[Director] “Hey, all you idiots back there – clear the shot! This isn’t Woodstock!”

Fuck that bitch!

Aziz Ansari, in his first standup Special since he was falsely accused of sexual assault on a date gone awry, should have opened his show with, “Fuck that bitch!”

Because his comedy has been ruined by the accusation of that anonymous cunt! A year after the furor, he’s back on stage in AZIZ ANSARI: RIGHT NOW, but he’s not all there. And he’s not concerned with “right now” so much as re-litigating “back then.” This once-energetic performer, who used to challenge Chris Rock in the panther energy stakes, stays mostly seated and sedated on a stool, in a clunky one-shot where we see him in the foreground, with the background all in focus as well, showing stage exits and crew silhouettes. What the hell kind of…?

Filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in May 2019, Spike Jonze directs, actually manning the up-close Steadicam onstage. Even before Aziz puts us off-balance by addressing his accusation (early in the set, because – elephant in the room), Spike has already made us feel uncomfortable with this weird non-subjective framing! Spike is no novice, so this is obviously intentional.

Then there’s the stage dressing: there IS none. Completely bare, we can see from the rafters to the back wall (and all the aforementioned exits and worklights back there). And Aziz is presented no different, dressed like a bum, in Metallica t-shirt, jeans and running shoes. (I guess they didn’t want any distraction or facade to ruin the metaphor of him “baring himself.”) Watch any one of Aziz’s other standup Specials – he’s a snazzy-suit guy. But now, his minders are re-imagining him as an Everyman. Why? Because his snazzy persona was the seductive pickup artist, his 2015 book Modern Romance: An Investigation only enhancing his image as a Ladies’ Man. But seductive doesn’t sell in the idiotic times of #MeToo.

Aziz Ansari: on his way to non-binary?

Aziz’s accuser (who crawled out of the woodwork and made her claim during the fervor of #MeToo) considers her date with Ansari “the worst night of her life” but has anyone considered it was actually the worst night of HIS life due to that indefinable spark she has robbed him of, that will affect the rest of his comedy career? Though Aziz successfully achieves many laughs in RIGHT NOW, the overall tone of his set is cowed and introspective. Like he’s got something to apologize for… But he has nothing to apologize for! That accusation haunts his every line of delivery, every situation he discusses, every insult that doesn’t go far enough. It’s like he’s asking forgiveness. For what exactly?! In the end, Aziz either becomes more of a man (in the eyes of women), or more of a woman (in the eyes of men). Let’s let social media decide. Because, surely, we can’t think for ourselves anymore…

Everyone is entitled to say no, and afforded the respect to say it, so the woman that accused Aziz is a cunt NOT because she didn’t give it up to him, but in the way she handled her rejection of him. She could have said no and left his home and flicked herself to sleep, hoping her next date would yield the prince of her finicky romantic ideals; instead, she said no, then stayed with Aziz for nearly an hour while he continued to try to stick it in (which is the preprogramming of every male of every species if the female remains in the vicinity), then she blabbed about her dissatisfaction in a public forum (to what end, we’ll never know), to a reporter with her own credibility issues (Katie Way, whose verification protocol was highly questionable).

From that woman’s own account, Aziz didn’t have sex with her, didn’t rape her, and both of them performed oral sex on each other more than once. Are we all adults here? Don’t we all know what this is? Was the woman waiting for her libido to kick in? Was she disappointed there was not enough alcohol in her system to fuel her desire toward Aziz? Was she waiting for him to offer to pay her bills? Was she hoping he would pull out an uncharacteristically enormous wang for a little Indian guy?… It was a simple date gone awry for myriad reasons, where the woman suddenly remembered that society has given her a politically-correct excuse for embarrassing dates. Aziz is no more guilty of “sexual misconduct” than every single man who has tried to get laid on a first date. Reading the woman’s account, it’s like a gullible child’s idea of what grownups should do on a night out. One of her texts to her friends after the date: “He wanted sex. He wanted to get me drunk and then fuck me.”

And?

How old do you have to be, to NOT know this about all men, let alone international entertainers? Are you seven? She went up to this world-traveled actor’s house! What did she THINK was going to happen?! I guess the enabled, privileged prude wanted to be wooed in a way that suited her and was just not responsive to Aziz’s methods of seduction, so… sexual misconduct.

The content in RIGHT NOW (written by Aziz), though very well-constructed and humorously delivered, is irrelevant. More important is the tone. And that’s why every bit sounds so careful, so examined, so trimmed of offense. Don’t get me wrong: Aziz is still very funny, and still commands the respect of his audience as he playfully tears down a few individuals within it, but on the whole, we won’t be talking about the actual “bits” in years to come, but rather how this Special sits within the Aziz legacy. His marketers, managers and manservants (and Aziz himself) don’t want to look back in five years and have people say “too soon!” They don’t want this Special dismissed as callous and inappropriate for being released so quickly on the heels of his “scandal.” They want it to seem like a worthy, thoughtful “comeback.” So everything is homogenized with qualifications and apologia and empathy and seeing both sides.

Woke is all the rage. Ironically making Aziz seem more asleep. For the sake of that elephant…

…But fuck that! Comedy is not meant to be this safe, this eggshell-treading. It’s meant to be dangerous and take you out over the edge. And maybe even drop you a few times. That’s why Aziz – whom we all know is innocent of rape, or sexual molestation, or even inappropriate behavior – should have faced his accuser from this powerful platform and told us straight-up: “Fuck that bitch!”

Then there’s that second elephant: R. Kelly. Yes, the rapper who kept underage female sex-slaves chained in his mansion, and pissed on them. During many routines in his past standup catalogue, Aziz has proclaimed R. Kelly’s genius, doing bits about his concerts, meeting him, and just all-round worshipping his talent. Well… those bits aged well. And poor Aziz finds himself almost groveling in his repudiation of the platinum-selling urolag.

Of course, this whole situation puts paid to Aziz’s overtly misogynistic womanizer character, Raaaaandy. Very sad to see that priapic energizer bunny disappear from Aziz’s standup landscape.

The trailer shot says it all in body language: head bowed, pensive, repentant. That’s not Aziz in attack dog mode. That’s cow mode. And if Aziz is going to bend over and let people do this to him without hitting back hard on his innocence, then –

Fuck that bitch.

END

Fried turkey coming up!

Turds making turds.

During the “Flaming Gauntlet” stunt in JACKASS 3.5, I realized that none of the stunts that Johnny Knoxville’s neurologically disordered brood perform are meant to succeed. The stunts have no training behind them, no practice, no Plan B; the brood enter into these stunts with their brains on standby and their balls braced for impact. In this gaggle of outtakes from JACKASS 3D, we don’t realize we want to see them fail, until the odd moments a stunt goes reasonably right. At that moment, we feel let down; there is disappointment, not just from the JACKASS crew, but within our own chests. So in Flaming Gauntlet, when brain-rotting Steve-O attempts to walk a pole between two sizzling, fiery hotplates, with flaming balls being swung at him to throw him off balance, we know he is going to fry.

Because that’s what sells this lurid amble into the lizard brain of humanity.

If you know the JACKASS ethos, you’ll know the JACKASS 3.5 “movie” is simply stunts, pranks and nut-shots, with no plot, no production values, and no redeeming qualities. It is a direct-to-DVD release, starring Knoxville, Steve-O, Bam Margera, Preston Lacy, Chris Pontius, Dave England, Jason “Wee Man” Acuna, and other turds, containing interviews, outtakes and failed stunts that did not make the cut in the marginally better JACKASS 3D. (Although I have no idea what I am even using as a criteria to measure “better.”)

During the opening interviews, the main message is that being on the set of JACKASS is “nerve-wracking” as pranks come at you from any direction, from anyone, at any time, sometimes even when you are sleeping, and always most definitely aimed at your nutsack. Painful pranks like Margera using a defibrillator on a sleeping Ehren. At one point, Ehren tries to get back at Margera, and it devolves into a real fight that has to be broken up. They are all smiles as they are pulled apart, but we can see the exact moment it got RAYL. We got eyes.

A guy kicking another guy in the face: entertainment for people who like falling off horses.

We see doctors stitching Knoxville’s thumb back on; we see the crew shitting their shorts while long-jumping with enemas inside them. We see England “Bareback Base Jumping,” where he rides a horse behind the rider, then throws up a small chute and goes flying off the horse. Basically – it’s England falling off a horse. Wonder why these are outtakes? Observe.

Margera gets a rocket-propelled dildo shot into his naked bottom. Again, I’m telling you guys, there are easier ways to get a cock in your ass. Just walk down Santa Monica Blvd past midnight.

We see footage using a “Phantom Camera” – a camera with a superfast frame rate that produces footage in super slow motion. Do we really need a closeup of Wee Man’s hairy naked ballsac from behind, being hit by a tennis ball?

All of them must be infertile by now, right? At the least, impotent. We know Knoxville has a major penis malfunction. And Ryan Dunn is dead, this film being the last footage of him.

There is something limbic in the frenzied hurling of shaken Coke bottles to the floor, making them explode in different directions, spurting, hitting the walls and camera and, of course, their nutsacks. Do we watch this brainless dreckage because the JACKASS team live out our catharsis? Decompression? Revenge on repression?

It had to happen – electrodes to the testicles. Steve-O.

There is a certain level of skill/interest in the final scenes of rebounding basketballs from incredible angles and distances onto – you guessed it – someone’s nuts.

The sad thing is, we sophisticates can’t win. If we compare the can’t-look-away aspect to a car crash, they’ll cream their jeans. There’s nothing they’d like MORE than to be in a car crash. And if we wish their stunts would fail – they want that too! If we wish their stunts success, success is failure in the most déclassé manner possible.

Enjoyment for people with the IQ of a turd.

END

One-dimensional characters in a 3D world.

Diary of a Douchebag.

Johnny Knoxville leads his troupe of professional sado-masochists through another array of idiotic stunts in JACKASS 3D, that I’m guessing is for the purpose of:
a) getting themselves killed;
b) satisfying their torture-porn kink;
c) touching each others’ balls.

“Professional” because these guys are somehow getting paid to perform these stupid, elaborate stunts, and “sado-masochists” because the stunts are specifically concocted to cause pain and suffering to the performer.

The troupe includes the usual jackasses: baby-faced Bam Margera (who suddenly gets real when confronted with his snake phobia), Ryan Dunn (now dead), Steve-O (depleted brain activity), Jason “Wee Man” Acuna (little people can be this stupid too), obese Preston Lacy (also credited as “writer” of this garbage), Chris Pontius (apparently a nudist), unnoticed Ehren McGhehey and leftover-nutbag Dave England. Make no mistake: these guys are idiots in the true medical sense of the word, meaning “A person of severe mental deficit, incapable of coherent speech or of normal response to danger.”

Directed by JACKASS veteran Jeff Tremaine without any plot, purpose or point, this excuse for a “movie” opens with Beavis and Butthead (yes, the cartoon characters) explaining the use of 3D glasses, because:
a) there was real doubt that this movie’s demographic would know how to use them, and
b) the movie needed more proof on how lowbrow it was.

Is the 3D effective, cool, or worthwhile in a movie of this ilk? I dunno. Who cares?

Opening titles feature the cast being belted and beaten to near-death in super-slomo. And that sounds like Dee Snider singing the opening theme, so they had to raise at least $4.50 for his fee.

The number of times these guys bash each other in the nuts, it’s like a closet-homo carnival of repression. These guys are so into touching, looking at, hitting, swiping, fondling, and gargling each others’ manginas, they’ll use ANY EXCUSE to get naked or down to their freeballing underpants. Or how about when Knoxvile throws a golf ball at naked Pontius, who bats at it with his tumescent dick, whereupon Margera tries to catch the golf ball in his mouth. Guys, there’s an easier way to get your mouth near each others’ dicks: just suck each other off.

Why do I need balls if all I do is hang around other men trying to touch them?

Stunts include (not a complete list):

• Jetski — where we see a closeup cam that shows Knoxville’s painful reaction to hitting his 39-year-old chest on the handlebar; yet all around are guffawing, unaware of that expression we just witnessed;
• Tee Ball — Steve-O being hit directly in the nuts with a baseball; of his 36 years on Earth, how many times has he used his dick for its actual intended purpose of being put in men’s assholes?;
• Beehive — two of the idiots allowing themselves to be stung by hives of bees;
• Roller Buffalo — Knoxville on roller skates simply being trampled by four buffaloes. After the first one butts him in the torso the others just run around his crumpled form. It takes one second. I hope it was worth the medical bills for a punctured pancreas. There must be a better way to get fisted Johnny, really. Later, he sets himself up to be continually charged by a bull (in Invisible Man). One day his testicles are going to be impaled on an ungulate horn and his non-existent kids will thank him.
• Super-gluing nude Wee Man to nude Preston in a 69 position – am I lying with the gay quotient or am I imagining it?;
• Sweatsuit Cocktail – gathering obese Preston’s sweat while he’s on a treadmill and Steve-O drinking it, while all the cast and viewing audience vomit. Smart stunt. Real smart. Again, if you want this man’s liquids in your body so badly, suck his cock and swallow the semen, Steve-O.
• Pin The Tail On A Real Donkey – a naked, blindfolded idiot kicked in the thigh by a donkey while he tries to get close to its butt with a fake tail. Unfortunately, it misses crushing his genitalia for life. Maybe Knoxville can do that with his mouth.
• Pigsty – shoving an apple up fat Preston’s ass and letting a giant pig eat it out.
• Irving Zisman montage (aka Knoxville in oldguy makeup causing social distress) – at least these gags are not physically hurtful to anyone, and are the best “candid camera” moments in the film;
• The Bungee Portaloo – Steve-O strapped in a portaloo and covered in shit. I’m beginning to suspect Steve-O is a bulimic and is simply thinking up creative ways to vomit rather than simply shoving a horse penis down his throat.
• Lamborghini Tooth Pull – a medical procedure turned into a prank; this idiot’s face could be ruined for life by tying a string around a gammy tooth and using a Lamborghini to pull the string, which comes out with an audible pop, as the idiot starts screaming. We realize – no anesthetic. If you’re that stupid that you would entrust the jackass crew with a medical procedure, you deserve a life spent in agonizing palate complications. By the way, didn’t you already do this in JACKASS NUMBER TWO, you brainless bastards?
• Pub Fight – One very funny moment that involves onlookers’ reactions, where Wee Man takes a Wee Woman into a bar for a quiet drink, with hidden cameras. Suddenly another wee guy appears, cussing out the wee woman for cheating on him. He brings back two wee thugs to beat up Wee Man. Midget Fight! Suddenly two wee cops run in to break it up. Wee cops call medics for the injured – and two wee medics run in! It’s staged brilliantly, and the pub patrons, none of whom interrupt the wee fracas, can only look on in stunned amusement at the unfolding midget tableau.

Most of the stunts are mean-spirited and somewhat disturbing for their pain or imminent-death quotient. What are the conditions of the insurance companies for this film? When the idiots are guffawing and running toward a fallen comrade after a stunt, is there a seed of fear in their heads that he might not be alive, or chronically damaged for life? Who cares?

Live Long and Fester, you tools.

END

The joys of backdooring!

Peeking in Grandpa’s Back Door.

A “Making Of” reel for BAD GRANDPA, BAD GRANDPA .5 is quite an interesting companion piece, filled with outtakes, interviews, behind the scenes footage and deleted scenes of Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville in oldguy makeup) creating socially-impure havoc.

In a package more professionally presented than any of the previous JACKASS straight-to-video “extras” movies, BAD GRANDPA .5 is filled with sketches that are not in the original movie, and some that seem wholly excised from it, notably Catherine Keener‘s large part as Irving’s wife Ellie (in heavy “Bad Grandma” makeup). There is also a large amount of new footage featuring writer Spike Jonze (in even badder grandma makeup) as the lactating octogenarian Gloria.

Johnny Knoxville and his twisted compatriots first take us through Irving Zisman’s oldguy makeup process, developed over the years from the MTV JACKASS days to the feature film. And here’s a nugget about the makeup that shocked me like a cattle-prod to the scrotum: BAD GRANDPA was nominated for Best Makeup at the 2014 Oscars! Knoxville tells of his exasperation with the arduous makeup process on the very first day and not looking forward to enduring 59 more days of it – until their first day of shooting where they riled up a course-ful of golfers and he realized it was all worth it.

Director Jeff Tremaine describes their initial idea for BAD GRANDPA: hiring “babysitters” to talk to Irving, where the producer would appeal to people’s pity, “My grandpa is sad, sitting there all alone; I’ll pay you to go talk to him but don’t tell him I did that…”  It created a different dynamic that didn’t work as well as people being blindsided.

We are shown a few scenes of the crew stopping gags when they get too intense for the marks. I’m presuming that if you rolled cameras long enough, that would be the final outcome of most of the gags – the crew stopping just before bloodshed or cops (nowadays in most States, you won’t get one without the other).

We see camera-hides and mic-hides – ingenious concealments – and the inside of the control van, which looks like an FBI sting in process with its banks of monitors and electronica.

We see gags on dating experts, tantric sex experts, erection gags in a casino, corpse burial gags, and we get lots more of the penguin guy from BAD GRANDPA, with his accent straight out of THE SOPRANOS. We hardly see young Jackson Nicoll, the foul-mouthed little wonderboy who played Billy.

When Spike Jonze hits the screen as Gloria, another dimension in bad taste is attained, and it’s not just because he starts squirting his drooping, lactating titty into Irving’s mouth in a public diner. Or starts talking about back door action to the nice portly old “card reader” lady who looks like Hillary Clinton. And we see that Spike as Gloria can push the buttons of the man whose profession is pushing other people’s buttons (Knoxville) – by kissing him on the mouth and constantly demanding eye contact when doing so. It’s scary and gross and somehow sensually arousing.

I’d better go before I actually start liking this shit.

END

Knoxville and his 9 year-old co-star: different height, same mental age.

Old Fart, New Trousers.

The JACKASS team bring one of their rabble-rousing characters from the TV show to the big screen: Grandpa Irving Zisman aka Johnny Knoxville in oldguy makeup. Tearing up civil society in hidden-camera anti-social fervor.

As Jackass-based media goes, it’s the most cogent of the lot; as hidden camera media, Sacha Baron Cohen does it better.

The plot of the cantankerous Grandpa growing to love his grandson over the course of a road trip is a thin disguise over Johnny Knoxville finding ways to make himself and unsuspecting people look like assfaces.

Grandpa Irving’s wife just died, at the same time his deadbeat daughter (Georgina Cates) burdens him with his grandson Billy (9 year-old firecracker Jackson Nicoll), as she is going to prison “for drugs.” Widower Irving, feeling unburdened for the first time in 46 years, doesn’t want “the little cockblocker,” so decides to drive Billy cross country to his deadbeat father (Greg Harris, who only agrees to take Billy for the child support benefits). This actual storyline (written by Knoxville, Spike Jonze and director Jeff Tremaine) is woven through the hidden-cam gags, and there is even an emotional arc, of Irving coming to the realization that he loves Billy and doesn’t want to give him up.

The hidden cam gags are the usual motif of Knoxville (in full Grandpa makeup) wading into perfectly normal life situations and turning them helter skelter, so that people around him are forced to act, react, fight or flight: getting his dick caught in a vending machine and asking passersby to help get it unstuck; running over a giant penguin model and fielding the threats of the goombah who insists he fix it; knocking over an open casket at a eulogy; causing trouble at a bingo game; pulling out his lengthy ballsac at a girls’ night strip club; accidentally destroying the cake at a wedding…

His young unseasoned accomplice is right there beside him all the way. Young Jackson Nicoll is as corrupt as Knoxville and crew, and by that I mean, the guy has a natural ability to stir the shit shamelessly. Yes, he’s sometimes being fed lines through an earpiece, but he’s just as quick on the uptake when he’s out there on his own. He bothers passing men to be his father, asks a sex shop worker what her stripper name is – to her chagrin – then dubbing her “Cinnamon”; participates in a Little Miss Pageant, disguised as a little girl, then does a striptease to Warrant’s Cherry Pie… He is right amongst the action on almost all the gags, holding his own beside Knoxville’s seasoned shameless shit-stirrer.

The finale is mildly disturbing for all the wrong reasons:

Irving delivers Billy to his trailer-trash dad at a pub being attended by a bike club called the Guardians of Children. Holy shit! Was this a planned plot point? Greg Harris as dad bravely plays asshole, almost getting himself killed by this bike gang. But here’s the most disturbing part: Knoxville, in one take, pulls an emotional goodbye scene to Billy. Remember, the Jackass crew did not have the luxury of doing more than one take for the bikers’ real reactions. As Knoxville chokes back tears outside, a biker says to him, “I can see the emotion.” Think about it: Knoxville isn’t playing to other actors in a scene with him – he’s fooling real people into believing he is crying inconsolably for his grandson! Johnny Knoxville not just a wannabe stuntman and self-flagellating dickhole? In reality, an Actor’s Actor? Now that’s disturbing!…

And check out the big balls on Greg Harris playing the insensitive prick father. Most bikers are hair-triggered to beat up anything that moves that doesn’t agree with them, and Harris bends over backwards to mistreat his little boy in front of these particular bikers who are laser-focused on mistreatment of children. Now that’s dedication to getting the shot! And the little kid once again proves his mettle by being right amongst the fracas and coming away – we hope – untraumatized.

The strangest element in GRANDPA is Irving and Billy alone in the car. While we imagine they would be using these breathers to laff uproariously about the unsuspecting marks they just punked, they remain in character, playing to the throughline. Funnily enough, these moments take us out of the movie, not the outlandish stunts they are pulling amongst the populace.

BAD GRANDPA follows the trend of exposing Middle America for the braindead river of flotsam it is, that trend reaching an apex with Sacha Baron Cohen’s BORAT and BRUNO. (It’s intriguing how most of the marks in hidden camera media are so caught up in ME ME ME ON TV, MA! that they rush to sign that release form no matter how stupid or foolish or ignorant they look.) Unfiltered reactions are priceless no matter who elicits them, but it just seems like Cohen does it more convincingly, more “professionally” (whatever that means – maybe a more “believable” hidden camera ethos?) and more hilariously.

This is not to say BAD GRANDPA is trash. It’s a more polished production than any of the JACKASS “films,” and it rates above average because, despite your functioning brain, you can’t help but laugh. A primitive survival instinct? A displacement gesture? The I’m-glad-it-wasn’t-me gene? We have to admit that there’s something viscerally enjoyable about seeing real people dealing with unreal situations in real life.

As a final thought, I love the fact that Jonze, Knoxville and Tremaine got away with naming their company Dickhouse Productions.

END

More Jockstraps, More Beer.

Johnny Knoxville and his crew of masochists do more stupid stuff which hurts them badly and could get them killed – and film it. Number Two in name, number two in nature. But of course, they meant it that way. And that’s what scares me…

JACKASS NUMBER TWO is so funny and so unnecessary that I’m laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.

Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Ryan Dunn and Jason “Wee Man” Acuna are the nucleus of this team of men who show affection by kicking each other in the nuts and laughing, setting new lows for redneck entertainment with every spaz stunt they never pull off. Either they’re a bunch of guys who refuse to grow up – or they’re trying to get themselves killed, which is the same thing from another direction.

There are the usual rocket sleds off piers, the willful crashing into objects, the beatings and molestations by each other; there is Knoxville dressing as an old lady whose flaccid breasts “unwittingly” dangle out to discomfort passersby; there is man-nakedness at every turn, branded butt-cheeks, blurred balls and stinking taints; there are the practical jokes that the gang play on each other, like throwing a King Cobra into a pen with the snake-phobic Margera, or doing the switcheroo on Margera’s mom so that she wakes to a fat impostor in her bed who isn’t her fat husband.

Then there are the clinically insane bits, like Steve-O pushing a giant fish hook through his cheek, attaching it to the end of Pontius’s fishing line and jumping into a sea full of sharks; swimming with sharks isn’t dangerous enough, he has to risk his cheek being ripped off from Pontius trying to reel him in if a shark grabs his leg, not to mention the infection and scar and simple visceral pain the hook is going to cause on his face.

And why does Margera agree to have his ass branded with a red-hot cattle-brand? And how many times must they get chased and butted by bulls before they realize they might actually get a horn through the liver and die? Steve-O puts a leech on his eye. Pontius eats cow shit. And someone drinks horse semen. Am I being unreasonable or am I getting too old to appreciate the idiocy?

Why does the “movie” open with Ennio Morricone music from FISTFUL OF DOLLARS? And then a snake bites Pontius’s penis dressed as a mouse.

The best “bit” is a gag within a gag and the most complex setup; I doubt this movie’s demographic can even follow it: they dress McGhehey as an Arab, strap him with fake dynamite and beard, and put him in a cab to Burbank Airport. The joke will be the cabbie’s reaction to this obvious “terrorist” passenger… The REAL joke is on McGhehey who is being set up by the crew: the cabbie is Jay Chandrasekhar (of Broken Lizard) in disguise, who has been told to slap Arab McGhehey around and pull a gun on him. Plus, unbeknownst to McGhehey, his fake beard is pubic hair shavings from all the gang, one of them with crabs.

There is a minefield of richer commentary here, but even the time taken to view this sordid public display of egomaniacal deviancy wastes time that could be spent doing something more productive with my life – like electrocuting my balls. Hey, maybe these JACKASS clowns are onto something…

END

… and to lay before the newborn king, they brought gifts of gold, bling and jockstraps.

KELLY’S HEROES without the ragtag.

War is not just Hell. In THREE KINGS, it is confusing as Hell.

Four American soldiers behind enemy lines on a mission; they’re not here to fight a battle, they’re here to rob a bank.

If the plot sounds familiar, it is KELLY’S HEROES for the morally ambiguous generation. THREE KINGS is a stunning, ferocious black comedy; heavy action, heavy emotion, heavier incongruity, as a troop of American soldiers in Iraq attempts to steal Saddam Hussein’s gold.

March 1991. “The war just ended.” That’s Iraq 1, Bush 1. Troops don’t know what to do with themselves; they have no orders, they have no clue. Everything is not as clearly defined as WWII, where “Ze Chermans” were the unequivocal bad guys. This is Father Bush’s idiot war of choice (as opposed to Iraq 2003, Bush Jnr’s idiot war of choice).

Across a flat expanse of desert, an Iraqi appears in the distance, and an American soldier calls to his distracted peers, “Are we shooting?” No one knows.

During a roundup of Iraqi prisoners, a map is pulled out of an Iraqi soldier’s butt. Soldiers Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze), led by cynic soldier Archie Gates (George Clooney), formulate a plan to go AWOL for half a day to steal what’s on the map – Saddam Hussein’s gold bullion stash – under the pretense they are distributing it to the wronged people of Iraq.

Nothing goes as planned.

And nothing is as it seems in this hell hole waste land: they attack the location on the butt map – no gold; they notice civilian Iraqis clustering around a well – soldiers in disguise guarding a subterranean vault; the gold bars are not in sturdy roadcases – they’re in cheap tourist suitcases; a gun battle is a few strategic shots, not sexy slomo spraying of bullets; they shoot up an oil tanker – it is full of milk!; sinister Iraqis garbed like STAR WARS Sand People rescue Archie (Clooney) and his crew and lug the clinking gold bars to a safe haven underground; like Viet Nam, the hostiles look like the friendlies, so no one knows who and when to shoot; and the press and military alike have no idea why they are there, exemplified in the miscast Nora Dunn (SNL) as a self-serving reporter and doofus Jamie Kennedy as her military liaison.

And so the movie goes, every single scene filled with strange actions and reactions. The four soldiers stumble on a group of hostage Iraqis, led by Cliff Curtis – over their avarice, they find their souls; realize they must help these people… then steal the gold.

Director David O. Russell tells us via opening text: “The makers of THREE KINGS use visual distortion and unusual colors in some scenes in this film. They intentionally use these unconventional techniques to enhance the emotional intensity of the story line.” Shouldn’t that be something us little green reviewers tell you?

Spike Jonze warbles the tenuous thematic link: “We three kings be stealin’ the gold…”; Ice Cube loves playing soldier in his ‘flage – at least all his guns are legal now; Clooney is decisive as a pouncing lion, and Marky Mark somehow finds an excuse to get his shirt off (even if it’s Iraqis ripping it off to torture him).

The torture scene is also a confusing revelation to all those inculcated to believe Middle Easterners are one-dimensional sadists, as the torturers cover their eyes while electrocuting Barlow (Wahlberg). The interrogator asks, “What is the problem with Michael Jackson?” At first, big laugh – then the biting indictment behind the question, “He is the King of Pop of sick fucking country. A black man make the skin white and the hair straight – and you know why? Your sick fucking country make the black man hate himself. Just like you hate the Arab and the children you bomb over here.” The interrogator describes his family’s death, with the roof falling in on his son, “Can you think how it must feel?” We almost ally with the Iraqis during that scene. Until we see Marky’s abs.

In the most amusing cultural flashpoint, Archie invokes, “George Bush wants you to unite against Saddam!” This was back in the day when the Bush name could incite fevered excitement in Iraqis. Last time that’ll ever happen…

END

The Importance of Being Malkovich.

Being Poffy The Cucumber

It’s about a puppeteer who finds a portal into the head of a real-life actor… No, it’s about an over-sexed, 105-year-old pirate who runs a company on the 7 ½ floor of a building who has found a way to live forever… No, it’s about a woman who realizes she is transsexual after having sex with her lesbian lover whilst inhabiting the body of John Malkovich… Okay, I give up.

I plead the Charlie Kaufman defense.

Like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, like BRAZIL, like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is like nothing else in filmdom. For originality alone, it deserves the highest accolades. Like its eponymous subject matter, it is inexplicable and indefinable.

Transcending its own marginally sane storyline (penned by that maniac, Charlie Kaufman), this movie stuns us with its audacity: has there ever been a puppeteer as movie hero?; when was the last time action took place on the 7 ½ floor of an office building?; have characters ever spoken plain English to a secretary, only to have her accuse them – in English – of speaking gibberish?; have we ever met such a lovable Grandpa character with such a liltingly filthy mouth (“My spunk is, to you, manna from heaven”)?

And the grandest audacity of all is the plotline of the puppeteer finding a tiny hidden door in his office which turns out to be a portal into the head of John Malkovich. (Don’t even ask…) Enter the portal and for fifteen minutes you see what Malkovich sees, hear what Malkovich hears, experience what Malkovich experiences; basically a passive passenger onboard the Malkovich train – until the puppeteer finds a way to manipulate Malkovich like a human puppet…

Brought to the weird screen by director Spike Jonze, MALKOVICH stars John Cusack as the puppeteer, Craig Schwartz; Cameron Diaz in an actual thinking, speaking, acting role as his wife, Lotte; Catherine Keener being arrogant as usual, as the glibly aloof Maxine (I would sincerely hate to be the guy Keener comes home to every night), Orson Bean as the lovable old lech, Lester, Mary Kay Place as his befuddled secretary whose naked thighs he wants to feel next to his and, of course, John Malkovich, being – well, you know…

Comporting himself in that slightly askew manner that can only lead us to believe he is a closet knife-killer, John Malkovich proves to be quite the sport when it comes to self-deprecation. Skewering himself as thoroughly as the movie skewers him, he does such an exemplary job of acting as if other people were inhabiting him, that we truly forget it is he himself who is calling himself an “over-rated hack,” or lamenting that he should have found a younger body to inhabit, for fear of breaking a hip…

Jonze and Kaufman bend storytelling convention so far backwards so successfully that – like 2001, like BRAZIL, like ORANGE – we could never guess at what might be coming next in this sui generis tale – which is as satisfying in its own way as any left-turn plot twist.

The bizarre intertwining between Maxine and Lotte and Craig-as-Malkovich will not support a simple “Hollywood” solution and commendably, there is no sappy ending with a heterosexual couple finally together after enduring adversity. Another portal has opened, another soul is diluted, and Carter Burwell’s sad, evocative score shadows a tragic, disturbing conclusion.

MALKOVICH is a wonderful balancing act between comedy and pathos: the ongoing reference to “that jewel thief movie,” which Malkovich is constantly accused of acting in, against his denials; the sudden cameo of a well-known Hollywood roisterer as Malkovich’s confidante; a funny little backstory involving Lotte’s chimp, Elijah; Cusack as the tragic, unappreciated puppeteer, walking a line which could have easily led an audience to regard him without pity – as a ball-less, amoral cur, who had to inhabit someone else to realize his own potential – yet somehow evoking our sympathies through his pathetic attempts at progress.

Though the story alludes to sublimated personalities, possession and transmigration of souls, it thankfully steers clear of any pseudo-science or mysticism, holding firm to the credo of not explaining a damn thing.

And what happens when Malkovich enters the portal himself? That, faithful reader, is too Malkovich for mere words to Malkovich.

END

Somebody should probably tell these guys that– ahhh, forget it!

Jockstraps and Beer.

Poffy being a jackass

If human civilization is to retain any semblance of forward momentum, never let our children see JACKASS: THE MOVIE. Matter of fact, once you’ve seen it yourself, burn your copy and wash your genitals.

With a bravado that most of us relinquish at age twelve, Johnny Knoxville and his near-equals in brain-deficiency offer innumerable hideously-filmed vignettes of them being – well, jackasses: snorting wasabi and vomiting it, electrifying their perinea, harrying Chinatown dressed as “Night Pandas,” golf-cart demolition derbying…

From hurling themselves into spinning ceiling fans, to taking a dump in a hardware store display toilet, to presenting their meat-packed jockstraps for alligators to attack, with the number of laws that these guys transgress through their fatalistic stunts, it is truly a wonder that none of them are crippled, dead or doing life as some perp’s byotch.

Haphazardly “written” by Knoxville, Spike Jonze and Jeff Tremaine, and uncouthly “directed” by Tremaine, though this “movie” has no socially-redeeming value, its makers obviously know something about our bloodthirsty proclivities that we who pretend to be civilized do not. Amidst all the assault, battery, indecent exposure, negligent driving, willful destruction of property and matchbox car butt-plugging, hidden in plain view amongst the skull-duggery and dumb-fuckery, there is most definitely a message – but I’m too busy laughing to figure out what it is.

END

If God watches over George Bush and Satan watches over Tenacious D
– Satan’s winning…

Once every hundred-thousand years or so, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow…

Not exactly Spinal Tap. Not exactly Martin & Lewis. Not exactly normal.

Once in a great while, an act appears that shimmers with such kineticism, such verve and lust, that audiences are scorched into submission – such an act is The Darkness – oh, and Tenacious D “The Greatest Band On Earth.”

No small coincidence that I mention The Darkness above; an anachronism that treads the same razor’s edge as The D, but on the “serious” side of the music biz. But what denotes “serious”? If financial success is the measure of sobriety, then Tenacious D is every bit as serious as those “real” rockstars. Which makes Tenacious D, as unlikely as it may be, real rockstars.

Poffodeus, Demon of Salad

Jack Black and Kyle Gass have achieved a unique quasi-stardom; satirized themselves into the “serious” rock world and into ostentatious success that they obviously could never grasp via conventional methods. We know that these guys are veterans of the rock scene – how else could they act so clueless so convincingly? – who never did “make it” with whichever garage bands they wore five-inch heels in, due to the provincialism of the music business; for the simple reason that their niche of pomp-rock has come to be purveyed by the likes of (and the looks of) the David Coverdales and the Jon Bon Jovis. And if you didn’t fit the mold, you were out in the cold. But Tenacious D have become their own self-fulfilling prophecy: in satirically proclaiming they would “change the face of rock” – they have!

Black’s hi-octane physicality and power-tenor vocal delivery is comparable to any of the arena frontmen whom he is hot on the heels of, and Gass’s guitar expertise rivals, if not surpasses, most of the toyboy hair-shredders of the 80’s who were bequeathed recording contracts on the strength of their Aquanet.

But Tenacious D’s angle of attack has widened their scope. Unlike “serious” musicians who boast powerful talent, yet are stultified by the “demographic” that they are marketed to, The D can shamelessly perform feats which would cause “serious” rock stars unwarranted PR problems or lose them their followings: criticize other musicians without press repercussion; display their out-of-shape bodies without loss of libido; wear idiotic stage attire whilst fearing no fashion police; claim to devil-worship without evangelical dissent; egotistically aggrandize their own product without humility; all due to the initial establishment that this project is unequivocally tongue-in-cheek!

But how far can tongue-in-cheek stretch? Ultimately, when international tours come into play, the business of propagating fun has to be taken seriously somewhere along the way – or money gets squandered and corporate wangling gets ugly.

The bittersweet irony is that in winning widespread public acceptance – in other words, in attaining “commercialism” (a word that would make rockers and hard-core fans cringe) – Tenacious D have paradoxically lost the vital element that won them that commercialism: their naiveté – for where is the parody in terming yourself “The Greatest Band on Earth” if everyone in your audience agrees with you?

The hook for the HBO series which launched Tenacious D onto an unsuspecting public was that it was obvious that these two rock-and-retch burnouts would never even have the finances to pay for a ticket to see – let alone be – “The Greatest Band On Earth,” as they exalted themselves from a dank stage where audiences almost didn’t even acknowledge their existence. (That being said, HBO must be kicking themselves that they didn’t contract Tenacious D for more than 3 half-hour episodes – Who knew that those benign television morsels, all of which are included in the Master Works DVD, would attain such cult legend?)

And now, Tenacious D, having brushed so close to actually being considered The Greatest Band On Earth (through acclaim by a multitude of fans), have necessarily modified their focus. This is not a bad thing, as every artist must sway to their public’s demand, but their éclat has shifted, from “vainly trying to make people notice them,” to “raving in the spotlight.” The overwrought, Spike Jones-directed Wonderboy music video is a prime example of their largesse threatening to outrun their self-possession. Though they parody Ronnie James Dio in an eponymous ode, this video is more Dio than Dio ever was – the production value could never be matched by Dio’s budgets in his heyday – which begs the question on whether the satirists have become the satire yet.

Is it still tongue-in-cheek? Yes.

For holding at bay the curse of self-consciousness and self-awareness is a schoolkid honesty and sophomoric sensibility, illustrated best in the three additional mentally-twisted shorts on the DVD – showing us that, talented though they may be, The D are still two sick puppies with abject disregard for social protocol, a near-miracle in this frightened and quivering politically-gutless modern age. It might be guilty laughter watching “Rock Star Sperm For Sale,” but it is unbidden guilty laughter. We wish we could all be this honest and juvenile and callous.

The DVD also sports the full-length concert at the Brixton Academy in London; a daring, stark presentation featuring only the duo themselves, harking back to their roots when there was no “band” intrusion into their chemistry. It is testament to The D’s charisma and talent (Black’s freneticism, perfectly complemented by the understated Gass) that they can hold an internet-bred audience with such rigor…

We bear witness to one of the truly great comedy teams of our time.

Praise be to Satan on his big-assed steed!

END