Nobody's saying the plots of all movies should fit on a ketchup bottle top but, as high-concept movies have proved down the ages – from I Was a Teenage Werewolfto Snakes on a Plane– there is a place for the simply stated premise. Say hello to Rutger Hauer and Hobo with a Shotgun, writes DONALD CLARKE
WHAT WAS it Louis Armstrong said? “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” He knew a thing or two. Start trying to define the music and you risk tangling yourself up in endless semantic knots. We can get ourselves in similar trouble when we attempt a definition of the high-concept movie. The short answer is that the premise of such a film can be easily expressed in one relatively succinct sentence. You know the sort of thing. Eddie Murphy plays a blue- collar cop in Beverly Hills. Michael J Fox (or Michael Landon) is a teenage werewolf. Max Von Sydow plays chess with Death.
Hang on a moment. That last one was Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. It surely requires a stretch to allow that venerable art film into the high-concept pavilion?
Still, as Armstrong would have agreed, you know the music when you hear it. The unmistakable sounds of the high concept will be emanating from selected cinemas with the release of Hobo with a Shotgun. Based on a fake trailer from Quentin Tarantino's and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse, the picture sits at one dazzling end of the high-concept spectrum. Films that actually contain the entire plot in their title – think, say, of Monster vs Aliensor I Married a Communist– can be seen as examples of the high-concept project in its purest, most distilled form. These are high-high-concept movies. The malt liquor of their genre.
As you don't need to be told, the diverting Hobo with a Shotgunconcerns the violent adventures of a discontented homeless chap. A righteous avenger rather than a motiveless maniac, the unnamed gentleman of the road – made flesh by an imminently suitable Rutger Hauer – brandishes his weapon as part of a scheme to clean up the ironically named Hope Town. The picture takes the odd meander down Subplot Alley, but it never strays too far from its remit. Why, there's so much of the classic high-concept juice here the film might almost count as a pastiche of the format. Surely not.
If one were inclined towards facetiousness, one might suggest that (lumbering cliche alert) the high-concept is as old as cinema itself. After all, among the earliest films ever shown in public we find the Lumière brothers' Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station. First exhibited in 1896, the 50- second picture does, indeed, depict the entry of a train to the titular terminus. The myth that punters ducked to avoid the hurtling locomotive has since been discredited, but it's fair to assume that few attendees complained that the title was misleading.
It is, however, cheeky to define such early efforts as high-concept movies. With only the guts of a minute to play with – and with few cinematic conventions established – the pioneering film-maker was compelled to keep his or her projects uncomplicated. Other early Lumière films include The Blacksmiths, Fishing for Goldfishand Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon. No Swamp Women vs Lizard Menfor the Lumière boys.
When cinema became a commercial business, producers quickly realised that an easily expressed concept could make meetings with studio bosses fly by. Charlie Chaplin takes care of a child? Douglas Fairbanks is a pirate? We can be shooting by sundown, Mr Laemmle.
The first golden age of the true highconcept came, however, during the drive-in era. Ponder classic films in the genre and you realise that, to qualify, a film’s premise must have an immediately discombobulating effect on the expectant cinema fan. The key response is not “That sounds interesting” but “Good grief! How did they ever think of that?” The late 1940s and 1950s saw the progress of exploitation movies into the outer corners of the mainstream. If you are sitting in your car, juggling a hot dog, straining to hear the dialogue on tinny speakers, you don’t want to have to disentangle an overly complicated plot. One mad notion, expressed plainly on the poster, will do very nicely, thank you.
This era saw the rise of that cornerstone of high concept – those films that announced "I was Something or Other or I Did Something or Other". I Was a Teenage Werewolf(the Landon incarnation) emerged in 1957. I Married a Communistcrept out in 1949. I Was a Teenage Frankensteincompeted directly against Landon's lycanthrope. Even masters such as Howard Hawks got in on the act. That director's I Was a Male War Brideparodied the construction as early as 1949.
Mix in quality pictures such as Invasion of the Body Snatchersand The Day the Earth Stood Stilland it becomes clear that the high concept was thriving many decades before the term became commonplace.
Much has been written about the influence of populist 1950s entertainment on the directors who colonised 1980s cinema. It is, surely, no coincidence that – following a period when drive-in fans returned to telly – the Reagan era marked the point at which the high concept took over popcorn cinema.
Steven Spielberg, a child of 1950s pop culture, set the wheels whirring with some film about a shark. But the vulgar effusions of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson really established the form. (Indeed, Charles Fleming's muck-raking biography of Simpson, the archetypal blockbuster producer, is actually titled High Concept.) Top Gun, Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop, Armageddon: none of these films can have required more than a brief sentence to secure their mighty financing. The question "what's it about?" became increasingly easy to answer. "Tom Cruise plays a fighter pilot," you enthusiastically tell your date. "Bruce Willis stops an asteroid from destroying the Earth," you would remark a few years later. Good luck explaining the plot of Bergman's Fanny and Alexanderin such succinct terms.
If you want to see high concept in action look no further than the Schwarzenegger comedy. Arnie is a kindergarten teacher. Arnie’s twin is short and fat. Arnie gets pregnant. The mind boggles when considering which ideas didn’t make it into cinemas. Arnie becomes a ballet dancer? Arnie marries Sylvester Stallone? Arnie becomes governor of California?
As is always the case with any populist movie craze, the high-concept movement was decried as the beginning of the end for quality cinema. Glance at your local megaplex and you will find much to complain about. Bruckheimer, now a lone tyrant following Simpson's untimely death, has prospered with such unlovely projects as the Pirates of the Caribbeanfilms (Johnny Depp is a buccaneer) and the Transformersmovies (cars become robots). But the main problem with these films is their betrayal of the initial high concept. The longer the Piratesfilms went on, the more muddled the plots became and the less focused the characters seemed. Just give us squabbling seadogs, Jerry. Hours of the Transformersfilms progressed without a single truck turning into a single clanking behemoth. That isn't what you promised us in that Bel Air meeting five years ago.
Let's stand up for the purity of the high-concept movie. No sane person wants the entire medium to be taken over by films whose plots can be summarised on a ketchup-bottle cap. But there should always be a place for neat, populist entertainments that hang around astonishing surmises. This writer has, for years, been trying to sell I Was a Teenage Godzillato 20th Century Fox.
In a nutshell: A potted history of the high-concept film
1 ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN AT LA CIOTAT STATION (1895)
The pitch: All right, Marcel. You have a station. You have a train. The train comes into the station. Sound’s mundane, yes? But here’s the thing. It all happens on a big white sheet hanging in a darkened room. It will catch on. I swear.
2 FREAKS (1932)
The pitch: There’s this bunch of carnival freaks, one of whom inherits a bunch of money and gets seduced by the avaricious trapeze artist. Then they . . . Okay, forget that bit. It’s about freaks.
3 I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)
The pitch: Look, I know zombies are a hard sell. It’s not as if they’re ever going to become the stuff of comic books, hit movies, pastiches of Victorian novels and series on – what’s that new-fangled thing called? – television. But it’s about a beautiful woman who walks out with a comatose ghoul. They’ll love it.
4 ROPE (1948)
The pitch: Okay, listen carefully. It’s about two guys who kill their pal and then have a bunch of people round for cocktails. But that’s not the hook. It’s all filmed in one continuous take. The gimmick is going on behind the camera. Sure, the audience will give a damn. They’re not morons. Are they?
5 HARVEY (1950)
The pitch: So, it’s about a drunk whose best friend is an imaginary rabbit. Good, isn’t it? Yeah, so it’s making fun of a serious symptom of substance abuse. Lighten up. This is 1950. Nobody cares about that stuff yet.
6 THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)
The pitch: What’s the only thing more exciting than lot’s of stuff happening? Nothing happening, that’s what. This alien arrives and – to teach us a lesson – makes all sources of power grind to a halt. They’ll call it a classic in 50 years.
7 JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1966)
The pitch: What are the two biggest genres at the drive-ins? Westerns and horror flicks. So, let's get a gunslinger on screen with a sexy relative of Dr Frankenstein. There's more. We put the film on a double bill with Billy the Kid vs Dracula.
8 AIRPORT ‘77
The pitch: Okay, the last one had a small plane crash into the jumbo. The first one had a mad bomber on board. We’ve done flying planes to death. This time the 747 crashes into the sea and sinks. Get it? It’s a flying drama underwater. As usual, every guest murderer from Columbo is on board.
9 KINDERGARTEN COP (1990)
The pitch: Arnie teaches kindergarten. Why thank you very much. I would like lots of money and an option to start shooting next Wednesday.
10 SNAKES ON A PLANE (2006)
The pitch: There are snakes on a plane. Well, that’s all we have actually. But we put the phrase up on to the internet yesterday and it’s caught on. Just get a star on board – Sam Jackson, sounds about right – and we’ll have a script (of sorts) ready when he arrives.
