Friday Minute
No. 101 | May 21, 2010

Six Packs

Our theme this week
Rat Packs, and other “Packs” that made movies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Holmby Hills Rat Pack
Tuesday         —   Rat Pack
Wednesday    —   New Rat Pack
Thursday        —   Brat Pack

Four “Packs” down, two to go, according to our theme title, so let’s double up today as we close out the week of Six Packs.

Frat Pack

 

We’ve come a long way since the days of Bogart and Sinatra.  Just about anybody can be in the Pack these days.

The Frat Pack should have been the collective name for John Belushi, Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert, and the guys from Animal House in 1978.  They must not have been thinking at the time.  After the Brat Pack hit it big in the ’80s, the Frat Pack seemed too good a label not to use for someone.  At the time of the 2003 comedy Old School, featuring a group of thirty-somethings, played by Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell, who start a fraternity, the entertainment media had found their guys.

The actors usually identified as the Frat Pack may be a shade on the old side, but they do have the virtue of never having grown up.  Other members of the Pack include Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and the second Wilson brother, Owen.  Steve Carell may have gotten a late start, but he’s now one of the brothers too.

The Frat Pack filmography includes some of the more popular comedies of the decade or so.  Not many (or any) have to do with college life, but on the other hand, no one can deny that they are often sophomoric.

They can be pretty funny too.  Here are a few of the films:

Meet the Parents (2000):  Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson.

Zoolander (2001):  Ben Stiller (director too), Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn.

Starsky & Hutch (2004):  Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell.

Anchorman:  The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004):  Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson.

Tropic Thunder (2008):  Ben Stiller (director too), Jack Black.

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Splat Pack

It’s no mystery how these guys earned their name.  Horror.  This gang is into the gory and the gruesome, and in the past decade they have taken a not-so-respectable genre and pushed it to new levels of outrage.  This Pack is not a group of actors, but directors.  They don’t get big budgets to make movies—usually $10 million or less—but they spend it to maximum effect.  They know how to push the audience’s buttons, and they have earned a loyal following of fans, mostly young ones, for their films.

The Splat Pack includes directors who are among the big names in horror working today:  Alexandre Aja, Darren Lynn Bousman, Neil Marshall, Eli Roth, James Wan, and the aptly dubbed Rob Zombie (not his birth name).  This group aims to push limits, and it’s no surprise they’ve been criticized for going too far.  When Darren Lynn Bousman, twenty-something director of Saw III, was in a dispute with the Motion Picture Association of America, which claimed his 2006 film was too dark, here’s what Bousman had to say:  ”That’s what I set out to do!  It’s a horror movie.”

A short list from the Splat Pack filmography, among them some of the sickest, scariest, most over-the-line, and most violent movies ever made:  Cabin Fever (2003, Eli Roth), Saw (2004, James Wan), Hostel (2005, Eli Roth), Saw II (2005, Darren Lynn Bousman), The Hills Have Eyes (2006, Alexander Aja), Halloween (2007, Rob Zombie), and Scanners (2009, Darren Lynn Bousman).

In the past decade we have witnessed unspeakable violence, in this country and around the world.  We have been engaged in bloodier wars than we’ve seen in many years.  We have seen debates about the use of torture as a matter of national policy.  It’s no surprise to me that we’ve seen a rise in ultraviolence at the cineplex.  There’s something going on, and like it or not, these filmmakers, and their audience, seem to be in touch with it.

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Tropic Thunder (2008)
Ben Stiller, director
Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black
Trailer

 

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Hostel (2005)
Eli Roth, director
Trailer

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Quote of Note
Pam:  I had no idea you could milk a cat!
Greg:  Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples.
Jack:  I have nipples, Greg.  Could you milk me?
—Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo), Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), Meet the Parents (2000)

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