. . .And God Spoke (The Making Of)

1993 mockumentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Clive Walton and Marvin Handleman--the producer/director team that brought the world
such gems as The Airport, Dial "S" for Sex, She Beast, and Nude Ninjas--decide to make a Biblical epic based on a 2,000 page script. The problem is that they have no budget, and after just a few hours, they're already hopelessly behind schedule. Numerous problems arise and begin to strain Walton and Handleman's relationship.

First off, I have to give the makers of this props (wait, do we still give props?) for the Fitzcarraldo reference. Nice. This pokes fun at the film industry more than Christianity. In fact, I really doubt it would offend too many Christians, and even if I'm wrong, it's still mighty funny. The production's nearly as cheap as the Biblical epic they're trying to film, and not every single gag connects, but it squeezed more than a few laughs from me despite the gloomy mood I was in before watching. Like the best of the genre, it's really the little moments (the ones you almost miss if you don't pay attention) that are the funniest. Everything Fred Kaz (Noah) says is funny ("I was a Klingon for a few minutes."), and I also loved the sound effect guy, a discussion about how many disciples there were, a dead buffalo, some hilarious product placement, and "What lovely Frankenstuff!" Oh, and "I could do it with or without my teeth." This has a few famous faces, too. Soupy Sales, oddly enough, is Moses. Jan Brady plays Noah's wife, and Lou Ferrigno and Andy Dick play Cain and Abel respectively. I'm sure reading about this movie has done little to convince you to watch it. Do it anyway and thank me later!

I'm Still Here

2010 mockumentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: River Phoenix's little brother Joaquin decides that enough's enough and announces his retirement from acting. In the aftermath of that decision, Ben Affleck's little brother Casey follows him around with a camera to document Hollywood's response and the birth of Joaquin's new career in hip hop.

Here's who ends up looking really good in this movie: Puff Daddy (or whatever the hell he goes by these days), David Letterman, and Edward James Olmos. The latter's speech (see below) is so freakin' good. I'm not sure if any of these guys were in on the joke (I think I heard that Letterman was), but if they were, their "performances" as themselves were really good. It's really hard to play yourself both realistically and naturally. Ask Joaquin Phoenix because his performance in this is wildly uneven. I sometimes bought that he was a real person living the Charlie Sheen life, struggling with public life and the emotions that it brings and excited about his new career as a terrible rapper. There were other times when it just didn't click. Casey Affleck claims this was the performance of his career, and in chunks, it is impressive. When he's got one take to work with (the television appearances or interviews, the rap concert), he delivers something authentic. There are some scenes where his drugged-out and haggard character just seemed like an over-acting job. (i.e. "Do the fucking snow angel!") The movie also seems very very long, and some of the scenes just dragged. "Ok," I said aloud several times, "I get it. Move on to Joaquin doing something else shocking." I went into this expecting a train wreck, and a train wreck I got. A very long train wreck. A train wreck in slow motion. But I liked the idea behind the experiment and similar to the Sasha Baron Cohen pseudo-documentaries, it uses those not in on the joke to satirize society. In this case, it's looking at the public's expectation of their matinee idols; their obsession with the rich and famous, especially when they're in the process of crashing and burning; and that fuzzy line between real person and entertainer. I was caught off guard by how much I had to think while watching the train wreck. I was also caught off guard by how much I liked this since I really just popped it in for the novelty and didn't even expect to finish the thing. I do wonder what this will do to Phoenix's career. It doesn't seem like he's got any movies coming out any time soon.

Here's Olmos's speech: "That's you, drops of water and you're on top of the mountain of success. But one day you start sliding down the mountain and you think wait a minute; I'm a mountain top water drop. I don't belong in this valley, this river, this low dark ocean with all these drops of water. Then one day it gets hot and you slowly evaporate into air, way up, higher than any mountain top, all the way to the heavens. Then you understand that it was at your lowest that you were closest to God. Life's a journey that goes round and round and the end is closest to the beginning. So if it's change you need, relish the journey."

Take the Money and Run

1969 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Virgil Starkwell is a career criminal. Unfortunately for him, he's terrible at it. The inept bungling burglar finds love but can't find a way out of his life of crime which humorously makes things difficult for him. He also looks a lot like Woody Allen.

There are some very funny moments in this faux-documentary--"gub," a scene with a ventriloquist dummy, a bad spit shine, a cellist in a marching band, glass theft. I'm bugged that Woody can't keep documentary consistency and loses cohesion because of it. There are scenes with multiple cameras, and more than likely, the events being captured wouldn't even have one camera. The typically absurdist slant is mostly fun, and even though this isn't exactly a Woody Allen classic, it's still worth the time.

Punishment Park

1971 social statement

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Pseudo-doc chronicling a group of counter-cultural anti-establishment troublemakers ranging from subversive folk singers to people who want to blow up government buildings as they are sentenced and given the option of jail time or a trip to Punishment Park where they have three days to run through a desert to reach an American flag while policemen chase them.

This is one of the most consistently realistic mock documentaries I've ever seen. There's no way this Punishment Park was even considered, let alone something that actually existed, but it's hard to watch this without being almost fooled that the government had set something up like this. A lot of the credit has to go to the actresses and actors--the hippies, the pigs, and the members of the tribunal. The desert setting also contributes, giving this a harsh realism. The story is tense, filled with bile and what looks to be actual hatred, both from the screaming maltreated hippies and the less-obvious government people whose loathing was a little more submerged. The complete lack of music, the handheld cameras, and what I think was probably largely-improvised dialogue also helped. As a metaphor, this at times delivers its message a little too forcefully, an allegory that could have been two pages but ended up as twenty. And I don't think the good guys in this always look like good guys. There's also a moment when the documentarians turn subjective (when documentarians attack) and I'm not exactly sure that was necessary. But this is a completely engrossing product of its time, one whose relevancy today is more than a little scary. Strong stuff, likely to offend a bunch of people, even people who might agree with the politics. But most hippies would love it, assuming they can afford dvd players to watch it on and could squeeze in some time to watch it between all their dope smoking and not bathing.