Paul Hogan: A Retrospective

Imagine the banality of being that guy who played
Crocodile Dundee. It was like ten years
of the same shit! I mean, I’m sure during
the year they make the first movie, he’s happy
to be employed and the movie seems promising—
everyone involved in its production knows
something vaguely special is happening.
Then the next year he’s riding the movie’s
success, you know, going to red carpet
events, meeting the president of the United States
or whatever. Then, like, during year three
he’s still trying to ride the movie’s success,
but some people are just like, Crocodile, man,
you have to move on, so by the end
of year three he’s all, yeah, it’s time
to move on. But what are his talents
aside from showing street punks what real
knives are like? He has none. It’s sequel time.
Perhaps he’s involved with the treatment, perhaps
it’s just commissioned and written by somebody else,
whatever, but year four he’s involved with
the pre-production of the sequel and year
five he’s off filming the sequel. And year
six? Another wave of success, only
this time not as big and glorious as the first.
People are tiring of the “that’s not a knife” thing.
And the cycle continues like this through many
more sequels, especially if you count those Subaru
commercials. Each time, less of a wave,
until eventually the wave is just keeping him
afloat, and he’s telling his friends, yeah, I think
things are picking up for me again, I’m doing
a Subaru commercial next week. But what
kind of hard-ass big knife guy
drives a fucking Subaru? And come on, no way
somebody’s buying a Subaru because Crocodile
Fucking Dundee is the spokesperson. Somebody’s
buying a Subaru because of the 6.9%! (MISSING)
APR financing offered by his or her local
Subaru dealer. But anyway, he rides that
for a while before optioning himself for a choose
your own adventure series. To stay and wrestle
the alligator turn to page 61, to run like hell
turn to page 12, and on page 12? Aw yeah,
it’s that woman who I used to think was Sharon
Stone but who isn’t Sharon Stone, in a thong,
slipping into a natural spring for a little “relaxation.”
Page 61? You wrestle the alligator before getting
all strange with some Aborigines as the woman
I used to think was Sharon Stone spies
on you. You go to New York City, show
a street punk the size of your knife which is probably
a metaphor for your penis, learn
how to use a bidet, do a bunch
of coke off of Sharon Stone not Sharon
Stone’s breasts. Whatever the case, it’s doubtful
this is how you’d ever envisioned your life,
serialized for pre-teens and easily maneuverable.
No, you’d imagined something much different,
like, yeah, you travel to South America
or something, taste a capybara and an emu egg
omelet, open a weird zoo in a country where
weird zoo laws are hazy at best, and there are
a bunch of deer just wandering around everywhere
for visitors to pet and feed salt to
out of their palms, and you raise a family here,
and it’s like everything works out so well despite
the country eventually getting specific with its weird
zoo laws and forcing you to close your snake exhibit
and cage all the deer, but by that point
you’re in your twilight years, and it doesn’t matter,
you’re just going to ride this thing out
with your loving wife. Your son Patrick
is a famous tennis player, after all.