The FilmNerds Blog

Still Smokin’ is my first experience with the infamous comedy duo Cheech and Chong. Both guys have impressed me as actors in the limited roles I’ve seen them in (Cheech Marin as Hurley’s dad on Lost and Tommy Chong as the drugged-out hippie on That ’70s Show) but I’d never seen them in action together in any form.

Still Smokin’ obviously isn’t their first film. Cheech and Chong had already created a formidable comedy franchise with their first four films, helping establish a new genre (stoner comedy) along the way. The guys were already running out of steam a little bit by the time Still Smokin’ was released, which is probably why they decided to shake up their formula a bit.

Unlike the four films before it, Still Smokin’ is less about creating its own story and wacky situations and more about finding a thing framework for what is essentially a concert film.

That thin premise is that Cheech and Chong are invited to Amsterdam for a Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton film festival. Outside of Cheech being mistaken by all the Dutch as Burt Reynolds because of his mustache, there aren’t many laughs early in the movie. It plays like a bad B-movie with a few subpar filmed sketches thrown in disguised as dream sequences.

What strikes me about some of the sketches is how far these prominent comedians were allowed to go in 1983…frankly, they touch on some areas that would get 99% of comedians in major trouble today. In one scene, Tommy Chong appears in full blackface as a blues character named Blind Melon Chitlin. Another scene called “Queer Wars” features both men playing outrageously gay drag queens. Both scenes feel incredibly dated today, probably only because no paid entertainer would even attempt them.

I was beginning to get exasperated right around the time the two men take the stage in an effort to save the film festival or something like that. What follows is actual footage of a Cheech and Chong standup show in Amsterdam. I say this without having seen any of their earlier, more successful movies but I find these guys to be really brilliant live sketch performers. Their energy and their commitment to a character or a premise is infectious to watch.

The perfect example would be a sketch called “Ralph and Herbie” in which both men enter the stage on all fours portraying two dogs who are best friends. I’ve got a little bit of a bias against most stoner comedy because I think a lot of it is based on trying to make the stoner look cool. It’s typically all about how the stoners are really the ones who have it all figured out and the straight tightwads just need to chill out. Cheech and Chong might be stoner comedians by reputation but their stage presence is anything but laid back. They aren’t afraid to give every sketch their all and they aren’t afraid to be physical and tense.

I don’t know that I can completely recommend this movie to anyone back in 2009 because the fact remains that as a movie, it stinks. The non-standup material in the film is almost unbearably dumb and hard to sit through. But if you’re into watching great standup comedians in action, this is worth devoting some time to. The final half-hour is an opportunity to see two of the best of their time at work.

It hit me the other day, after watching the decade-late quasi-sequel to The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, that we’re 10 years removed from 1999, the year the future of movies arrived. The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, Blair Witch, a Star Wars for a new generation…. all these movie events pointed towards a change in the industry, a breakthrough. As the independent American cinema finally got a foothold in the mainstream, it was supposed to change the way movies were made. Even then, indie sensation Steven Soderburgh was readying his one-two populist/geopolitical Oscar punch, Erin Brockovich and Traffic. We were supposed to get a decade full of mainstream film, told through the lens of post-modern deconstructionist filmmakers, with the technology of the future.

But did the future ever actually happen?

It kind of feels like the machine gobbled up the rage, doesn’t it? I suppose artistic revolutions usually tend to yield a lot less interesting and cohesive work than the boring standards of discipline and consistency, but really, what came out of the indie pillaging of Hollywood? The information age trend of viral marketing, popularized by Blair Witch, sure came in handy, but what about the stories themselves? They got bigger and bigger, that’s for sure. It feels like the independent spirit has just been relegated to a market niche at this point. Throw enough dysfunction and awkward framing together, and you’ve got the modern American indie.

I suppose there’s an inherent flaw in looking at content, though. Maybe storytelling in the cinematic medium peaked by the 80′s? Even if that’s true, I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with it… arguably, the novel form peaked with Moby Dick, and we still get great novels. I think what’s important to most revolutionaries is less the what, and more the how. That’s where the indie spirit resides, anyway: thriftiness. It’s the part of the 90′s indie movement that the machine has failed to consume.

A special case is this year’s District 9. When Peter Jackson’s pet producing project Halo fell through, he promised the refugee director of that project, Neil Blomkamp, $30 million to make whatever he wanted. So, utilizing the (relatively) inexpensive RED camera system, and the backing of the (2nd) hottest director on the planet, Blomkamp made an extremely profitable summer blockbuster. Say what you will about the WHAT of District 9, an okay sci-fi action movie, but what’s important to me is the HOW.

The question is, why didn’t this happen sooner, and will it happen again? Low cost digital cinema has been available for at least 5 years. The star system has been declared dead for as long. Yet, bloated productions have only accrued more and more overhead, necessitating safer decision-making, and increased branding. Does a Spider-Man movie need to cost $300 million? Maybe… Let’s go with a more down to earth example? Does a sequel to the $50 million* Raiders of the Lost Ark need to cost $150 million? What about a sequel to Die Hard? $110 million? Really? $230 million for Quantum of Solace? No aliens, no supernatural elements… and it costs more than two Lord of the Rings movies?

One is reminded of Tugg Speedman, in Tropic Thunder: Looking up after performing an emotional scene (armless), to see a director huddled over him, with about 500 crew members watching. Film production, like regular life, necessitates moderation and a proper handling of waste and over-expenditure. If not, fear of failure becomes a crippling motivation, no?

So what do you all think? Should we be optimistic that, instead of running for foreign money and sacrificing autonomy, Hollywood executives will sacrifice luxury, and shoot digital, write economically, and second-guess in pre-production rather than post? I think we can be more hopeful now, since we have a smash hit “real” movie (not a one-camera mockumentary) made with fiscal responsibility. It would seem that there, the independent artists can teach us all a lesson: Do what you can, with what you have, to create good work… rather than what you must, with what you lack, to impress the establishment. Will this next decade see the fruition of that idea? Will this recent  “recession” play a part?

Maybe so. Then again, I hear a new Spider-Man is on the horizon. And boy, those giant Transformers movies keep making money… and you know how people still love playing Battleship…

(*Budget adjusted for inflation)

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

Like most nerdy kids, I discovered Monty Python and the Holy Grail just before high school and wrote its punchlines upon my dorky heart. Silly French accents, random violent rabbit attacks, musical numbers…it was all a weird prepubescent boy could hope for. Then in college, I discovered the Python troupe’s less famous but perhaps more respected film effort, The Life of Brian, a stunningly irreverent but achingly brilliant religious satire.

I had certainly heard mention of the other Python movie, The Meaning of Life, but not being a particularly rapid fan of the group beyond their film work, I never bothered to check it out…until I decided to embark on this little project.

There appear to be conflicting accounts about the origin of the film but at least one member of the group, John Cleese, seems to have suggested in interviews that after the smashing critical success of Life of Brian, the group was offered a much larger budget from Universal than they’d ever seen before. Basically, they did it for a paycheck.

Watching the film, that production history would explain a lot, not because it’s a film that feels lazy but a film that is without real inspiration. The boys were out to prove themselves and their style of humor in Holy Grail. They were out to make a brilliant and inflammatory comedic statement in Brian. In The Meaning of Life, they gave it their all and never cease to push the envelope in nearly every sketch, but there’s no aspirations beyond that.

As a part of this project, I’ve been reviewing film writing and criticism from 1983 as well to try and get a gauge of what critics thought of these films at the time and compare it to how these films are thought of today. Roger Ebert, who in 1983 seemed a great deal harsher than than he is today, said of The Meaning of Life, “This movie is so far beyond good taste, and so cheerfully beyond, that we almost feel we’re being one-upped if we allow ourselves to be offended.” Ebert’s suggestion that the Pythons were simply playing an old fashioned game of British one-upmanship seems to be right on. With nothing left to prove and money in their pockets, these masters of English comedy were simply trying to defy the expectations of even their own fans.

Even those who aren’t offended are likely going to be surprised at the lengths to which the Pythons take their jokes. In one segment (the film is divided into different, unrelated episodes meant to represent the different stages of life), an enormous fat man vomits all over a restaurant and all the people in it. Another scene shows a man having his internal organs being forcibly removed as he screams. Neither of these scenes offended me but neither of them worked for me as jokes either. A lot of this may have to do with the time that has passed since 1983 and the redefining of what is shocking in those 26 years. What we see in the film could easily make it onto network television today, possibly in primetime. At the time, it was enough to get the film banned in several countries.

Shock comedy appears to come in waves, losing its effectiveness after audiences become immune and numb to its power. I think today, audiences seem to be gravitating toward a gentler, more subtle form of comedy, brought on by the influence of comedians like Ricky Gervais and Larry David. This season’s biggest family sitcom hit Modern Family has a lot more in common with Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run than it does with I Love Lucy (which itself was a bit of shock comedy).

The film does contain at least one real gem, a short film that precedes the feature titled The Crimson Permanent Assurance. The short was originally intended to be yet another segment of the film, specifically a five minute segment to be directed by Terry Gilliam with his own cast and crew. Left unsupervised by the production company, Gilliam finished with a film that was three times as long with twice the budget than was originally intended.

The result is a magnificent live-action fantasy trip in which a group of elderly insurance clerks stage a mutiny in their corporate headquarters and then unfurl a set of sails that take their skyscraper sailing away out of the city. The film plays like an Errol Flynn swashbuckler set in modern corporate London, with file cabinets being fired through the window like cannons. It’s a truly entertaining piece of whimsical filmmaking by an ambitious, young Gilliam who was still trying to establish himself as a separate voice from the Pythons.

This is certainly not a light comedy to pop in on a Sunday afternoon (particularly right after you’ve been to church) and to be honest, it was pretty disappointing to me as a Monty Python fan. While there are some individual moments in the film that work, like the extremely irreverent musical number “Every Sperm is Sacred” or the rugby match between a team of 12-year-olds and a team of full-grown adults teachers, most of the scenes are very difficult to watch and fall flat as comedic premises. This is probably rightfully the least-known of the three Monty Python films and will likely remain so simply because there aren’t enough memorable laughs for the audience to hold onto.