12 Things I Learned While Watching: Movie Hookers–Julia Roberts vs. Elizabeth Shue

12 Things I Learned While Watching: Movie Hookers–Julia Roberts vs. Elizabeth Shue

1. The Plots: In Leaving Las Vegas Elizabeth Shue plays a gritty, street hardened prostitute who befriends a sad dude (Nicolas Cage) who’s moved to Las Vegas on a semi-holy mission to drink himself to death. In Pretty Woman Julia Roberts plays what could only be described as that rarest of Unicorns, a hooker who almost never fucks.

2. Julia Roberts pretends to be the sort of prostitute who’s never had sex before. Or if not ‘never’, then ‘rarely’ i.e. maybe one or two guys at the most. Which means she either comes to this world from an alternate multiverse in which the skill set for what they call ‘hookers’ is completely different, or she’s lying. I think she’s lying. Like when your girlfriend says she’s never done anal before and you eventually do anal together and because she’s drunk (because it’s largely in those moments cresting with booze where the anally timid find courage and the anal act thrives) she mumbles something into the pillow after about how “That didn’t hurt nearly as bad as it did the last time I did that.”. And you’re like “What’d you say?” and she’s like “Nothing.” and you’re all “I thought you said you’d never done anal?” and she’s like “Maybe I tried it once, but he couldn’t fit it in all the way so it doesn’t really count.” and you’re all “What does that mean? It doesn’t count?” and she’s like “Stop being such a Richard Gere about everything and get me a towel.”.

3. Elizabeth Shue’s kind of hooker is more honest about stuff like that. She’s not going to lie to you and horse-laugh like Julia when she pulls your pants down, act like she’s never seen a penis before, or behave all PG-13 about shit and make you buy her a necklace.

4. Julia Roberts is the kind of hooker who will refuse to kiss you on the mouth, unless you’re rich and you’re good looking like Richard Gere. She’ll have sex with you, maybe, but only after you pay her and agree to marry her missionary style the next day.

5. Elizabeth Shue’s the kind of hooker who’ll hang out and fuck you for free despite the fact that you’re drunk all the time, not quite average looking and broke. The only thing she asks in return is that you don’t cum in her hair.

6. And even if you do accidentally cum in her hair she probably wouldn’t get all that upset about it. She’d probably just half jokingly call you an asshole while trying really hard not to laugh.

7. If you accidentally cum in Julia Roberts’ hair she’s going to order you to drive over to the fancy hair salon to buy her a $400 bottle of shampoo and even after you apologize 100 times and buy her the shampoo you can pretty much count on her not talking to you again for at least a month. Note: During that quiet month she’ll still be charging you by the hour, but so-help-her-god if you so much as look at her without her first ordering you to look at her she’ll burn down the couch you’ve been sleeping on and charge you double for the time it takes her to do it.

8. And as long as we’re on the topic of Movie Hookers, if I remember correctly it was shortly after Nicholas Cage won an Oscar for playing Elizabeth Shue’s sidekick in Leaving Las Vegas that he transformed himself into a giant crotch and started selling his ConAir to the highest shitty-movie-bidder. He wanted to transform himself into an action hero or something. Fine. I’ve got no problem with that. I mean, he’s no Liam Neeson. But who is? Liam Neeson did what Nicholas Cage tried to do, only Liam Neeson did it correctly. Liam Neeson transformed himself into the greatest action movie hero this world has ever seen! In his new movie he beats a guy who’s pointing a gun at him unconscious using only his piercing eyes and one of those oxygen masks that fall out of the ceilings on airplanes! How fucking bad ass is that?! (note: It’s exceedingly bad ass. I love Liam Neeson.)

9. What I do have a problem with is when Mr. National Treasure unnecessarily remakes shit like The Wicker Man (taking an epically weird mix of dead crops, Christopher Lee, clog dancing, and a grown-man-virgin and remaking it into some bullshit thing in which Cage spends most of his time punching women in the face and screaming about bees.) or when he fucks with the stories of Philip K Dick. I’m talking about Next here, which was based on Dick’s short story The Golden Man. In the story the main character’s an unintelligent, golden, fur covered evolutionary mutation who spends most of his time in the woods, can see a half hour or so into the future, and possesses an almost Richard Gere like power over women (who aren’t Julia Roberts). His Richard Gere-ness allows him to easily spread his mutated seed and his precog powers make him damn near impossible to be captured by the ruling government which has come to realize that this Golden Man is the next step in human evolution. Society as they know it will soon be over. Everyone thought humanity’s intelligence was the future, but human intelligence has failed and will be weeded out and replaced by super powered survival skills and pretty golden fur that acts like peacock feathers or Steve Perry records on the opposite sex in order to keep everyone fucking/ ensure the continuation of the human race.

10. In Next Nicolas Cage plays the Golden Man, but according to the DVD special feature exclusive interview he had a few changes he wanted to make to the character. In Next the Golden Man is no longer golden. And he’s not covered in fur. He doesn’t spend most of his time living quietly in the woods avoiding the authorities. He’s not an unintellectual mute, he doesn’t have any sexually persuasive powers over women, and he’s no longer the first representation of humanity’s next big evolutionary step.What he is is a fucking magician. Because Nicolas Cage wanted to play a magician. I’m not making that up. The only thing Next has in common with The Golden Man is they kept the bit about the main character being able to see into the future. That’s it. They turned PKD’s original short story into the tale of a sad eyed magician who’s recruited by the police or whoever the fuck recruits him because they know he can see into the future a little bit and they need him to use these powers to find and prevent the exploding of another goddamn terrorist bomb.

11. Seriously. What the fuck’s up with that?! They treated a perfectly great Philip K DIck story like it was a broken Elizabeth Shue styled hooker.

12. Fucking Hollywood. If you’re going to treat great literature like a hooker, at least treat it like the Julia Roberts kind. Buy the fucking thing a necklace or give it a goddamn bubble bath or something before you rub your stupid dick all over it and fuck it in the ass until it shits itself all over the sheets to become the next goddamn Nicolas Cage movie. Or Ben Affleck movie. Ashton Kutcher, etc., whatever……