Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

Menu
  • Home
  • About Wendy
  • Books
    • Books for Adults
      • The Wilder Life
      • I’m Not the New Me
      • Other Books and Anthologies
    • Books for Kids
      • A Garden to Save the Birds
      • It’s a Pumpkin!
      • The Princess and the Peanut Allergy
      • Wanderville
      • Wanderville 2: On Track for Treasure
      • Wanderville 3: Escape to the World’s Fair
  • More
    • Media and Publications
    • Wanderville Extras
    • Book Clubs and School Visits
  • Contact

Trailer trashing!

June 3, 2007 by Wendy

So Chris and I went to see Knocked Up this weekend (and we loved it, but more on that in a bit). And before the movie started we sat through the requisite commercials and videos and video-commercials and fake-movie-trailer-commercials, and then, finally, the actual trailers. One was for the new Hairspray movie, where they’ve replaced all the rare vintage R&B songs with self-important musical numbers and all the John Waters regulars with Scientologists. At least Tracy Turnblad is still fat in this version. As for the next two trailers—well, I’ll post links to them, but I feel compelled to describe them, too, since seeing them back to back was especially dismaying. Plus the huge prosthetic pimples don’t show up nearly as well on YouTube as they do on the big screen! So here we go:

Trailer 1: Dane Cook is the protagonist. We first see him at a wedding reception, where, during a toast, the bride calls him out as someone she dated before finally and triumphantly finding true love. Dane Cook has a reputation for being That Kind Of Guy, the one women sleep with just before meeting their husbands. But then he meets The Girl, and she is different. They stroll side-by-side down a scenic path, just about to kiss, when suddenly, BONK! she runs straight into a lamppost and falls the fuck over! Har har! True love ensues. Next comes the conflict and the gross-out parts: He has to sleep with a big fat girl with a mustache because he doesn’t want to be That Kind of Guy anymore and hopes he can break the patten by having sex with someone so ugly she’ll never get married. We see the fat girl’s huge prosthetic pimples and Dane Cook’s horrified expressions. But will he ever get with The Girl?

Trailer 2: Ben Stiller is the protagonist. We first see him at a wedding reception, where, during a toast, the bride calls him out as someone she dated before finally and triumphantly finding true love. Ben Stiller has a reputation for being That Kind Of Guy, the one who’s perpetually single and won’t ever commit. But then he meets The Girl. They ride bikes side-by-side down a scenic path, just about to kiss, when suddenly, BONK! she runs straight into a trash can and falls the fuck over! Har har! Marriage ensues. Next comes the conflict and the gross-out parts: On their honeymoon his new wife turns out to be weird and crazy and she farts loudly in the bathroom, but he puts up with it because he doesn’t want to be That Kind of Guy anymore. Then he meets The Other Girl, and she is different. We see the new wife’s huge prosthetic pimples and Ben Stiller’s horrified expressions. But will he ever get with The Other Girl?

From these you might conclude the following about men and women and love and relationships: Marriage is the ultimate goal for most women, who pursue it ruthlessly, though of course they have to be unoffensive enough to even deserve it in the first place! They are all hot, except when they’re disgusting! Running into stuff and falling down spectacularly are helpfully distracting things a woman can do any time a man is in imminent danger of expressing his feelings to her! And also, it’s funny! And…and I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I can stand to extrapolate from these, because I’m afraid that watching them too much will make my soul withered and small and sad.

But Knocked Up was nothing like this. I can sort of see how the trailer might indicate otherwise, with the childbirth scene serving as the women’s-bodies-are-scary joke and a of throwaway bit of dialogue used as the marriage-is-full-of-unsexy-bathroom-stuff joke. But those jokes have less to do with the movie itself than they do with the creepy latent phobias of the trailer editors and/or some horrible focus group somewhere. Really, the movie was terrific, though Chris and I own the Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared box sets so we’re probably biased.

And not for nothing, I read this article, and one of my favorite parts was where it mentioned all the stupid, totally puerile things that the guys in the cast do in real life. Because none of it seemed to involve laughing at fat women in bikinis, or pretty women falling flat on their faces, or any of the other thuggishly insecure little things that pass for funny in a lot of movies these days. No, it was mostly drinking games. And you know, I would rather watch a whole movie of Martin Starr playing Edward Fortyhands than one of these so-called “romantic comedies.” Hell, I would pay to just see the trailer.

Filed Under: Body, personal, popcult

Comments

  1. vj says

    June 3, 2007 at 10:51 pm

    This is why I never go to the movies. But I do want to see Knocked Up. Maybe when it reaches the second runs, so I won’t have to see how horribly women are? Sigh.

  2. mcm says

    June 4, 2007 at 10:04 am

    FYI, there was a Fresh Air last week which featured an interview with Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow. It wasn’t Terry Gross doing the interview, but her substitute is clearly a big fan… there’s a little overlap with the NY Times article, but it’s still worth listening to, I think!

  3. mcm says

    June 4, 2007 at 10:08 am

    Oh, also? You might be intrigued by this piece in which Buffy creator Joss Whedon examines the exploitative trailer for Captivity in the larger context of violence against women.

    http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

  4. Rebecca says

    June 4, 2007 at 11:35 am

    I saw all those trailers on Friday too. There was a super interesting article in Slate (“Unplanned Parenthood: What Knocked Up Gets Wrong About Women; http://www.slate.com/id/2167386/fr/flyout) that discussed how women are not as well represented in the film. I can’t even imagine what she would say about the trailers for the other wedding related films showing up before Knocked Up.

  5. solaana says

    June 4, 2007 at 11:43 am

    Yeah, I saw Knocked Up this weekend too, and caught that Dane Cook preview. The only other preview I remember (I was begging the whole time for the Transformers preview) was the one where Adam Sandler married the King of Queens. I am very tired of Jessicas Beal and Alba.

    But I love Martin Starr so hard, even if he does look like the American Taliban guy the whole time. Or! Sporting a pony tail.

  6. Kim says

    June 5, 2007 at 11:43 am

    Oh, this makes me happy. I’m going to see Knocked Up this afternoon.
    It’s actually almost physically painful to sit through the kind of movie trailers you mentioned. You KNOW the movie is going to be awful and offensive and you KNOW that it’s also going to be the number one film on it’s opening weekend (inevitably spawning… shudder… The Sequel). Audiences as a whole need a cinematic intervention.

  7. RJ says

    June 5, 2007 at 9:50 pm

    This is exhausting, isn’t it? You’ve managed to keep it on the light side, congrats — I am considerably more angry on the inside, as I’m sure you are, too.

  8. srah says

    June 6, 2007 at 4:51 am

    Oh, Bill Haverchuck is in this? I am late to the party, so I’m about halfway through the Freaks & Geeks DVDs and Bill is my favorite character of all. I look forward to seeing him in something else!

    (I’m here via Gleemonex’s comments)

  9. Gleemonex says

    June 6, 2007 at 12:59 pm

    Haverchuck is King!

  10. Jenny Lauck says

    June 6, 2007 at 8:52 pm

    I’ve been looking forward to seeing Knocked Up – glad to see you loved it.

Archives

  • March 2016
  • January 2014
  • December 2012
  • July 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • September 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • February 2010
  • December 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • December 2005
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005
  • May 2005
  • April 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005
  • December 2004
  • November 2004
  • October 2004
  • September 2004
  • August 2004
  • July 2004
  • June 2004
  • May 2004
  • April 2004
  • March 2004
  • February 2004
  • January 2004
  • December 2003
  • November 2003
  • October 2003
  • September 2003
  • August 2003
  • July 2003
  • June 2003
  • May 2003
  • April 2003
  • March 2003
  • February 2003
  • January 2003
  • December 2002
  • November 2002
  • September 2001
  • July 2001
  • May 2001
  • February 2001
  • January 2001

The Wilder Life on Flickr

Recent Press and Links

  • Essay: A Little House Adulthood For the American Masters documentary on Laura Ingalls Wilder, I contributed a piece to the PBS website about revisiting the Little House books.
  • Essay: The Christmas Tape (At Longreads.com) How an old audio tape of holiday music became a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.
  • Q & A With Wendy McClure Publishers Weekly interview about editing, Wanderville and more.

Connect with me

Visit Us On TwitterVisit Us On FacebookVisit Us On Instagram

Where else to find Wendy

  • Candyboots Home of the Weight Watcher recipe cards
  • Malcolm Jameson Site (in progress) about my great-grandfather, a Golden Age sci-fi writer.
  • That Side of the Family My semi-secret family history blog
Copyright © 2023 by Wendy McClure • All Rights Reserved • Site design by Makeworthy Media • Wanderville illustrations by Erwin Madrid