Get on the Bus and Swingers

The films are similar in that they are shot on location nd not in a studio. Both are also based on real-life experiences. Spike Lee's Get on the Bus recounts the experiences of some of the black men who traveled to Washington in the Fall of 1995 for the Million Man March. This film follows several of these men as they make their way to Washington, and the substance of the film is the way they talk about their reason for the journey and about their lives. Doug Liman's Swingers was written by Jon Favreau, who also plays the lead character. In effect, he is playing himself, for he wrote this script based on his own experiences with his friends in bar-hopping around the Hollywood area. His purpose is not so elevated as that of the men traveling to the Million Man March, but it is just as personal and just as real.

Lee's film was probably easier to get made in terms of finding a studio to finance it because of Lee's track record. He has shown the ability t

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ers seems more shaped by the screenplay. Swingers is part of a clearly defined genre, as noted, and yet this can cause viewers to think they have seen all this before. Swingers succeeds because it has a different slant on the material: Four guys hang out, kid one another, get into scuffles and flash their gonadal searchlight for available women. Yikes, havn't there been enough variations on the multiple-buddy movie? Actually, no. The funniest thing about the comedy Swingers. . . is how smartly it spiffs up a tired formula (Corliss 80). The film has a fresh look as well because the actors are not known, and this was one of the problems with getting the film made in the first place since some studios would have made it with established stars if Favreau had agreed. He fought to make the film his way and succeeded. Spike Lee is an established filmmaker, but he is well versed in the requirements of the low-budget film and started by making several such movies until he hit a major success with Do the Right Thing, leading to the much larger-scale Malcolm X. Do the Right Thing is a panoramic film that presents in great detail the life of a black neighborhood in Brooklyn on a decisive day for the people and for race relations
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1447
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)