 2, describes this scene, the Bat Gremlin scene, as:
"The only Gremlin capable of surviving in sunlight, the Bat Gremlin ends up encased in cement, hardening into a gargoyle. This fate is a parable for the futility of individual rebellion. It is not destroyed but neutralized: captured and transformed into an aesthetic fixture." -IG2S (Sept, 2018)
To the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies, the Gremlin brood are always seen as victims of some mass injustice and they are heroes who's futility should be viewed as honorable (if not pedantic).
I gotta disagree here. These Gremlins are a buncha jerks. They are. They are not the good guys. Sorry, but we all know who the Protagonist of Gremlins 2 is ... we all know this in our hearts ... even the Gremlins 2 Institute ... but won't admit it. We won't admit that Murray Futterman is the HERO of Gremlins 2 even though we all know it!
Now, to truly understand this scene, you need to familiarize yourself with Dick Miller's work. This scene is a big shout out to Bucket of Blood which is one of the funniest movies ever created. In Bucket of Blood, Dick portrays the klutzy cafe busboy Walter Paisley ...
Bucket of Blood
Bucket is a film from 1959 which satirizes the "beat" or "beatniks" of the era. The greatest thing about this movie ... is it STILL works to this day.
Last article I was making fun of the "beatniks" who "dig" this and "dig" that ... and even in 2019, I can't come up with as funny lines to parody beatniks than this 1959 film does. It has lines that not only work today but make MORE sense today, I remember a line where like all these beats are gathered around and making breakfast and one of the beats is all like ... "yo, cousin, I have some flax seed oil, daddy-o, and some organic gluten-free wheat germ flour ... let's cook up a mess of organic pancakes!"
The beat poetry they do in the Cafe scenes is thick, man. They lay it on THICK, dude. Wow. It's funny because Walter Paisley loves the beat poets diatribes and commits it to memory ... echolaliacally repeating it ad nauseum throughout the entire film.
Walter Paisley is a bus boy at the Beatnik cafe that wants to be part of the "scene, man" but he's just too much of a klutz and too much of a slob to be in the In crowd, daddy-o.
Yet, one day he accidentally kills his cat while trying to save it from being stuck in wall by stabbing at the wall with a butter knife ... and freaks ... so he dumps a bunch of clay all over the cat and the knife.
Ironically enough, the "sculpture" is viewed as a genuine masterpiece by the beat community and Walter is crowned King of the Beats and is pressured to continue his sculpting career ... fame, avarice, and lust for the ladies leads him to create more and more larger-scale and ever-more heinous "sculptures" ... is anyone safe?
Let's Get Back to the Futterman....
Murray grabs the horrible bat Gremlin monster, choke slams 'em into a cement mixer, and pours cement all over the hideous fiend! The Bat Gremlin slinks free and on broken wings flies high atop a building where the cementation process finishes its due course .. and Bat Gremlin is encased in stone high upon a mountain-esque tower ... an urban sky scraper ... modern man's tower ... modern humanity's minaret .... to sit like a Gargoyle-Gremlin for centuries to come.
Yeah.....
That Bat Gremlin got what was coming to it. He didn't die for some hokey-honorable cause as the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies would have you believe. Bat Gremlin got what was coming ... that Bat Gremlin got PAISELIED! BAM! HE GOT WALTER PAISELIED! WHAM BAM!
Gremlins 2 Institute
Everyone is familiar with the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies by now, I as far back as a year ago or more, have been trying to call attention to the outright lack of resources allotted for Murray Futterman related studies by the institute.
The Institute is bogged down in their Myth of Sisyphus ways and nihilistic tendencies. They refuse to acknowledge any form of light at the end of the Gremlins 2 tunnel. They would rather bathe in nihilism than to even give one ounce of thought that possibly this Brave New Gremlins 2 World they fear of is not written in stone and is easily debunked and rebuked if they only invested six seconds of thought into the glorious actions of Murray Futterman.The Brave New Gremlins 2 World they preach of is but a cautionary tale and nothing more... for there will always be Murray Futtermans who will always be there to bail humanity out of even its most dire circumstances.
I will leave this question to you....
Were the Gremlins honorable creatures who's actions against the futile plight of their existence nothing more than pedantic fooleries .... or were they big jerks who deserved to be turned to stone by the greatest action hero of our times?
Murray Futterman, Walter Paisley, Dick Miller ... we salute you.
