80’s Action Hall of Fame: The Pizza Scissors, Cobra

Painful as it is to admit, these old, tired eyes have watched Cobra at least two dozen times. Add to that the twenty-odd half measures of scenes, parts of scenes, and YouTube clips, and, well, the time spent with Marion Cobretti, his seven-foot wife, and the world’s least threatening revolutionary group outpaces my own actual life. I’m not even sure I’ve had many friendships that have lasted longer than the film’s running time. But when I am confined to my bed at last, no one to wipe my brow, and my mind races with thoughts of what remains, now and forever, an 80’s Action staple, the first and last images that will appear before me are those iconic pair of scissors. And that damn slice of pizza. Pulled, inconceivably, from the freezer. And yet, the cut. Clean, easy, methodical. It’s the Rosebud of the piece, only with more lasting consequence.

To speak of the scissors is to brace for a fever dream of subtext and character interrogation. Why were they included? What does it mean? What possible explanation could there be? If a man desired but one chunk of pie for breakfast, why not simply take the bite? Or tear it off? Or, worst case scenario, grab a knife and fork? The man used scissors. At the ready, proving he’d done it before. Likely as a ritual from childhood. Was it replicated elsewhere? Who else could lay claim to its madness? In a life where I’ve seen thousands of films totaling years of cinematic devotion, it’s an act of singular nerve. Never before or since. The only time in the history of the medium where a character performed thusly. Say what you will about the film’s politics, acting chops, or rampant misogyny, let’s give the piece its due. Here, for once, someone did it all for the first time.

Now, I’ve listened to much of the film’s DVD commentary and, hilariously banal though it may be, I don’t remember whether or not director George P. Cosmatos provided any clues. Was the scene improvised? If so, Sly Stallone deserves a Nobel Prize. Insisted upon by the screenwriter? An Oscar, only twice the size. And if Cosmatos himself, somewhere around the 33^rd take, decided that what he needed – what we all needed – was a man taking a small piece from a larger piece in the most time-consuming manner possible, well, let’s shake loose the pantheon and add a figure more deserving. And here, 38 years later, we’re still talking about it. Maybe not in elevated circles or humorless film classes where cinematic worth is determined exclusively by representation, but here, on a website that, two decades later, still insists there’s more juice to squeeze from Death Wish 3.

I’ve said what I had to say. Sacrilege to add inanimate objects to a Hall of Fame? Maybe, but believe you me, I have at least three paragraphs in me about that can of oil in Over the Top. Or Kersey’s ice cream cone in Death Wish II. And Cooperstown has bats. Hell, anyone can pontificate about the fascistic vision of Cobra. I may have done it once myself in a forum long ago. But this is about what lasts. What we remember. Scissors and a slice of pizza. A hill I can’t help but die on