I thought of an interesting list that dawned on me today: ways to address people you should know but don't:
1. Hey you!
2. Hello sir/ma'am
3. Hey! How ya doin'?
4. This guy!
5. Uh-oh! Here comes trouble!
6. Wo-oh-oahh where have you been?
7. Well look what the cat dragged in!
8. Look at this big shot!
9. I was just thinking about you!
10.
I'll leave number ten open for suggestions.
Video for the day is a fairly recent Cursive song. There's a lot of energy in it which is one of the things that drew me to it in the first place. It's called Dorothy at Forty.
#29: Waiting for Guffman
I think it's fine to have a thing. M. Night Shyamalan has his twists. Quentin Tarantino uses chapters. Francis Ford Coppola does a lot in black and white. And Christopher Guest has his mockumentaries.
In part it's a safety net--not necessarily in a bad way, but in the way that a director can ensure his or her audience knows what to expect, effectively weeding out potential critics by completely disclosing your style up front. It's also a testament to doing what you're good at. Cinema is not a field conducive to experimenting for the sake of experimenting. You need to be pretty firm in your presentation, and throwing the budget and time into something you aren't completely sold on yourself certainly would be a waste.
Additionally, though, it's a bit constrictive whether one realizes it or not. When directors make a conscious decision to exhibit some distinguishable consistency in their work they need to have mastered the craft and all of its requisites. By no means am I trying to imply that Guest hasn't; his mockumentaries are truly well-done and his films seem to improve chronologically. The problem is the nature of the genre calls for certain things that can't be compromised.
The one thing I feel that Guest failed to provide his viewers in this film is verisimilitude. Part of the beauty of a mockumentary is that it takes the world as we know it and presents it completely unfiltered, exposing just how nonsensical we can be sometimes. The reality is where the humor comes from--we laugh because we're uncomfortable, because we're in denial, and because we see a lot of what we find ridiculous in ourselves or in people we know. That's why The Office is so funny, because the business world can be that ridiculous without realizing it.
In part the problem might be that this review is coming from someone who has at least some experience with community theater. Simply put, based on the community plays I have seen, the community plays I've been in, and the community plays I've heard of, this just doesn't capture reality. The product is a caricature of community theater stereotypes that are simply too hyperbolized to get a laugh; the players were too delusional, the community was too naive, and the play was too awful.
There's no denying that I'm no professional screen-writer/director, but to me the potential humor in satirizing community theater lies in the nuances. The singers need to be good enough for the viewer to understand where they're getting the idea that they deserve a spot in a play but just amateur enough that their performance teeters on tolerable. The director needs to be obviously and knowingly amateur but can't care about that. The audience needs to be generally indifferent despite the profound amount of work that is going into it--superficially supportive. And the play itself needs to be bad only in small ways--minuscule mishaps and miscues that are noticeable and cringe-worthy but not downright appalling. I just feel like Guest's scenarios in this movie are too overblown.
There are moments where this movie really struck a chord with a particularly funny line or situation. The end, in particular, was predictable in the sense that you knew something was coming, but the viewer couldn't help but appreciate it. Best in Show came four years after Waiting for Guffman and the improvement is undeniable. However, on its own, Waiting for Guffman only shows glimpses of an entertaining movie.
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