I Know You Are, But What Am I?

Dale Peck writes:

"Where in the hell do you start with a movie like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? With Tim Burton in his feature debut, displaying a B-movie zeal so old school it looks brand new? Or Danny Elfman in his star turn, delighting listeners with an irresistible fusion of Carl Stalling and carnival jingles and video game bleeps and whoops? And let’s not forget co-writer Phil Hartman, muse of the Groundlings and SNL before he became a great deadpan actor in his own right -- one of the few men who can play both halves of a double entendre for a laugh.

Or Elizabeth Daily as Dottie or Diane Salinger as Simone or -- Oh! My! God! -- Jan Hooks as the saccharine Alamo tour guide, whose two minutes of screen time are pants-wettingly hilarious.

But even with all this talent and energy and, let’s face it, good luck going for it (I mean, Burton and Elfman and Hartman, all on a $6 million budget), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is still pretty much all about -- um, duh -- Pee-wee Herman, a.k.a. Paul Reubens, who, like his friend Cassandra Peterson (blink and you’ll miss her boobs in the biker scene), wound up more or less subsumed by his most famous creation."

Click here to continue reading Dale Peck's article "Scary Fun" at Out.com.

Reverend's Reviews: Paper or Plastic?

Don’t go in the woods, boys and girls: Baghead may be waiting! This initially goofy, ultimately soulful riff on out-of-work actors’ angst and classic slasher movies screens this week at the Los Angeles Film Festival, after premiering at April’s Philadelphia Film Festival. It is scheduled for theatrical release by Sony Pictures Classics later this summer.

Mark and Jay Duplass, credited as “the Duplass Brothers,” wrote and directed Baghead as their second feature, following their acclaimed 2005 debut The Puffy Chair. Here, a group of unemployed actor friends (played by Steve Zissis, Greta Gerwig, Ross Partridge and Elise Muller) escape to a cabin in the woods for a weekend. There’s no threat of danger at first, although there is sexual tension as the guys try to manipulate events to bed the woman each likes most.

Once the group decides to collaborate on a screenplay, however, creating roles intended to showcase their acting talents, strange things begin to happen. A man wearing a paper bag on his head begins to appear in their dreams (?) and in the woods, and one by one the friends start to go missing.

The film takes a while to get going. At first, the characters, especially the men, are sex-obsessed and unlikable, although their humorous moments help. Eventually, though, the film becomes both downright funny (after all, how scary can the Unknown Comic from TV’s old Gong Show really be?) and truly frightening (the answer: pretty scary).

What struck me as both subversive and GLBT-friendly on the Duplass Brothers’ part is that, by the film’s end, the guys are more genuinely freaked out than the women. The men here also reach a deeper point of emotional connection than the guys in the semi-comparable Scream movies ever did.

A low-budget horror-comedy with a soul, Baghead is definitely worth a look (take a peek at the trailer). But the next time you’re checking out at the grocery store and are asked, “Paper or plastic?”, you might want to stick with plastic.

UPDATE: Baghead is now available on DVDfrom Amazon.com.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

AFI's Top 10 Epic: #1

Lawrence of Arabia - 1962

AFI's Top 10 Epic: #2

Ben-Hur - 1959