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Category Archives: Video
Saturday Matinee: Valley Girl
80S BITS: VALLEY GIRL
By Richard Grey
Source: TheRealBits.com
With the release of a fourth American Pie film this year, one that largely looks back at the highs and lows of the 1999 original, it is tough to imagine a time when teen sex comedies weren’t a dime a dozen. When reflecting on Martha Coolidge’s 1983 hit film Valley Girl, what makes it stand out is just how much hasn’t changed in the last three decades. Some of the fashions might have altered, the music is now retro and valley girls have been parodied in everything from Frank Zappa music to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yet there remains a central familiarity that this film set the tone for in many ways.
In fair California, where we lay our scene, Julie Richman (Deborah Foreman) is a rich valley girl who has everything a young lady could dream of: cool parents, money, a gaggle of friends and the hottest boyfriend in town. After hanging out with her valley friends Loryn (Elizabeth Daily), Stacey (Heidi Holicker), and Suzi (Michelle Meyrink), she decides that Tommy (Michael Bowen) doesn’t respect her anymore and unceremoniously dumps him. When she meets Hollywood punk Randy (Nicolas Cage) at a party, the pair share an instant connection, and Randy falls in love hard, showing her a world she never knew existed. Yet Julie’s friends don’t approve, and she must decided whether to go with Randy or cave to peer pressure and reconcile with Tommy.
The disparity between rich and poor, and the class war it created, was a major theme in the films of the 1980s, proving to be the Romeo and Juliet stumbling block that stopped couples from uniting in Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful to name but a few. Just as the decade of decadence was getting underway, the familiar trope is pulled out here not so much as a cheap cash grab, but rather as a parody of the popular youth culture of the 1980s. More so than any other film that has lampooned or been set in the 1980s since, Valley Girl captures the era perfectly, from the plastic image-focused girls of the valley, to the New Wave punks of Hollywood, just as caught in the scene as the sex-obsessed girls.
Where most teen comedies are the fantasies of the middle-aged, who vicariously live out deflowering fantasies that they missed out in their own formative years, female filmmaker Martha Coolidge creates a world inhabited with real kids. Much of the film cleverly sits back and observes conversations, adopting an almost documentary approach to exposition. Refreshingly, this means that catching girls out in the nude or obtaining a pair of panties as a trophy are not the ultimate goals in the film, nor is there a contest to be the first past the cherry-popping post. These young characters are sexual active, aware of their own bodies but in contrast conflicted over the dichotomy between their feelings and social status. Through the mere act of listening, we find out their fears and their desires. Who knew that girls talk about sex almost as much, if not more than, boys?
Valley Girl is fuelled by a terrific New Wave soundtrack, making liberal use of The Plimsouls and Josie Cotton, who both appear in the film. Peppered with minor hits of the 1982-83 charts, “I Melt with You” by Modern English serves as an unofficial theme song for the film. The film originally had a lot more on the soundtrack, with the music rights costing $250,000 on top of the film’s original $350,000 budget. However, while The Clash, Culture Club, Bananarama, and The Jam all originally appeared in the credits to the film, none of their songs can be found in the actual picture thanks to an inability to secure the rights. Frank Zappa, whose satirical 1982 song “Valley Girl” served as the basis for the film, unsuccessfully attempted to sue the film’s makers for capitalising on his song’s name.
Trivia fans will know that this was the first film in which a young Nicolas Coppola first used his more famous stage name of Nicolas Cage, but the legacy of the film goes well beyond beginning the career that launched a thousand hairpieces. Apart from popularising the highly imitable “Valspeak”, Valley Girl opened the door for frank and open explorations of youth anxiety and sex, far more than the Porky’s films ever did. Indeed, a direct line can be traced between Valley Girl‘s star-crossed lovers and the Jane Austen-inspired Clueless. Like, totally for sure.
Watch the full film for free here: https://youtu.be/9VbyTLnRXCs
Two for Tuesday
Saturday Matinee: Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
Review by Jim Tudor
Source: Screen Anarchy
Having never seen the comedic TV work of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (“Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!”), I went into their feature-length variation, “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie”, braced for a merciless expansion of inside jokes that I would be terminally outside of. Mercifully, I was able to navigate these strange waters successfully enough to understand and even enjoy the film, even as it came apart in places.
Aesthetically speaking, it’s got about as much going for it as an early Kevin Smith film. Comically speaking, it’s a downhill ride that starts out promising but then fizzles out.
Heidecker and Wareheim play fictionalized versions of themselves, occasionally wandering beyond the forth wall to further muddy the meta-waters. The laughs are the most solid in terms of the plot itself. When “Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” opens, we come to learn that that’s exactly what Tim & Eric have made – a movie, with a billion dollar budget. And it sucks in every possible way. Because they are morons, in every possible way. And the Hollywood execs who green lit their billion-dollar movie are bigger morons for letting it happen. They want their billion dollars back, but having pissed it all away on flamboyant houses, clothing, and a guru/mooch played by Zach Galifianakis, they have no choice but to take a job reviving the world’s deadest shopping mall, owned by a tyrannically delusional Will Ferrell. (And I do mean dead – the place looks like George Romero just got done shooting “Dawn of the Dead” in there four times over. It’s wolf-plagued and everything!) Huh? Don’t worry, it all actually makes an absurd bit of sense, and legitimate satire abounds… for a while. It’s semi-intelligent fun, until Tim & Eric as actual filmmakers (as opposed to the meta ones they are portraying on screen) (which makes this whole thing ultra-confusing to write about; great job on that, Tim & Eric) lose control of the whole operation, and simply opt to let it careen, because hey, who doesn’t love a wreck?
That said, there was a lot I didn’t get, and I’m not talking about the graphic shrim crapping sequence or appearances by “Awesome Show, Great Job!” stock actors that brought instant chuckles to the initiated viewers. What I didn’t get is why a promising comedy would willingly and irrevocably veer into the realm of the pseudo-sadistic, beyond the confines of dark humor. By taking full advantage of the freedoms of their R rating, Tim & Eric end up attempting to mine laughs by wallowing and attacking rather than through the time-tested methods of careful craft and construction. Maybe I sound like an old school curmudgeon when I say that they’re taking the easy way out, as they increasingly abandon what makes their film clever as the running time wears on. I get that Tim and Eric are absurdist comedians who’ve made their mark by seizing upon and distorting the familiar TV tropes we take for granted. But in this movie, what begins as a sly riff on consumption, advertising, and self-obsession becomes a manufactured midnight movie; a subpar comedic Jodorowsky film (of all things).
As would-be auteurs and stars of their own big-screen ego-trip, Heidecker and Wareheim make every attempt to turn their filmmaking shortcomings (budgetary, experience, etc.) to their advantage. (It’s clearly not really a billion dollar movie. Maybe not even a million.) 1980s corporate video aesthetic is embraced, and that much works. There are moments when it even looks and sounds like synth-fueled Video Toaster-generated cheese. Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gross, Robert Loggia, William Atherton, Will Forte, and Erica Durance, among others, all turn up in amusing roles. John C. Reilly indulges his shameless comedic side with a larger role as yet another moron, although he manages to steal every scene he’s in. So there are redeeming qualities. But Tim & Eric’s unwavering on-screen attempts to be as unlikable, despicable and morally bankrupt as the bloodthirsty Hollywood moguls they screwed over drowns everything by the end. Tim & Eric become the failed, new Butch & Sundance in a hail of ridiculous grindhouse-level violence for it’s own sake and it’s own sake only. This sort of thing could’ve been very smart and memorable, but in light of the utter lack of comedic build permeating this movie, it’s just whack-a-mole sound and fury, signifying only other signifiers.
Whether this obvious attempt to forge a deliberate cult classic out of their TV program will work or not, time will tell. Hailing from Will Ferrell’s Funny Or Die comedy farm, “Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” manages to both be funny and die. It’s the dying that’s easy, which this film proves. Even if it is funny for a while.
Watch the film on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/product/tim-erics-billion-dollar-movie
Two for Tuesday
Saturday Matinee: Winnebago Man double feature
From Wikipedia:
Winnebago Man is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Ben Steinbauer. The film follows the Internet phenomenon created by a series of twenty-year-old outtakes from a Winnebago sales video featuring profane outbursts from the salesperson, Jack Rebney. Originally intended as an inside joke, the video spread across the globe first on VHS then via YouTube and other online video sites, earning the salesman the title of “The Angriest Man in the World”. The documentary explores the story of the clips’ origins and how, two decades later, it affects the reluctant star.
Steinbauer released a short film Extraordinarily Unusual: Surprising the Winnebago Man in 2017, documenting his return to visit Rebney on his 87th birthday, bringing some of Rebney’s old friends to celebrate.
Watch Winnebago Man on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/product/winnebago-man
Extraordinarily Unusual: Surprising the Winnebago Man:
Two for Tuesday
Saturday Matinee: Chicago Conspiracy Eight
The Real Chicago 8 Movie: R.G. Davis Gets it Right
By Jonah Raskin
Source: CounterPunch
In January 1970, R.G. Davis, the founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and one of the fathers of guerrilla theater, filmed a 60-minute video with seven of the defendants in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Long buried, the film which is titled “Chicago Conspiracy Eight,” recently surfaced thanks to the Media Burn Archive. Unedited and uninterrupted, it can be viewed on Vimeo.
According to the web site, the Media Burn Archive “collects, restores and distributes documentary video created by artists, activists and community groups.”
They’ve done a great job with the “Chicago Conspiracy Eight,” which illustrates the wonders one can work with a camera, a cast of colorful characters and a lot of gumption. By January 1970, when R. G. Davis produces the video, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party had already been severed from the federal case, which indicted eight men on charges of conspiracy and rioting in the streets during the 1968 Demcratic National Convention.
In the video, R. G. Davis and the seven defendants sit around a large table littered with food and drink. R.G. serves as the moderator, though he doesn’t really moderate the discussion. Indeed, it’s a wild hour in which everyone gets to speak, albeit some longer than others. An empty chair sits at the head of the table and carries a sign that reads, “Mr. Bobby Seale.” His absence is palpable.
The video tells a story that Aaron Sorkin’s feature film, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” can’t and doesn’t tell. In this case, reality beats fiction. The magnificent seven each have their own individual hair styles: Dave Dellinger with long sideburns, Abbie with a Jewfro, as it was called, Jerry and Lee Weiner with full beards, Fronies with a mustache and Tom with the unkempt hair on the top of his head. Rennie Davis looks the cleanest cut of the lot. The era was a lot about hair. Our side clearly won on that front.
The seven defendants talk about Chicago in the summer of 1968, the Conspiracy Trial and anything and everything else that comes up, spontaneously. There’s a great deal of humor and a lot that’s serious, though no one seems to be afraid of going to jail. No topic is sacred. Everything can be and is the butt of comedy, including Abbie raising his middle finger and shouting “Fuck the Movement.” As a Yippie who battled the stogie members of SDS, that’s understandable.
The video is often about language and the spoken word. Jerry explains that “the most beautiful moment” in the trial takes place when poet Allen Ginsberg of Howl fame testifies on the witness stand and “the courtroom becomes a religious place.” In the video, Abbie is the most literary and cultural of the defendants. He likens the trial to Brave New World and describes Judge Julius Hoffman as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. Tom Hayden calls the U. S. “a police state” and recounts the murders of members of the Black Panther Party, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Rennie Davis explains that racism “effects every major institution” in American life. That it did.
John Froines jokes about being “a male chauvinist.” Dellinger plugs non-violent tactics as “revolutionary” and Jerry says that the word “Fuck is the biggest issue” in the courtroom. It did push a lot of buttons. Abbie tells R. G. Davis that he and the other defendants want to be honest and not fudge facts and at the same time “beat the rap.” That’s the tricky part, coping to the revolution and aiming for a not guilty verdict. The Chicago eight aimed to beat the rap in the courtroom and outside the courtroom where they organized, appealed to the media and aimed to put pressure on the judge and the prosecutors.
Here and there, bits of history show up in the video: the Haymarket Riot of 1886; and U.S. Communist Party members who defended themselves when they were on trial. Abbie adroitly weaves together comedy and ideology. He calls the Hilton “a symbol of American imperialism” and adds that the demonstrators marched on the hotel with the intention of “changing the sheets.” That’s still pretty funny.
Near the end of the hour, R.G. Davis tells the others, “I got some good points.” Indeed, he did. He deserves credit for his realization that it was essential to bring the defendants together while the trial still raged. Starr Sutherland and Tom Weinberg produced the 2020 video, along with the team at MediaBurn who deserve praise from everyone who rioted then and everyone who protests these days.
After the Crash 