Beau Is Afraid Contains A Subtle Reference To A 90s Ray Liotta Movie
For his follow-up to the critically acclaimed horror hits "Hereditary" and "Midsommar," writer-director Ari Aster has come out swinging with "Beau Is Afraid," a more divisive "evil comedy," as he calls it, starring Joaquin Phoenix. The film has drawn comparisons to everything from Darren Aronofsky's "mother!" to Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York." And in fact, "mother" might be the operative word for "Beau Is Afraid," which our review calls "a Freudian hellride." The plot, per the official A24 synopsis, follows "a paranoid man [who] embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother."
The use of Phoenix — star of "The Master" and "Inherent Vice" — and the Supertramp song "Goodbye Stranger," which featured in "Magnolia," also brings to mind the works of Paul Thomas Anderson in the "Beau Is Afraid" trailer. However, big-name filmmakers like Aronofsky, Kaufman, and Anderson aren't the only points of reference where Aster's film is concerned.
In a recent interview with Vox, Aster discussed the fun of cinematic "chicken fat," a term he picked up from Mad magazine for "the overabundance of background gags that have been crammed into any given panel." In other words: Easter eggs. One such Easter egg in "Beau Is Afraid," Aster explained, is a deep cut in the filmography of the late Ray Liotta:
"These are things that nobody will know that just made me laugh. Like the city that Beau lives in, in the first part of the film, is called Corrina, Corrina. The city is Corrina. The state is Corrina. That's a reference to a Whoopi Goldberg and Ray Liotta film from the '90s. [...] He lives in Corrina, Corrina. And then he goes to Wasserton at the end, the home of [Patti LuPone's character] Mona Wassermann."
Why Corrina, Corrina?
The title of "Corrina, Corrina" is itself a reference to an old country blues song. The story involves Ray Liotta's character, a widower, hiring Whoopi Goldberg's Corrina Washington to be a nanny for his daughter.
Released in 1994, "Corrina, Corrina" billed itself as "a romantic comedy-comedy," which might seem like a strange and utterly random choice for a "Beau Is Afraid" Easter egg. However, part of the reason Liotta's character turns to Corrina for help is that his daughter has become mute and withdrawn in the absence of her mom. With lines like, "When your mother's gone, growing up can be tough," it makes a certain kind of sense for "Corrina, Corrina" to find its way into the background of "Beau Is Afraid" (which makes a case for itself, anyway, as a strange and utterly random sort of film).
In his interview with Vox, Ari Aster also discussed the joy of working with production designer Fiona Crombie and "making sure that the world was dense with detail" in "Beau Is Afraid." One thing's for sure: "Corrina, Corrina" isn't the only chicken fat to be found in the film, and judging by some of the other mixed reviews for "Beau Is Afraid," Aster maybe could have stood to use fewer eggs and trim some of that fat from his three-hour film. Whatever you do, just don't watch the movie on mushrooms, if Joaquin Phoenix has anything to say about it.
"Beau Is Afraid" is in theaters now.