Anyone who’s ever read more than three puff pieces knows that movie press tour soundbites tend to fall into three or four basic categories. Actors tell you about the weight they lost or gained, how their character is or isn’t different from their real personality, so-and-so was a joy to work with and/or humorously eccentric, and then the writer or director of the movie tells you how “at its heart, ___ is really just a story about ____.”
Here are just a few examples from the first page of Google results:
“At its heart, Simple As That At is a film about living by your own rules.”
“At its heart “Twilight” is a story about just that — true love prevailing against all odds.”
“At its heart, Breaking Bad is a story about family and violence.”
“At its heart, Wolf in White Van is not a story about redemption so much as survival.”
“At its heart, [Blackish] is really a sitcom about a happy, loving family wanting to keep ties to their heritage while enjoying the trappings of success.”
As you may have noticed, the most popular version of this cliché is the one where the story is actually about family. I don’t know if this one started with The Godfather, but for some reason, creators think that the best way to sell their movie or show is by deflecting the interesting parts and comparing it to the most boring thing in the world. Spies? Pilots? Robots that turn into cars? Well sure, it’s about that, sort of, but mostly it’s about family. And not like biological family, but more like a metaphor for any group of people standing near each other for a while which I think is more meaningful.
The latest creator to drop that old “it’s about family” chestnut? Fury director David Ayer. Here’s what Ayer told Hitfix:
“I wanted to tell a story about just a family. It’s a study of a family that happens to live in a tank and kill people.”
And also:
“And at the end of the day, like I said, it’s about a family, so this is kind of the — this is like a crazy Thanksgiving dinner.”
Wow, he combined “at the end of the day” AND “it’s actually about family,” this guy must’ve had some serious media training. If we listened to directors on press tours, we’d find ourselves asking, “Gee, what story about family do I want to see today… The story about family where Bryan Cranston sells meth to support his family while he has cancer? The story about family where Brad Pitt kills Nazis with a tank? Ooh, or maybe the story about family where Claire Danes has to balance her OCD and penchant for the jazz trumpet with trying to stop a home-grown terrorist she’s in a relationship with from plotting to kill the vice president?”
So many stories about family, so little time. So that’s your FilmDrunk Moratorium for this week: stop saying your movie or show is really about family, especially if it’s actually about something way more interesting.