We watched the bilingual buddy film Bon Cop, Bad Cop this weekend. What a riot. I don’t think you need to be Canadian or know Canada really well to get the movie, but it sure helps. It starts Colm Feore (Storm of the Century, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Trudeau) as the English speaking cop from Ontario and Patrick Huard as his Quebecois counterpart. The film is shot in both official languages, so you will probably need the subtitles to understand at least half the film, especially when the forensics guy gets going on a roll.
Anyone who thinks there’s not much difference between Canadians and Americans should watch this film. It is so Canadian it hurts. It pokes fun at English/French relations, Canada’s love of hockey, and just about every other Canadian stereotype you can think of. And it’s just plain funny. The chemistry between Feore and Huard works perfectly and the smooth transitions between English and French by all characters is fantastic. It’s campy, but that works, too. The “high” scene in front of the QPP boss is as funny as the famous brownies episode of Barney Miller.
My total output for the weekend amounted to about 2500 words of a new short story. Not bad, considering I tossed away everything I wrote on Saturday. My upcoming Storytellers Unplugged essay (on the 17th) will explore why I chose to do this.
I picked up the new issue of Esquire (I’m so not a regular reader of that magazine!) for the King short story “The Gingerbread Girl” (a 21,000-word suspense story that’s good for some fingernail biting and pulse pounding moments), but I was equally interested in the profile on Angelina Jolie. Overexposed though she may be, it was an interesting look at some of what makes her tick these days—which may not be what you think. Despite the sultry cover photo, it’s not a pictorial, and the article is constructed around an interesting thesis.
