Final Draft for 'The Huge Snooze'

As clearly seen, the role and purpose of my main product, which is my short film entitled The Huge Snooze, was to create a postmodern take on the genre of Film Noir, by parodying many of the genres conventions, in terms of certain shots used, the narrative, the characters and the props and costumes etc. For example, the protagonist's internal monologue is heard through the use of a hard-boiled non-diagetic narration; typical of Film Noir, however  in this case the narration is riddled with subtle jokes, establishing that this is a comedy. Every aspect of the film is a parody, even down to the films ident. Not only does the title 'A One Rehearsal Picture' linguistically resemble 'A Universal Picture', the film company who made most of the famous Film Noir movies, but the idiom replicated the 1930's-40's Universal one; with a DC3 propeller plane orbiting the Earth as it spins on it's own axis and then disappearing from view around the unseen part of the planet. I have also put a lot into the story in order to pastiche popular examples of Film Noir; in particular, possibly the most famous Film Noir movie, The Big Sleep featuring Humphrey Bogart. Not only is my film's title, The Huge Snooze, a clear parody of The Big Sleep, but the film following the life of Private Investigator Marshal Mallow, a clear homage to Bogart's portrayal of the character Phillip Marlowe. I even went as far as to put the book of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler on Mallow's desk as an intertextual reference. Another reason as to why my film is an example of a postmodern comedy is due to it's near cringe-worthy, black humour in the form of the almost sexist nature of the film; for starters the fem fatale, Lotta Clivage, is played by a woman with a large cleavage; with explicit references to her breasts in the script, and with the narration and, in some cases, the shots representing the POV of Marshal Mallow, representing his voyeuristic nature  as he judges Lotta sexually. This links to the feminist critic Laura Mulvey, who speaks about the concept of the 'Male Gaze' in her Essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by parodying the male gaze by literally having the male protagonists POV moving down very close to, and facing, Lotta's cleavage, which then cuts to a wide shot of the room, revealing that Mallow's face was right up against Lotta's breasts. Another, perhaps more extreme example of this is when Marshal stops paying attention to anything that Lotta says and instead the camera, again from his perspective, moved down towards Lotta's cleavage until the screen blacks out. Due to the previous shot from Mallow's perspective, the audience is shocked to realise that Mallow's entire face has perhaps now dived into Lotta's cleavage. Although this may seem sexist towards woman, I intended for the audience to realise that it was not mocking Lotta; in fact she is who the audience should sympathise with, the film is insulting the sexist nature of 1930's and 40's men, and the way in which they'd treated women; personified by Marshal Mallow's and his grotesquely misogynist and money orientated nature. For this, I was inspired by the comedy film Monty Python's Life of Brian which was criticised by the church for ridiculing Jesus, but really Monty Python intended for the audience to realise that they were mocking the Romans. I believe that my short film has served it's purpose in terms of people understanding that it is a parody of Film Noir, with obvious homage to The Big Sleep in particular. When I was collecting feedback on my short film, I asked an audience of people who had just viewed my film whether or not they felt that the comedy aspects of my film; be it audio or visual, were explicit enough for them to understand that my film was a parody of the Film Noir and not just another Film Noir movie, and they all agreed that it was clearly a comedy, as it contained both explicit and subtle comedy elements. For example, the sped up section when Mallow is tidying his office to a sped up version of We're in the Money is cleary comical; in a Bennie Hill-esque manner. Whereas a quick cutaway shot to the Cluedo board on the wall with red ribbon pinned to it, between cards stuck onto the board, to replicate a detectives cork board is a much more subtle joke.