by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
King Lear | 1987
For most of its life, the Cannon Group was a minor studio known for brawny B-movies like Death Wish, Cobra, Missing in Action, and Masters of the Universe. But during the 1980s, under the direction of co-owners Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who bought the company in 1979, Cannon also used some of its profits to take chances on risky auteur-driven projects in an attempt to gain some prestige. One such project was Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear, a deal Golan and Globus infamously made with Godard on a napkin at the Cannes Film Festival, where the pair were tenaciously courting filmmakers.
There's a certain set of expectations that come with movies about dogs. They tend to be fairly saccharine affairs, if not particularly deep. W.C. Fields once said, "Never work with children or animals," and while he likely had a different idea in mind when he said that - both tend to be used as shortcuts and crutches by filmmakers because they are who audiences will likely sympathize with the most.