We’re big fans of comedian Nathan Fielder ’round these parts. His Comedy Central show, Nathan for You, earned the coveted UPROXX FOUR-STAR STAMP OF APPROVAL (note: said stamp doesn’t actually exist, but if it did, the stars would be made of corgi heads), and he was great on Bob’s Burgers and Jon Benjamin Has a Van. Fielder also has a must-follow Twitter account, and yesterday, he came up with his best idea yet: “Experiment: text your parents ‘got 2 grams for $40′ then right after ‘Sorry ignore that txt. Not for you’ Then tweet pic of their response.”
The results were WTF YOU’RE GOING TO REHAB F*CK YOU BRIAN, I mean, wonderful.
Time for your weekly LIVE edition of the Deadspin Funbag. To submit a question to the live Funbag, you gotta post down in the bowels of the discussion section below. As always, we begin with the question of the week.
Kevin:
One of my friends thought it would be funny to subscribe me to a magazine called "Dairy Goat Monthly" and just let me tell you, it's the craziest fucking thing I have ever seen in my life. Just look at these pictures. [See first photo]
When this came in the mail the other day, I could hardly contain my excitement. I was desperately in search of a way to build a hay manger, and I definitely needed help in worming my goats.
I'm not sure that family should stay together. [See second photo]
This just might be the craziest thing printed in any magazine, ever. If this person loves their goat so much, why not put your name on it? [See third photo]
Scratch that, THIS is the craziest thing printed in any magazine, ever. These are supposed to be words SPOKEN BY A GOAT to a lunatic who thought it would be a good idea to tell people she can communicate with goats. [See fourth photo]
The magazine is about 40 pages and every single one of them is filled with insane ramblings about goats. There's even recipes for what to cook for your goat, though I didn't check to see if any of them involved blanching grass.
They also have a website. "New to goats? Then click here to read about goats!" Oh, I will, DGJ. I very much will. Anyway, now you know that the hierarchy of crazy animal people now goes...
The diverse filmography of director David DeCoteau.
If your kids ever want to watch a movie on Netflix called A Christmas Puppy, don’t let them. Not because it’s one of the most poorly made, low budget children’s movies of all time. Not because it has the intellectual nutritional equivalent of feeding their brains a bowl full of wet cardboard. And not even because, despite featuring an adorable puppy on the cover and having the word “puppy” right in the title, there is no puppy in the movie. Don’t let them watch it because it will put them a single click away from a small mountain of softcore gay porn.
All they’d have to do is click on the director, David DeCoteau, and holy lord, are their young eyes in for a surprise when it produces over a dozen results for movies with scantily clad twinks on the covers. You, as a parent, will be in for a series of childhood innocence-crushing questions. Questions like, “Daddy, what happened to those boys’ shirts?” and “Mommy, why are their nipples so shiny?”
Wait, one of these seems slightly out of place.
The movies are not appropriate for children, for sure. But to call them “porn” is actually unfair. From my research (research = fast-forwarding through each movie on Netflix while blasting Motörhead and chugging a case of Dr. Pepper Ten to maintain my unblemished record of ardent heterosexuality), the movies seem to be nothing more than cheaply made vehicles for homoeroticism wherein the young male actors do shirtless pullups, engage in boxer-brief-only wrestling matches, and tan their perfectly sculpted hairless pecs by the pool. What I’m saying is, no butt sex.
Apparently, what’s on Netflix is just the tip of the iceberg for DeCoteau. (No pun intended on that totally sweet use of “just the tip.”) Over the last 25 years, the American/Canadian director has made almost 90 eerily similar-looking films with titles like Boy Crazies, Beastly Boyz, and Weiner-Fondling Island. Ok, I made that last one up. Still, everything about them is terrible: the acting, the production, the storylines. They all look like they were filmed over a single afternoon at the same California mansion. Imagine if Tommy Wiseau added homoeroticism to The Room and you’ll get a pretty good picture of what we’re dealing with from DeCoteau. But clearly the man found a niche. A very shirtless niche.
But then in 2011, a title appeared on DeCoteau’s resume that was out of place: A Christmas Puppy, a family holiday movie about a teenager having his faith restored in Christmas. Shortly after its release, DeCoteau put out a rapidfire string of kids’ movies: A Halloween Puppy, An Easter Bunny Puppy, A Talking Cat!?!, and coming soon: A Talking Pony!?! I’ll just go ahead and predict his next few movies: A Valentine’s Day Puppy, A Presidents Day Puppy, and A Talking Armadillo!?!
While it’s unclear exactly why, it looks like DeCoteau found a way to take his cookie cutter formula for softcore filmmaking and apply it to kids’ movies. Maybe he got tired of looking at tanned abs all day, I don’t know. Look, I’m not trying to get into the mind of a guy who made a movie called Cougar Cult. The point is, he seemed to make the ambitious jump from gay porn to children’s movies. What could possibly go wrong with that? Plenty. Plenty could go wrong with that.
The main problem is that old habits die too hard with DeCoteau. Despite the fact that he’s now making child-friendly movies, he still approaches them as if he’s making a sequel to Haunted Frat (actual title). He continues to cast the same kind of clean cut Abercrombie model actors you might find in Boy Crazies. He even films them at the same mansion with the same pool where dudes have oiled each other down. Basically all he does is add a talking animal to his existing softcore flicks, cut back slightly on the all-male shower scenes, and presto, it’s a kids’ movie. The result is unsettling. It feels like you’re watching a very poorly made Disney Channel movie that’s going to break out into a softcore sex scene at any minute.
One is from a gay porn. One is from a kids’ movie. Can you guess which?
For their intended audience, DeCoteau’s movies are incredibly inappropriate and intellectually unstimulating. You’re better off making your kids do whippets in an enclosed garage for 80 minutes than letting them watch one of these movies. But for adults who ironically appreciate the simple pleasures of an awesomely bad movie, DeCoteau’s catalog is a treasure trove of cringeworthy awfulness.
Take A Talking Cat!?!, for example. It’s an 85-minute-long story about a cat named Duffy who can talk to people, but only once, for some reason that’s never explained. Most of the film is just scenery footage of waterfalls and crashing ocean waves. Edit all of those shots out and the movie is probably only 18 minutes long. The cat, who is older and less cute than the one on the cover, is inexplicably voiced by Eric Roberts. And by “voiced by,” what I mean is Eric Roberts narrates the film via the cat whose actions and demeanor do not sync up with the dialogue whatsoever. Roberts’ gruff voice is a comically bad mismatch for a cute animal. It’s like hearing Sam Elliott as the voice of Nemo. And Roberts’ vocal track sounds like it was recorded on an answering machine. There are rap albums recorded over the phone from prison that feature better audio quality.
Here’s how terrible the movie is: Even the cat is unconvincing. In most of the scenes, you can clearly spot cat treats or laser pointer dots around him. Those probably should’ve been edited out. Speaking of things that should’ve been edited out, there are multiple shots of the cat’s passing butthole. Having a cat’s butthole in your face is an unfortunate but commonplace real world result of cat ownership that you should never ever be subjected to while watching a movie.
More technology went into making this gif than the actual effects in it.
Occasionally, DeCoteau will throw some special effects into his films, which is like saying occasionally Taco Bell will throw healthy food options onto its menu. It’s amazing how, after 90 films under his belt, the man’s CGI prowess is that of a freshman at DeVry University.
Another bizarre quirk of DeCoteau’s style is that a generic musical score plays for the entire duration of his movies. It never stops. And it’s incredibly distracting while the characters are talking over it. But when you consider the quality of the dialogue and acting, he’s actually doing the audience a tremendous favor.
DeCoteau also seems to have a rolodex of semi-celebrities at his disposal. Aside from Roberts, who has “starred” in A Talking Cat!?! and A Halloween Puppy, he has also cast Kingpin’s Vanessa Angel, former child star and current terribly aging adult, Johnny Whitaker, Baywatch’s Alexandra Paul and two of the Brady sisters, Maureen McCormick and Susan Olsen, making him one Jan short of the full bunch. Once DeCoteau discovers bankrupt former athletes and desperate 90s rappers, there will be no telling what levels of awfulness his films will reach.
Plenty of directors have contributed to the cult of bad movies—movies like Birdemic, Troll 2, and The Room. But they are all one hit wonders compared to David DeCoteau. He is The Rolling Stones and they are all just Right Said Freds. With a new film out every other month, each one more staggeringly devoid of actual content than the last, he is the most prolific director in the bad movie game. He also sealed his status as a cinematic pioneer with the creation of a new genre: Family Erotica. His movies are truly something to behold. Just don’t let your kids behold them.
It’s been a while since we last checked in with Armond White, everyone’s favorite vociferant contemptularian, and three-time exalted cyclops of the Bull Moose Moving Picture Society of the 1934 World’s Fair. On the A-Dubz docket today, IFC Films’ Room 237, a documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining told through interviews with the most outspoken Kubrick lovers. As is so often the case, Armond actually has a valid point to make, about how the middlebrow has come to worship ambiguity for its own sake, because middlebrow critics aren’t smart enough for critical thinking. And as always, A-Dubz’ valid points are almost completely upstaged by his own verbidinous thesaurification and intense desire to keep his lawn clear of pre-pubescent whippersnappers.
Which is to say, he uses the word “nerd” seven times. Seven. And that’s not counting uses of the term “geek.” And let’s keep in mind, he’s an Ivy League-educated film critic.
Room 237 lets the nerds loose
Comprised of theories spoken by five different Kubrick nerds over an assemblage of movie clips and diagrams by director Rodney Ascher, Room 237 pretends to dissect Kubrick’s 1980 movie The Shining. Ascher’s film—a true mockumentary if ever there was one—is named after the Overlook Hotel suite where little Danny sees Kubrick’s most disturbing visions due to his gift for “shining.” Every nerd wants to shine.
Three times. He used “nerd” three times. And we’re still in the first paragraph, people.
Fans seem unable to recognize the film’s failings and so try to make virtues of its mistakes. “Kubrick often in many of his movies would end them with a puzzle so he’d force you to go out of his movies saying ‘What was that about?’” So claims one zealot who responds to cinema the way a child reacts to a video game, trusting that the manufacturer cares about his response.
“who responds to cinema the way a child reacts to a video game.” So… joyfully? By calling the other viewers “fag” on a headset? I love the phrase, I’m just not sure what it means. “…trusting that the manufacturer cares about his response.” Again, this is coming from a guy who writes about movies for a living.
Another nerd says “[Kubrick] is like a megabrain for the planet who is boiling down, with all of this extensive research, all of these patterns of our world and giving them back to us in this dream of a movie.”
NERDS! NERDS! NERDS! God, what I wouldn’t give to see Armond White giving some Christopher Nolan fanboy a swirly. I’d like to think Armond could do it without even mussing his cravat.
Sorry to say but this inanity redounds to the global reach of Roger Ebert’s TV reviewing.
According to Armond White, Roger Ebert is the root of all the world’s evil, a ruthless thumb pimp, the pied piper of Philistinism. In FilmDrunk parlance, Roger Ebert is Armond White’s Danny Masterson.
It is Ebert’s pretense of “criticism” that inspires these nerds to insist that The Shining must be important because it is more than just a horror movie. Their theories concentrate on gaffes and continuity errors which is exactly the sort of “criticism” that Ebert made available to couch potato/laptop cineastes.
“Laptop cineastes” is the most gloriously fogie-ish esoteric insult of all time. I also like to think Armond White refers to a film critic who sells out for mass appeal as an “Uncle Rog.”
Lost in a maze, one cheerleader cheers “Its contradictions pile up in your subconscience.”
Wait, are they nerds or cheerleaders? That seems like a mixed metaphor. But then, maybe I’ve just seen one too many John Hughes movies, like some beef-headed iPad Richard Roeper.
Reverence for Stanley Kubrick overwhelms any understanding of The Shining. It is symptomatic of today’s celebrity veneration—the flip-side of the feeling of nothingness that makes nerds bow down to the likes of Nolan, Fincher, Soderbergh and Kubrick.
F*CK YOU I WON’T DO WHATCHA TELL ME! F*CK YOU I WON’T DO WHATCHA TELL ME!
They fantasize about The Shining’s supposed profundity as when one professes, “We all know from postmodern film criticism that the meanings are there whether or not the filmmaker is aware of them.” This is the mess that criticism has come to. Fake erudition causes another to muse, “Why would Kubrick make the movie so complicated? Yeah, why did Joyce write Finnegan’s Wake?” This goofy comparison shows they don’t know the difference between literary and cinematic erudition.
Okay, well he’s got a point there. A valid point that he immediately follows with…
These Shining geeks don’t even know the hotel story of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, a truly profound expression of memory and desire.
Hahahaha. I assume this is a callback to my all-time favorite Wire episode, where D’Angelo Barksdale just keeps shouting “WHERE ALAIN RESNAIS AT? WHERE ALAIN RESNAIS AT, STRING! WHYNCHA TAKE YOUR ASS BACK DOWN TO MARIENBAD!”
They ignore the human significance of Jack (played by Nicholson) telling his son Danny “I would never hurt you.” In this warped cathexis, the cynical gotcha coincidences carry hidden importance that means more than any clear, apparent behavior and imagery.
“Cynical Gotcha Coincidences” is easily my favorite Warped Cathexis album.
The ultimate nerd testimony says “In your own life, your point of view is being altered by your study.” But this isn’t study which means to examine, this is mere mania. Room 237 is another confirmation of the end of cinephilia.
“This is the end… my only friend, the end…”
I like to imagine Armond singing it sweetly to his life-sized standee of Paul WS Anderson.
This famous Canadian hunk got his first major gig on a well known TV show, before launching a successful film career, including a breakout role in an award-winning movie, and less-remembered musical side project. Then, with little notice, he retired from acting, disappointing millions of fans. I’m, of course, referring to Rick Moranis, not Ryan Gosling, as the headline may have led you to believe. I can see where you’re coming from, but c’mon, Baby Goose, a hunk? Yeah, and I’ve got a washcloth with his face on it that DOESN’T feel like I’m being kissed by a corgi made out of cotton candy when I use it to dry my hands. Also, he hasn’t officially retired; he just needs a “break from [himself].”
In a recent interview Gosling spoke more with the uncertain, self-critical grasping of a still-developing actor trying to find his foothold in an illusory profession. Soon to direct his first film, he’s looking forward to taking a step back just when moviegoers can’t get enough.
“I’ve been doing it too much,” he says of acting. “I’ve lost perspective on what I’m doing. I think it’s good for me to take a break and reassess why I’m doing it and how I’m doing it. And I think this is probably a good way to learn about that. I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does.” (Via)
He then stood up, reached into the messenger bag covered with Pro Hugs pins he brought with him to the interview, and pulled out a ukulele and a jigsaw puzzle. With the ukulele, he performed a cover of the White Stripes’ “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself,” while simultaneously working on the puzzle of himself, which he finished in 20 minutes. Except for one blank spot on his chest. Gosling looked up at the female journalist and said, with a twinkle in his eye, “Hey girl, you’re my missing piece.”
R.I.P. panties R.I.P. Ryan Gosling (for awhile, at least).
Time for your weekly LIVE edition of the Deadspin Funbag. To submit a question to the live Funbag, you gotta post down in the bowels of the discussion section below. As always, we begin with the question of the week.
