...BUT IF IT'S FREE...
We make some shitty movies in America. I know this horse has been roundly beaten in a public forum, but I just want to get it out there that I'm paying attention, and we make a damned lot of movies that are not as interesting or clever or funny as most things one could experience staring at a dead shrub or standing perfectly stone still in the frozen food section at the grocery store.
I don't have cable- mainly because I don't earn enough money to pay for it, but also because everyone I know who has cable, especially those who pay extra for new movie channels ("new" excluding channels like TCM and such that play "classic" movies) seem to do nothing with their free time but flip through hundreds of channels only to say repeatedly "There's NEVER anything on- I wish I could just find SOMETHING to leave it on!" which seems more like self-inflicted punishment to me than something one would pay a premium for.
On a recent and rare hotel room stay, I found myself doing this exact thing. An abundance of "free" movie channels intrigued me- I hadn't had more than 8 viewing options in a good number of months. This also offered an opportunity to indulge the movie masochist within me.
Some part of me really enjoys terrible movies- obviously simple, old cheese is best. Looking back on a terrible movie from the past, one begins to ruminate on how far Hollywood has come. But this could not be further from the truth. If anything, as movies become yet another disposable product to consume and throw away, more and more studios, directors, actors, and especially writers seem to be sitting back with there legs kicked up, giving the world the collective finger and asking that it sit and spin. If you don't believe me, take a stroll through the used DVD section at your local Blockbuster. You'll be hard pressed to find a movie you remember existing, let alone something you want to buy and watch again and again. But you'll find lots of movies that look like they will suck humungous amounts of shitty, shitty ass.
But like a car wreck, I can't look away, and at times the curiosity is unbearable. I have to see what it's like: For the sake of my ego and my sanity, I have to watch and confirm everything I've thought privately and publicly about a steaming turdfilm.
Thus, on said hotel room excursion, I found myself watching "Mr. Woodcock" starring Billy Bob Thorton. Not for very long, mind you, but long enough to affirm all those bad thoughts I had watching commercials and trailers for it prior to its theatrical release. I'd imagined it was a brainless movie aimed at 6th graders with no hint of the violence or nudity that would make such a movie moderatly tolerable, with "jokes" mostly arranged around the "hilarious" last name of the titular character.
Ha. I said "titular."
The movie starts by asserting the premise that ol' Billy Bob is a ruthless gym teacher. If you think that sounds like a great idea for a movie, please stop reading this, stand up, walk to your kitchen, and repeatedly stab an olive fork into your ear.
We see Billy Bob circling a group of nerdy looking 8th graders holding a basketball. As each kid asks/answers a question, he either tells them to run laps, or chucks the basketball at them and then tells them to give it back to him.
That's about as far as I got. 20 minutes in, I'd yet to see anything that even vaguley resembled what a normal, intelligent person might consider "funny." As I'd expected, there weren't really jokes, so much as a string of mild things that happen, cushioned by wooden delivery of dry, uninteresting dialogue. I really hope ol' BBT was drunk as all fuck. Had *I* been drunk as all fuck, I'm still not sure I could've made it much past 1/2 hr or 45 minutes of the seeping leprosy sore that was Mr. Woodcock.
The next night I managed to stomach exactly 8 full minutes of one of those parody movies with "Movie" in the title (Scary Movie, Super Hero Movie, Not Even Barely Funny Movie, Shitty Movie, et al.) I have no idea which one it was, and it doesn't matter. In 8 minutes there was a Britney Spears "joke" that is already no longer current, a Michael Jackson "joke," and several other examples of dialogue that was the verbal equivalent of fully formed, piping hot poop logs sliding out of the actors mouths and flopping to the floor, which probably would've been a lot more entertaining. After 8 minutes, my seething red veil of dislike for anyone who might consider this "funny" forced me to decide whether it was worst bursting a blood vessel in my brain to continue watching.
But it was free.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I'm on a bus here in Chicago. Lo and behold, two young, knock-a-round Cubs fans sit having a frank and pithy discussion:
"Hey dude... have you seen Mr. Woodcock?"
"Ha... no, but that sounds awesome!"
"It is! Billy Bob Thorton plays this angry gym teacher"
"Oh man, that sounds cool!"
Seething red hate-veil do your thing...
We make some shitty movies in America. I know this horse has been roundly beaten in a public forum, but I just want to get it out there that I'm paying attention, and we make a damned lot of movies that are not as interesting or clever or funny as most things one could experience staring at a dead shrub or standing perfectly stone still in the frozen food section at the grocery store.
I don't have cable- mainly because I don't earn enough money to pay for it, but also because everyone I know who has cable, especially those who pay extra for new movie channels ("new" excluding channels like TCM and such that play "classic" movies) seem to do nothing with their free time but flip through hundreds of channels only to say repeatedly "There's NEVER anything on- I wish I could just find SOMETHING to leave it on!" which seems more like self-inflicted punishment to me than something one would pay a premium for.
On a recent and rare hotel room stay, I found myself doing this exact thing. An abundance of "free" movie channels intrigued me- I hadn't had more than 8 viewing options in a good number of months. This also offered an opportunity to indulge the movie masochist within me.
Some part of me really enjoys terrible movies- obviously simple, old cheese is best. Looking back on a terrible movie from the past, one begins to ruminate on how far Hollywood has come. But this could not be further from the truth. If anything, as movies become yet another disposable product to consume and throw away, more and more studios, directors, actors, and especially writers seem to be sitting back with there legs kicked up, giving the world the collective finger and asking that it sit and spin. If you don't believe me, take a stroll through the used DVD section at your local Blockbuster. You'll be hard pressed to find a movie you remember existing, let alone something you want to buy and watch again and again. But you'll find lots of movies that look like they will suck humungous amounts of shitty, shitty ass.
But like a car wreck, I can't look away, and at times the curiosity is unbearable. I have to see what it's like: For the sake of my ego and my sanity, I have to watch and confirm everything I've thought privately and publicly about a steaming turdfilm.
Thus, on said hotel room excursion, I found myself watching "Mr. Woodcock" starring Billy Bob Thorton. Not for very long, mind you, but long enough to affirm all those bad thoughts I had watching commercials and trailers for it prior to its theatrical release. I'd imagined it was a brainless movie aimed at 6th graders with no hint of the violence or nudity that would make such a movie moderatly tolerable, with "jokes" mostly arranged around the "hilarious" last name of the titular character.
Ha. I said "titular."
The movie starts by asserting the premise that ol' Billy Bob is a ruthless gym teacher. If you think that sounds like a great idea for a movie, please stop reading this, stand up, walk to your kitchen, and repeatedly stab an olive fork into your ear.
We see Billy Bob circling a group of nerdy looking 8th graders holding a basketball. As each kid asks/answers a question, he either tells them to run laps, or chucks the basketball at them and then tells them to give it back to him.
That's about as far as I got. 20 minutes in, I'd yet to see anything that even vaguley resembled what a normal, intelligent person might consider "funny." As I'd expected, there weren't really jokes, so much as a string of mild things that happen, cushioned by wooden delivery of dry, uninteresting dialogue. I really hope ol' BBT was drunk as all fuck. Had *I* been drunk as all fuck, I'm still not sure I could've made it much past 1/2 hr or 45 minutes of the seeping leprosy sore that was Mr. Woodcock.
The next night I managed to stomach exactly 8 full minutes of one of those parody movies with "Movie" in the title (Scary Movie, Super Hero Movie, Not Even Barely Funny Movie, Shitty Movie, et al.) I have no idea which one it was, and it doesn't matter. In 8 minutes there was a Britney Spears "joke" that is already no longer current, a Michael Jackson "joke," and several other examples of dialogue that was the verbal equivalent of fully formed, piping hot poop logs sliding out of the actors mouths and flopping to the floor, which probably would've been a lot more entertaining. After 8 minutes, my seething red veil of dislike for anyone who might consider this "funny" forced me to decide whether it was worst bursting a blood vessel in my brain to continue watching.
But it was free.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I'm on a bus here in Chicago. Lo and behold, two young, knock-a-round Cubs fans sit having a frank and pithy discussion:
"Hey dude... have you seen Mr. Woodcock?"
"Ha... no, but that sounds awesome!"
"It is! Billy Bob Thorton plays this angry gym teacher"
"Oh man, that sounds cool!"
Seething red hate-veil do your thing...
posted by Pete Klockau at 6:07 PM
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