Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather tackle American Hustle, directed by David O. Russell and starring Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, and Jennifer Lawrence.
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I loved the opening to this movie for two reasons:
A combover is very much like a con, because it is a lie that everyone agrees to. I feel like everyone who has a combover knows that everybody else can tell it’s fake. They’ve just decided that an obviously fake hairdo is still preferable to actually being bald. And everyone else has decided that not mentioning the hair style’s fakeness is preferable to the social awkwardness of pointing it out.
The second reason is that it is a FANTASTIC reference-to-slash-inversion-of Christian Bale’s morning beauty routine from American Psycho, and is at least as effective as using Robert De Niro as the mob hit man in terms of bringing past film work onto the screen to inform the current movie.
I mean the scene was funny enough as it stood, but recalling American Psycho as I watched it just pushed it that much further into the sublime.
Excellent point about American Psycho — “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, but there is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory.… I simply am not there.” I missed it completely, but you’re totally right.
Here’s the scene, in case people don’t recall it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46-WNPlCYsg
Louis C.K. revealed the end of the ice fishing story to Leno:
http://www.slashfilm.com/louis-c-k-reveals-the-ending-of-that-ice-fishing-story-from-american-hustle/
Although Fenzel’s prediction made a lot of sense and would have fit well with the movie, it’s unfortunately not correct. The actual ending is…probably not what you’d expect.