Satire

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (2019)

December 5, 2020

(VOD) For far too many years, I’ve habitually trawled through the entirety of the Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) yearly schedule and shot off a list to a few friends to map out what we wanted to see together. The list would include not just a list of film titles and descriptions, but also trailers not linked in the CIFF schedule, additional context, interest level, and a list of potential screening times/conflicts.

It’s never been a fun job, but it’s a necessary one because CIFF is surprisingly daunting for reasons best left for another time, and most folks I know don’t bother with CIFF unless someone else puts in a bit of effort. Every year, I’m rewarded by finding a gem I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, and had I not put in the effort, I probably would have missed out on THE TWENTIETH CENTURY last year. Thankfully, unlike many films that screen once at CIFF and are never heard from again, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was picked up by Oscilloscope and can be purchased today!

The description I sent off in the yearly missive was: “It may be puerile, but I keep hearing that it’s like Maddin meets John Waters, and I’m down for that.”

Upon watching it, yes, Guy Maddin is an obvious inspiration, with its extreme Soviet-inspired camerawork, choppy editing/frame-gaps, kink, and scrutiny of Canada. However, director Matthew Rankin’s use of color, tempo, and symmetry makes it very much the work of a new auteur instead of something simply derivative. Yes, it’s weird but, despite its eccentricities, it’s rarely off-putting, and it’s supremely entertaining. The trailer will immediately inform you as to whether it’s something in or out of your wheelhouse. If it tickles you, please, pick up a copy.

BORN IN FLAMES (1983)

December 1, 2020

(kanopy/VOD)? An electric 80s NYC ’10 years in the future’ dystopian film from Lizzie Borden (yes, the director legally changed her name) shot in the vein of Godard’s ALPHAVILLE in which nothing about the city is changed apart from the context. In this case, it’s: ‘what if socialism occurred in the US, but it ultimately sidelines all women, compromising their health and their right to work?’ Nearly 40 years later, it’s still shamefully relevant.

The end result is a vibrant exploration of activism helmed by a DJ and divergent feminist movements trying to organize and radicalize women to upend the machine, all pasted together from a mixture of pre-shot footage, on-the-street footage, and documentary footage, and paired with an amazing array of proto-punk feminist songs.

Warning: the end of the film coincidentally mirrors real events and might be painful to watch. To say why would spoil matters, but you’ll see it coming well before you actually have to watch it.

Please note: the following trailer is briefly NSFW.

DIFFICULT PEOPLE (2015-2017)

November 24, 2020

(Hulu/VOD) DIFFICULT PEOPLE is for everyone who watched SEINFELD and realized those four friends were garbage people, but still loved the jokes (and loved the series finale).

It features Julie (Julie Klauser) as an aspirational comedian/writer stuck recapping TV (this is back in the days of -Television Without Pity-), her best friend Billy (Billy Eichner) as an aspiring comedian/actor, and a long list of brilliant supporting talent such as James Urbaniak (HENRY FOOL, VENTURE BROS) as Julie’s long-suffering boyfriend and NPR stooge, Andrea Martin (SCTV, BLACK CHRISTMAS, GREAT NEWS) as Julie’s mother, and Cole Escola and Gabourey Sidibe as co-workers at the coffee shop Billy works at.

The eps are mostly self-contained and normally feature Julie & Billy scheming to advance their writing and acting careers, but often fail miserably because they’re terrible people that can’t go two seconds without (wittily) tearing into someone, and you kind of love them for it. They know who they are, they know they aren’t going to change, and they know the world will never accept them, but they know they’re goddamn funny and smart so they’ll never stop trying or shut the fuck up. While their jokes are absolutely filthy and hurtful, they always punch up.

Somehow, despite being one of the first Hulu original shows, and despite neither Klausner or Eichner being terribly well-known names at the time, they managed to get the most ridiculous guest stars -and- make proper use of them! Deborah Harry! John Mulaney, in the part he was born to play: an eccentric rich young man into Edwardian clothing, technology, and vernacular! Stockard Channing! Victor Garber! Jessica Walter! Nathan Lane! Martin Short! Micky Dolenz! Mink Stole! John Cho! Even goddamn Lin-Manual Miranda:

Also, DIFFICULT PEOPLE had the best goddamn cold opens, partially because they always had the perfect quip and then smash-cut to WHITE REAPER’s -She Wants To- (captioned solely as DRIVING PUNK MUSIC), which is the perfect punctuation. (Similarly, just about every ep manages a perfect kiss-of before launching into WHITE REAPER’s -Half Bad-.)

Here’s a montage of the best/worst lines and insults, including some cold open jokes:

S2 Trailer (because the S1/S3 trailers? Very misleading.)

It’s not for everyone. Hell, it’s not for most well-adjusted people. However, it’s a show I routinely re-watch — and I rarely re-watch TV, apart from single scenes or sole episodes for research — because it’s so gleefully over-stuffed with jokes and gags, and the pacing is perfection. I know it’ll probably never happen, but I do hope that they’re able to find an outlet that’ll bring the show back five years from now, even if it’s just for a special.

STRANGERS WITH CANDY (1999-2000)

November 17, 2020

(Paramount+/VOD) The late 90s/early naughts was a great time to be a comedy TV nerd living in Chicago. ImprovOlympic (RIP, IO) was thriving, you had Chicago alums UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE on the air, and it was followed by STRANGERS WITH CANDY, which was chock-full of entertainers who cut their teeth at Chicago’s Second City, including a little-known comedian named Stephen Colbert. Also, Paul Dinello, aka Geoffrey Jellineck? His uncle, Dan Dinello, taught at Columbia College when I attended. Sadly, I never had him as a prof, but I felt a certain amount of weird pride whenever I walked by his office because I loved this show so goddamn much.

(All three were also in Comedy Central’s under-watched, but CableACE-award winning EXIT 57 sketch comedy show.)

STRANGERS WITH CANDY can be simply explained as: ‘What if we had a SCARED STRAIGHT TV show where the junkie goes back to high school after being in jail for 30 years?’ Amy Sedaris played ‘junkie whore’ Jerry Blank (who consists of an array of endless ticks), Colbert was a recurring teacher as was Dinello, and Greg Hollimon played the straight-man/school principal.

For a show whose premise was paper-thin, they managed to wring a surprising amount from it. It lasted for three seasons -and a movie-, and the show was never less than hilarious. (The less said about the movie, the better. It’s not awful, but the premise and writing could never sustain itself for more than ~24 minutes at a time.)

I hesitate to call STRANGERS WITH CANDY a dark comedy, because while it exacts a lot of humor out of bleak and cruel topics, its characters are rather ebullient and resilient, despite hvaing everything thrown at them in every episode. That said, it’s definitely twisted in a very Gen-X way.

I could elaborate on the strange and straight-laced characters, the colors, the awkward editing, but it’s best you find out for yourself.

The following is not a trailer — just part of the first episode:

CHILDRENS HOSPITAL (2008-2016)

November 11, 2020

(Hulu/VOD)? One of the first adult swim live-action shows, this is a wall-to-wall neo-vaudevillian gag machine riffing on the daily soap opera genre that just about no one watching adult swim have actually consumed.

Despite the fact that it ran for eight years, it never quite received the recognition it deserved, being wedged in-between SQUIDBILLIES and adult swim’s anime block, but it was clearly a labor of love from all involved, and holy crap there were a ton of brilliant people involved: David Wain, Henry Winkler, Megan Mullany (clearly having the time of her life), Ken Marino, Lake Bell, Jordan Peele, Jon Hamm, and several Robs and Corddrys.

It also featured brilliantly cyclical jokes like the following exchange, delivered by the under-appreciated Erinn Hayes to Rob Heubel:

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“What? Why?”

“I uh, have a brain tumor.”

“Oh, bleep How long have you known?”

“…how long have I known? Ugh, I can’t lie! I don’t have a brain tumor. I just couldn’t think of a reason to break up with you.”

“Break up? Not with you sick like this! I’m going to take care of you!”

“No, no, no. I said I -don’t- have a brain tumor.”

“That’s just the brain tumor talking!”

While there isn’t a bad episode in the bunch, Megan Amram (who contributed the best storefront puns in THE GOOD PLACE and is the mastermind behind AN EMMY FOR MEGAN) penned one of my absolute favorite episodes of TV ever by taking CHILDRENS HOSPITAL pitch-perfectly into the past with -The Show You Watch-. (Unfortunately, the episode labeled as -The Show You Watch- on YouTube is actually the episode -Through the Eyes of a Falcon- and definitely not a great episode to start with.)

MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN (1976-1977)

November 3, 2020

A breakout daily satirical soap conceptualized by Norman Lear, but shaped by Gail Parent, Ann Marcus and Joan Darling, focused around a severely dysfunctional family and their titular wife, Mary Hartman (played by Louise Lasser), whose life of constant stress and anxiety and insecurity builds to a crescendo of a nervous breakdown. It’s a severely intelligent, often hilarious, self-critical melodrama about domesticity, consumer culture, American media & existentialism that’s just as relevant now as it was when this was first broadcast.

The show nailed its tone out of the gate, as you can see with the infamous ‘Waxy Yellow Buildup’ series opener:

(I really wish SHOUT! featured a longer clip, as the first half of the premiere is amazing. The show quickly picked up its pace, but kept its oft-putting, absurd sensibility, well before it was fashionable.)

It’s worth noting that MARY HARTMAN was a full-blown phenomenon, at least for its first year. If you’ve read the first TALES OF THE CITY (1978), you know that characters planned their days around the broadcast. Lasser was brought onto SNL to do a Mary Hartman bit, which allegedly resulted in her being banned from the show for erratic behavior.

The show was too smart, burned through too much plot, was too emotionally grueling and controversial to have any proper longevity, and it wrapped when Lasser bowed out at the end of the second season which, doesn’t sound like much, but those two seasons consisted of 325 half-hour episodes over the period of under two years.

If you’d like to read more about it (instead of watching all 325 episodes like I have), here are two great places to start:

https://tv.avclub.com/mary-hartman-mary-hartman-combined-soap-opera-satire-1798242393

https://eastofborneo.org/articles/from-a-waxy-yellow-buildup-to-a-nervous-breakdown-the-fleeting-existence-of-mary-hartman-mary-hartman/

In typical Lear fashion, a spin-off was born based on one of the odder characters, Barth Gimble, as FERNWOOD 2 NIGHT, and then reborn as FERNWOOD FOREVER, both tongue-in-cheek takes on local late night programming which are probably better remembered today than MARY HARTMAN is.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986)

October 30, 2020

(AMC+/hoopla/Prime/VOD) TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 has a similar reputation to its original as HALLOWEEN 3 has to the first two HALLOWEENs: fans felt betrayed. Both films toy with their hallmark villains (in the case of HALLOWEEN 3, Michael is nowhere to be found), neither film tries to repeat their prior efforts, and both look and feel drastically different from what fans expected. While HALLOWEEN 3 has finally been embraced by horror fans, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (TCM2) is still mostly ignored, which I believe is rather unfair.

TCM2 is unmistakably glossier and poppier — just take a listen to the soundtrack. And yes, it’s far broader than the original. In other words, far closer to the tone of similar 80s horror films, but there’s a reason for that.

Hooper and co-writer L.M. Kit Carson (co-writer of PARIS, TEXAS) are using TCM2 to actively undermine what Hooper created with TCM1, by putting a slapstick, circus-like veneer on the entire film. Texas, as a state, is reduced to a brightly colored carnival (Texas Battle Land, chock full of crass Alamo murals and poorly rendered re-enactments), the Sawyer family become a twisted Three Stooges, and Dennis Hopper is reduced to an short-sighted, idiotic buffoon, often over-compensating for his own weaknesses by taking up not one, but two chainsaws.

Is it puerile? Oh, most definitely — there’s even a scene where Leatherface (who quickly falls for our radio DJ heroine) ejaculates in his pants, then quickly becomes frustrated and tears up the radio station upon discovering this new sensation. New Sawyer family member Chop Top has a disgusting habit of picking the skin from around his skull wound with the hook of a clothes hanger and eating it.

Is it satire? I’m hard-pressed to say, but Hooper’s definitely undermining his original creation and having a lot of fun doing so. If they had replaced Leatherface and recast the Sawyer family and hadn’t sold it as a TCM sequel, I’m sure this film would be better regarded today. However, it’s questionable whether the film would have the same bite that Hooper intended if it weren’t billed as a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film, if it hadn’t pulled the rug out from fans’ feet.

BLOOD DRIVE (2017)

October 21, 2020

(SyFy/VOD) Another cheat, as it was very briefly a SyFy TV show, but I felt like it’d be a disservice to wait until November to boost this horror one-season wonder.

I can’t believe this aired on basic cable.

The show’s basically DEATH RACE 2000, but the cars are Cronenberg-ian devices that run on blood, and every episode riffs off of a different horror genre. Watch the trailer, as it succinctly explains the premise:

Now, with a premise like that, they could’ve just phoned in the eps, made them all stand-alone stories, but no — they fleshed out the lore, ruthlessly plotted it, made it super smart with surprisingly rich and empathetic characters — Colin Cunningham as Julian Slink is especially delightful — all while still managing to be one of the most amusing and disgusting things I’ve ever seen on TV. A surprisingly perfect season of TV.

If you still aren’t sold? Well, it’s basically second-wave industrial music conceptualized as a TV show.

PARENTS (1989)

October 20, 2020

(Prime/tubi/VOD) Directed by beloved character actor Bob Balaban! Scored with mambo-verve by Angelo Badalamenti! Mary Beth Hurt channelling Mary Astor! Sandy Dennis! Dennis Quaid back when he used to give a shit!

Delightfully weird, but very relatable, suburban horror coming-of-age film where the pre-teen kids’ strange imaginations run wild as they suss out that adults are really just large, hungry, hedonistic animals. We need more Sheilas in stories.

If anyone knows anything about the featured home, I’d love to hear about it because I swear I recognize it. It feels like it was ripped straight from Tati’s MON UNCLE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHybb1zSH-g

As a treat, here’s Ebert panning the film:

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (1982)

October 14, 2020

(AMC+/hoopla/SHUDDER/tubi/VOD/Vudu)? I recently watched a short documentary about the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise and one of the dudes in the doc — because of course they only talked to dudes — panned MASSACRE because the killer lacked character, and wow, way to miss the fucking point of the film.

MASSACRE was penned by Rita Mae Brown, a well-known feminist activist and writer, and Corman picked it up and gave it to Amy Holden Jones to direct, but only if she’d play it straight. It features wall-to-wall women, all more capable and unique than you’d normally see in a slasher film, and the film leans so heavily on the male gaze that it’s intentionally absurd, a sly way of gaining Corman’s approval while hoping others would recognize it as visually subversive.

As I’m sure anyone reading this is aware, sadly, the horror genre has leaned even harder into exploitation and male gaze — not to mention outright misogyny — since ’82, so what at that time was meant to be winking reads as standard fare.

As a slasher film, it holds up — the killer may not have the silhouette of Jason or Michael, but the drill is undeniably iconic, and the film utilizes the full frame in more Hitchcockian ways than you’d expect from an 80s Corman exploitation film.

It excels at satire, though. None of the boys are heroes, the girls spend their time reading PLAYGIRL and trying to figure out the score of a recent baseball game, often while eating pizza over a dead body.

Again, you might want to skip the trailer, as it gives everything away.

Please note: the following trailer is VERY NSFW.