Drive angry mona movie#
Drive angry mona driver#

But most of all, it’s just funny as hell. It does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of establishing the setting and the characters and the quirky nature of their community. But wherever credit is due, I think it’s a brilliant conceit. Okay, so maybe Steinfeld deserves more credit than Richard Toyon, the production designer.

Drive angry mona movie#

And like any good screenwriter, he saved that idea in his back pocket and used it years later to put movie stars in clown cars and let us laugh at them. If the New York Post-who wrote a piece about how the real denizens of Verplanck, New York, were very upset about being depicted as “dirt-poor half-wits” in Drowning Mona -is to be believed, the idea came from an anecdote that was casually passed along while the screenwriter, Peter Steinfeld, was working at a previous day job.Īs Steinfeld told the Post, he was moving furniture at the New Jersey office of Yugo of America, and one of the executives told him about the company’s failed efforts to test-market their putrid little vehicles in Verplanck. You know what the best part is, though? It’s all true. It’s like a Richard Scarry book with the animals replaced by rednecks. Anything that isn’t a truck or a van in this town is a Yugo. And Danny DeVito, the local police chief, drives a black one, which is even funnier because the police cruisers are also Yugos. Casey Affleck and Neve Campbell share a blue one. Her husband, played by William Fichtner, drives a silver one. Bette Midler met her maker in her son’s yellow Yugo, even though she normally drove a red one. Everyone in this damn town-Verplanck, New York, a tiny hamlet along the east bank of the Hudson River-drives a damn Yugo. The Yugo itself, mere minutes into the film, is already portrayed as a harbinger of doom.***īut this hideous yellow Yugo is not the last we see of this distinct design flourish. That’s all the context we’re given before we see Bette Midler, the titular Mona, stumble to her silly little car and follow a one-lane country highway until her brakes fail and she sails off a ledge and into a lake. “Years ago, the Yugo Car Company chose Verplanck, New York, to test market its new breed of vehicle. Here is the text that opens Drowning Mona before we see the first shot: But these Yugos aren’t just a frivolous component of the story-they’re essential to establishing the wacky tone of the film. The writer of Drowning Mona thought it would be hilarious to fill a 2000 crime caper with Yugo vehicles.

Drive angry mona driver#

Car and Driver calls it the worst car in history. They were apparently moderately successful at first, selling nearly 50,000 cars at their peak in 1987, but they ended up totaling a mere 140,000 over a run that only lasted through 1992. They’re these hideous little boxy hatchbacks that originated in Yugoslavia (get it?) and arrived in the U.S.

(Which is hard to do in one of those cars, I bet.)Īre you familiar with the Yugo auto manufacturer? I was not, so I’ll give you a brief history in case you aren’t either. That’s how I felt while watching Drowning Mona, a turn-of-the-century black comedy where you come for the ensemble cast* and you stay for the stupid, ugly little cars.īut I’m getting ahead of myself.

But a good, creative, unique detail of production design can add an extra layer of enjoyment to a film that could otherwise feel forgettable. Props and décor and even architecture rarely make or break a film, I think.

I imagine it’s also one of those Oscar categories that feels rather nebulous to more casual viewers. Production design is so important! It was one of those on-set roles that I didn’t fully understand or appreciate until I met and worked with production designers. Want to request a film for a future issue? Subscribe to the paid version! I always love discussing films with her since we’re often on the same wavelength, and what’s more, she’s one of my most endearing Twitter follows. Happy Friday, nerds! Today’s film was requested by Julie Holland, one of my comrades over at Modern Horrors who has been my partner in crime when covering online film festivals like Nightstream and the Chattanooga Film Festival.