8/16/15 (Part One): A Little Stake, A Lotta Whine

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Alex Karpovsky, Anna Margaret Hollyman, awkward films, bad boyfriends, cinema, commitment issues, Dakota Goldhor, dark comedies, Dustin Guy Defa, film reviews, filmed in New York, films, hipsters, horror-comedies, independent films, indie films, indie horror film, Jason Banker, Jason Selvig, Jerry Raik, Juliette Fairley, Max Heller, Melodie Sisk, Movies, obnoxious people, Onur Tukel, rom-com, romances, set in New York City, sex comedies, Summer of Blood, unlikable protagonist, vampires, Vanna Pilgrim, Woody Allen, writer-director-actor-editor

On paper, multi-hypenate filmmaker (he writes, directs, produces, edits and stars) Onur Tukel’s Summer of Blood (2014) seems like a pretty winning idea: take the neurotic, relationship-based comedies of Woody Allen but insert a vampire protagonist. Et voila: instant horror-comedy goodness! There’s obviously a rich vein to be mined here: imagine one of Allen’s schlubby, lovable losers trying to navigate the choppy waters of not only a terrifying dating scene but also their newly acquired vampirism. If you think about it, the comedy almost writes itself.

In practice, however, Tukel’s Summer of Blood is actually quite a pain in the ass (or neck, if you prefer the punny version). This has less to do with the oftentimes awkward, amateurish performances from some of the cast than it does with the film’s one towering problem: not only is Tukel’s Erik a thoroughly obnoxious, odious jerk, he’s also a massively unlikable, irritating protagonist. As portrayed by S.O.B.’s resident auteur, Erik is a tone-deaf, ridiculously self-obsessed hipster nitwit, a constantly schticking human hemorrhoid who’s never funny, sympathetic or, for the most part, remotely interesting. While the film that surrounds him has its own issues, Tukel’s Erik is the super-massive black hole at the center that sucks the good stuff right into oblivion.

We first meet our hapless “hero” as he and long-suffering girlfriend, Jody (Anna Margaret Hollyman, much better than the film requires), are having one of their customarily awkward dinners at their favorite outdoor restaurant. Jody proposes to her schlubby, commitment-phobic beau only to be summarily rejected: not only is it “cliche” to propose at a restaurant, it’s too “post-feminist” for the woman to propose. Since this little routine has been going on for some time, Jody finally gets fed up and ends up leaving with an old friend, Jason (Jason Selvig). On their way out, Jason offers some pretty valuable advice: “Shave, button up your shirt and get a fucking job.” Well played, Jason…well played.

Turns out that Jason does have a job, although he applies himself as little as humanly possible. He works in an office of some kind where his one and only friend, Jamie (Alex Karpovsky, who’s always a breath of fresh air) tries to keep him on the right side of the boss, Carl (Max Heller). For the most part, Erik just uses his time in the office to hit on comely co-worker, Penelope (Dakota Goldhor, turning in a truly baffling performance). When she spurns his advances due to his age and “not being her type,” Erik swipes a photo from her desk and proceeds to jack off in the bathroom. If you thought romance was dead, you’d better think again, pardner.

After Jody breaks up with him, Erik goes on a trio of awkward, mostly unsuccessful blind dates (all at the same restaurant, natch), two of which end with him getting summarily rejected after saying some truly stupid things. He does manages to seal the deal with one young lady, however, although the thoroughly unspectacular sex (in the most bored way possible, she keeps imploring Erik to go “deeper,” “harder” and “faster,” none of which he’s capable of doing). She only does “great sex,” however, so our hero gets the heave-ho here, as well.

While wandering the streets of his hip, New York neighborhood (Bushwick, natch) one night, Erik happens to bump into the mysterious, debonair Gavin (Dustin Guy Defa). After another awkward, schtick-filled encounter, Gavin bites Erik on the neck, turning him into a child of the night. Rather than be overly concerned, however, Erik is actually kinda over-joyed: he feels great, he’s more confident, can hypnotize his stereotypical Jewish landlord into letting him stay for free and, most importantly, can now fuck like some kind of Roman god. Using his new “powers,” Erik returns to each of his previous “strike-outs” and proceeds to knock their socks off…and turn them into vampires, of course.

As Erik adjusts to his new lifestyle, a lifestyle that includes vampire threesomes, feasting on stoners in the park and being an even bigger jerk at work, he finds himself constantly nagged by one little issue: turns out he really, really misses Jody. In fact, he might actually be in love with her, after all. With only Jason standing between him and presumed happiness, Erik must use all of his vamp skills to try to win Jody back. Can a vampire ever find true love? Only in New York, baby…only in New York.

For the most part, Summer of Blood is a pretty typical, low-budget horror comedy: the film looks okay (the frequent blood-letting is well-done), the camera-work is decent (cinematographer Jason Banker is actually the writer/director behind Toad Road (2012), one of the very best, most ingenious films I’ve seen in the last several years, although his work on S.O.B. certainly isn’t revelatory) and the actual storyline is kind of intriguing. The acting ranges from pretty good (Hollyman and Karpovsky are definitely the best of this bunch) to much less impressive (Goldhor brings such a weird energy to Penelope that I could never figure out if she was disgusted by Erik’s frequent advances or actually flirting with him and the two hipsters that Erik runs into are the very definition of non-actors), with most performances falling in the “decent” spectrum.

As mentioned earlier, the single biggest, critical issue with Summer of Blood ends up being our protagonist, Erik: to put it bluntly, any scene he’s in is a chore to sit through, which becomes a bit of an issue when he’s in every single scene. Erik is never anything more than an intolerable shitheels, a whining, obnoxious jerk who’s endless self-awareness and constant schtick gets old by the three-minute mark and then just keeps going and going, like some kind of Hell-spawned Energizer Bunny.

In any given scene, at any given moment, Tukel’s verbal diarrhea is so overwhelming that it’s impossible to ever focus on the content of any particular scene or moment. He finds a guy dying in the street from a slashed throat, he does a stand-up routine. He runs into a couple of hipsters, he riffs on how he looks like Jerry Garcia. He has an orgy with his three vampire ladies, we get schtick about how he’s not a misogynist because he genuinely likes having sex with multiple women at the same time. To make it classier, however, he lets one of the vamps read from Ginsberg’s “Howl.”

The entire film becomes one massive, never-ending bit of (largely unfunny) schtick, some of it so moldy that it’s practically vaudevillian. It’s pretty obvious that Tukel modeled the film after Woody Allen’s oeuvre and, as stated earlier, there’s nothing wrong with that idea whatsoever. There’s no denying that Woody can be a bit of a “schtick-up” guy, himself: he’s also pretty well-known for portraying the kinds of neurotic asses that most people wouldn’t willingly associate with in the real world. For all that, however, Allen is still able to make his characters at least somewhat likable: he’s a schlub but he’s our schlub, dammit.

The problem with Tukel’s performance is that Erik begins the film as an off-putting creep and finishes that way: there’s no arc, no “dark night of the soul,” no sort of internal change, no notion that anything that transpires has any sort of effect on him whatsoever. Oh, sure, he talks about how he’s a “changed” man at the end but the revelation is immediately given the raspberry by the film’s ridiculously flippant final moment. I’m not sure if Tukel actually meant Erik to come across as a lovably shaggy rogue or if he actually meant to portray him as a hatefully obnoxious dickhead: whatever the intent, the end result is a character that wears out his welcome in three minutes and then sticks around for another 83. Talk about the guest from hell!

The real disappointment with Summer of Blood is that the film isn’t devoid of good ideas. In fact, the ultimate observation about vampirism and commitment issues (Erik doesn’t want to turn Jody into a vampire because then he’d be “stuck” with her for all of eternity, rather than just her lifetime) is a really sharp one and could have been spun into something much more thought-provoking, even within the context of a silly sex comedy. There are moments during the film, such as the great scene where a dejected Erik tries to “comfort” strangers on the subway, that are genuinely funny: the key here, for the most part, is that they’re the ones where Tukel gives his motormouth a rest and just lets his filmmaking do the talking.

I didn’t hate Summer of Blood, although I won’t lie and say that I particularly liked it, either: I’ve seen plenty of worst films, both micro and mega-budget. For the most part, the constant, unfunny schtick just wore me down, like being trapped with an incredibly tedious observational comic in a stuck elevator. I still think that the idea of mashing together Woody Allenesque comedy and vampires is a good one, even if Summer of Blood makes it seem as natural as mixing oil and water. No need to wear your garlic necklaces for this one, folks: Onur Tukel’s Summer of Blood is all schtick, no bite.

10/10/14 (Part One): What a Drag It Is Not Getting Older

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31 Days of Halloween, Adam and Eve, Anton Yelchin, art films, auteur theory, Bill Laswell, Christopher Marlowe, cinema, Dead Man, Detroit, drama, ennui, eternal life, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Ghost Dog, hipsters, horror movies, husband-wife team, independent film, Jeffrey Wright, Jim Jarmusch, John Hurt, Mia Wasikowska, Movies, Only Lovers Left Alive, romance, romantic films, Tangiers, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Vampire Code of Conduct, vampires, vampires vs humans, writer-director, youth vs old age

In certain ways, the classical notion of vampires is equitable with the current phenomena known as “hipsters”: vampires are intelligent, urbane individuals who look down on the dregs of “normal” society, take pleasure in obscure, archaic entertainments, consider themselves to be more sophisticated than those around them and lament the tawdriness of the modern age in contrast to purer, more interesting “times gone by.” Minus the blood-sucking bit and aversion to sunlight (well, perhaps not completely forgetting the aversion to sunlight bit…), that description sounds an awful lot like the current conception of hipsters. At the very least, both groups appear to share a common attribute: a completely world-weary and jaded viewpoint that makes snark and sarcasm more natural go-to responses than honest simplicity. For bored, ageless vampires, the business of “living” appears to be as much of a burden as “regular folks” are to the modern hipster. The whole thing is just so…gauche.

Auteur Jim Jarmusch’s newest film, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), takes the above parallel between vampires and hipsters to its logical extreme, positing Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as the bored, ageless vampires Adam and Eve, doomed to cast a disparaging eye on the wreck that is humanity for more centuries than they care to recall. Or, at least, that’s definitely Adam’s take on the whole mess of existence. In fact, he’s so agitated with the inanity of the “zombies” (the vamps favorite descriptor for humanity) that he’s commissioned a wooden bullet and plans to commit the ultimate act of bored defiance: if this world won’t cease its tedium, he’ll just have to cease his existing.

Eve, on the other hand, views things just a little differently. In fact, it’s probably easiest to view Eve as a Gothic variation on the whole “manic pixie girl” ideal: unlike Adam, she hasn’t lost her sense of joy at being alive. As she sees it, living for hundreds of years can get tedious and humdrum, of course, but it also allows for more experiences and wonder than any “regular” person could ever have. After all, she’s best friends with the one and only Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt)…how many “regular” people can say that?

This contrast between Adam and Eve forms the foundation of Jarmusch’s film, his rather belated follow-up to The Limits of Control (2009). As befits someone who tackles genre films in the most unconventional ways possible (Dead Man (1995) is a trippy art-film masquerading as a Western, while Ghost Dog (1999) is a treatise on Eastern philosophy filtered through a gonzo Mafia framework), Only Lovers Left Alive is a highly unconventional film. For one thing, there isn’t a whole lot of narrative thrust to be found here: much of the film’s running time is taken up with the relationship between Adam and Eve and what happens when she leaves her home in Tangiers to come see him in Detroit (despite being married for, apparently, hundreds of years, the couple live across the world from each other, which has to one of the handiest metaphors for long-distance relationships in some time). Plot points do raise their heads from time to time, of course: the couple is visited by Eve’s young, out-of-control sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), and must figure out how to replenish their exhausted blood supply. On the whole, however, Jarmusch is largely uninterested in the vagaries of a traditional plot: this is all about atmosphere and vibe, two fronts which Only Lovers Left Alive really takes to the bank.

More than anything, Jarmusch’s newest film is an art film: the emphasis is most definitely on mood, with evocative shots, exquisite slo-mo and deliberate framing taking precedence over any traditional narrative devices. To that end, events sometimes come and go with a sense of arbitrary randomness: Adam’s best friend, the human Ian (Anton Yelchin), is dispatched early on but it so much as cause a ripple in the narrative. Ava seems poised to serve as some sort of villainous character (she’s so selfish, obnoxious and derisive towards humans that she feels cut from a much more traditional “vamps vs humans” film) until she’s pretty much written out of the story without so much as a second thought. Adam appears to be a rock star, of some sort, and much is made in the film about him constantly hearing his music in surprising places (a restaurant, for example) but this ends up having no bearing on the story whatsoever. Like much in the story, these various plot ends aren’t meant to be tied up neatly: they’re used for seasoning, like salt on a steak.

Lacking any sort of driving narrative, the responsibility for the success (or failure) of the film rests solely on its considerable craft: as with anything else in his catalogue, Jarmusch is more than capable of not only making this work but making it work spectacularly well. For one thing, Only Lovers Left Alive looks fantastic: the well-lit daytime scenes may seem a little blown-out but the night-time scenes are exquisite and highly evocative. The score, all hyperbole aside, is a true thing of beauty: not only does it manage to elevate the film, as a whole, but Jarmusch’s musical choices are just a ton of fun, all on their own. The scene where Adam plays his music is pitch-perfect (apparently, vampire music sounds like droning, Eastern-tinged shoegaze, which makes complete sense), as is the truly nice moment where Adam and Eve dance to a Motown tune. The Bill Laswell instrumental that closes the credits totally rips and this was the first art film I’ve seen in sometime that practically demands I check out the soundtrack.

As with all of his films, Jarmusch assembles a first-class ensemble and puts them through some pretty excellent paces. Hiddleston and Swinton are absolutely magnificent as the ageless lovers: not only is their relationship genuinely romantic but the pair make a truly unearthly couple…they not only look but act and sound like age-old creatures living in an era not of their construction. Wasikowska turns in another great performance as the childish, casually evil Ava and is quickly proving to be one of this generation’s most capable genre actors. It’s always good to see John Hurt in a film and he tears into the character of Christopher Marlowe with gusto, although I wish he got a little more screen-time. Likewise, Yelchin and Wright turn in great supporting performances as Ian and Dr. Watson, respectively: Hiddleston’s scenes with Wright are definitely a highlight of the film.

As a huge fan of Jarmusch’s work (Dead Man is one of my all-time favorite films), I went into this expecting nothing short of greatness and, for the most part, my expectations were met. Only Lover’s Left Alive is definitely an extraordinary film, from the peerless performances to the gorgeous cinematography and back to the picaresque locations (the dilapidated, ramshackle setting of the once-might Detroit makes a pretty awesome, if obvious, metaphor for a vampire film, since the city seems as undead as the vampires). That being said, I still found myself slightly letdown by the film: there’s nothing inherently wrong with the picture – truth be told, there’s a lot about it that’s very, very right – but it still manages to feel somehow slight, at least when stacked up against his previous work. Whether this due to my perception or Jarmusch’s intention, there definitely seems to be a disconnect (at least for me), a disconnect that I rarely noticed in his earlier films.

Ultimately, however, my slight dissatisfaction ends up being a pretty moot point: Only Lovers Left Alive is a pretty great film and certainly one of the more interesting vampire films to emerge in some time. The main idea, that ageless individuals with access to all of the music, art, history and time in the world, can still manage to be bored and listless is an extremely relevant one in this day and age of the Internet: after all, humanity now has access to just about everything that Jarmusch’s vampires do and we’re not content, either. It’s an interesting notion, is this idea that having it all really means we get nothing. It’s certainly not the kind of idea that’s par for the course in most vampire films. When you’re dealing with Jarmusch, however, “usual” and “par for the course” are pretty meaningless terms: he’s been doing it his own way for over 30 years, now, and I’m imagining he won’t be stopping anytime soon.

1/24/14: Are We Supposed to Laugh Yet?

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Borat, cinema, Eric Wareheim, Film, hipsters, indie comedies, indie dramas, James Murphy, Jeffrey Jensen, LCD Soundsystem, Movies, Neil Hamburger, pretentious, Rick Alverson, Sacha Baron Cohen, satire, scatological conversations, self-satisfied, tedious, The Comedy, Tim Heidecker, unpleasant

Since things have been a little hectic for the past several days, last Friday was the last time (for a few days, at least) that I was able to cram several films into one day. This particular day, however, ended up being more miss than hit but just barely. I watched one extremely irritating film, one fantastic film and one very disappointing film. Since it turned out that I had more to say about The Comedy than I initially figured, I’ll go ahead and split this day into two: we’ll get to You’re Next and Curdled in the next installment.

As I’ve often found to be true, it’s entirely possible to detest the content of a film while still admiring the craft behind said film. This is certainly true of film’s with extremely disturbing content (Salo, most “torture porn” films) but the same can also be said of film’s that display a masterful touch with cinematography and style yet offer nothing whatsoever as far as content goes. These films, in other words, are the cinematic equivalents of Little Debbie snack cakes: bright, vibrant outsides filled with nauseating nothingness inside. Nowhere can I think of a film that better exemplifies this aesthetic than Rick Alverson’s The Comedy.

Before I begin to detail everything that I disliked about this film — and that’s no inconsequential list, might I add — let me take a moment to list the things that actually worked for me. Right off the bat, the film looks pretty great, at least as far as moody indie films go. The acting, when it can manage to stay away from endless litanies of debauched profanities (which it cannot do for any great length of time), isn’t bad. The trump card of having oddball comedians like Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim and Neil Hamburger (listed as Gregg Turkington in the credits) perform in the equivalent of a dour indie drama is interesting, at first, but wears its welcome out pretty quickly. Alverson has a tendency to use indie-instrumental music to set moods and, in scenes such the wordless bicycle ride through the city, it really works. I actually found the bicycle riding scene to be very atmospheric: I only wish that the filmmaker’s had followed that particular muse instead of the one that actually informed the picture: South Park.

You see, The Comedy isn’t so much a film, per se, as an extremely misguided attempt to call out that most mystical of modern beasts: the hipster. What, you may ask, is a hipster? Well, it seems to be a bit harder to define than a hippie, goth or metal-head, mostly because those sub-strata of society can (usually) be readily defined by either their attire or their choice of music. Hipsters, on the other hand, seem to be more defined by attitude: a slack, lackadaisical, ultra-sarcastic view of the world that allows for only ironic attachments, whether they be to entertainment, friends or political viewpoints: a hipster will hate Motley Crue but wear a Motley Crue t-shirt because it’s ironic. The hipster (at least as defined by what we see in The Comedy) is a PBR-swilling, smirking, self-satisfied putz, a rather repugnant creature that feels any subject (Hitler, rape, slavery, death) is ripe for hilarious satire. Because, you know, it’s all ironic, dude.

And that, essentially, is my huge problem with The Comedy. Under the guise of taking to task these odious individuals, Alverson has actually given them free rein to run amok for almost two hours. Here’s the exact format of the film, a formula that’s played out time and time again:

— Swanson (Heidecker), a rich, bored “hipster” and his equally bored friends Van Arma, Ben, Cargill and Bobby (played, respectively, by Wareheim, LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, Jeffrey Jensen and Hamburger), hang out together, damn each other with faint praise (“I totally respect your friendship”…”You are so good at being you”), drink PBR, have disgustingly scatological conversations with each other (The low point? Either the bit about hobo cocks being super clean because stock brokers are constantly sucking them or the delightful bit about smearing shit on vaginas…take your pick.) and then go out into the public where they act like boorish assholes and, apparently, attempt to get themselves killed by as many offended people as possible. This is usually followed by a short, quiet scene where Swanson seems to reflect on his actions, only to have the whole cycle begin anew within moments. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Here’s the thing: cinematic history is filled with great films about absolutely loutish individuals. Hell, it’s filled with plenty of great films CREATED by loutish individuals. There’s a fine trick involved, however, with such depictions of obnoxious characters, a trick that outre filmmakers like Todd Solondz know only too well: you may depict any number of endless atrocities, you may say anything, you may go anywhere, as long as the audience understands that you don’t actually agree with these things.

And yes, that is a mighty slippery slope, since it really begins to edge around issues of creative control, intent, art vs pornography, etc. But here’s the other thing: the filmmakers who are the undisputed masters of this domain, people like Todd Solondz, Mel Brooks, Trey Parker/Matt Stone and John Waters, never allow the audience to lose sight of what’s wrong or right. They may depict racist, misogynistic, insane, unpleasant and downright bizarre individuals but there is always the sense that humanity is upheld. The truly evil individuals, in these particular universes, will always be known to us: the filmmakers may not always give them their just comeuppance but we, as an audience, can always see through the act. I don’t mean to say that bad characters in films always need to be punished: I do mean to say, however, that it should be very evident where the actual filmmakers stands on issues like racism, sexism, etc.

The Comedy, unlike something such as Blazing Saddles or Pink Flamingos, is a much more confused  affair. For the most part, there is no commentary on these boorish acts, mostly because everyone in the film (with very few exceptions and we’re talking perhaps five, total, if I’m pressed) are equally obnoxious. Swanson takes a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant and engages in verbal sparring with a comely waitress (played by Kate Lyn Sheil). His method of courtship? Graphic descriptions about how he’s a convicted rapist and will rape anything that moves, including her. The waitress, for her part, gives as good as she gets, indicating that she’s pretty okay with this line of discussion. We’re supposed to understand, of course, that Swanson is being super-duper ironic here: he’s saying the worst possible things he can think of, simply to provoke any kind of reaction in his stunted life. His technique, it must be said, is also successful: after some light rape talk at the restaurant, Swanson eventually takes the waitress back to his houseboat for some more “clever” repartee and some hanky-panky.

All fair and good. What, then, to make of the “hilarious” scene where Swanson goes into a predominately black bar and swaggers around, loudly asking, “Where your bitches at” because he “wants to fuck some black ass?” It couldn’t possibly be racist because no one, save the caddish Swanson, would actually do that, right? How about the priceless gag where Swanson pays a Middle Eastern cab driver $500 so he can drive his cab around and yell at innocent women like they were prostitutes for hire? Another fun bit of harassment involves Swanson planting himself in a chair by his dying father’s bedside and regaling the male nurse with delightful anecdotes about “prolapsed anuses” before launching into a clever routine involving the word in phrases such as “Anus and Andy” or “Famous Anus Cookies” (okay, full disclosure: I did laugh at Famous Anus Cookies but I’m pretty sure that was the 12-year-old in me).

And yes, of course, there is plenty of history for material like this. Hell, Sacha Baron Cohen turned these kind of interactions (in the real world, no less) into his entire career and the Jackass guys have been doing it for a while, too. We also have some pretty racist material in Blazing Saddles and South Park, some pretty awful sexual ickiness in Happiness and a horribly worthless schlub in The King of Comedy. The difference, as far as I can see it, has to do with the equal-opportunity scope of the other filmmakers, particularly Mel Brooks and Parker/Stone. Mel Brooks is famous for never meeting anything he wouldn’t make fun of in a film: religion, ethnicity, racism, sexism, social mores, incest, mental illness, nationalism…you name it, Brooks poked at it. You’d have to be pretty brain-dead, however, to mistake whether Brooks’ sympathies lay with Bart or Hedley Lamarr. Every edgy joke, reference and rim shot in the film is funneled towards one, explicit purpose: shining the cold light of truth under the rock and exposing racism as the ridiculous, self-defeating, self-cannibalizing disgrace that it’s always been. Similarly, South Park may seem to unleash quite a bit of scorn on Scientology but compare that to what they’re saying about Christianity, Judaism, Paganism, Islam and the like and it comes across as just another target bottle on the fence. Offensive? Sure. But equal-opportunity offensive rather than specifically targeted.

With The Comedy, however, I was never sure where my sympathies were supposed to lie. I’ll be honest: I’d already mentally checked out a few minutes into the film, as the first scene was a slo-mo fest of slobby, shirtless guys spraying PBR everywhere while dry humping each other. There was such an air of detached bemusement to the scene, almost as if Alverson were saying, “Aren’t these guys just too, too crazy?,” that I could almost smell the self-congratulation coming from the screen.

None of this, by the way, is to insinuate that either Alverson or any of the cast have any intentional purpose to salute this sort of behavior. I do believe, however, that everyone involved lacked the abilities to pull this kind of thing off gracefully, opening the door wide for just such an insinuation. The whole thing, to be honest, smacks of the “enlightened” individual who relishes telling racist and sexist jokes because they “outrage” him so much or the gore-hound who studiously tracks down every frame of questionable content for films that she has no intention of seeing, just to see how bad it really is.

By the time I got to stuff like Swanson arguing for the return of feudalism (because some people just need to serve other people), the relative merits of Hitler (if one could look past all of the murder and stuff) and the scene where the waitress has an epileptic fit (I guess) as Swanson is preparing to have sex with her, only for him to spend the next several minutes watching her convulse while sipping a drink…I had just given up. Any attempt to look for deeper meaning, any idea that Alverson would be pulling the rug from under my feet and doling out bottomless shame to these assholes, was defeated completely by an ending that seems to posit Swanson as a lost, confused soul. Really? Because he kind of came across like a pretentious, racist, privileged douchebag for the entirety of the film. I realized that the extent of Alverson’s commentary on the subject was confined to the title: it’s ironic because the movie isn’t actually a comedy but a drama, dude…get it?

Ultimately, I was left with more questions than answers by The Comedy: What, exactly, is a hipster and does it actually exist in any minds other than other “hipsters”? What the hell was James Murphy doing in this? (to his credit, Murphy often looks pretty ashamed of what’s going on around him but his glee in the church-scooting scene is pretty obvious) Is it possible to have a really good, dark drama populated entirely by comedians? Where is the line between satirizing frat-boy misbehavior and just depicting it wholesale?

Perhaps, in the end, the joke really is on me. The characters in the film are all in their mid-30s, just like me. Perhaps I’m supposed to identify with this in the same way that twenty-somethings identify with films like Ben Stiller’s The Secret of Walter Mitty or Spike Jonze’s Her. If so, the joke is still over my head. I couldn’t imagine doing anything with these people but repeatedly hitting them with a 2×4. When I watch The Comedy, all I see is a bunch of stunted man-babies acting like complete and total jackasses. If Alverson sees something more noteworthy or noble, I sure wish he’d point it out to me.