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Inside: Cultural Sausage. ~ Ludic Lists. ~ Skullbucket. Outside: "gorilla boss" "Chicago Cubs baseball team gone longest without winning a World Series" "gun vs. sword" "muzzies Muslims" "lengthy cocks" "paradiddle pyramids" "and I don't know what I'm doing" "teeth plaque conspiracy Metallica" |
06.01.2004
In my role as professional freelance critical something-or-other, I see a lot of the same things over and over again. I eat at the same kinds of restaurants, I see the same kinds of movies, I read the same kinds of books, I hear the same kinds of bands, and so on. It is the deviation from this crippling sameness where the best and the worst aspects of the critic's duties arise. It is the art which breaks away from type and presents you with an outstanding performance, an arresting emotional response, an unusually proficient technical accomplishment, a fresh interpretation, or an unexpected perspective that is usually the best; and, likewise, the rare crappy heap of shit can break away from the mundane by being startlingly unique in how much it manages to suck. Indeed, the best of bad experiences are ones that manage to take a promising concept or idea and execute it with such breathtaking thoroughness that you instantly sense you have witnessed something special, even if the specialness of it is marked by a terrible and pervasive smell. Such was the case with Movie-Oke. I was assigned to write about this recently-imported-to-the-Big-Town-from-New York phenom for one of the papers who occasionally employs me. Since the article I wrote was meant to be informative and not critical, I was, as ever, the consummate professional and kept my opinions to myself; I will not do so in this forum. Movie-Oke is, as I said, a promising concept -- without promise, bad art is merely bad art rather than the toweringly incompetent failure that only the worst can acheive. There must be promise for that promise to be shattered. Similar in both conception and execution to karaoke, Movie-Oke is an activity in which people act out scenes from their favorite movies, reading the lines off the subtitles of a DVD which is being projected before the audience. An interesting idea, no? A promising diversion, no? Here's how to completely fuck it up. 1. HAVE IT AT A REALLY SHITTY BAR. This particular version of Movie-Oke took place at a bar on Lincoln Avenue previously unfamiliar to me, and to which I sincerely hope to never return. The place, rather optimistically, had a taxi stand, as if people would be lining up on a Saturday night to hear administrative assistants pretend to be Captain Kirk, and it specialized in serving drinks that became more expensive as they got weaker in potency. For instance, my first Scotch-and-water cost $5.50, and contained approximately one part Scotch to fifteen thousand parts water. My second Scotch-and-water cost $6.50, and lowered the ratio to no parts Scotch to all parts water, apparently on the theory that all you had to do was point a bottle of Scotch at the glass in order for it to qualify as Scotch-and-water. The faintly rustlike color of the beverage was attributable to the dirtiness of the bar's tapwater rather than any alcohol content. My third drink (a Manhattan, ordered in hopes that they couldn't water down a drink containing no water) was $7 and a bargain at twice the price, as they substituted high-quality turpentine for the normal vermouth. The waitstaff was alternately surly and ditsy, the atmosphere was nonexistent, and the event (sponsored, in a rather flagrant good-money-after-bad scenario, by an energy drink I've never heard of) was hosted by a dropout from mail-order broadcasting school who talked in one of the more egregious "drive time DJ" voices I have ever heard. 2. STAGE IT WITH MAXIMUM TECHNICAL INCOMPETENCY. One scarcely knows where to begin with this aspect. First of all, the screen on which the movies where shown was nothing more than a bedsheet, so thin that the rear projector appeared to the audience like a blinding white sunburst during the entire evening. Second, the performers had to stand directly in front of the 'screen', ensuring that no one could actually see the movie scene being performed. Third, there were no mic stands, which meant that no one could gesticulate or otherwise use their bodies in the performance because they had to hold the mic. Fourth, there were not enough people there to support the event, which meant that the extremely grating host did the lion's share of the performances. Fifth, the monitor off which the performers read the subtitles was (a) very small, which meant they often couldn't see the lines and (b) set on a chair instead of on an overhead rack, which meant they always had to look down towards the floor. Sixth, the space given to perfomers to rehearse their scene was directly behind the screen, meaning you could both see them moving around and hear them saying their lines before their turns name. Seventh and last, the DVD player they were using seemed to be a bit shaky, technically speaking, and would frequently skip or freeze up for some reason. 3. INVITE ONLY VERY DRUNK, TASTELESS FRAT-BOY AND SORORITY-GIRL MORONS. Now, of course, I was not expecting brilliant performances out of Movie-Oke, any more than I expect people at karaoke to sing like Caruso. I was expecting a lot of bad performances by bad people of bad scenes from bad movies. This, I thought, would be the appeal of it: laughably bad performances. But they weren't laughable. They were just bad. The few people who participated, and managed to overcome the technical failings outlined above, were uniformly horrible. Apparently reading along with words on a screen was far too difficult a task for these college graduates, and their ability to perform the rocket-science-level duties required by karaoke ranged from poor (the guys who tried to do a scene from Caddyshack but were unable to follow their lines, deliver them with any inflection in their voices, or remember which of them was supposed to be playing which character) to the abysmal (the cluster of girls who attempted to do a scene from Animal House in which they were literally unable to deliver a single line other than endlessly screeching "TOGA!"). The only halfway-decent performance was by a balding, middle-aged weasel of a guy who delivered Gollum's big talking-to-himself scene from The Two Towers, and his good acting was overshadowed by the fact that he got so into it that the whole thing was extremely creepy. The high point -- the high point -- was when a couple of fat Indian guys with impenetrable Hindi accents read a scene from Austin Powers, and then left immediately afterward, dooming the rest of the night to get worse and worse. (And for Christ's sweet sake, people, Austin Powers is played. It wasn't that funny the first time, and it keeps getting more not that funny with every second that passes.) As it happened, I had a decent time, because I went with a bunch of good friends, who made the evening tolerable. But the combination of overpriced, underpowered drinks, utter technical incompetence, and mind-bogglingly bad performance, had I faced it on my own, would have had me hanging at the end of a length of clothesline by the end of the night. At free, it was horribly overpriced. Well done, Movie-Oke; well fucking done. |
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| TODAY'S DRIFTWOOD: "I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images." (Ingmar Bergman) |