Best Catfight Ever? Google thinks it has the Answer

Best Catfight Ever:

Google thinks it has the Answer

By Mr. Blue

If you want to start a spirited debate (or an argument) at your local pub or on your favorite internet board, challenge people to pick the greatest catfight scene of all time. Most of us have our favorites but those are usually a personal preference – what makes a catfight “click” for a particular guy is a highly subjective thing.

Like beauty, a thrilling catfight is often in the eye of the beholder. But imagine if you are the might Google, which has emerged as one of the internet age’s powerhouses. Google’s strength (not to mention its main source of income) comes from its search engine, which allows Google to sort through an unbelievably huge volume of websites and other online materials and instantly rank them in order of preference.

Not to get too technical, but Google’s search feature is powered by the top-secret (and patented) algorithms created by Google’s founders. Despite a host of challengers, searching on Google remains the most popular way to surf the internet.

There has been some controversy of late, since some have shown it’s possible to “game the system” and get a site ranked higher than it deserves, but most people agree that Google’s search results are a fairly reliable way to rank things. So if a website or video link appears near the top of Google’s first page, that’s a good indicator of how popular it is.

Now, try this: Go to Google and type in the word “catfight” as your search query.

At least as of this writing, the first result will be a Wikipedia entry for catfights, which has an almost laughably straightforward tone to it. It begins, “Catfight is a term for an altercation between two women, typically involving scratching, slapping, hair-pulling, and shirt-shredding…” But scroll down and you’ll see the highest ranked link to a particular catfight scene (it usually appears second or third from the top). If you buy into Google’s ranking system, that scene is the most popular catfight scene of all time.

So what scene has Google elevated above all others? Here’s a hint: It’s not from Amazons (also known as War Goddess), nor any of the female fights from Kill Bill. It isn’t the Gypsy camp scene in From Russia with Love or Raquel Welch’s cave battle in One Million Years B.C. or any of a number of worthy contenders. Nope, according to Google, the most popular “catfight” found by its all-powerful computers is from a 1996 film that performed only modestly at the box office and was dismissed by many (including me) as an inferior knock-off of Pulp Fiction. The film, of course, was 2 Days in the Valley.

Few of us may remember all the different characters or various plot twists in the film but the epic catfight between Teri Hatcher and Charlize Theron is certainly something to behold. Both actresses are attractive, no doubt about it, and Charlize Theron is wearing a particular fetching outfit. If a woman is going to engage in a catfight, what better outfit to wear than a skintight white catsuit (Teri Hatcher’s character is dressed down for the occasion in running shorts, sneakers and a sweatshirt).

Teri plays an Olympic track star whose husband (actually ex-husband) is involved in some nefarious dealings. While still married to Teri’s character, he had a fling with Charlize’s character. For reasons I no longer remember, Teri confronts her romantic rival at Charlize’s apartment and the emotions between the former wife and the mistress are still raw. Things heat up once Charlize calls her a bitch (not once but twice) and then mocks Teri’s, um, performance in bed (ouch). And that’s when the fur starts to fly.

But whether you think the 2 Days catfight is the greatest of all time (I don’t) or merely excellent (I do!), there are – objectively speaking – at least two things wrong with it. First, in a problem plaguing many a catfight, the director cuts away from the action at a critical time. As the two women are fighting for the lives, he cuts to the apartment below them where an old couple is lounging in bed (the husband is played by tough guy actor Lawrence Tierney) but his intended laugh line is lame and ruins “the mood” for me.

The second problem is another recurring source of frustration for us fans, since the fight ends before one woman has proven who the better fighter is. Just when the action is really heating up, Charlize makes a move for the gun in her purse, the ladies struggle for control on the bed, the gun goes off, and one combatant then flees the apartment. What a letdown. A fight this good deserves a clear winner (and loser), not an accidental shooting victim!

But let’s not dwell on those drawbacks, especially since the film gets so much right.

Apart from a couple of nice kicks from Teri (remember, her character is supposed to be a top athlete), the “catfight” is an all-out brawl. No martial arts, no high-wire nonsense, just a life-and-death struggle between two ladies with their adrenaline pumping and juices flowing. They hold nothing back as they tear into each other. With so many catfight scenes, the women might as well be robots doing battle, but listen as they grunt and groan as they give everything they’ve got. I especially like Teri’s facial expressions in the first half of the fight, as Charlize’s aggression catches her off guard and she absorbs quite a bit of punishment before recovering. And, give the director credit, since his camera captures the chaotic nature of the slugfest, as the ladies literally crash around the apartment.

Read the review by Starr on 2 Days in the Valley back in 2008:
http://www.catfightreport.com/2008/05/catfight-report-movie-review-2-days-in.html

What’s on the screen matters most but the back story is interesting. Teri Hatcher had a solid track record on TV (having started out as a guest on the Love Boat and then a stint on MacGyver) and was riding high as Lois Lane on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

But having never landed a major film role before 2 Days in the Valley, she had something to prove. Even more interesting is what was driving Charlize. She had been a successful model in her native South Africa (she was born to a German mother and French father) but was eager to show she was more than a pretty face. Apart from a brief, uncredited scene in a horror flick, 2 Days was her first film role, playing the improbably named Helga Svelgen. As it turned out, Charlize would have a far more successful film career than Teri (who eventually headed back to TV with Desperate Housewives), but to earn her Oscar for best actress, Charlize had to go “ugly” to portray a female serial killer in Monster. 

Bottom line: when the cameras started to roll in 2 Days, both actresses had a lot on the line.

Writer-director John Herzfeld had given them the film’s only fight scene and he wanted something special. In an interview, Herzfeld said this: “I wanted to see two women really have a brawl. Not just hair pulling and face scratching… I specifically wanted two women who were strong and in great physical condition, who were smart and tough, and who would go at it the way they could if they were in great shape. And [the actresses] worked on it for weeks [before filming began].”

But it gets better.

According to the director, the intensity of the on-screen action was due, in part, to an on-set accident. Charlize had never filmed a fight scene and despite the rehearsals, she made a rookie mistake during the first day of filming. She was supposed to pull her head back as Teri swung a punch but she didn’t go back far enough and Teri connected with a solid blow to Charlize’s cheek. But rather than storm off to her trailer and pout (or ask for her stunt double to step in), Charlize wanted to go again. They iced her swollen face, put on some make-up to cover the redness, and the scene started up again. Back to the director’s interview: “The accident … raised all the adrenaline. Suddenly the way the fight had been planned with stunt doubles, well, [Teri and Charlize] wanted to do it all ... When Teri throws Charlize up against the wall, it’s them. When she kicks her over the table and Teri grabs the vase and smashes it over her head, I don’t cut to a close up of the vase over the head. It is all there on the screen. They were very into it...”

To me, the “real” feel of the scene sets it apart from so many others. As the two ladies crash around the room and dig into each other, you feel like you’re in the middle of an actual catfight.

By the way, the highest ranked Google link is to an edited YouTube video of the catfight, where someone eliminated the cutaway to the old couple. I understand the rationale for stripping the scene to only the catfight but the purist in me has a problem with that. That is not how the director intended the scene, so for better or worse, the scene should be viewed (and evaluated) in its original form. Thankfully, there are several unedited clips available on the internet, including this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6KjY4lAU7g

Is it the best ever?

Not in my book but it’s still a heck of a catfight!

Buy 2 Days in the Valley

Feel free to leave your own comments and opinions in the comments box below.

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