.jeri.

When I was first home from surgery, it seemed like we had people over every night of the week bringing us entertainment and food. I highly recommend it. The Manns came over and made us dinner and an insanely good dessert that I need to get a recipe for so I can post it online for you all to share. We wanted to watch a fun movie together, so we browsed the Roku and came across this movie from my queue. I can't remember who recommended it to me, and I had never heard what it was about, especially how it was made.

I would almost say that this movie feels like film noir meets Airplane! It's a classic black and white tale of a detective who uncovers a complicated and sinister plot. Steve Martin stars, and Rachel Ward co-stars as his love interest. I think they are the only two original characters in the movie. The rest are famous. We know them from many classic movies. Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart... All of them are spliced into this movie, which is made up of scenes starting Martin and Ward intertwined with shots from old movies.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is essentially a feat in creative writing end outstanding editing. I think I was the first to catch on to the use of an old scene, and it was funny to watch as each person in the room realized they were watching old movies spliced into a new one. The fun comes in how well one knows his classic flicks as well as how well Martin and the legendary actors are connected to each other.

I can't imagine sitting down and writing a script that finds a way to incorporate all of these clips into one plot, and I especially can't imagine what it would be like to concoct a dialog from previously written dialog and mix it together with new material. And it all happens seamlessly, except in the cases where the old material is meant to stand out. From the hands of Martin, George Gipe, and (also directing) Carl Reiner, it all seems easy. Martin also does a great job of convincing us that he is actually interacting with all of the other actors.

And beyond all of that, the movie is actually funny, especially the exchanges between Martin and Ward. There are a lot of running gags, some physical humor, and some funny scenes that are written solely for the purpose of including a specific clip from an old movie.

The further away I get from this movie, the more I think about how cool of an idea it was to make it. While the payoff at the end isn't as hilarious as I expected it to be, it's the process itself that impressed me, along with the talents of Steve Martin as a writer and a parody actor. Great stuff.