April Fools 2014: Isaacs Picture Conclusions

Welcome back to another edition of April Fools! The awesome Miss Zoë started off the guest posts on Tuesday (view her list here), and now it’s time to turn things over to yet another special guest–a man I have dubbed the most lovable idiot on WordPress: Eric Isaacs of The IPC. Eric has achieved fame through his riotous Shitfest series, his honest opinions on (mostly) terrible films, and his general awesomeness. I’m sure you follow him, but if you don’t, hop on over there and check things out. Eric is here to proclaim his love for a single, glorious April Fool. Take it away, buddy!

The April Fool: H.I. McDunnough (Raising Arizona)

Hi Cara! THANK YOU for doing this!! YOU are a WONDERFUL person and a great host!! We sure have had some fun since we met!!

#platonicsmooch

#maybenotthatplatonic

When you first announced this thing, I figured I would just write a little piece about the idiot fool that is myself and then I did some thinking and didn’t want any of your beautiful readers to hang themselves so I did some more thinking and came up with one of my favorite movie characters of all time: H.I. McDunnough, the hysterical – yet beautiful – idiot from Raising Arizona. If any of your readers should ever look at my place, they may or may not notice that it’s primarily horror movie based (mostly crappy crap) with a sprinkle of action and thrillers. BUT – there’s has been a couple of occasions when I’ve grabbed myself by the stones and attempted a comedy. I don’t really like much comedy, honestly, because I’m not the type of guy who likes obnoxious bullshit like Anchorman and Jack Black screaming and yelling and screaming about their boners and eating cat shit. I like my comedy sly and dry and demure and silly and BY FAR, my favorite comedy is RAISING ARIZONA.

I mean – “HI” (Short for H.I.) keeps intentionally getting thrown in prison to meet and woo the local prison photographer (Holly Hunter) (her name is Ed) – LOL I’m cracking up writing this, thinking about it. He does petty grocery store heists and gets caught on purpose, gets thrown in the clink and spends his few minutes “turning to the right” to talk to Ed. TURN TO THE RIGHT!! HAHAHHAHA!!! But – one of my favorite scenes / shots in all of the things I’ve seen comes during a twenty minutes chase scene involving HI and some cops, some dogs and some old ladies with grocery carts. After weaving his way through city streets and aisles and aisles of grocery items, with the cops CONSTANTLY shooting at him, he remembers his husbandly duties and grabs a package of Huggies diapers. Just as he puts them under his arm, a different package of diapers explodes next to his head – from a shotgun blast. In comedic BRILLIANCE, he turns to the clerk who fired off the shot who is reloading and HI gives him a look like he just got his feelings hurt and his heart is broken. I CRACK UP every time I see that.

I could go on and on and on about the movie but we’re here to talk about HI so what else? He’s an outlaw in love with a cop, so they get hitched and find out they can’t make their own baby so what do they do? They go and steal one, naturally. See, local furniture magnate Nathan Arizona’s wife just had five kids so they certainly have too many on their hands, right??? So one night HI sneaks up into the room upstairs and steals off with one. This is a VERY FUNNY sequence involving Nic Cage’s HI and a bunch of squirming babies crawling all over the place. You totally have to give it to the Coens for constructing this thing.

In another piece of character driven genius, we find HI and Ed having some friends over to celebrate their new baby arrival.  After getting his crotch sprayed with a squirt gun (“HE WET HIMSELF!! HE WET HIMSELF!! MR MCDUNNOUGH WET HIMSELF!!!”), HI and Glen go for a walk out in the desert. Being an outlaw but also a true upright family man, after Glen proposes they act like swingers – “as in TO swing, man” – and wife swap, HI rears back and knocks Glen on his ass, breaking his nose and repeatedly threatens “Keep your god damn hands off my wife!!!”

Of course, Glen’s his foreman so he loses his job, so HI goes back to robbery – which leads us to the grocery store scene above. We also need to remember that, even after he’s been shot at 300 times, been chased through the neighborhood, gets thrown out of a truck window, he still has the courtesy to turn around and say “Thank You” to the driver who’s life he just endangered. I could probably go on and on about this for a while but Cara is tapping her foot and keeps looking at her watch and sighing so I best stop before I get in trouble. HI is one of my favorite characters ever and I totally ♥ him. Of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t include this image from the movie. THANK YOU CARA GALE!!!

#robbinghayseeds

#ohbullshit

 

Thanks, Eric, for sharing this lovable idiot with us (and for being a lovable idiot, too ;))! More to come from this series, but tomorrow will (hopefully) involve a new review…We shall see. TGIF, my friends!!!

#probielove