Okay,
right off the top we need to address certain urgent matters. Feast is a very cool,
good time of a horror film that you have to see this weekend for reasons I'll
go into in just a second. It's one of those infectious, horror howlers with plenty
of fiendish guffaws and gore galore. Right near the intersection of Slither and
Descent, Feast serves up the yuks, yucks and white-knucks with a rangle gangle
collection of interesting actors caught in a pickle that goes down like a hyperkinetic
Night of the Living Dead. As I mentioned, even more pressing is the fact that
the window of opportunity to join in this Feast is just as slim as our stranded
cast-of-strays chances of making it from dusk 'til dawn. The film is only going
to be screened theatrically at midnight on September 22. For a film that wears
its guts on its sleeve, Feast's distributors (Dimension Films?) are demonstrating
a marked absence of said innards in giving this film a chance to find it's legs
- I'm guessing based on the abysmal box office performance of the two previous
Project Greenlight projects - Stolen Summer and the Battle of Shaker Heights.
Seriously, this is the kind of film you just have to see in a packed house - screams
and belly laughs of this nature thrive on an audience and Feast definitely delivers
generous helpings of both.
I
really hope it kicks ass on the 22nd and whomever's in charge sprouts a "hairy
pair" and loses this "dump it on DVD and run" strategy. It'll be
a shame otherwise. This film could easily have surfed the recent wave of hip horror
and found an audience. Just on word of mouth, Feast would have recouped the distribution
expense, there's no way it would've stunk up the B.O. like The Grudge 2 is going
to stink up the theater. Kudos to the Maloof Brothers who have proven themselves
to be rich guys who do cool things with their money. Along with Johnny Brenden
they threw down a right festive, red-carpet shindig at their Palms Casino movie
facility (home of the stress-free press-friendly CineVegas film festival). Along
with Damon and Affleck, they flew in just about everyone remotely connected with
the film's production. The Good Will Hunters chose to remain somewhat cloistered
from the rest of us peasants, but y'know whatever, it was cool that they showed
and from what I'm hearing and reading Affleck's foundering stock may rebound a
bit on the strength of his second portrayal of a superhero.
For
reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose (assholes on my Homeowners Assoc) I didn't
have HBO during the first few years of Soylent Greenlight. (That's slightly funny
because Feast is all about "eating people") yet I understand Feast's
fi fo fum was on Bravo, which surprises me because the fruit of my loins have
all fallen out female, thus by default I'm a Project "Runway" junkie.
(I'm secure enough to scoot aside and let my inner-homo have a turn at the wheel)
still I haven't seen ads for Greenlight, so I'm puzzled. I know I'd love it (as
I continue to soldier bravely on, tortured under the mantle of America's great
and tragic undiscovered screenwriter - somebody fucking call me man, shit). I
know it sucks that I'm making this review about myself but, I don't know.
I'm
confident the two screenwriters who concocted this inventive take on man against
monster, must have been fun to watch on the show because, thanks to my partner
Adam's endless erudition about all things cinematic and my occasional ability
to get a laugh, we found ourselves pretty much buddied-up with Marcus Dunstan
and Patrick Melton and they were genuinely nice and funny young dudes. (Judging
from their script they might have an issue or two, but decent, approachable guys
to be sure.) We were able to chat at some length both on the "Red" and
at the after-party and I think it's possible that they might've actually liked
us and didn't think we were cloying little pains in the ass. I never sensed that
"Oh God, not that guy again," thing. (It's hard not to get down on your
knees and beg for pertinent info regarding agency representation - it's like the
Goddamn Da Vinci Code, I was popular in High School, tell me the password - come
on? It's almost like you've gotta do that Project Greenlight deal.) Seriously
they wrote a great script. The dialogue is spot-on and I bet they've coined a
catch phrase (one of the characters becomes infected by the monster virus [don't
worry] and in a panicked fit he screams, "hey guess what people, I'm infected.
I'm fucked. I'm "upper-case" FUCKED!") If that's anywhere near
verbatim it's a coincidence. Speaking of which, the script shares one or two events
and themes in common with Descent, but before you cry foul do the arithmatic -
any similarities the two films share have to be coincidental.
The
writing team really make a noticeable effort to defy predictability, which, early
on, I was afraid would become pat (or patrick) as the movie wore on, but at the
very least it brought a grin to your face and more often than not it leads to
truly inspired moments of hilarity. And those were the things that you wanted
to talk about as you're exiting the theater. And before you get feeling too sorry
for these Midnight Men and their film's one day Midnight Run, the likable newcomers
told us that they'd recently sold their latest script, coincidentally entitled
"Midnight Man" which I'm gonna guess is not wholesome family fare. I
thought better of my impulse to ask how much they got for it, but they seemed
really cheerful. You gotta love those happy Hollywood endings.
As
for the direction of the film, John Gulager does an amazing job on a shoestring.
I guess a gripe about the film is that the monster attacks and encounters are
too close and thus muddled, but by the same token you recognize it for lack of
budget and in that sense it's not really a fair complaint to make (he made Feast
the way they did before CG). Balancing horror and comedy isn't easy - throw in
casual cruelty, brutal violence and buckets of blood and that's a lot of balls
in the air. Even though you're laughing at practically every turn, it's pretty
damn scary and thinking back you really have to admire the aplomb with which Gulager
manages it all. It helped to have a group of able actors. The director's father,
long-time Hollywood journeyman, Clu Gulager does a nice job in front of the camera
as the tender of the doomed bar. He's aged gracefully and bears a pretty strong
resemblance to Jimmy Carter (circa The President) which was cool because he'd
smile and give the cameras the bird. He stopped and talked to Adam and I, (due
to alphabetical challenges we were at the end of press row) which turned out well
because everybody was relaxed by the time they got to us. Clu was all about fuck
this and fuck that, a little more like "Billy" Carter I guess. Balthazar
Getty probably clocks the most screen time, (even desperately hungry, monstrous
beasts are cautious when it comes to fucking with Balthazars.) I should confess
that I once referred to Getty as the poor man's Charlie Sheen, but that was before
Charlie Sheen became the poor man's Charlie Sheen. I'm keeping an eye on Balth,
he looks about 8 years younger in this than he did in that movie with Peter Weller
as the Devily guy - Shadow Hours I wanna say? (Who am I kidding I imdb'd it. How
did we ever get along without imdb?) I particularly liked Josh Zuckerman who plays
a wheelchair bound youngster, he definitely has the "it." This is kind
of a spoiler, but I think it's only fair to warn "Jay" fans that Jason
Mewes is one of the first to go, (did he - he might've slipped and hit his head
in the restroom.)
The
cast is really peppered with a cool mix of interesting folks. Punk Rock icon Henry
Rollins plays against type to marvelous effect, Eileen Ryan (Sean Penn's mother)
plays Grandma, Dwayne Whitaker (perhaps best known for being the guy who pulled
"the gimp" up out of his cage in Pulp Fiction) gets his come-uppance.
Judah Friedlander who's always popping up in stuff as sort of the big doofy guy
(also the serial hugger in that Dave Matthews video). He's the one who gets infected
and regards himself as upper-case fucked. And then there's the bad-ass ladies.
Not to give them short shrift (they all deserve, and I'm sure frequently get,
much longer shrift) but I'm running long so I'll name them and leave them to your
imagination. Krista Allen, Navi Rawat, Chauntae Davies, Diane Goldner and last
but not least Jenny Wade a fitting way to leave off as Jenny's exit got the biggest
laugh of the night. GO SEE THIS MOVIE AND START A PETITION AND STOP GLOBAL WARMING
AND THANK THE MALOOF BROTHERS - THIS EVENT WAS A CLASSY AFFAIR . . . . .
