Todd Levin

I’ve been very lucky recently, because I’ve caught up with a couple of filmmakers who are so gifted with easy naturalism – something really missing from most films today – that they practically elevate it to a kind of poetry. When I first saw David Gordon Green’s George Washington a couple of years ago, I really fell for it. It’s a pretty difficult film. It shuffles wherever it pleases, and is often unwilling to be contained. It doesn’t drive forward will all its fiery pistons-a-poppin’ but there’s something really beautiful in its refusal to resolve actions in any traditional way. Green does the kinds of great things that Terence Malick and Robert Altman did first. He zooms in for close-ups when actors don’t expect it, instead of physically pushing the camera in, and forces them to be the main focus of the scene without making them self-conscious or even remotely aware. He also spends as much time observing as he does capturing his story. A three legged dog is as important to him as a murder. And the result is not for everyone, but it was for me.

His latest film, All the Real Girls is a small, but big achievement. He captures first love and all of its various complications so naturally that it raised all my blood to the surface of my skin. The characters aren’t insightful the way scripted characters are. They’re not too smart for their own good. They suffer from the same poor articulation of emotions many of us did when we were young. It’s like the antithesis of Dawson’s Creek, in a way.

When the characters mix of their words or prefer to sit a moment out in silence, petting a dog or drinking a beer or dancing alone, you’re so close to them that you want to squint into the film’s sunlight. The movie is so pretty and sad and touching that I wish it were out in every city. It’s hard to imagine that a movie like All the Real Girls can even inhabit the same medium as shit like Summer Catch and Swimfan. How can they all claim to talk about the same emotions and experiences without laughing at each other? Summer Catch probably had a Smashmouth song on the soundtrack. All the Real Girls had Promise Ring. Do you hear me? PROMISE RING! Now that’s some sensitive shit.

Oh, and Lynne Ramsey. Shit. If I had the energy I would talk about her for the rest of time. She’s made two films – Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar – and they’ve each become favorites. I hate saying a movie that just came out is one of my favorite movies of all time, because it sort of suggests the same denial of history that teenage kids love to exhibit. But I love them. They are my favorites, right alongside Little Nicky and the new Matrix movie that hasn’t come out yet. If you don’t believe me, look at this still from Ratcather that I, in an act of total mental deficiency, captured by photographing my television screen and tell me you can still resist it:

Not bad for a girl, right?

Right on the heels of last month’s most heavily forwarded web site, “Cool 2B Real”, comes the less-beef-more-pork “Pork 4 Kids”. Are kids turning their backs on fatty meats? Why is the meat industry mobilizing like this? I must have missed out on a worldwide symposium somewhere.

Where Cool 2B Real bordered on insidious in its shady insinuation that beef consumption keeps teenage girls true to themselves, Pork 4 Kids is merely lazy and misguided. And infinitely more insane for its effort-without-effort approach to educating children. It’s almost as if the Pork 4 Kids people don’t believe their own agenda. I can’t think of any other way of explaining their defeatist approach to persuasion.

Here’s an example: click on the male character and show your affinity for pork by coloring a chef’s hat. Don’t worry. It only takes TWO clicks to color it since there are just two areas to fill in. Sweet. That leaves more time to eat bacon! Or click on the girlie to read the most long-winded cartoon ever dedicated to a better understanding of pork. It tells the very lonely tale of a pork chop named Peggy on a quest to discover which food group she belongs in. After about 15 pages of missed connections alternating with long, sweeping shots of a pork chop dragging itself across a meadow, Peggy meets (or should i say ‘meats’? i shouldn’t? ok, i won’t.) Robert Rib Roast and Henry Ham. And, not to spoil it for you but, yes, they all fuck.

There are seven other ways this site is terrible. Can you name them all?

Since The Onion moved its content online several years ago, it has become a peerless source of humor for everyone with an Internet connection. In the past, I’ve joked that it is no longer necessary to even point out or link to something funny you’ve seen in this publication because drawing attention to it as “funny” is almost superfluous. Everyone has already seen it, and laughed. It’s like saying, “Hey, did you notice that the Earth is round, or that dogs make excellent lovers?”

Because of The Onion’s great success online and offline – sweeping humor awards year after year, spawning several books and calendars and nerds – it has drawn an enormous amount of attention to itself and has been crudely imitated by less fertile minds. I’ve seen rip-offs of The Onion everywhere, from (the hopefully defunct) The Rotten Apple to a few video game-oriented news parody web sites, and each “homage” just makes you long for The Onion’s sharp wit and pitch-perfect voice even more.

I spoke with one of the paper’s editors around a year ago, and he explained what he believed was The Onion’s simple formula for success: parody the news with such unflagging loyalty that you actually begin to write it better than your source material. It’s a really good rule for parody because it requires that you never let your audience feel like they’re part of the joke.

[DIGRESSION ALERT] That’s why I’ve always felt the parodies on sketch shows like MR. SHOW generally work so well. MR. SHOW immerses itself fully in the material it parodies, almost to the point of losing the distinction between their sketch and the very thing they’re poking fun at. The painstaking attention they devoted to “Coupon: The Movie” and “Racist in the Year 3000” is what makes them so watchable. Even when the show isn’t outrageously funny, it is at least outrageously astute.

This type of parody works in contrast to shows like SNL and MAD TV (and, despite the protests many would love to offer, the majority of the material on THE BEN STILLER SHOW – a show as over-rated as it is under-rated), which constantly appear to doubt the intelligence of their audiences and therefore cannot create parody without completely revealing their hand. The parodies on SNL – with the exception of some of the curious characters created by Mike Meyers – and MAD TV are too often self-referential. This causes them to slash their own tires.

Here’s one example of many, from MAD TV. (and this might not be 100% representational, because i confess i barely watch the show since i find it so loud and its jokes so telegraphed) The players did a parody of the television show WEST WING, and for the majority of the sketch one or several characters paced the labyrinthine halls of the White House, speaking in tones as rushed as their brisk walking pace. It was actually funny, because it illustrated exactly what was ridiculous about the show. It felt right. Then, as if we couldn’t make the connection without a well-illustrated instruction manual, the characters did that horrible post-modern trick that most sketch shows are guilty of: they began telling us (the audience) exactly what was so funny about what they were doing. One of the characters literally said something like, “I think we should continue to speak quickly and walk with a great sense of purpose, forever.” That’s either a lack of confidence in your ideas and presentation, or unforgivable laziness, but it’s a really common device. It’s also what keeps these sketches from being transcendent.

Jimmy Fallon is the mainstream comedy king of this technique. Watch his celebrity impersonations and see how often he actually, in character, lets the audience in on exactly what funny attribute he chose to zero in on for his parody. As Carson Daly: “Hi, I’m Carson Daly and I’m a total tool.” As that guy from E! Entertainment: “Hi, I’m that guy from E! Entertainment and I never breathe through my mouth!!!” Thanks, Jimmy! And hey, nice song parody. When you made that song from 8 Mile about puking up St. Patrick’s Day beer I told everyone in my quad about it. I wish you weren’t so popular so you could come to SUNY Oneonta and perform at our on-campus bar, The Nook.

[BACK TO BUSINESS]
Fortunately, The Onion gets it right. It always has, and that’s why it is so easily distinguished from its imitators even when that distinction is difficult to articulate. I think many people probably still find the imitators funny, because their expectations are as low as their need for subtlety. In fact, I saw a site today that shamelessly ripped off The Onion with slightly inferior results, and I’ll bet many people would even see the difference. Similar format, but less graceful editorial layout. Similar stories but with a greater eagerness to please, and with jokes recycled and slightly modified from old issues of The Onion. Current events that rely more heavily on poorly photoshopped photographs than the strength of the headline, conceit, or body copy. Similar tone, though slightly more brash and less sophisticated. It even has a similar name. It’s called The Onion. (nervy!) All in all, it’s OK but it’s really not fooling anyone. It’s just another pale imitator or the original.