last night i watched "the happytime murders." it came out in 2018. i remember briefly hearing about it but mostly because it was one of the many many melissa mccarthy movies that were coming out around that time.
it's a puppet movie. the premise is simple. a world where puppets and humans coexist, but it's given an x-men treatment: puppets are considered second-class citizens and are displayed as openly and voraciously mocked by the humans ("Fleshies," in puppet parlance). and part of its "heart," by which i mean m.o., seems to be the hollywood's favorite back-pocket Social Justice (TM) play-card, the way the puppets are treated is Of Course (in the meta-realms) a commentary on Race Relations. at one point melissa mccarthy literally calls someone racist for teasing her puppet partner. oh and by the way, although the film is rude&crude and did feature what i thought were some clever jokes about "what if"s, there's a puppet porn industry, there's sexual jokes galore about male puppet ejaculate amounting to silly string and lady puppet ejaculate being purple glitter, which by the way, in the film it's not heroin that people get hooked to, it's sugar. as in sugar smacks, which is purple lines of glitter to be snorted through a Twizzlers stick shoved up the nostril, as in smack. yeah it made me laugh while i was watching it, but the morning after i thought, every joke was kind of the first thing that you'd think of if you were going to imagine how fucked up you could write a puppet/human coexistence story. got sidetracked - so although it got a few laughs out of me and i thought it was sort of clever, it's also copaganda (thanks @kappys_korner for intro'ing me to that one). the real star of the show is not even exactly mccarthy, it's a Private Detective, an ex-cop(detective), like they often are, named.... shit, i can't even remember. but one of the other thrusts of the film is that, this puppet and mccarthy used to be partners. the puppet accidentally shot another puppet years and years ago while on the "force," and he was fired, and subsequently the Puppet Code was put into place, which barred any other puppet from ever being a cop. the emotional climax of the film is that, mr puppet, after joining forces with mccarthy to avenge the death of his brother and a bunch of other puppets, does a Real Swell Job, and ends up back on the force, and also the Puppet Code is repealed, so now puppets can be cops. in case you missed it, hollywood's allegory extends here - hey, why not be a Black cop. yeah go for it! "You can protect your own." booooorrriiiinnnngggg and copaganda. but anyway, i digress.
googling this morning to find a picture to represent the film, which i decided not to do, apparently many people felt the need to write blogs about, you'll know what i mean: "before there was the happytime murders.... there was.... MEET THE FEEBLES." ad copy, in other words, that function solely to elevate the name of this hollywood film in the public consciousness by riding off the coattails of the work of an actual outsider and independent artist (at the time, remember this is 1989, WAY before lord of the rings), Peter Jackson. always mining the past, hollywood, come on now. because meet the feebles is such a better film. so to use it to promote an inferior film feels so heinous and disrespectful to both Peter Jackson, and My Intelligence.
i first heard of and saw Meet the Feebles at the Red Vic Theatre on Haight Street. R.I.P. it was about 10 years ago. i was on a 3rd date with my first real girlfriend, a starbucks barista who i met at starbucks, and only dated for about Two weeks. (our first date was me seeing her in a production of the vagina monologues at city college.) (2nd date was my first time at the Elbo Room. also R.I.P. man, ever notice how things disappear in san francisco so much. huh, maybe it's all these techies? call me carazy.) we watched a lot of good films together but weren't meant to be together forever, or for Three weeks even. we also saw "Drive Angry" in theatre, which I still think is one of nicolas cage's notable roles. and has one of the "best" slow-mo scenes in an action film. nicolas cage is drinking a bottle of jack daniels while fucking hookers while bullet-time shooting like 5 angry rednecks trying to drag him back to hell, or something, while the camera swings around the room. i think it's genius. anyway. i should write about nicolas cage. i mean 3 of the best films, he has starred in. (not gonna count drive angry as a great film, but it is great.) "Wild At Heart," directed by David Lynch, "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans," directed by Werner Herzog, and "Mandy," directed by Panos Cosmatos (son of George Cosmatos, director of such films as "Rambo First Blood Part 2," "Cobra" [also starring Stallone], "Leviathan" [featuring a score by Jerry Goldsmith that one time Spencer Clark of the Skaters, and aka Monopoly Child Star Searchers, and runner of Pacific City Sound Visions record label, told me he would accept a copy of the LP soundtrack as payment in exchange for a bunch of his cassette tapes], and "Tombstone"), and it's just as good as Jodorowsky and features a scene straight out of Prison Pit (see also: "Superjail!") involving alien monsters having sex, as well as the best drug scene in modern cinema, and did i mention that Nic Cage plays a lumberjack who at one point wields a 6-foot chainsaw to interrupt the alien mid-coitus for a battle to the death? i mean, nicolas cage is amazing. i will never, EVER, understand people who think he is overrated or deserves to be mocked. i will only speak to the converted on this matter, and i think we are all the better for that, case closed. next time I'll tell you all the reasons Keanu Reeves is a legend. but there are still so many great nic cage movies i haven't even mentioned.
anyway, where were we. meet the feebles. it's great.
in the pantheon of great puppet movies that do not feature muppets (btw: the muppets are legendary and deservedly so, and i think every thing muppet is a masterpiece, do not get me wrong on this one), there are other notables. obviously there's "team america: world police," from the south parkers trey parker and matt stone, who i will always respect for a., creating south park, and b., taking acid before hitting the red carpet to promote "south park: bigger longer & uncut" at the oscars (for their "blame canada" nomination).
of the things that you can watch, there's not too much else that i am personally aware of, as far as puppets are concerned. the only other things i had in mind when i started this post were "the dark crystal" (which is an absolute standout tripping-on-acid viewing) and to a lesser extent, more of an honorable mention really, "superstar: the karen carpenter story."
also: i guess there's 4.5 (uh i mean 6) types of puppets, ranked and listed here in order of complexity -
- finger puppets - one level of movement
- hand puppets - 3 degrees of movement - which will have a movable mouth and two arms / appendages, operated the same way you would make a Wolf shadow puppet, where your two middle fingers and thumb represent the mouth, while pointer and pinky operate appendages.
- marionettes, which feature between 4 and 8 moving parts (an upgrade from hand puppets)
- shadow puppets (one magnitudinal order of complexity above marions as far as Visual Thinking os concerned)
- ventriloquism (the logical conclusion of human stand-ins, as this is FULL MERGER)
- the reptilian race (this is the illogical conclusion of complete submission to our new overlords)
it'd be nice if i had a full catalog of cultural objects to draw from that left at least 3 items under each category, but then we're talking 18, and i've got barely a fraction of that to go off of at the present moment.
there are of course great examples of shadow puppets if you look into indonesian shadow play, and maybe some filmmakers have approached that; i'm only familiar with the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (uncle boonmee, whom i'm sure is a reference to all this) - > i'm sure there's *plenty* yet to discover.
i will surely revisit this later, in either weeks months or years, but that's today's missive.
thanks for reading, take care of yourselves.
✌️
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