Hollywood’s Lost Opportunities: Bo and Luke Duke return to the General Lee
I once had an interesting discussion with Skip Press, the author of several books on screenwriting and an instructor of the topic in Hollywood. He was even kind enough to put me in touch with Steven Spielberg’s manager but in my endeavors I hit a brick wall of opposition there centering on the ridiculous progressive belief that characters written for the screen needed to be flawed. Skip Press is a good guy and a very helpful and generous person—but he and I disagreed fundamentally about the very nature of character narrative. He will tell writers that the best way to get a screenplay funded and made for the big screen in Hollywood is to write a comedy, a vampire flick, or a story filled with flawed characters that mass audiences can relate to. I on the other hand have no interest in such topics, my characters are always strong—nearly flawlessly strong, and they take life very seriously—certainly not a comedic flair for the irrelevant. There are no fart jokes in my material—so Skip tried to advise me where I was wrong and needed to correct my approach—which I was not interested in resulting in the referred to “wall.”
Over many years I stand by my argument, there are many vampire flicks that have come and gone, many comedies that have drifted off into irrelevancy—but the kind of films I have always loved and are still loved by millions even if the quality of the originals are cheesy–have stuck around. To that consideration, I wrote my novel Tail of the Dragon which stayed sold-out at Amazon.com nine months of the year my publisher carried it as a direct tribute to the Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey and the Bandit violating every modern law of content writing—because I still love those stories and wanted to update that type of content. And I’m not alone. Recently as an ad for Auto Trader illustrated with great spectacle the Duke boys returned to their famous car the General Lee to film a two-minute commercial that featured a good old classic car chase. Bo and Luke Duke were looking for a faster, more updated General Lee to outrun the more modern police cars in hot pursuit. It was a lot of fun, and a very clever campaign which can be seen above. To see how that commercial was made—which I found more interesting, see the making of it below.
http://www.hazzardnet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9352
The Dukes of Hazzard was a dynamic slapstick comedy and each of the characters was an exaggeration of a real life counterpart. Boss Hogg was the epitome of the crony capitalist corrupt to his very core with a name resembling a pig. Daisy Duke, who still has an impact on our modern culture with Daisy Duke shorts was a dream girl who was nice, loyal, beautiful, feminine enough to be everyone’s favorite mother, sister, or wife, but strong enough to hold her own with the guys. Then of course there were the Duke Boys, Bo and Luke. Both of the guys looked like male models and were good clean people who didn’t drink too much, did not smoke, did not curse, and always—always helped people who were in trouble. They were the closest thing to perfect human beings that there was on television and at the end of each show they always won. They always overcame any obstacle and achieved their objective without being hateful monsters.
Now, over 35 years later people still hunger for that show. They still want Bo and Luke Duke as the Auto Trader commercial eloquently displayed. Their popularity is so intense that there is even a 2014 Christmas album coming out featuring the characters from the Dukes of Hazzard. That old television show is still popular, even with young people who weren’t even born when it originally aired. It was nice to see Tom Wopat and John Schneider playing the Dukes again. Wopat was (63) in that Auto Trader commercial and still in fantastic shape. Schneider was (54) and has even been successful as a song writer and performer—after all he became a born-again Christian while living with none other than Johnny Cash. They are just good dudes who have spent their careers making decently clean entertainment. But for all of their lives no matter what they do elsewhere, they will always be known as the Duke Boys which they embrace openly.
That returns us back to the premise that Hollywood screenplays should feature, comedies, vampires, or some other emotional travesty to become a viable seller–and the answer is a resounding NO. Hollywood is losing massive amounts of money by producing that kind of crap as opposed to more of the material represented by the Duke Boys. Movie audiences want bold, flawless characters as much as possible. If they want flaws, they’ll look in the mirror for free. They go to the movies and watch television to see something greater—not to revel in mediocrity.
Hollywood as they currently are for the most part with only a few exceptions—mostly coming from filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and his brother, and a few others—are completely wrong in their selections of cinematic material to purchase and produce. The Hollywood studio system is a rudderless vessel caught in the tumultuous chaos of river rapids. By default their projects will move down river although not very efficiently. They bounce off a lot of rocks in the process and take on enormous damage—and they are slow to get where they want to go. Material like the Dukes of Hazzard may be frowned upon by the social reformers who think it’s better to get wet and banged up in the rapids of life toward humbling imperfection as opposed to just jumping over the river in the General Lee—but they would be wrong. Nobody remembers the loser who chooses to just cruise down the rapids of story telling—they remember the daredevils who seek to leap the gorge and the river all together—and those that survive are always loved and memorialized for their valor in the effort. That is what the Dukes of Hazzard mean to our 2014 American culture.
It is better to have characters who are so larger than life that they are silly compared to reality than to have grimly realistic characters who really aren’t much better than the slugs who often populate the lives of most people. It is in that yearning that Bo and Luke Duke still have star appeal and represent a time when men were men, women were women, and good wanted to defeat evil instead of make friends with it that fuels that hunger for the Duke Boys. Hollywood has missed many opportunities convincing nice screenwriters like Skip Press that they need to bend their projects to the will of movie producers who fall in love with Democratic politicians and feel good social policies. The core of America does not relate—so the lack of box office take and quick life-spans of most modern films—such as 22 Jump Street and Let’s be Cops will always lose their audience before the Duke Boys or a classic Clint Eastwood cop drama like Dirty Harry. Average is not memorable, but super good is—and in the context of television and movies in modern entertainment, there were few better than Bo and Luke Duke. Their short two-minute commercial for Auto Trader was better than most feature films and television from over the last 30 years—and that is truly a sad statement that only Hollywood can look in the mirror and blame.
Rich Hoffman
