The State Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Remember Broken Lizard's Beerfest? Whatever you thought of that 2006 comedy, it's difficult to dispute how incredibly astute the filmmakers were with rattling genre expectations in just a single scene. See, the American team's greatest beer guzzler, "Landfill", has passed away under shady circumstances, and right when everyone's ready to throw in the towel, in walks Landfill's identical twin brother, who they knew nothing about but who happens to have been told everything about each of them. Better yet, he's more than willing to even adopt Landfill's name, in an effort to bypass that whole awkward 'getting-to-know-you' stage.

It's every end-of-second-act "what do we do now, coach?" dilemma from an inspirational sports movie mercifully condensed to a couple of rapid-fire beats, and even if the rest of the film otherwise adheres to said sports movie formula, it's nice knowing that audience and actors alike were not going through the paces entirely unaware of how clichéd the entire narrative was.

Today we speak with comedian/actor/writer/director Michael Ian Black. Black's hilarious credits include MTV's The State, Comedy Central's Stella, and the cult classic Wet Hot American Summer. He's probably best known to the general public as being the standout quipper on VH1's "I Love the (Insert Decade Here)" specials. Black's latest project is Run Fatboy Run. He wrote the original screenplay for the film, which was directed by David Schwimmer and stars Simon Pegg, Hank Azaria, and Thandie Newton.

Cinematical: Would you tell our readers a bit about Run Fatboy Run?

Michael Ian Black: Sure. It's a lovely and funny romantic comedy about a guy who has never finished anything in his life who decides to run a marathon.

Cinematical: What inspired you to write the film?

MIB: I wanted to write something a little more mainstream than what I am normally known for. I had just written two screenplays that were more left of center and I wanted to challenge myself to try to write something that I thought would be a little more accessible.

Cinematical: Are you a marathon man? Why do people do this to themselves?

MIB: I've never run further than a couple miles. I have no idea why somebody would subject themselves to the agony of running for twenty-six miles. Particularly if they've got a car.

Maybe the best thing about The Ten -- a new anthology comedy assembling ten short vignettes, each based on one of the ten commandments -- is how it starts with that premise (famously used by Krysztof Kieslowski in The Decalogue) and immediately, casually, chucks it in the dustbin. "Honor thy mother and father" leads to a vignette where a mother (Kerri Kenney-Silver) explains to her two African-American sons that their father's never been part of their lives because they were conceived during the '80s, when she was having lots and lots of sex with celebrities. Their father is, in fact, Arnold Schwarzenegger; since having their real father bond with them would be impossible, she's hired a local Arnold impersonator (Oliver Platt) to come hang out with the boys. ...

No, the scene's focus isn't parent-and-child interaction and the currency of respect that should flow through that relationship; the scene's focus is Oliver Platt in a leather jacket and wraparound shades, playing football with his two long-lost not-sons, murmuring fatherly endearments in the strangulated Teutonic tones of a bad Arnold imitation. That, to me, is funny; who cares if it really explores the ideas in the correlating commandment?

The Ten, an anthology comedy comprised of ten vignettes inspired by the ten commandments, is a bit of a throwback to scatter-shot comedies of the past like The Groove Tube and Amazon Women on the Moon; at the same time, it's possessed of an ultra-modern deadpan sensibility, with highbrow ideas sharing screen time with lowbrow cheap laughs. The Ten was co-written by Ken Marino and David Wain; Wain was also the director. The two have collaborated on other films (most notably Wet Hot American Summer) and also worked together in the comedy collaborative "The State." Wain and Marino spoke with Cinematical via telephone about the challenges of making The Ten, how you fake 40 CAT scan machines on a low budget, method mustache acting and cute-yet-terrifying animated animal orgies.

Ken Marino: (Singing) "... Band on the run! Band on the run!"

Cinematical: Is there nothing like Wings to cut the strain of the all-day, conducted-by-telephone promotional tour?

KM: You took the words right out of my mouth.

Cinematical: So let's start by just getting our praise of Krzysztof Kieslowski and his hard-to-pronounce name out of the way. Was The Decalogue really an inspiration for The Ten?

David Wain: Well, insomuch as it's exactly the same premise, yes.

Cinematical: But you guys didn't actually think ... Was the actual starting point "Let's do the Ten Commandments ..."?

KM: The starting point was 'Let's steal Kieslowski's idea and do our own funny version of it. ..."

Cinematical: Which you certainly succeeded in doing, but: Do you feel like maybe he's stolen the ten commandments and no one else can do them?

KM : I feel like he stole the ten commandments from some other book -- some other, dare I say, good book. ...

If you're a fan of comedic experiments like The State, Stella and Wet Hot American Summer, you're bound to find more than a few solid laughs in The Ten, a skit-intensive (and entirely bizarre) amalgam of ideas -- clever, silly and just plain stupid. Those who don't see the humor in this sort of stream-of-consciousness, ultra-strange and intensely self-referential material will walk out of The Ten with their reaction phasers set firmly on "hate" -- but I discovered a solid handful of worthwhile chuckles in the flick, most of which come from the smoothly reliable Paul Rudd and the still-adorable Winona Ryder.

The framework is a fairly sketchy one: Rudd introduces a series of broad and generally goofy little set pieces, each of which are based on one of the Ten Commandments. Of the ten sketches (and the framing device) perhaps half of them deliver some really funny schtick, while some of 'em simply flop around the screen until the next bit comes along. But just like an anthology flick is only as good as its most entertaining sections, The Ten manages to fly only during its best moments. Here's what's on offer here:

Chris reported in June on The Ten, a David Wain-penned and directed 10-part spoof of the Biblical Ten Commandments (Yes, it's one story/commandment -- good work!). The potential in the film had him (and yours truly) excited, both because of Wain's past (he was a member of The State and Stella, and co-wrote Wet Hot American Summer, among other things) and the film's packed cast, which at that time included Paul Rudd, Jessica Alba, Amanda Peet, Justin Theroux and Adam Brody.

Depending on how you feel about Wain and this film, it either just got a lot better, or added a load of useless cast members, who will contribute nothing to its spoofy nonsense. Me, I'm in the former camp -- how can the addition of Liev Schreiber to anything fail to make it better? In addition to Schreiber, Winona Ryder, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Rob Corddry, Ron Silver and Oliver Platt have all come on board. That, my friends, is quite a cast. Granted, many of them will probably appear for 30 seconds in robe and beard, carrying a tablet, but still.

The film is currently filming in New York and Mexico; it'll come out some time in 2007.

Of the large comedy troupe that appeared on MTV and very briefly on CBS as The State, no single member has risen to any great length of fame, but three of them broke off to form the funniest trio since The Marx Brothers worked without Zeppo or Gummo. Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter and David Wain have performed on stage, online and on Comedy Central as Stella, and the latter two wrote the brilliant cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer, which was also directed by Wain. Since that film, Showalter made his own movie (the understated and underrated The Baxter), and Black's directorial effort (The Pleasure of Your Company) is coming soon. Now Wain is finally making a follow-up to Summer, this time co-writing with Ken Marino, who appeared in the previous film and was also a member of Stella. The film is a spoof of The Ten Commandments and is simply called The Ten. It is set to begin shooting in July and will star Paul Rudd, Jessica Alba, Amanda Peet, Justin Theroux, Adam Brody and Marino. My guess is that the three Stella guys will have roles, as usual, too.

I always felt this bunch was the real successor to Monty Python, and now with a wacky Biblical picture, they may prove it. Sure, Mel Brooks did an adequate bit in History of the World: Part I that spoofed Moses' story, but if you've ever seen any of the hysterical projects that Wain has been involved in, you have to agree that his latest endeavor will be equally amazing. If you haven't seen any of his work, go and rent Summer and download all the Stella episodes from iTunes this very minute. And be prepared with stitches for when your stomach bursts from laughter.