Hey folks! I'm INSANELY proud to announce that my 3D film AracAttack! in 3D! will be shown as the main event of the Bad Film Fest / Bad Theater Fest's Saturday (April 20th) screening!
Much like it's original screening nearly 4 years ago, it will be screened in full FANG-O-VISION!! I'll be providing everyone with FREE special 3D glasses that they can keep as a momento of the event!!!
This is going to be the LAST time it's ever shown in a theater EVER AGAIN.
MAKE SURE YOUR BUTT IS IN THAT THEATER!!
ADMISSION IS FREE! CHECK THE LINK FOR DETAILS!!!
http://www.badtheaterfest.com/home/saturday-april-20-8pm/
It always strikes me so odd that this can happen. It takes HUGE balls (the metaphorical kind – not necessarily the literal kind, ladies) to take creative risks… but when something is presented AND FAILS that in roughly 10 years time that same concept/idea/tone can become the keystone of an entire channel/media’s content.
I can think of no better example of this exact situation than the topic of today’s Out of the Toilet post than MTV’s Sifl and Olly Show.
For those who don’t know of the sock puppet duo, imagine Wayne’s World but FAR less manic. The basic concept of the Sifl and Olly Show is that a pair of friends run a zero budget variety show from a rickety studio in some undisclosed seedy place. Each show they’re introduced by the easily distracted Chester, a childlike stoner burnout who they mock occasionally. They hold tight to a few segments that they return to over the arc of each episode – An interview or two, taking calls from the public, running a QVC style program for Precious Roy, and closing the show with a musical number. Also, to fill time In between these segments, they would air old music videos and sometimes dance in front of them via the magic of green screen.
in fact – it was ALL through the magic of green screen.
The show was cheaply made on the quick, and always looked like it was a week away from disappearing entirely. Despite the loose, conversational, and sophmoric tone of the show, it was surprisingly cerebral and focused. It was contrived and polished in it’s garish unfinished edges.
Just check out some of their original episodes:
It was Adult Swim years before Adult Swim existed. It was a perfect Youtube smash before Youtube existed. No one got it, and it still holds the honor of being one of the lowest rated shows in MTV’s history.
Why should you care about this? Good question.
The show is the creation of two amazing folks: life-long friends Liam Lynch and Matt Crocco. You may not know them by name, but they’ve had a hand in some amazing productions over the years – including a lot of the wackier early work of Jack Black in Tenacious D and School of Rock, Sara Silverman’s film and TV work, and the music (not the theme song but everything else) from Clone High.
Liam though is one of my personal Internet Heroes. His early work as a one-man-band style producer/creator is AMAZING. There is no limit or bounds to his imagination or creativity. Just watch this quick behind-the-scenes video they produced for Sifl and Olly’s new webseries.
Amazing, right? After he scripts out and performs the episode – radio style – he puppets all the characters HIMSELF in front of a green screen, then personally edits the episode together with graphics he made HIMSELF! ALL FROM HIS GARAGE!
But what’s best about him, is that he’s unafraid to take the risk and fall flat on his face. He’s the pioneer of zero-budget high-production value. Just check out his podcast, Lynchland.
He’s just out there doing what he thinks will be funny and entertaining. Is it 100% hilarious or 100% focused? No. But it looks insanely professional for the time of when it was produced and the limited abilities of the equipment he used to create it. He’s accomplishing EVERYTHING that I hope to accomplish whenever I pick up a camera. At the time, his podcast had over 90,000 subscribers (now rather paltry by Youtube audience standards), and now it seems he’s back to work on a new series of Sifl and Olly Show webisodes!
Check ‘em out!
The first 8 have been aired on Machinima’s channel, and the upcoming season will air on Nerdist!
So get out there and consume, folks! Subscribe to Liam’s channel on Youtube, and watch the rest of the original episodes there! If interest is piqued, MTV may finally release a DVD of the entire series!
It seems like every once in a blue moon the creators in Disney Animation are handed broad instructions and let loose to do as they pleased. I can’t tell it’s because upper management just gives zero fucks and these insane greenlit productions are pushed through to make a quick buck, or if these wild and wacky chances are fully backed and believed in by those in charge. In either case though, the stars aligned in 1995 and just such a rare occurance was birthed onto the airwaves.
The thing is – no one remembers it.
That’s where I come in. Normally I just blog about it on my website – but today I shake things up. Welcome to the first video installment of Out of the Toilet!
In today’s episode I polish up the long forgotten 13 episode’s of Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show!
In a hilarious side note, the show produced only ONE piece of merchandise – Franco American Shnookums and Meat spaghetti in a can.
It’s enriched with EXTREME!
It’s even more hilarious because each can had to bear a warning that the products name was the name of the cartoon character, and the product contained no meat product!
EAT AT YOUR OWN RISK
FOR YOUR WATCHING ENJOYMENT
Tex Tinstar: The Best In The West
Episode 1:
Episode 2:
Episode 5:
Episode 7:
BONUS PITH POSSUM!!
As always – if you like the music, please visit the links where you can download their music for free and comment on their work!
Really. Check it out. It’s like the universe cracked open and poured out 90% of my favorite films ever.
Among the many absolute cinematic legends (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, Police Academy, The Karate Kid, Revenge of the Nerds, Romancing the Stone, Red Dawn, Splash, Amadeus – THE LIST GOES ON) the highest grossing film that year was the blockbuster Ghostbusters. It shaped childhoods and was so widely beloved and such a surprise smash that it of course had it’s share of money woes as everyone tried to hop on the Ghostbuster Express to Cash City.
Now, much like my last Out of the Toilet, I’m not here to talk about a CRAZY popular intellectual property, but rather, something often forgotten and/or much maligned by pop culture.
Today’s post is all about one of my favorite shows – Filmation’s Ghostbusters.
WHAT HAPPENED
It’s somewhat well known that Ghostbusters the film went into production before they had secured the rights to the name “Ghostbusters.” They had no idea that back in 1975, Filmation had produced a live action children’s show called The Ghost Busters. They say they learned late in the game, but in a move of surprising dickery, they decided to just go ahead and use the name anyway. Ghostbusters the movie came out and was a SUPERMEGASMASH and Filmation was all WTF.
No, seriously, what the fuck?
So Filmation unchained their lawyers and sued Colombia for roughly two dump trucks full of money – and rightly so. Sure they were sitting on the then currently unused and obscure copyright – but Colombia should have at least tried to research for a copyright before production started (and if one existed, licence it from them). The suit was wisely settled quickly out of court – but in the settlement Filmation attempted a rather cunning attack. They secured the rights to solely use The Ghostbusters name in Animation. Filmation then backed up this right by secretly developing a cartoon series based on Ghostbusters the movie.
It was win-win. They would be the only ones who could use “The Ghostbusters” by name in their nigh monopoly of children’s animation, and they had a completed pitch for a cartoon based on the film. Everything was turning up Filmation, until Colombia for some reason didn’t want to do business with a company that just sued them. DIC reached a deal with Colombia, and they dodged the court settlement by naming their cartoon The Real Ghostbusters.
Filmation kicked itself soundly for not being more concrete in its settlement requirements – but rather than let it’s “The Ghostbusters” title go to waste, they started hasty work on creating a Ghostbusters cartoon based off their original property The Ghost Busters.
You know! These guys! The MORE famous ones.
Their project started with a couple of adverse qualifiers before they were even out of the gate. Firstly, The WORLD knew the Ghostbusters as the Murray lead team of social misfits and blue collar workers that wisecrack and trap ghosts – meanwhile, in a world WAY before anyone thought people would care about home video or old TV programs, NO ONE knew about the original Ghost Busters. There was very little chance that kids (or adults) would care about a new Intellectual Property that seemingly stole the name from their new favorite thing (even though it was the other way around). Secondly, the original concept of the live action show was clunky at best – The Ghost Busters live action show was a slapstick driven vehicle for old F-Troop favorites Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch who basically WERE their characters from F-Troop (don’t fix what ain’t broke). They would always have to go to the same castle on the outskirts of town in every episode and deal with a ghost in some way. Two old guys and a poorly made gorilla suit doing the same thing over and over. It was far from innovative, engaging, or toy driven (as ALL of Filmation’s properties were in the 80’s).
Kids are gonna LOVE this!
Things seemed pretty grim from the start.
WHAT WAS IT ABOUT
The original Ghost Busters from ‘75 was about the incredibly dry straight man Jake Kong, the zoot suit clad Eddie Spencer, and their smarter than average propeller beanie wearing gorilla Tracy. They busted ghosts with the help of their Ghost Kit and their Dematerializer. Their adventures were usually framed around a bunch of bungling.
Most of the time whilst breaking and entering private property.
[Filmation’s] The Ghostbusters takes place one generation into the future, where Jake Kong Jr., Eddie Spencer Jr., and the same Tracy (though now REALLY smart and sporting a cool Indiana Jones fedora) have inherited their father’s business, their headquarters – The Ghost Command (a haunted mansion tucked between massive skyscrapers), cool equipment, haunted artifacts, and their ape. It’s not an easy transition for the two men, who have had little contact with their fathers over the years and know relatively nothing about ghosts.
Wait. You expect us to WORK?! FOR A LIVING?!?!
It’s all silly fun until Jake and Eddie are thrust into action when their fathers disappear and the time traveling Prime Evil comes to the present, but remains trapped in the Fifth Dimension. From there he commands a crew of motley evil ghosts from his Hauntquarters. (More on that in a second.) Prime Evil is part robot and part ghost because FUCK YOU, IT’S AWESOME. The guy is just fucking evil, and wants to break the barrier between the dimensions, and lead his unstoppable ghost army across the Earth.
WHY IT WAS COOL
# 1 THEME
There are a lot of reasons I really love this cartoon, but right off the bat is the world in which the show exists in. In the movie Ghostbusters, Ray, Egon, Winston, and Venkman are all insiders (more or less) to the scientific and reality grounded world of New York City. Their self designed and built equipment sweeps up ghosts like a garbage man cleans streets, and though they brush with the paranormal and the metaphysical – they have a classification and a scientific reason for each spook spector and ghost. In [Filmation’s] The Ghostbusters, Jake and Eddie are untrained outsiders in a world where the paranormal coexists with the normal, and reality is always in flux. They don’t have classifications or fancy science on their side – they have a few gadgets built and maintained by a gorilla and are constantly out of their depth. They get to go through a transformation sequence where they’re ripped from reality and imbued with powers from the Spirit World. They are heroes and adventurers picking up a family legacy (one that’s basically unknown) of being bad ass battlers against evil forces.
And getting to wear cool uniforms while battling that evil!!
The best way to frame it is that Ray took out a loan and geeked out over a car. Jake inherited a haunted mansion in the middle of Manhattan and his car is a geek.
# 2 ARTWORK AND MUSIC
Secondly is the frankly GORGEOUS artwork and music. The animation is cheap and recycled (much like in most of Filmation’s cartoons) but the designs are sound and the backgrounds are LAVISH. Especially the Spirit World and transformation sequence backdrops.
Look how fucking METAL this is!
The theme is one of my favorites from any 80’s cartoon, and the insidental music is mostly original from episode to episode. They build a large library that they can pick from – and it makes for a much more animated show (despite the sometimes lack of character movement).
Thirdly is the idea of Dematerialization. I had my theories of what this exactly meant, but in my research into this article I discovered a small community of fans that had pulled apart this very idea and proposed three varying ideas of what the technology was, and how it worked. The first thing to consider is that a ghost shot with a dematerializer is returned to the Fifth Dimension (The Spirit World). So it’s easy to assume that being shot with the Dematerializer would open a split second door to the Spirit World and suck the target back. This is unsound because any missed target shot accidentally would return to the Spirit World, and it only seems to work on ghosts sent from the Spirit World. The second and slightly more sound idea is that the Dematerializer is a time machine of sorts, and that it de-ages ghosts – robbing them of their powers. This sounds feasible given the amount of time travel in the show (more on that to come) – but Go-er community member Nix (Go-er is apparently the nickname of a Filmation Ghostbusters fan) has suggested the currently held group belief that a Dematerializer does just what it’s name suggests. The ghosts that exist on Earth have a corporeal state of being, and a blast from the Dematerializer dissipates this state and sends the ghost reeling back to the Spirit World.
Taking care of ghosts LIKE A BAUSE
Yes, you can think that hard about it.
# 4 CHARACTER STYLE
Jake and Eddie have casual clothes that they wear off duty WHICH ARE AMAZING.
NOT PICTURED: Eddies green socks with blue shoes. It’s like a rainbow barfed it’s worst parts on him.
NOT PICTURED: Jake’s sensible white tennis shoes.
Also, Jake’s hair is awesome. I styled my own hair after his when I was a kid, and I never changed it.
So damn cool
Speaking of Jake, he’s not just the everyman/leader of the group – he’s also quite the ladies man. He’s clearly dating the famous redheaded news reporter Jessica Wray.
Hot DOG
BUT he’s also flirting with Futura, the Ghostbuster of the future who teams up with them on many adventures (more on time travel in a second).
Here’s Futura being chastised by Puritans for being a Godless naked whore.
# 5 THEIR STUFF
Ghost Central, the Ghostbuster’s HQ is a haunted mansion FILLED with stolen relics, trophies, and strange powerful paranormal items.
SWAG
From their answering machine, AnsaBone who answers the phone and insults the caller (something I wish I could design for cell phones to force people to actually answer their phones in a timely fashion) to the Skelevator that takes the Ghostbusters into a part of the Spirit World where they’re suited with their uniforms. It’s clear that Jake and Eddie are sitting on not only PRIME NYC real estate but a wealth of unimaginable supernatural power and technology – which they usually squander on menial labor and tasks.
PLUS everything in their own HQ FUCKING HATES THEM. All of the stuff in the mansion is constantly pulling pranks on them or generally making life more complicated. It’s like if you tried to look up directions on your phone and a skeleton hand pops out of your phone and hits you with a pie. I REALLY like the fact that it’s always an uphill battle for Jake and Eddie to get anything done.
File this under FUCK YOU
Their equipment is insanely powerful. Each Ghostbuster is equipped with a GhostPack which is like a TARDIS – nearly infinitely larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Each creating a pocket dimension full of useful crap they can pull out whenever they need it. Plus they also TURN INTO FUCKING JET PACKS. Lets see the TARDIS transform into something cool OH WAIT IT CAN’T BECAUSE IT’S BROKEN.
But that’s not the only Doctor Who-like connection
# 6 THE CONCEPT
Like I mentioned before, Prime Evil is from the future.
On the Ghostbusters first training exercise with their Dads, they successfully trap Prime Evil in a massive vault inside a mine. Since he’s too powerful for their equipment, they think “job well done”, and they strike back home and leave him there to rot. Or whatever ghosts do. Oh that’s right, HE’S A FUCKING GHOST AND CAN’T DIE. Prime Evil is trapped there for 100 years, and at the tail end of that time, he “befriends” a mutant bat creature called Belfry who he tricks into releasing him.
Now in the year 2086, he forms his legion of ghosts and takes over the Earth.
That’s right.
THE BAD GUY WINS.
And he is going to FUCK YOUR SHIT UP
Back in the present, Jake and Eddie are watching the Skelevision and realize that the horrible things they’re seeing in the future are actually THE REAL FUTURE. THEY REALIZE THAT THEY CAN SEE THE FUCKING REAL FUTURE AND IT SUCKS. So they run to tell their Dads about this crazy shit, only to find them kidnapped – INTO THE FUTURE!
So Jake and Eddie team up with a super smart gorilla and hop into their belligerent talking car, the Ghost Buggy, which transforms into a plane/rocket and then they ACTIVATE THE TIME TURBO AND GO TO THE FUCKING FUTURE.
GOING TIME TURBO!!!!!!
AND THAT’S THE FIRST EPISODE OF THE SHOW
YOU ARE NOT MISREADING THAT
They cover the existential horror of being imprisoned for 100 years, a bad guy who’s competent and actually takes over the world, and novice protagonists that jump into the frying pan to TRAVEL TO THE FUTURE TO SAVE THEIR DADS.
Who ya gonna call?
The entire first 5 episode arch is all up for free on Youtube!
I present them now for your viewing pleasure because I’m awesome like that.
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
PART 5
BONUS: The episode where The Ghostbusters travel to the 1600s and have to stop a witch trial!
So hopefully this helps you get reacquainted with [Filmation’s] The Ghostbusters. If you never gave it a chance as a kid because of The Real Ghostbusters – I think you may want to give it another chance. Just be warned – it’s a children’s show.
From the 80’s
There are cool ideas and awesome art, but you’ll be saddled with some ANNOYING AS FUCK sidekick characters that talk in terrible voices.
But if you survived Snarf, you can make it through Belfry and Brat-a-Rat.
Dinosaurs was hardly a flop at the time it was on the air.
It commanded HUGE ratings and was one of the main draws to ABC’s TGIF lineup at the time (early 90’s). I can’t imagine the balls it took to greenlight the project in the first place – They had NO pilot, since it would have cost more than a season’s worth of a standard TV show’s budget to produce, and the concept was so risky because: A) the technology they planned to use was very new and more or less untested and B) they basically sold the show on the blind faith that everyone would LOVE these characters sight unseen.
In the end, what allowed this show to exist was the timing of it all. Just a year or two earlier, The SimpsonsEXPLODED on TV. The crazy popularity of a more mature prime-time animated show was not only unexpected, it was quickly envied by other stations who ALL wanted their own huge demographic cash cow. The other half of the equation was the sudden and unfortunate death of Jim Henson – which not only caused an instant craze for all of his past works, but also a passion to bring any of his unfinished projects to fruition. It just so happened that the basic concept of Dinosaurs was one of the many things he was kicking around at that time.
What shocked me was recently finding out how little of the concept Jim actually had. He had the basic idea of wanting to make a sitcom starring dinosaurs and that their society was toxic – but that’s it. When the show was greenlit, Brian Henson had to collaborate with TV veteran Michael Jacobs to be able to get the show together. He was the mind behind the topicality and the issues breached in the episodes and brought focus to the gorgeous artistic world that the Henson creature shop created. That’s not to discredit the Henson company or to put Jacobs up on a pedestal – this was a full collaboration and each needed the other to survive. (For example Jacobs tried a pitch of the same stuff he did with Dinosaurs on FOX called the OOg Show without the Henson input – and it never made it past the pilot, and the Hensons created the creatures for Aliens in the Family, a show that lasted only 8 episodes… and for good reason)
It’s an important and humbling lesson for me – that no matter how much someone is hailed as a genius or visionary, they’re usually just the charismatic leader in front of a wealth of amazing talent. *cough cough LucasCameronDisney cough cough* You may get the popularity whammy, and that’s amazing, but it always pays to remain humble, remember who helped you get where you are, and never be afraid to collaborate.
But that’s not what I’m writing about.
This is Out of the Toilet after all. A place for forgotten relics of pop culture to be raised to new heights! Why am I talking at length about something everyone seems to fondly remember?
As I said before, Dinosaurs was INSANELY popular at the time (though a bloated money suck for ABC to produce) and was the fashion of that decade, a IMMENSE amount of merchandizing was churned out for the series. (Most of it formed in the shape of the catphrase spewing Baby Sinclair)
I’m the Baby! Gotta Buy Me!
What was forgotten about by most though, was the music album that was created for the show.
Dinosaurs Big Songs was thrown nearly directly into the discount bin upon it’s arrival at Sam Goodys across America. Instead of hanging out with the soundtracks like it should have, it was usually lumped in with the children’s CDs and tapes in unflattering packaging that didn’t let people know what gems existed therein. How could anyone take an album seriously next to Garfield meets the Smurfs audio books and Raffi cassettes?
In short – they didn’t.
How could any self respecting adult buy this?
The CD flopped and flopped hard. Despite the small success of the song I’m the Baby (Gotta Love Me) (mostly due to the music video they created for it and ABC using it as filler on Saturday mornings) no one bought the album or heard the songs that wasn’t a kid at the time.
Leather coats and fog machines do not make this song cool.
I personally remember hunting down a copy and feeling like a moron for having to go to the baby section to get it. The fact that my mom was there at the time didn’t help the embarrassment factor, but I did get it – and listened to it – until I accidentally left it at a restaurant in Maine (as was the fate of many of the cassettes I bought and had carried in a carrying case I brought everywhere with me)
R.I.P. Nothing But Trouble Soundtrack. Wherever you are.
It really shouldn’t have flopped though. It was FAR better produced than The Simpsons album that debuted around the same time, Simpsons Sing the Blues (even though it did give us The Bartman).
Dinosaurs Big Songs not only had the same whitty and mature writing the show enjoyed, but also ran the gamut of music genres and styles. It had child oriented songs, songs teenagers (and I suppose “tweens” though that word hadn’t been coined at the time) could get a kick out of, and songs that had mature humor that adults would enjoy.
Presented now, my top 5 songs from Dinosaurs Big Songs
5) He’s a Lizard
The song is a torch song sung by Fran Sinclair and her ancient mother Ethel about Earl Sinclair – the patriarch of the family. It’s not only catchy (and hilariously heckled by Ethel) but it outlines and lampoons the odd stockholm syndrome exhibited by exploited sitcom wives, but also shows an interesting dynamic created between a mother and daughter – Ethel can clearly see that Earl is a TERRIBLE choice for her daughter. He’s a sexist, racist, foodist, fat lazy slob with no prospects aside from pushing down trees. But for all Ethel’s name calling and pointing out his flaws, Fran seems to rebel and ignore these barbs. It’s almost like she’s choosing Earl in SPITE of her mom – to get back at her for questioning and demeaning her choices.
It’s also hilarious in modern context, because Fran is voiced by Jessica Walter – Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development fame.
4)Cold Blooded Guy
ANYTHING Sherman Hemsley sings is hilarious, and this blues song sung by Earl’s boss B.P. Richfield about how much of an evil guy he is, fills me with such a joy it’s indescribable. One of the best points of Richfield is that he revels in being an evil, scary, land rapeing, exploitative bully – and that’s what makes him so compelling. If the new Muppet movie, The Muppets, had Richfield instead of Tex Richman – it might have actually been a good movie. A badguy who is ACTUALLY bad and fucking LOVES being a badguy is incalculably fun. Just look at all the fun they have with Mr Burns in The Simpsons. (even though his song sucks.)
3)In a Perfect World
Here, Charlene, the family’s only daughter, sings a do-wop song about what matters to her: Shopping and boys and wanting to be a natural blonde. We live in a very PC and progressive society nowadays in the world of media. There seems to be a need to make every woman infallible and portrayed with more gender neutral or formerly masculine-only traits. The “Strong Woman Character” as Joss Whedon has named it is all the rage nowadays (even though not everyone knows how to write for them). Now, I’ll admit that it’s really cool to open the doors to everyone for all types of characters – I also feel like some types of female characters are being washed from screens in the march toward progressive new ideals. Outside of the world of tired sitcoms that recycle the same ideas – I’m not sure if a character like Charlene could exist today… It’s regressive a bit and that’s why I like this song so much.
2) I Wanna Be King
Robbie Sinclair is the family’s forcefully idealistic and progressive son who has weekly BIG IDEAS that constantly RESHAPE SOCIETY. He toys with bucking society and becoming a herbivore. He invents a clean and free energy plant based off of the planet’s natural energy. He constantly asks WHY whenever ANYTHING is asked of him. In the show, this is shown as mostly a positive thing – progress and whatnot… though in this song we get to see the real reason why he does this. He’s an egotistical teenage boy with delusions of grandeur and has been doing so just to question authority and wrestle it away by being a dick. Robbie wants to be King of Teenage Pangea – which he explains to us through this AWESOME rock ballad. I now sing this to myself most mornings to pick myself up for the day of work.
1) Poor Slobs with Terrible Jobs
This is my favorite song by far. Sung by Earl Sinclair and his best friend Roy Hess, it’s a marathon of a song sung by the two tree pushers where they explore their doomed existence. They’re too poor, uneducated, and limited to quit their terrible jobs where they exploit the land and are insulted and threatened by their boss constantly. It’s both rousing and sad at the same time as they question the very hope of escaping the shared doomed destinies of the planet and their own miserable existence. Also, in an odd moment of foreshadowing, Earl has a moment of clarity – realizing that his tree pushing will cause the Earth to freeze… THE VERY SAME THING THAT HAPPENS AT THE END OF THE SERIES CAUSING ALL THE CHARACTERS TO DIE. At the time of the recording they would have had no clue that was to be how the show would bow out – which makes the song even more weighted in relistening to it.
It does however have a really cool idea though – Roy waxes about being a Ornithologist. I think there’s something really hilarious about a dinosaur that studies birds.
BONUS: I’m the Baby (Gotta Love Me)
Didn’t think I’d close without including this did you?
After a search, I discovered that the lyrics to Howard the Duck’s theme song, Howard the Duck, have not been posted online. This travesty of Internet HAD to be righted – so I present:
Once the fist rock is thrown, everyone rushes to get their jab in. Deep down, I just suspect that everyone likes to bully something. Once it’s culturally correct or deemed feeble in the eyes of mass society, there’s a race to see who can take the largest dump all over it.
It’s not fair.
A lot of excellent performers, songs, films, and even beverages are ridiculed because it’s cool to do so.
It’s time someone started standing against the slings and arrows of the masses and defending the weak and downtrodden of pop culture.
Someone to look right in the face of the bloated fat pizza-covered geekhole that is the Internet and say NO MORE.
THAT’S WHERE I COME IN.
I, Douglas MacKrell, noted host of Internet After Dark, celebrity, and Man’s Man — shall now take up this valiant quest. I shall begin celebrating some of my favorite films, music, or pop culture whatnots that for some reason have become the collective toilet of society.
Debuting in 1986, George Lucas’ Howard the Duck flopped into theaters. It was confusingly received, critically panned, and reviled by much of the movie going populace who heard “George Lucas” and came running to see the next Star Wars. What they got was a quirky 80′s by-the-numbers comedy that tried to mix the absurdest adult tones of the satirical source material, the zaniness of a campy exploitation screwball comedy, and just enough pop culture and family friendliness that would allow them to sell all sorts of Howard crap
Like a video game
The gag is, the film was never meant to be much more than a show-off piece for Industrial Light and Magic.
Much like Ghostbusters 2, the effect shots were planned out WELL in advance to give the artists the time to work on those. The script came afterward, and as such, you have large disjointed action/effect sequences inserted into a quirky comedy.
Which in hindsight, worked – no one really ever complains about the quality of the 80′s-style special effects.
They had problems with the everything else
Much of the blame is heaped squarely on the shoulders of the Director, Willard Huyck, and Producer Gloria Katz. That’s not necessarily fair, because much like the latter Batman films (pre-Nolan) there was so much studio interference they couldn’t tell whether they were coming or going. They became glorified yes-men, and just accepted every curve thrown their way.
The film was originally conceptualized as an animated Noir-style comedy. Very low budget and for a very specific audience. The studio suddenly needed a big summer release, and a Lucas backed one at that, and upon Lucas’ boast of ILM’s savvy – the animated movie was morphed into a wider audience friendly live action special effect spectacular.
So the ball was rolling.
The cast was set, and the pieces were in place. The only problem was that the special effect was the star of the show.
The problems with Howard were multiple. They started filming without a workable suit or puppet, so most of those scenes had to be reshot. The actor (one of five) in the Howard suit would have to walk backwards between takes and work blind and mute. Hell, they actually had Tim Robbins fly a rigged plane from the back seat so that it could look like Howard was flying it.
So what should and could have been a very easy production, was crippled by big ideas and shallow perspective.
But does that mean the movie is bad?
IT’S ANYTHING BUT!
The Director was a pushover, and everyone has a blast on set. Plus this film has the right level of camp that allows it to GO ANYWHERE. Nothing is too big for this movie. Where else do you get to see stuff like this?
or THIS?
The world building is so absurdest – you CAN’T QUESTION ANYTHING! Duckworld, the physiology of Howard, the Howard/Bev relationship (or how I refer to them, “Boward”), How Cherry Bomb can suddenly explode in popularity and start headlining huge arenas. It all works on this 80′s logic of “All characters are always awesome ALWAYS.”
Nowadays people are so bogged down with logic and science and mired in grit and realism and so afraid of having fun or being absurdest – I doubt any big budget film will ever take such a risk again.
I still appreciate this film. I appreciate the hard work from the actors and the special effects artists.
(this takes effort, yo)
I appreciate the 80′s-tastic music by John Berry and Thomas Dolby. The film is still as captivating today as it was when I saw it as a child.
If you get the chance, check it out (for the first time or the 108th time) on Netflix streaming.
You’ll be glad you did.
On a scale of one to ten sexy ladies, I rate it INFINITE FIST PUMPS!
