The Screengrab : bill o'reilly

Screengrab Review: "An American Carol"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:45:00 GMT

This week, as the election nears, I decided to treat myself to two movies that I ordinarily wouldn't see under any circumstance. Not just because they looked terrible -- although they did -- but also because they were movies that, in a very literal sense, were not made for me. These movies are less artistic endeavors than they are salvos in the culture war, and if they were aimed at me, it was not as a consumer, but as a target.

But hey, so what? I go see a lot of movies that aren't really meant for me. I've reviewed Tyler Perry movies, which aren't meant for me. I've reviewed Disney animated movies, which aren't meant for me. I'm a big fan of Stan Brakhage, and his movies weren't really made for anyone. I'm a professional, damn it, and as a professional, I can take whatever to the other side in the culture wars dish out. The first tasty bowl of arsenic: David Zucker's An American Carol.

The film, as you may know from Phil Nugent's earlier piece on it, is a high-dudgeoned but low-minded spoof in which a stand-in for Michael Moore (portrayed by a stand-in for Chris Farley) is interrupted in his quest to ban the Fourth of July by a visitation by three ghosts, who attempt to dissuade him from his wicked anti-American ways. Why wasn't his movie released at Christmastime? Why would anyone want to ban a calendar day? Why would you send John F. Kennedy to attack a prominent liberal? I figured if I started asking myself questions like that, I would just go insane. Instead, I focused on whether or not the movie was actually funny. I hope I will be believe when I say that, all ideological considerations aside, it wasn't. It's not that you can't be funny from a specific political point of view; in fact, satire (which, really, An American Carol is too dumb to qualify as, but still) depends on a moral standing ground from which to attack. It's that these jokes lack any kind of universality, humanity or relatability: the only way you can think it's funny is if you agree with where it's coming from. Or, to put it another way: the new, right-wing David Zucker believes it's funny to have Michael Moore slapped around by Bill O'Reilly. If you happen to agree, you might be modestly amused; if you don't, the joke will fall even flatter than it actually does. The old, non-political David Zucker knew better: he just thought it was funny when people get slapped.

Above and beyond the question of its partisan demands, though, is the fact that An American Carol just isn't very funny, even if you're a conservative. Its jokes are lazy, obvious, and predictable even by the subzero standards of modern farce, and while moviegoing audiences have proven time and time again that they'll go to a movie that critics don't like because they genuinely enjoy it themselves, there's very few people who will go to a movie out of spite, which is really the only reason to see An American Carol. This is evidenced by the fact that with half the country or more still self-identifying as conservative, the movie completely tanked at the box office; as Phil reported, though, Zucker and a few of his far-right pals are claiming that its disastrous performance is due to some kind of liberal conspiracy. If I can be allowed one moment of ideology, that's the great strength of the paranoid right: if you succeed, it's because America loves your values; if you fail, it's because liberals sabotaged you. All I can say is, they did a hell of a screw job on this one.

Hollywood Conservatives Face 'New McCarthyism', Goblins, Unicorns

Special Election Year Report: Unfunny Conservatives Battle Racist Chihuahuas at the Box Office

Phil Nugent — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Jean-Luc Godard once said that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 had surely done its part in getting George W. Bush re-elected. You may disagree, but if an investigating committee of impartial wise men were formed to rank every statement of a political nature that Godard has ever issued in descending order of just how deranged they sound, it's doubtful that the sneer at Moore would make the top hundred. (Maybe not the top five hundred.) Moore said back in 2004 that he hoped that his movie would have an effect on the election, and maybe it did. (How he though that he might inspire some effect that was hurtful to Bush by making a movie specifically designed to comfort those who already agreed with him one-hundred percent while confusing anyone on the fence and pissing off and galvanizing everyone on the other side is a question for a different investigating committee of impartial wise men.) To hear them tell it, David Zucker and the other conservative Hollywood players who worked on An American Carol would like to have an impact on this year's election but are having trouble breaking through that gosh-darn media filter. Zucker, who will probably always be best known, especially at the rate he's going, as part of the team that wrote Kentucky Fried Movie and went on to create Airplane! and the Police Squad/The Naked Gun franchise, has weighed in on political matters before. A few years ago, he produced and directed a series of political ads, including the one above, which chastises the Democrats for being too soft to dictators and terrorists, and the one below, which compares James Baker and the Iraq Study Group to Neville Chamberlain. Basically, the spots look a lot like what you might get if a smart new comedy troupe were to fantasize about what would result from one of the Airplane! guys got it into his head that he was a political satirist. Politically and historically, they're garbled all to hell--for instance, you might get the impression from the first one that Zucker thinks that the Clinton administration's negotiations with North Korea had resulted in Kim Jong Il developing his own nuclear weapons and the Bush administration's refusal to talk to that government had cowed them, instead of the other way around--but you do get to see an overweight Madeleine Albright impersonator in a bad dye job split her skirt. As the Drudge Report noted at the time in an exclusive report on a screening for political insiders, "One GOP strategist said 'jaws dropped when the ad was first viewed. "Nobody could believe Zucker thought any political organization could use this ad."

An American Carol stars Kevin Farley--Chris's brother--as a Michael Moore-like filmmaker who, after a setback with the failure of his latest cinematic diatribe Die, You American Pigs!, tries to regain his rad-lib street cred with a campaign to ban the Fourth of July. To set him straight, he is visited by a vision of John Kennedy and then by the ghosts of George Washington (Jon Voight), General George Patton (Kelsey Grammar--and if you were forced to pick out one role best associated with George C. Scott that could also be a good fit for Sideshow Bob, wouldn't this be the one to jump out at you?), and an angel of death, played by a typecast Trace Atkins. The all-star cast also includes Leslie Nielson, who Zucker must keep stashed in a safety deposit box between films, as well as James Woods, Dennis Hopper, Robert Davi, Paris Hilton, Kevin Sorbo, Gary Coleman, and Bill O'Reilly--as "himself", thank God. (Really, does anyone want to see Bill O'Reilly stretch himself as a performer?) Considering what's known about the movie, including its trailer and the stuff you just read here, it doesn't strike me as shocking that it didn't do well in its first weekend. Especially since the movie wasn't screened for critics, meaning that the first real reviews didn't start dribbling in until the day after it opened. This is a well-known sign of a stinker, one that moviegoers have learned to pick up on. It should be noted, though, that Zuvker has explained that in this case it was a protective measure, meant to shield the film from liberal critics who would never judge it fairly. (Full discolsure: This writer's politics are probably closer to Michael Moore's than to Jon Voight's. However, I once had to kill a blog that I had worked on for a over a year because of the flood of comments from people wishing me a slow, painful death after I wrote there that I had problems with Michael Moore's work and suspected that his farts do not smell like sweet honey. Also, though basic human sensitivity keeps me from describing my actual reaction to the news that Chris Farley had died, I can say that it was not anything like, "Oh, if only he has an equally unfunny, lookalike brother who can some day continue his mission on Earth!")

The filmmakers might have been expected to react to the collapse of their box office hopes in any number of ways. They might have re-thought the no-press-screenings rule, for instance, or maybe regretted not having asked Kevin Sorbo to do full frontal. Maybe even regretted not having asked Kelsey Grammar to do full frontal. (Dennis Hopper and Gary Coleman hardly need to be asked.) But instead, they have floated the notion that a kind of voter fraud is going on: At a page at the movie's slow-moving web site (was it designed by John McCain?) they wrote: "We have had heard from numerous people across the country that there has been some ticket fraud when buying a ticket for An American Carol this past weekend. Please check your ticket. If you were in fact one of those people that were "mistakenly" sold a ticket for another movie please fill out the form below. Hold on to your ticket so we can have proof. If you have noticed other irregularities with the theatres in your area please let us know in the comment section below. For instance, Rated R film rating (when in fact we are rated PG-13), posters not being up, not being listed on the marquee, image or focus problems, sound issues, etc. Please email us a picture of your ticket stub to fraud@americancarol.com.") The page has since been taken down, indicating either that liberal hackers are making mischief or the filmmakers' lawyers gave them a pep talk explaining such arcane concepts as "baseless charges", "talking out your ass", and "sue you back to the Stone Age." (Meanwhile right wingers on-line are keeping the spirit alive. Still you'd think that the director of BASEketball and My Boss's Daughter would be better equipped to shrug off failure; it's not as if he hasn't had some practice at it. Then again, maybe even Ed Wood would have trouble processing the information that his labor of love got its ass kicked by Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It can't help that a recent article in Slate tagged Beverly Hills Chihuahua as an implicitly conservative movie that uses racist images of Mexico and Hispanic dogs to, confusingly, peddle a message of tolerance, brotherhood, and hitting on the landscaper. Take it away, Lou Dobbs!

Trailer Review: An American Carol

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I’ve heard some conservatives speaking of “the humorless left,” but if this trailer tells me anything, it’s that humorlessness can be found on both sides of the aisle. How else to explain this laugh-free, broad-as-a-barndoor jeremiad against America-hating liberals, embodied here in the person of a Michael Moore surrogate played by Chris Farley’s little brother Kevin? Granted, Moore kind of brings this upon himself, but I think that’s part of the problem- Moore’s tactics have become pretty embarrassing even to those who agree with his politics, so not only is it all too easy to single him out as a symbol of left-wing America, but it’s fairly inaccurate as well. But then, cheap shots are this trailer’s stock in trade- liberals hate America and deserve to be repeatedly socked in the face on for ideological reasons, while only conservatives truly love and respect what this country stands for (could the Trace Atkins song in the trailer be any more on the nose?). All of which goes to show you that there are few things more depressing than an unfunny comedy, especially one populated by has-beens (Kelsey Grammer, no doubt trying to rustle up funds for his next misbegotten Broadway show), crackpots (Jon Voight), and all-around attention whores (Bill O’Reilly). And this guy directed The Naked Gun? How the mighty have fallen…