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Thoughts...

Friends of On The Scene share all their film related thoughts. 

Putting the
'Fun in Funeral'

On The Scene asked Alex Slater to share her comedy film thoughts... she watched one of our curated shorts in August 'Pushing Daisy' and just HAD to write about it...

T

I really enjoyed this short. Daisy (Madeline Spooner), a bubble gum pink, girl boss-esque student arrives as an intern ready to optimise the funeral business headed by funeral director Tom (John Wark). The film opens with Daisy speaking confidently into a headset microphone - a sparkle in her eyes as she presumably imagines basking in the glory once her killer business plan pays off. "It's time to breathe life into this dying

industry,” she says as it looks like she's delivering a TED Talk. The camera slowly pans out to reveal the  lectern she’s using is a coffin. We very quickly learn that Daisy approaches death with exactly the same mindset an influencer might approach a failing brand that is yet to see the power in social media marketing. Her plan consists of "bums on seats, not tears on cheeks" and other words around death turned into corporate buzzwords and marketing slogans like earnestly suggesting, "why are you sad when you can just not be?" It reeks of exactly how I imagine Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO would approach this job. The sickening idea that every experience, however awful, can be reframed as an opportunity for productivity, personal growth or monetisation.

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The film gets a lot of mileage out of the contrast between Daisy and Tom. Everything she touches is bright and sparkling, right down to the neon post-it notes decorating the walls, the pink bow she whacks on a coffin, to the 'DEAD' LED spotlight sign. However, as absurd as Daisy's approach to her new job is, she isn't walking into the funeral home unwilling to work. This film isn't suggesting that hyper-femininity and 'real business' just don't mix, which is humorously proven in the film's ending. Her naive and uber optimistic style of business might be insensitive but her ruthless attempt to capitalise on death is no different to Tom's. There's a moment when he dismisses Daisy's handling of a client's family member's death as "terrible business." Not an awful way to treat someone's grief - terrible business. They both represent how the poison of modern-day capitalism can drip through us all. Her’s is just pink x. Anyway, Daisy goes from intern to essentially director of communications, desperately trying to manage the narrative around a death, which at this point of the film makes complete sense. You really can't have an egg and cress sandwich be the story.

The writing and acting go hand in hand and, I think, are the film's biggest strengths. The writing is sharp and playful and clearly has a lot of fun with the premise and even props. It's a very funny film and you can feel how much fun the filmmakers had in the making of it.

But I loved Pushing Daisy most for it luring you into believing that Tom and Daisy are complete opposites before revealing at the end that they're the same type of seller just in different coloured clothing. They're both trying to turn death into something they can sell. She's just putting the fun in funeral!

his strange, not so new anymore, phenomenon of people turning grief into a 24 hour Instagram story of them holding their dying grandparent's hand in a hospital bed, is taken to its absurd conclusion in Leah Revivo's 'Pushing Daisy'.

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 Written by Alex Slater 

grandparent's hand in a hospital bed, is taken to its absurd conclusion in Leah Revivo's 'Pushing Daisy'.

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