Culture Blues

Buddy Cop Movies That I’m Writing

The buddy cop movie (or the Wunza, as Roger Ebert calls it) is a glorious staple of cinema. It’s a genre that includes some of my favorite movies of all time – Lethal Weapon, Point Break, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, etc. With this weekend comes the release of Adam McKay’s The Other Guys, a buddy cop pastiche starring Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, not as the mismatched supercops that usually dominate these flicks, but as the mismatched schlub cops that stand in the background. Judging by my taste, you would probably assume that I’m excited about The Other Guys.

Get back in my imagination!

You’d assume wrong, jerk!

Why? Because I came up with the idea for The Other Guys like 7 years ago during a screening of Bad Boys II. [Ed. Note:  Remarking “Hey, they should make a movie about those two Mexican dudes.” does not necessarily constitute coming up with an idea.] I’m sick of Hollywood stealing all my good ideas, man! With that in mind, here’s a list of other awesome buddy cop movies that I’ve come up with. Hopefully, preserving them here on Culture Blues will force those Hollywood fatcats to finally fork over some of the scratch that is rightfully mine.

Stakeout – Vampire cops! I mean, come on, I’m sure someone has already pitched this one. When the sun goes down, crime sucks. Get it? It’s like Lethal Weapon, but with vampires. You have the really old vampire, except he doesn’t look really old because he’s immortal so you can still use that pretty little Pattison fellow from Twilight, but he’s been a vampire since like The Byzantine Empire so he can be all “I’m too old for this shit! I haven’t seen this much bureaucratic red tape since John the Cappadocian created Justinian’s Code!” Obviously, he’s partnered with a really young, freshly made vampire that’s new to the force and always forgetting the rules (maybe intentionally? Conflict!), and chasing criminals into direct sunlight. “It’s like you don’t even want to be a vampire!” “No, I want to be a cop!” Plus, every time someone says Stakeout, they can be all like – where?! and freak out because they think they’re about to get dusted. This has franchise written all over it, Hollywood. How about Stakeout 2:  Silver Bullet where our vampire cops are paired with a plucky werewolf informant, possibly played by Joe Pesci? It’s a goldmine.

Flatfoot – I came up with this one when I was combing the police officers slang Wikipedia page for pun inspiration. It’s pretty standard buddy cop stuff, except one of them has a messed up foot. He would be played by Samuel L Jackson. Imagine all the fun stuff he could yell! “How’m I supposed to chase these [n-word]s with this mother fucking flat foot?!” Ok, so that could use some fleshing out. Moving on.

"The 22nd precinct is about to go... bananas."

Turner & Hooch 2 – It doesn’t necessarily have to be a sequel since that dog is probably dead and Tom Hanks is busy doing boring-ass crypto-thrillers. We can make it a reimagining. What if the dog is the smart one? Like he’s this awesome Rin-Tin-Tin police dog that’s super professional, and he gets paired with this bumbling curmudgeonly slob that needs to get bailed out of trouble all the time. Can you teach a dog to roll its eyes? That’s important. Also, lets not get locked into the canine family here. We could use any number of animals – a hawk, a circus bear, a cat. They’re the purrrfect partners! Bam! That’s like four ideas for the price of one! Or, what if we just did two monkey cops? Too much? OR NOT ENOUGH?

Rush Hour: Iraq – So I just finished this really interesting article in last month’s Esquire about how the Iraq police force is too woefully unprepared, or incompetent, or corrupt to take over the safety of the country when the Americans pull out in a couple months. Well maybe they wouldn’t be so unprepared if we sent one of our best cops, Chris Tucker’s James Carter, to help set things right! We’d need a badass Middle Eastern guy to replace Jackie Chan. I’m thinking Sayid from Lost. Honestly, there aren’t enough action-comedies about what’s going on in Iraq. In fact, I can’t think of any! Let’s break some new ground, Hollywood!

Cinder Dicks – Ok, so here’s the Oscar contender. Cinder dick is an old term used for detectives that used to work the railroads. It’s a period piece, so you already know that it’s prestigious. It’s like LA Confidential meets Shanghai Knights meets The Orient Express. “Just a couple of cinder dicks, rumbling across this beautiful America, seeing all the best and worst society has to offer.” One of them has a drinking problem! One of them is attracted to Renee Zellwegger for some reason! I’m already practicing my Academy Award speech. Call me, Ron Howard.

Lawyer Up – Buddy cop movies aren’t limited to just two cops with divergent personalities. There’s also a sub-genre where it’s a cop paired with a non-cop. The best example is 48 Hrs. where Nick Nolte’s cop is paired with Eddie Murphy’s criminal. In Lawyer Up, we’d take one of these badass John McClane type supercops and, because he’s always crashing motorcycles into helicopters and getting in trouble with internal affairs, force him to spend a day with the district attorney who wants to observe his methods before potentially throwing him off the force. “Chief, this is bullshit! He wants to charge me with being too good at my god damn job!” Oh, but it just happens to be the day that some criminal mastermind has chosen to exact a complicated revenge plan on the district attorney that put him behind bars. TWIST! It all ends with the cop and the criminal hanging off the edge of a burning building and the lawyer’s like “all charges are—“ and then he throws the criminal off the edge!   “-dropped!”

You’re welcome. Pay me.