My apologies to anyone who wishes they didn’t have to know that this year is the 40th anniversary of the movie Clue. 🙂 One of the Read Harder tasks this year is to read a book about a piece of media you love, and I love Clue. It’s one of my absolute comfort watches, so hunting down this book became a priority.
Author John Hatch also views the movie as one of his favorites, and possibly more of a favorite than he realized before Covid-19 changed the way we watched movies in theatres for a while. He was inspired to write the history of the movie following the opportunity to rent out a movie theatre with his family where Clue was one of the options and he was super excited to revisit this now cult classic. So, he spent his pandemic time researching the heck out of the creation of the movie.
“What Do You Mean Murder?” Clue and the Making of a Cult Classic is the definition of a deep dive. The book is broken down into three sections, the first is about the pre-production process of getting the movie written, financed, and greenlit. I think this was my favorite section because the story of how Clue came to be is a bit unique, it is after all the first movie to be based on a board game. The second section is about the production of the movie, and it reads like a commentary track a bit since Hatch works through the movie sequentially talking about how various shots were made, what edits happened, and how exactly the script was interpreted – which was rather faithfully as the writer was also the director. The third section is the shortest, as Clue was a flop on arrival and some of its production choices probably fed into it not landing with audiences at the time. Hatch hits on the idea that Clue works best with multiple viewings and the home video version with all three (available) endings.
Hatch spent the time to find so many primary resources and a slew of secondary ones as well (the bibliography of this is chef’s kiss). Hatch uses archival documents from John Landis, Tom Stoppard, and Jonathan Lynn – including multiple versions of the script – to illuminate the story of the movie. He also had lots of things from the production company, including the document they sent out to reporters which laid out the details of how the sets were decorated which brings in so much additional detail. Hatch also talks about the font choice and music cues used in the movie and all that adds. So good!
If you love Clue than this is a book you should read. Even if you just like movies from the 1980s. If I enjoyed it so much why then is it only four stars for me? Because I felt that the beginning was very repetitive and I did eventually get reading fatigue in the second section. But I still kept coming back to it and was glad to read it and am passing it off to a friend who also loves the movie.
Bingo Square: Red. The bright red letters of the title draw you in.
Bingo #2: Favorite, Red, Family, Border, Green
