Review of the Mike Judge film, originally published in OC Weekly.
I sat through Mike Judge’s new comedy, Idiocracy, struggling to suppress my laughter. It was an evening screening, just a few days after the film opened, and there were only four people in the entire theater: me, a grim, sixtysomething couple, and a very old man who wandered out after five minutes looking utterly baffled, like he’d come there expecting to see D.W. Griffith’s latest. The film hit me with one hilarious gag after another, but every time I giggled, I honestly felt rude for disturbing the shrine-like quiet of the place. I kept imagining the sixtysomethings peering over their shoulders in the dark, hissing, “Listen, we came here to enjoy a comedy, so will you please knock off all that damn laughing?”
The film follows Joe (Luke Wilson), a career slacker working in a seldom-visited Army library. One day his truly remarkable averageness and lack of family ties get him noticed by his Army bosses, and he, along with a sleazy but winsome hooker named Rita (Saturday Night Live polymorph Maya Rudolph), are selected to take part in a cryogenics experiment that’s supposed to put them to sleep for one year. Of course, things don’t quite work out according to plan, and Joe and Rita are revived in the year 2505, where they discover that humanity has devolved to a truly wretched state.
A grimly funny sequence early in the film illustrates humanity’s sorry downfall by chronicling two modern couples: one, a pair of smart, strenuously polite yuppies, spends so long dithering about whether having kids would be a prudent idea that they never get around to actually reproducing, while the other couple is a pair of braying redneck beasts who breed like rabbits that have OD’d on Levitra. By 2525, the hillbillies have inevitably taken over the earth, and the lunky Joe and dippy Rita now find they are the most intelligent humans alive.
The film takes us on a tour of a vividly realized, nightmare America—or “Uhmerica”—where the streets are piled high with mountains of uncollected garbage, astonishingly crass corporate advertising assaults the senses (Fuddruckers has now dropped all pretense and just calls itself Buttfuckers, although it remains a popular spot for kiddie birthday parties), and the most popular show on TV is called Ow! My Balls! You know that snaggle-toothed trog on your block who spends every Saturday camped out in his driveway with his knuckle-dragging buddies, blasting hip-hop at unholy volumes from noon until the cops finally show up at 11 p.m.? Idiocracy’s future America has become nothing but that guy, from sea to oily, polluted sea, and it’s a hilarious, terrifying place, like one of R. Crumb’s cartoons come to grimy life.
Judge’s previous creations, which include Beavis and Butt-Head, King of the Hill and Office Space, have made him many millions of dollars and spawned enough catch phrases to fill a couple of chapters in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations; as you read these very words, thousands of dorks all over America are annoying their co-workers by muttering about Swingline staplers. But even most of Judge’s most devoted fans were unaware he had a new film in theaters because Fox dumped this thing like a radioactive turd, releasing it to but a handful of cities, with no TV or radio ads, no posters, no media press kits . . . basically, the only way you’d have known this movie existed is if you happened to run into Judge somewhere and asked him what he’s been up to lately.
Idiocracy is arguably as good as anything else Judge has done, it stars a bona fide A-lister, and it looks like it cost a bundle; after all, all those grimy, crumbling city streets and little doodlebug cars couldn’t have come cheap. So what gives? Why is Fox treating Judge and his film so shabbily?
With King of the Hill, Judge comes across as that rarest of creatures on the modern American scene: an honest-to-gosh compassionate conservative. Very occasionally the show degenerates into wearisome Republican propaganda, but Hank Hill is generally a quiet and reasonable soul who espouses the kind of folksy values that are fairly hard to fault—hard work is good for you, and all that. Idiocracy is a more vicious beast, and if you didn’t know better, you could easily take it as the work of some angry commie kid. The film relentlessly and savagely attacks corporate America: here, ill-tempered Carl’s Jr. vending machines snarl, “Fuck you, I’m eating!”, Costco stores are the size of Arizona, and Fox News is hosted by a shirtless himbo and a hot chick in a bustier who cheerfully and sexily lie to an endlessly gullible public. Idiocracy all but grabs you by the lapels and screams, “Stop buying all this McCrap and read a fucking book already!” No wonder Fox didn’t get behind this thing, not while the Rock has a new mind-rotter flooding the multiplexes.
There are a few moments in Idiocracy when some of Judge’s red state prejudices surface (even the otherwise kind-hearted Joe refers harshly to “fags,” for instance), but for most of its running time, the film is so wonderfully shocking and subversive, saying so many blackly comic truths about life in these United States, that you can hardly believe Judge is getting away with it. But then you realize that, thanks to Fox, the film only reached the tiniest fraction of its potential audience; it could well be that the only people who saw it last week were me, the two sixtysomethings and the Griffith fan. So just what is Judge getting away with, again?
Of course, Office Space was poorly promoted and tanked on its initial release, and it has since become one of those Spinal Tap-esque “cult” hits, where everybody in America seems to be a member of the cult. (Seriously, just mention the Swingline stapler at your office tomorrow morning, and half the people there will start mumbling about burning down the building.) Assuming Fox bothers to put this movie out on DVD, it seems inevitable that an audience will find it and love it. Idiocracy paints a grim picture of our future, but I’m willing to bet that this smart, angry little comedy’s own future will be a happy one.
Showing posts with label Film Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film Reviews. Show all posts
John Waters: The Man, the Mustache
Interview originally printed in OC Weekly.
John Waters: Are you planning to record this?
OC Weekly: No, I’ll just be taking notes.
[Grumpy] Hmm. Well, okay. Then I’ll speak slooowly.
Okay. Nowadays, you can turn on TV any time and see all kinds of gross stuff. It occurs to me that we’re kind of living in a John Waters world, and I wondered how much of a part you feel your films have played in leading pop culture where it is today.
I think everything has come full circle. Now mainstream Hollywood is making gross-out comedies, and the foreign and cutting-edge people don’t anymore. I think I’ve always made foreign movies—in America. You have to understand, I was never that interested in gross. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that something like Pink Flamingos was gross, but . . . Well, no, I don’t think it was gross exactly; I’d say it was more surreal.
You have to remember that when it came out, it was just after Deep Throat came out and was a hit. There weren’t even any laws that said you couldn’t show somebody eating shit in a movie! There probably still aren’t because, good lord, who would want to copy us?
Things really have come full circle in all kinds of ways. I mean, in Pink Flamingos, we had the joke about selling babies to lesbian couples, and now today look at Rosie O’Donnell on the cover of all these magazines! It came true!
I was looking back at your films in preparation for this interview, and there’s a very definite change between your really extreme early stuff and the relatively wholesome tone of your work from Hairspray on. What led to the change?
I had to evolve. I couldn’t make the same film forever. In the case of Hairspray, I made a family picture by accident; it happened that one time. There are no more midnight movies anymore, so it’d be kind of dumb for me to make one.
Well, given how extreme a lot of the stuff out there is now, are you tempted to ever do anything really wild and extreme again?
Well, I think something like Cecil B. DeMented is pretty extreme—film terrorism is pretty extreme. I mean, I showed gerbils being shoved up the butts of major movie starlets! Maybe you’ve just gotten jaded; it takes a lot more to shock us today.
If something like Pink Flamingos came out now, in today’s climate, I think it would be huge.
When Pink Flamingos came out a while back, it was the No. 2 video. If I made it today, it would be released to 30 great art theaters around the country, and if it didn’t do well the first weekend, it would die. When it first came out, nobody came to see it the first weekend. It built very slowly over a year by word of mouth and wound up running for 10 years at the Nuart. Not that I think everything was so much better then. Today, the big studios are all looking for the next weird, interesting little film, but they weren’t back then.
Looking back on your films, are there any that you’re embarrassed about, any that just make you cringe?
Well, there’s that old cliché that my movies are my children, and mine are juvenile delinquents with learning disabilities. There are things in all of them that make me look back and cringe, but they were just the movies I made when I was the age that I made them. Obviously, if you look back at my first films, you can see I didn’t go to film school. Certainly, Mondo Trasho was too long, but it’s all a body of work—I’m not ashamed of any of them.
I understand you’ve recently been doing a lecture tour . . .
Well, I’ve been doing that for 30 years. It’s basically me doing my vaudeville act. I’ve spoken or taught at colleges, prisons . . .
Hang on! Prisons?!
Yeah. [Wistfully] I miss jail. I have a friend in jail, and visiting a jail is a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
How so?
The people look good, everybody has an interesting story, and even the guards, if they know you, can be very nice. Well, or they can be not nice, depending on their appreciation for your films! And there’s nothing like watching a movie in jail—in the gym. Ah, yes.
What could possibly be pleasant about that?
Well, it’s dark, it’s moody, you can have sex, it’s wonderful. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now they make you hang your head out of your cell and watch movies on video. So, no more movies in the gym.
[Still reeling from the last question] Uh. Okay. Your movies are known for their incredibly eclectic casts. Is there anybody working now or from the past that you dream of working with?
What, you mean including dead people? Well, that’s so broad; it opens up all of cinematic history. Jayne Mansfield, certainly. When I started with Divine, we said we wanted to base the persona on a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Godzilla. Who else? Anita Ekberg is pretty terrifying. She’s great. I’d love to get Meryl Streep, although we know it’s so unlikely that she’d go for it that we haven’t even offered. If you offer it to a star and they turn it down, the studio gets nervous.
Could you offer it to her privately? Mention it to a friend of hers or something?
There’s no such thing as a private offer. You have to offer it to them through their representation at their full salary. It’s very complicated.
I noticed, doing research online for this article, that there is no Johnwaters.com.
Thank God! I want it to be harder for people to reach me, not easier. Everything you find on the Internet is lies, so I hope you didn’t believe any of it.
I did discover Johnwaters.net, and the guy who runs that site said something about you hating the internet.
See, even that is a lie! I wouldn’t say I hate the net; I just have better ways to use my time. Although I do think the next depraved masterpiece will come from the Internet.
Have you ever been to Orange County before?
I don’t think so, but I have a friend from Huntington Beach I was thrown out of college with. Isn’t Huntington Beach near there? He was a surfer, and if you were into that, it seemed like the best place in the world to live. Actually, most of the surfers I’ve known have been criminals. Surfers are all criminals, or at least they’d like to be.
Really? It’s not like I’ve known a lot of surfers, but the ones I’ve known haven’t struck me as criminal masterminds.
I’d say watch your wallet. Or maybe they more want to be jewel thieves. Oh, don’t print that, that I said all surfers are criminals! But it’s true, the surfers I’ve known certainly had a criminal glint in their eyes.
You have one of the most meticulous mustaches I’ve ever seen. What’s involved in the maintenance of that thing?
[A little wearily] Oh, at this point, I could pretty much do it in my sleep. You just shave it from the top down, and then you do maintenance twice a week, and if you make any mistakes, you touch it up with Maybelline. If I ever want to disappear, I can just shave the mustache, and nobody will know me. When I reach a certain age, I plan to dye it blue. I’ve experimented, and it looks good blue.
Would this be just the mustache? Or would you dye the rest of your hair blue?
Oh, no. God forbid.
And what inspired the mustache?
Well, Little Richard, of course. Store detectives in old movies. [Getting enthusiastic] Hotel security guys in ’40s pictures! Pimps!
I see. It’s all starting to add up.
It does.
John Waters: Are you planning to record this?
OC Weekly: No, I’ll just be taking notes.
[Grumpy] Hmm. Well, okay. Then I’ll speak slooowly.
Okay. Nowadays, you can turn on TV any time and see all kinds of gross stuff. It occurs to me that we’re kind of living in a John Waters world, and I wondered how much of a part you feel your films have played in leading pop culture where it is today.
I think everything has come full circle. Now mainstream Hollywood is making gross-out comedies, and the foreign and cutting-edge people don’t anymore. I think I’ve always made foreign movies—in America. You have to understand, I was never that interested in gross. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that something like Pink Flamingos was gross, but . . . Well, no, I don’t think it was gross exactly; I’d say it was more surreal.
You have to remember that when it came out, it was just after Deep Throat came out and was a hit. There weren’t even any laws that said you couldn’t show somebody eating shit in a movie! There probably still aren’t because, good lord, who would want to copy us?
Things really have come full circle in all kinds of ways. I mean, in Pink Flamingos, we had the joke about selling babies to lesbian couples, and now today look at Rosie O’Donnell on the cover of all these magazines! It came true!
I was looking back at your films in preparation for this interview, and there’s a very definite change between your really extreme early stuff and the relatively wholesome tone of your work from Hairspray on. What led to the change?
I had to evolve. I couldn’t make the same film forever. In the case of Hairspray, I made a family picture by accident; it happened that one time. There are no more midnight movies anymore, so it’d be kind of dumb for me to make one.
Well, given how extreme a lot of the stuff out there is now, are you tempted to ever do anything really wild and extreme again?
Well, I think something like Cecil B. DeMented is pretty extreme—film terrorism is pretty extreme. I mean, I showed gerbils being shoved up the butts of major movie starlets! Maybe you’ve just gotten jaded; it takes a lot more to shock us today.
If something like Pink Flamingos came out now, in today’s climate, I think it would be huge.
When Pink Flamingos came out a while back, it was the No. 2 video. If I made it today, it would be released to 30 great art theaters around the country, and if it didn’t do well the first weekend, it would die. When it first came out, nobody came to see it the first weekend. It built very slowly over a year by word of mouth and wound up running for 10 years at the Nuart. Not that I think everything was so much better then. Today, the big studios are all looking for the next weird, interesting little film, but they weren’t back then.
Looking back on your films, are there any that you’re embarrassed about, any that just make you cringe?
Well, there’s that old cliché that my movies are my children, and mine are juvenile delinquents with learning disabilities. There are things in all of them that make me look back and cringe, but they were just the movies I made when I was the age that I made them. Obviously, if you look back at my first films, you can see I didn’t go to film school. Certainly, Mondo Trasho was too long, but it’s all a body of work—I’m not ashamed of any of them.
I understand you’ve recently been doing a lecture tour . . .
Well, I’ve been doing that for 30 years. It’s basically me doing my vaudeville act. I’ve spoken or taught at colleges, prisons . . .
Hang on! Prisons?!
Yeah. [Wistfully] I miss jail. I have a friend in jail, and visiting a jail is a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
How so?
The people look good, everybody has an interesting story, and even the guards, if they know you, can be very nice. Well, or they can be not nice, depending on their appreciation for your films! And there’s nothing like watching a movie in jail—in the gym. Ah, yes.
What could possibly be pleasant about that?
Well, it’s dark, it’s moody, you can have sex, it’s wonderful. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now they make you hang your head out of your cell and watch movies on video. So, no more movies in the gym.
[Still reeling from the last question] Uh. Okay. Your movies are known for their incredibly eclectic casts. Is there anybody working now or from the past that you dream of working with?
What, you mean including dead people? Well, that’s so broad; it opens up all of cinematic history. Jayne Mansfield, certainly. When I started with Divine, we said we wanted to base the persona on a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Godzilla. Who else? Anita Ekberg is pretty terrifying. She’s great. I’d love to get Meryl Streep, although we know it’s so unlikely that she’d go for it that we haven’t even offered. If you offer it to a star and they turn it down, the studio gets nervous.
Could you offer it to her privately? Mention it to a friend of hers or something?
There’s no such thing as a private offer. You have to offer it to them through their representation at their full salary. It’s very complicated.
I noticed, doing research online for this article, that there is no Johnwaters.com.
Thank God! I want it to be harder for people to reach me, not easier. Everything you find on the Internet is lies, so I hope you didn’t believe any of it.
I did discover Johnwaters.net, and the guy who runs that site said something about you hating the internet.
See, even that is a lie! I wouldn’t say I hate the net; I just have better ways to use my time. Although I do think the next depraved masterpiece will come from the Internet.
Have you ever been to Orange County before?
I don’t think so, but I have a friend from Huntington Beach I was thrown out of college with. Isn’t Huntington Beach near there? He was a surfer, and if you were into that, it seemed like the best place in the world to live. Actually, most of the surfers I’ve known have been criminals. Surfers are all criminals, or at least they’d like to be.
Really? It’s not like I’ve known a lot of surfers, but the ones I’ve known haven’t struck me as criminal masterminds.
I’d say watch your wallet. Or maybe they more want to be jewel thieves. Oh, don’t print that, that I said all surfers are criminals! But it’s true, the surfers I’ve known certainly had a criminal glint in their eyes.
You have one of the most meticulous mustaches I’ve ever seen. What’s involved in the maintenance of that thing?
[A little wearily] Oh, at this point, I could pretty much do it in my sleep. You just shave it from the top down, and then you do maintenance twice a week, and if you make any mistakes, you touch it up with Maybelline. If I ever want to disappear, I can just shave the mustache, and nobody will know me. When I reach a certain age, I plan to dye it blue. I’ve experimented, and it looks good blue.
Would this be just the mustache? Or would you dye the rest of your hair blue?
Oh, no. God forbid.
And what inspired the mustache?
Well, Little Richard, of course. Store detectives in old movies. [Getting enthusiastic] Hotel security guys in ’40s pictures! Pimps!
I see. It’s all starting to add up.
It does.
