Grizzly Man

Bear-hugging is more dangerous than tree-hugging

Environmental activism consists of many different shades. Some work in electoral politics. Some work in direct action. Some combine the two and some, generally the least effective, do something asinine in the misguided belief that it will help. Falling into the latter category is Timothy Treadwell. His actions on behalf of Alaska’s grizzly population not only lead to his and his girlfriend Amy Huegenard’s deaths, but ironically to the deaths of two bears as well.

Werner Herzog’s excellent new documentary The Grizzly Man is made from some 100+ hours of footage that Treadwell recorded in the last five years of his life in the Alaskan wilderness. In turns bizarre, tragic, comedic, touching and bizarre again, TGM stands out in a year flush with excellent documentaries (Murderball, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). The opening scene is one that typifies Treadwell’s behavior. After a brief encounter with a bear that decides not to eat him he claims, “I have proven myself and gained their respect.” That “respect” that he speaks of is better described by Herzog, who doubles as narrator, as “a half-bored interest in food.” That imagined connection is present throughout the film as he shares the names he has made up for the bears. For one who claimed to “know the language of the bears” Treadwell sure gave them crappy names. Sgt. Brown, Quincy and Mr. Chocolate are monikers that give some credence to one associate’s claim that Treadwell was “acting like he was working with people in bear costumes.”

Herzog is clearly sympathetic to Treadwell’s personal problems. He captures the frustration that permeated Treadwell’s life with a sequence where a fox (named Ghost) has run away with Treadwell’s hat. “If it’s in the den I’m gonna fucking explode!” is just one of many tortured exclamations made by a thoroughly confused man. His painful and bizarre behavior stands in bright contrast to his claim that, “I had no life. Now I have a life.” Herzog brings out the humanity in his protagonist but does not refrain from explaining the harmful effects of Treadwell’s actions. Two biologists familiar with Treadwell’s work lay out the great potential harm from habituating bears to humans. It is actually illegal to do much of what Treadwell did. Very reasonable as far as laws go are regulations like the Park Service’s demand to keep 100 meters from bears in the park. Instead of “protecting” his wards from a reasonable, and safe, distance, Treadwell launches a long and impressively profane rant against the Park Service and individual people he sees as persecuting him or grizzlies. That paranoia of dangerous persecution includes such “warnings” as an innocuous message left by some visitors and a big stack of rocks. Treadwell’s main antagonist was a series of imagined poachers in this protected wildlife refuge. Despite essentially nonexistent poaching and a healthy animal population in Alaska, it was there that he fought his battles. The Fish and Wildlife service does list grizzlies as being endangered, but only in the lower 48 states making Treadwell’s fateful statement that he “will die for these animals” tragically comedic. As luck would have it, the camera was rolling during the final moments of Treadwell’s life. Though the lens cap was on, his and Amy’s death were recorded. The director has the good taste not to exploit this and provides two brief descriptions of the tape courtesy of himself and the coroner who viewed their remains.

Herzog’s ability to capture so troubled a man about perfectly is astounding. Making use of an excellent soundtrack and considerate narration, Herzog again shows why he one of the modern masters of the documentary. His careful and respectful film shows clearly that getting lost in a fantasy is not the same as finding yourself.



The Aristocrats

"Here's the kicker: Grandma's dead."

A standard joke will have a setting, action and punch line with the punch line, appropriately providing providing the humor and the the end of the joke. The Aristocrats is a joke with a similar sequence but the punch line is simply to note the end of the joke. The humor in a telling of the Aristocrats is in the action. In the hands of a gifted comedian (or perhaps a lunatic with a gift for improv) the Aristocrats can be a quick and funny joke or a transcendently raunchy tirade. The Aristocrats provides numerous examples of both.

As an artful documentary film it's more or less a failure. For experienced comedians like Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette pacing should be something they’re familiar with. The back-and-forth editing between comedians gives something like a whiplash effect. I can think of no obvious reason, at least not a good one, to not allow individual comics to state complete thoughts. Using three comedians to tell one complete version of a joke deprives the audience of the version that would have been told by either three. Bad editing is compounded by the bad sound. Understandably this was not a film with a large production budget but a good mic would have helped a couple of the tellings of this joke. Additionally, Kevin Pollack cracking himself up doing an impression of Christopher Walken is annoying as all hell.

Nonetheless when time is given to the participants to tell their full version of the joke the movie picks up more than enough goodwill to gloss over the flaws. Many of the comedians don’t tell the joke in the movie but instead give anecdotes about the joke or about joke-telling and sometimes about what it means to tell a joke that if beyond offensive. Sarah Siverman’s version is told in first person while Stuart Banks does an effective pantomime. Bob Sagat’s version is so incredibly foul that it reveals what years of exposure to Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos can do to a person’s soul. Andy Dick, the Smothers Brothers, Shelley Berman and quite memorably, Gilbert Gottfried relay the Aristocrats in turns innocent, dirty and shocking. Never have fisting, dirty sanchez’s, rusty trombones and other sexual, if that’s the right word, activities been described so graphically without the use of live action illustrations.

Given the wealth of material recorded to make The Aristocrats one can only hope that the dvd release will include damn near all of the raw footage. Listening to George Carlin talk about telling a joke is just as interesting as hearing him tell it. I imagine ti would be just about the same for every comedian this side of Gallagher.



Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

Would have been funny if only it had some humor

Six years is a long time between an original and a sequel. In the case of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo it was probably for the best. The first volume was largely bland and forgettable but perhaps just memorably crappy enough that a bit of distance was necessary. If there is to be a third volume, it’s going to need a good two decades or so before the ordeal that is Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo fades from memory. This shit storm, miraculously, will run head to head with Fantastic Four for worst film of the year.

The film opens with a male prostitute being compensated for his services by an attractive lady. As he’s leaving the premises he is stopped and tipped by two others, an older housekeeper and a beefy security guard, for additional work performed the previous evening. Writers Rob Schneider, David Garrett and Jason Ward were apparently of the opinion that there was something inherently funny about the scene and that adding a joke of some sort would be unnecessary. It seems that opinion is extended to every scene in the film. Good jokes are nonexistent except for a quick shot of a guy getting bit in the balls by a dolphin. Animals biting testicles has a little bit of built-in comedy if done quick enough. It’s unfortunate that another character is bitten in the nuts later in the film by a different animal and that the bite goes on for some length. Of course, one should gather from the very existence of this film though that those involved believe that any gag at all, no matter how unfunny, is worth repeating. Shall we have a few examples to illustrate? Perhaps there is something funny in the phrase “man-whore” that I’m missing. Whatever that particular joke is though, it is repeated 46 times in the film, I counted. There is also an attempted joke about Chinese guys having small dicks. Well, that’s not exactly true. There are six attempted jokes about Chinese guys having small dicks. Rob Schneider through much of the film carries his dead wife’s prosthetic leg with him. Again, this is what is supposed to pass for funny. When first exposed to Saturday Night Live in the late 70’s, Johnny Carson stated that Chevy Chase “couldn’t ad-lib a fart after a baked-bean dinner.” That was probably more than a little bit of professional jealousy but it would apply perfectly to Rob Schneider here. A scene arrives in which there should be some innate laughs. One of the other prostitutes is going to get his ass hair bleached. The “Man-Whore Killer” (Oh did I forget to bring up the murderer earlier? Well it’s pretty much an unimportant back story in the film too so don’t worry.) plans to kill the gigolo by replacing the ass hair bleach with something toxic. Not only is the scene not funny but they couldn’t even figure out what they could replace the ass hair bleach with to make comedy. It’s just some bottle with a skull & crossbones type thingy. How can you really fail to find one good element of sophomoric humor in a scene involving ass hair and bleach? How can you not think of something funny to put on someone's ass?

When not busy being unfunny, DB:EG is otherwise occupied being offensive. Sarah Silverman had a funny joke on a talk show a few years back where she talked about a Mexican ex-boyfriend of hers and said she had to break it off because every time they had sex she got diarrhea for a week. That is so far beyond the bounds of good taste that it reaches a type of offensive absurdity that is genuinely funny. When DB:EG decides to go for a joke at the expense of Mexico’s people it is just plain racist instead of absurdist. Mexicans are incompetent. That’s the joke. Beyond the small-dick Asian series of “jokes”; a dwarf is tossed, the blind are used as comedic props, a pimp jokes about backhanding prostitutes and, among numerous gay jokes, a character is ridiculed as being “musical theatre gay”. There is a way to make jokes like that and have them be funny and to challenge and push the comfort zones of audiences but again, it has to be so far over the top, or perhaps making fun of a stereotype by using a stereotype, that it couldn’t be understood as anything but a joke. At that point, if well told, it could be funny. That doesn’t happen in this film though. What does happen is that Americans are great and Europeans are useless pansies that whine continuously about American foreign policy (which is a negative thing why?).

The end credits have a Rachel Stevens song with a chorus that sings, “I said never again but here we are.” It’s a perfect ending to the film and it really adds an exclamation point to the director’s decision to use a pseudonym. Whoever Mike Bigelow is, s/he made an excellent career choice by saving their real name for real comedy.



The 40-Year-Old Virgin

"Do you have protection?" I don't like guns...

Neither the buddy nor the romantic comedy sub-genres have produced much worth remembering in recent years except for a few that should be invoked as warnings or perhaps curses(Maid in Manhattan, Road Trip). It comes as a nice surprise then to find The 40-Year-Old Virgin to be both romantic and comedic in generous portions.

Directed by Judd Apatow (Freaks & Geeks) and co-written with star Steve Carrell (The Daily Show), The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a battle between the past and future of Andy Stitzer (Carrell). His job in the stockroom at an electronics store has provided him with a huge collection of action figures, video games and toys of all types but all things vaginal remain a hopelessly lost mystery. Hopelessly lost that is, until a confused and spectacularly bizarre description of a sex act tips his coworkers off that he has no idea what he’s talking about. The plotting then begins to get this man some action, no matter what. “What” though, includes scenes where “Your hat has sequins” works, plausibly, as a pickup line and where Stitzer is told he needs to “be like David Caruso in Jade.”

For a decent looking guy like Andy it might not seem to difficult to do. But twenty years into a comfortable routine he’s not easily drawn out into the world. Every time you’ve stayed home instead of having gone out, that’s his entire life. Paul Rudd, Romany Malco and Seth Rogen are the friends bent on finding their boy some sex. Whether it’s trying to introduce him to drunk girls, providing him with a box of, um, study materials or telling him to “Plant a seed, with your finger. Wait for it to grow into a plant then fuck the plant” their advice reveals their own struggles with romance and transition more than it helps Stitzer find some lovin’.

The film would be a very, very funny comedy were it not for the presence of Catherine Keener (Lovely & Amazing). Her divorcee mother of three adds a believable romance interest to Stitzer’s life and a richness to what could have been just another good and raunchy comedy. Her attempts to solicit a date with the titular character are full of a comedic warmth that is generally lacking from romance on screen. Keener’s element leads to a couple of great scenes where Stitzer tries to reconcile his desired future with his past efforts and decide whether or not his goals are worth the comfort of his no-pressure, no-sex world. With a brilliant script, strong performances and a great unexpected musical number The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a hilarious and romantic film that proves among other things that porn, even porn watched in a comfortable bed with candles lit around the room, cannot hope to be an adequate substitute for sex.



Chaos

A pointless, ridiculous waste of time

Villains sometimes win in movies, as in real life. People are sometimes killed in movies, as in real life. Sometimes those deaths are incredibly brutal, as in real life. A good film could even portray concentration camps or genocide from the point of view of the perpetrators and still have significant value for giving some insight into the mind of a butcher or the mental state of a semi-automaton carrying out horrific orders. Indeed it’s entirely possibly to get inside the mind of a racist, misogynistic casually brutal killer in a way that can illuminate one’s own humanity and potential for savageness as in Jim Thompson’s classic noir novel The Killer Inside Me. By watching the exploitive trash that is Chaos, one will gain no insight into anything. Chaos will not help one understand inhumanity, war, genocide, serial killing or anything else. A pointless and graphic exercise in misogyny, brutality, racism and sadism Chaos is a physically unsettling film, although not in a way that challenges one’s world view or biases. As far as that can be considered a success the movie succeeds.

There are two positive aspects of this film although they are not nearly enough to be dubbed “redeeming”. The first is that it is only some 76 minutes long. The second is that the various scenes of gore have above average special effects. I cannot think of a good reason to even mention the acting and the dialogue as neither are really relevant to the film however, both are bad. The dialogue is cliché schlock recycled from any number of awful films with immoral or morally ambiguous protagonists and the only acting that seems remotely convincing are scenes of the two young women begging for their lives. They too however, turn in awful performances when not screaming. Chaos is played by Kevin Gage who is currently serving 41 months for growing pot. He shouldn’t be in jail for that but he should probably serve some time for the bile he serves up as “acting”. His character’s mannerisms and delivery are a bit like Sam Elliott just not as cool. It should be pointed out that the writer/director of this film has gone on record as stating that this film somewhat like Wes Craven’s horror classic The Last House on the Left (itself an uncredited rip-off of an earlier Bergman film) but better. It cannot be compared to that film though as not only is this film lacking in artistic quality, it’s not what I would call a horror film. This film should would be better categorized as gore-porn. For posterity’s sake I’m going to end this review by describing a scene from the movie hoping that anyone who somehow feels intrigued by this awful mess will be dissuaded. If you are worried about having your filmgoing experience (or your next meal) spoiled then skip the rest of this review. To be clear, I don’t recommend that you read what is below or see the movie. There’s no good reason to do either.

Emily is running from the killers. Chaos catches her. She is beaten by Sadie but gets hold of Sadie’s knife. She stabs Chaos’ son in the balls and runs. Chaos strangles his son to death. Chaos catches Emily. Emily is beaten, stripped and bound naked on the forest floor. Chaos rapes her with a knife and uses it to carve a hole from her anus to her vagina. Chaos informs us that he’s gotten an erection but can’t rape Emily as he’s left no appropriate hole. Emily dies.