Okay guys, I’m going to need you to pretend that it’s still Christmas or whatever. I’m seriously running out of time on this deadline, so let’s just all pretend that it’s current, alright?
Welcome back to another installment of Who Put That On? the internet’s least important monthly film column and equally the only thing tethering me to this diseased rock. For those who didn’t read Vol I and are curious as to how this works—please say hi to the worms for me on your way to hell… but also please read on. My ego needs this bad; especially around the holidays.
*Performed in gentle, languid choral fashion*
Christmas time is here… Happiness and Cheer… Fun for all that children call… Their favourite—time—of year.
I’ve never been a big Christmas guy. Instead, I celebrate the Icelandic Yule festivities. Every Jól I anticipate the thirteen Yule Lads who torture me for twenty-six days, sometimes delivering gifts in the shoe I place upon my windowsill. If I’ve done too much online gambling that year (my true art), they curse me with a rotten potato in my sneakers, which brings down the resale value of my signed 2010 original Kobe 6s in the ‘grinch’ colour-way. Here’s an unsolicited ranking of the thirteen Yule Lads, with position thirteen representing the nastiest and most impish of the little grifters.
- Skyr Gobbler — Frankly, I don’t like yogurt that much; I’m happy to share.
- Stubby — This guy is just short. Somehow worse than the yogurt boy though.
- Doorway Sniffer — This just doesn’t seem like a big deal.
- Sheep Coat Clod — I would be pretty upset with Clod if I owned sheep. Luckily I’ve vowed never to own animals.
- Gully Gawk — Truly one of the most troll-esque of the lads.
- Spoon Licker — Kind of nasty, and I play favorites with my stirring spoons.
- Pot Scraper — Stop stealing my left overs!
- Bowl Licker — It would be funny if this was related to toilets. I’m a big cereal guy. *Insert joke about stealing me’ lucky charms.*
- Window Peeper — I don’t mind a little voyeurism, but his penis is just so much bigger than mine.
- Candle Beggar — What can I say, I like candles. They aren’t cheap!
- Sausage Swiper — If there is one thing I like more than candles, it’s sausages. And they aren’t cheap!
- Meat Hook — If there is one thing I like more than sausages, it’s the general concept of ‘meat.’ And it ain’t—*sigh.* You get the idea.
- Door Slammer — I just need my beauty rest. Especially around the holidays. Am I right?
Anyways, here are some movies you might like.
Highway (2002) dir. James Cox
Guys, don’t worry; this script was written by Scott Rosenberg—the force behind Con Air, Venom, and all three of the new Jumanji films—an undeniable track record.
I found this flick at my local video rental shop, and boy does it give ‘random video rental shop’ energy. If you put young Jake Gyllenhaal in pilot goggles on the cover of a shitty-looking 2002 stoner grunge comedy, I’m going to rent it every time. I guess people don’t share this sentiment because I have never met anybody in the world who has seen this film. There is a possibility that it’s because it’s a bad movie. Not saying that the film is bad; I’m just saying that it is a possibility. Alternatively, Highway’s low-profile may be in part to an unfortunate direct-to-dvd release; some exec abandoned the project right as it was turned in and blah blah blah blah.
Things I learned watching Highway:
a) young Jared Leto is sexy
b) young Jake Gyllenhaal is sexy
c) young Selma Blair is sexy
Jared Leto plays Jack, the world’s greatest pool boy. After an adulterous escapade with the mob boss’ wife, he is chased out of town. Also, his whole character centres around the fact that he hasn’t cum for eleven years, and then he… cums; it’s genius and nuanced—it insists upon itself. Jack escapes with his friend Pilot (Gyllenhaal) who gets his name because his mom banged a—you got it! Pilot also struggles in the cum department, and the subtext seems to be that he’s gay. This idea never sees development but somehow takes over the whole movie. After finding Cassie (Blair) feuding with a John, they agree to give her a ride. As is common for an early 2000s stoner comedy, Highway fails to provide Cassie much of a character. Unfortunate, because Blair has a chill and warming presence on screen, which could have been better used to cut Jack and Pilot’s abominable musings on sex work.
My favourite moment is when Kurt Cobain dies and a grunge hippy draws a massive spider on Gyllenhaal’s face. To a soft-skulled film casual this detail may go completely overlooked, to a true enlightened cinephile, like myself, this clearly identifies Highway as the prequel to Enemy. Look out for my ten-thousand-word schizophrenic Highway/Enemy essay where I completely omit punctuation, and the piece ends, not because I’ve drawn a conclusion, but because a long strand of drool, suspended above my keyboard for hours, finally breaks, frying my laptop.
Highway sort of epitomizes the charm and failures of early 2000s douchebag culture. I generally maintain that this era doesn’t deserve preservation, but Highway is so loose and exaggerated in its structure that it feels like it’s laughing at the genre it belongs too. It’s a mess of a movie. I recommend watching this film with fifty-five percent of your attention—if you ride that sweet spot this thing is a damn masterpiece!
Last Night (1998) dir. Don McKellar
If the world was ending at midnight, you’d probably find me doing what I do best: practising how to spell the word “nescassary.” Each time I spell the word necesascary it feels like my first. That’s why I love writing.
Last Night is a compelling little Canadian end-of-the-world flick, starring a lab-grown hybrid construction of young De Niro and Nathan Fielder’s DNA. Also the untouchable Sandra Oh is in Last Night, operating this film’s gas pedal and providing well-placed snark. I often point to Last Night as a salient example of Hollywood and Canada’s differing cinematic styles. While most Hollywood disaster pictures see a bald-headed dufus racing up a mountain to shoot a shotgun at a meteorite, Last Night never even poses the apocalypse as a surmountable event. Instead, the citizens of Toronto face their impermanence head on—living out their fantasies, engaging in prayer, reading my OddCritic article: The Unknown American Monopolization of Canada’s Film Industry, or in proper dry Canadian fashion (unrelated to the ginger ale) killing themselves.
Waggwan croski; end times got me mad vexed fam. Me and croski are trying to bare waste each other, before we’re caught out like gerberts, eh? No joke, that’s how they talk the entire film.
I have to get better at writing summaries, so I’m going to try really hard on this one. In his final hours, Patrick Wheeler clings to a nihilistic, provocative persona, skipping family dinner to spend his final moments listening to his favourite record—he is a true reddit audiophile. On the stoop of his apartment he bumps into Sandra, who is trying desperately to get a hold of her husband. Begrudgingly, Patrick sets off with Sandra in hopes of stealing a car, and through a stranger’s company and good will, his hermitic sigma mask begins to crack. Oh and David Cronenberg is leaving voicemails for people, telling them he’ll keep their gas on right up until the end times. See I’m getting better at summaries.
This movie has the best almost-sex scene in all of cinema (an underrated category of scene). Craig, one of Patrick’s old schoolmates, is trying to check off every bucket-list sex quest he’s ever considered. Instead of writing them in a notebook, he scrawls them all across his kitchen walls, which I think is chill and cool. Patrick visits him in hopes that Craig will pony up his automobile; after some catchup Craig gently asks Patrick if he’d like to…y’know. The mixture of deep curiosity and socially homophobic conditioning wells up in the both of them, making for a tense, honest, and incredible scene. I recommend watching this movie using your phone’s youtube app, post mediocre sex.
Crumb (1994) dir Terry Zwigoff
There seems to be a Christmas theme emerging: quarked up problematic white boys all backed up with cum. That’s festive, right? Isn’t that like Jesus’ whole thing? There’s a joke in there somewhere about dreaming for a white Christmas, but I would never be so crass.
Crumb is a documentary about the greatly-influential and equally perverted comic artist, Robert Cum—I mean Crumb. There’s a lesson to Crumb that I think a lot of young men need to hear right now: if you consider yourself a dejected incel, you need to become so undeniably talented in one niche that people consider you a genius, and then you can openly hate women for the rest of your life.
I think the word “raw” is overused to describe documentaries, but Zwigoff shows no apprehension at performing a thorough enema on the unsettling, nihilistically pornographic, corners of Robert Crumb’s mind; oh, and Robert seems more than happy to hold the tube. After a brief 20-minute exploration of Crumb’s early life and popular works, the documentary descends into Crumb’s opinions on the artifice of modern society and his hypersexual fixations. He openly discusses his attraction to Bugs Bunny, touches on his submissive and transgressive kinks, and waxes poetic on his life’s masturbation trends. This indulgence in Crumb is also matched with a range of testimony from Crumb’s Mom, current girlfriend, two ex-girlfriends, and several art critics. I would say the film feels balanced, remaining as unbiased as possible in the depiction of his art and character.
One of the more hilarious components of this film is the irony of Crumb—a cartoon character in himself—incessantly doodling effortless caricatures every time he is on screen. Mind you, Crumb is a towering myopic gangly man, who looks like young Steve Buscemi pretending to be old Steve Buscemi, but a bit more classic and with a moustache that looks like if John Waters was straight and only shot porn. His proportions are only exaggerated by his love of forties era suiting, and he talks with an all-knowing vintage snark. Every third line he says makes you hate him, but he always follows it up with something redeemable or unfortunately-brilliant. This surreal spectacle of a cartoon man filtering the world into cartoons is then tripled, as we are introduced to Crumb’s two brothers, Charles and Maxon; who, ‘yes’, also draw cartoons. Charles is a heavily tranquilized shut-in that looks like a toad, and who gives his testimony behind a mountain of books—which may I add, are arranged in the least performative way possible. He’s read every single one a dozen times and seems like he is waiting to die. His other brother Maxon is a terrific and skittish oil painter who lives in a disheveled cube that he maintains via panhandling. He has a seizure condition, which he claims is triggered by feelings of sexual arousal, so he has turned to asceticism to avoid compulsions. Yes, he has a bed of nails. Yes, he sits on it in the doc. Thank God, because he is horny to a truly evil degree. His interview includes manic stories of pantsing strangers in public.
Anyways, this is getting too dark. Just go watch the movie. You’ll like it. Is this good film writing? I recommend watching this movie in San Francisco with your genitals caught in a cartoonish bear trap, while you smoke a pipe.
Pedal (2001) dir. Peter Sutherland
Man riding a bicycle: My name is Skeletor
Interviewer: Is that a first or last name?
Man riding a bicycle: Both!
I went through a dark phase in my life where I was exclusively watching fixed gear bike- messenger documentaries. I realized I had hit rock bottom when I caught myself trying (and failing) to enter a niche, 20-minute, early-2000s San Franciscan film called Helmet Optional to the The Movie Database (TMDB)—which for those who have meaning and purpose in their life—is the archive that Letterboxd bases their catalog on. The quality of a bike messenger documentary can basically be broken down into one ratio: [production value] to [number of psychos who may live in subway tunnels]—and Pedal finds that golden ratio.
While the documentary makes a decent effort to detail the process and intricacies of running a bike courier business, the film finds its stride portraying the strange individuals attracted by such bizarre and free work. Let’s run through a few of my favorite characters: there is Evangelis, aka bike jesus—who couriers not just packages, but the word of god. There is Big E who, in the morning, emerges from a street grate because—you guessed it—he slept in the subway tunnels. We’ve got the aforementioned Skeletor, aka the fastest courier in the city; my favorite part is when he lifts up his jorts to show off his calves, which look identical to handsome squidward. There is Kid, aka The Famous Kid Ill, who is, apparently, also the fastest courier in New York, and he likes torturing cops on bikes, by slowing down so that they almost catch him and then speeding off; he does this until they have to face-the-fact that they are a useless unit of the police force. There is Dexter from Trinidad, who rides with one leg because he saved a kid from being run over by a truck. That’s only just a few of the legendary riders that Pedal has to offer, and I think I’ve illustrated my point.
My one frustration with Pedal, is that the camera crew struggles to keep up with some of the bikers. This might be for the film’s own good, as it allows room for testimony and breakdown, but I do enjoy films like Line of Sight or Red Means Go that lean a little more on the spectacle of riding. This one’s also for free on youtube. Turns out they are all on youtube for free, besides Crumb.
I know that you’re panicked, worried, seizing, sick, thinking “Dylan, Dylan, how does this film fit the theme of problematic white boys all backed up with cum.” And to that I say: isn’t that just what a fixie kid is? I recommend watching this film with your pants off, a right hand full of chain lube, and a concussion. Happy Holidays.
Crap, I got to do an outro. I forgot about that. On the theme of problematic white boys all backed up with cum, I turn to the most pent up of all problematic white boys: Ebeneezer Scrooge. Let’s hear a quote shall we; a cautionary sentiment on watching/idolizing problematic white boys all backed up with cum: “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”