"Thinner," or "How Road Head Made Me Kill a Gypsy and Ruin My Life."

Hey, guys! Remember me? That guy who used to post semi-regularly about terrible women shrieking at each other? No? Ok, well anyway, after a prolonged hiatus working on other mysterious, sinister projects, I've made a triumphant return to this little dog and pony show a new man. Well actually, the exact same horrible person I've always been. But the former sounded better.

What inspired me to come back, you ask? (no you don't) Why, only my having seen one of the GREATEST MOVIES EVER MADE. And by that I'm referring to "Thinner," Tom Holland's 1996 "horror" masterpiece based on a novel by Steven King about an obese man who runs over a gypsy while getting road head from his wife, and as a result gets a gypsy curse where he gets skinny. Yeah, I know. So as you can see, a movie like this deserves a revisiting 15 years after it's released, don't you think?

Anyway, as mentioned above, Thinner is the story of Billy Haleck, a morbidly obese lawyer living the high life defending Joe Mantegna from racketeering charges and eating whole pies in suburban Connecticut. Billy's got a beautiful (and skinny!) wife and a precocious daughter, and things couldn't get any better. That is, until trouble comes to his sleepy hometown in the form of a traveling gypsy carnival. Who HASN'T heard of this scourge laying waste to New England, right? Gypsy carnivals, terrorizing the Eastern Seaboard with their sinister ferris wheels, rigged carnival games, and comely lasses ready to lift their skirts for anyone with a few coins to spare (seriously, this happens at one point).

"This is my sexy face!"

So, the filthy gypsies set up their dark-sided filth carnival, and Billy tries to stay clear of the whole mess because they are bad news and don't have any pies for him to swallow whole like a goose. He's largely successful in avoiding the gyppos. That is, until one fateful night when he runs one over while getting road head from his skinnywife. Whoopsies! To make things worse, the old broad turns out to be the daughter of the KING OF THE GYPSIES, and who is not happy about it! He expresses his displeasure in the murdering of his bizarrely old daughter by touching Billy's face and saying "Thinnerrrrrrrr."

"But I'm so young!"

Billy's all "Weird!" but doesn't think much of it until he starts RAPIDLY LOSING WEIGHT (that's a problem?). At first Billy thinks it's great, and there's lots of comical scenes of him eating more pies and whole chickens and stuff, but eventually he starts to get TOO THIN (still don't see the problem). It's at this point that Billy starts to get worried. He tries to find comfort with his two best friends, but WHOOPS they're cursed too! You see his buddies are the judge and the police chief, both of whom helped him escape getting convicted for vehicular gypsyslaughter. Gypsy King doesn't much like that, so he makes the judge grow scales and the police chief look like the worst Proactiv before picture ever. So yeah, they're both miserable and kill themselves. NO HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS, SKELETONFACE, TRY AGAIN!

Now Billy starts to get really frustrated (a chicken carcass is hurled at one point). Apparently, the only one who can remove the curse is the Gypsy King himself, so Billy decides to recruit Joe Mantegna to...pursuade him. First he poisons all the gypsy dogs and leaves a hilarious sign that says "WHITE MAN FROM TOWN SAYS TAKE IT OFF." Sexxxy. (Also, aren't the gypsies white too? Unless you're a Nazi?). Nice try, but that just pisses off the gypsies more. Back to the drawing board. Next, he shoots up the gypsy camp with a machine gun, killing a couple of them. This time, the gypsies are shaken up, but still no dice. Curse stays.

FINALLY, mafia Joe Mantegna kidnaps the comely skirt-lifting gypsy lass from earlier. This turns out to be the gypsy weakness (take note: if ever cursed by a gypsy, kidnap the sluttiest person in the camp. It's a sure-fire cure.). So anyway, with the kidnapping of the gypsy slut, the leader finally agrees to meet with Billy and take the curse off. But there's a catch! A curse can't be removed, only transferred. So Gypsy King transfers the curse to a strawberry pie (?) by pouring some of Billy's blood into it (??? Also, ew.). He then says that whoever eats the cursed bloodpie will die a horrible death, and if Billy had any dignity he'd eat the pie himself.

"Nope! That is one pie I WON'T EAT!"

Billy's decides to feed the pie to his wife instead. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, Billy thinks his wife is boning the town doctor, so he's mad at her. So, he goes home and leaves the pie out on the counter for her to eat and then goes to bed. He awakes the next morning, giddy as a child about to see what Santa left him ("Please let it be my dead wife, Santa!"). He bounds downstairs, only to discover that HIS DAUGHTER ATE THE PIE! Bam! Whole family dead from a cursed bloodpie! In your face!

So naturally, Billy's super bummed about poisoning his daughter with a cursed gypsy pie, so he decides to eat it too. But just as he's about to take his first bite, the doorbell rings! It's the home-wrecking doctor! So, seeing a perfect opportunity, Billy invites Dr. Wifefucker in to share a slice of pie. DEATH BY GYPSYPIE! The end!

So, that's Thinner. It's, perhaps, the most ridiculous movie ever to have been made. First of all, the premise is not remotely scary, like, at all. How is a man rapidly losing weight considered a horror movie? Even at his thinnest, Billy looks, at worst, like Michael Stipe. You're just like "Aw, yeah, he's pretty thin. That's not good." Also, the makeup in this movie is awesomely terrible. Billy's fatty suit in the beginning of the movie is the best to ever grace celluloid, and the hag makeup on the gypsy king looks like a cut-rate version of Billy Crystal's in The Princess Bride.

Whoever greenlit this masterpiece deserves a medal. Hat's off to you! So yeah, if you haven't seen this movie, you should. In fact, I suggest you make it a drinking game, and do a shot every time someone says "gypsy curse." You will die of alcohol poisoning 30 minutes in. Cheers!

Screenshots via the amazing Movie Screenshots

Joan vs. Joan

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, the excellent new documentary about the brittle Jewess/comedienne by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg, with a live Q&A with Ms. Rivers immediately following the film. Going into the thing I wasn't really expecting much. I mean, I was expecting to enjoy it, because as a gay man with a love for stand-up and a filthy sense of humor, it's a genetic impossibility for me not to.

However, I was blown away by the intimate portrait the film paints. Filmed over one year, her 75th, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work follows it's subject through her numerous commitments, both professional and personal, while she discusses her career along the way. As someone who has idolized Joan Rivers ever since I saw her putting on makeup with Miss Piggy in Muppets Take Manhattan (one of my formative babygay memories) it was fascinating to see her this up close and personal.

First and foremost, we get a good dose of the brash humor and razor-sharp wit (seriously, the woman is 75 and still has the timing and speedy delivery of comedians a third her age) that have made her famous. I particularly liked the scenes of her refining her act at New York's Cutting Room, writing out "vagina farts" on a cue card while laughing hysterically, or telling a joke about her daughter being an idiot for turning down a $500,000 Playboy offer ("She should have offered to show her pussy for an extra 400!"). The scene of her eviscerating a heckler at a Minnesota Indian casino show who took issue with her telling a Helen Keller joke (really? Helen Keller is off limits now?) was another highlight.

But, the fact that Joan Rivers is hilarious is hardly surprising. What was surprising was the Joan we get to see off stage. Stern and Sundberg show us a workaholic and deeply insecure Rivers who seems to have a constant voice in her head reminding her that all her success could be gone tomorrow. This mantra is what propels her to take any job that comes her way, to "do anything." She says it's for the money, but more so I think it's to stay relevant, to stay working, to stay in the spotlight by any means necessary.

This compulsion leads her to measure her success event by event, seemingly unable to look at her career as a big picture. At the Q&A afterwards (JEALOUS?!), somebody asked her whether she is able to get any satisfaction from her varied and prolific career, and she brushes it off, asking why should she? Even the praise from this documentary will be gone in a week, she said, and then she'll have to start over again.

Joan's insecurity and inability to look at her career for what it is are central to the film. During one scene, Joan is asked to take part in a star-studded tribute to George Carlin. Despite her comedy legend status, backstage she worries about comedians like John Stewart and Dennis Leary, who have teams of writers behind them, being funnier than her. The fact that she has been doing this for 50+ years, and has probably taken part in hundreds of events just like this seems to never cross her mind. To her, it's all about staying relevant against the constant stream of up-and-coming comedians. As Kathy Griffin put it in the film, the mark of a successful comedian is whether they are still working or not, a sentiment that appears central to the Joan Rivers philosophy.

And then there's the part dealing with her recent Comedy Central roast. To me, the episode was hands down the best roast the channel had done, and Rivers seemed to revel in the jabs about her age and heavily-surguried face. However, in A Piece of Work, we see that she in fact hated the whole process, and fretted about the onslaught of jokes about her face and age she was going to be subject to. When you view it in this context, of dozens of comedians delivering a barrage of personal jabs against a deeply insecure woman, rewatching the roast changes from hilarious to heartbreaking.

On a different note, one of the most interesting things we learn about Joan in Piece of Work is that from the get go, her desire was never to be a comedian, but a serious actress. In the film she says that comedy was just something she did to pay the bills while she tried to make it as an actress, and goes on to say that people can say she's ugly, or a bad comedian and that's fine, but if they say she's a bad actress, it's devastating. Plenty of female comedians have gone into comedy because for whatever reason they didn't fit the narrow mold required to be an actress, but the fact that Joan still feels this way, at this point in her career, is surprising.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is an incredible film that gives incredible insight into a woman who has been a pop culture constant for over half a century. It manages to deliver huge gut-busting highs and emotional lows, as well as even delivering a little bit of shmaltz for good measure (the scene with her grandson Cooper is adorable. I got so jealous of that kid. Can you imagine having Joan fucking Rivers as your bubbe? That kid doesn't know how good he has it!). Beyond that, it's also a film about show business, and the life of constant rejection and abuse that performers have to deal with on a daily basis. It's a film about Joan Rivers, but a film about so much more as well. I highly recommend it.

(See! She was really there!!!)

I think I am in love with Lindy West.

Recently, I saw The Worst Film in the History of American Cinema, also known as Sex and the City 2. I've spent a little over a week now trying to verbalize just how terrible the film really was, but was struggling to find the words. Was it because of the terrible writing? The parade of over-the-top Gucci clown suits? The offensive Middle Eastern stereotypes? The scene where SPOLER ALERT Samantha smears estrogen cream on her vagina in the middle of her glass-walled Times Square office, in full view of her assistant? The fact that it is TWO AND A HALF FUCKING HOURS LONG?! The answer to all is yes, but also, so much more!

It was in the midst of ruminating on the shittiness of this film that a friend of mine sent me Lindy West's review from The Stranger, and let me tell you, it is solid gold. She enumerates the film's awfulness with such scathing, hilarious verbage it makes seeing the film almost worthwhile just so you can fully appreciate her rage.

My favorite part:

"Samantha, being the prostitute sexual revolutionary that she is, rages against the machine by publicly grabbing the engorged penis of a man she dubs "Lawrence of My-Labia." When the locals complain (having repeatedly asked Samantha to cover her nipples and mons pubis in the way of local custom), Samantha removes most of her clothes in the middle of the spice bazaar, throws condoms in the faces of the angry and bewildered crowd, and screams, "I AM A WOMAN! I HAVE SEX!" Thus, traditional Middle Eastern sexual mores are upended and sexism is stoned to death in the town square."

Seriously, READ IT! It's worth it for the phrase "emaciated goblin shoulders" alone.

Even if you couldn't give two shits about the movie, or have never heard of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte (lucky you), READ IT!


P.S. Also good, her article about the worst popes ever.

So, that happened.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

So, the Oscars happened last night. Overall, I thought it was pretty meh. Sure, there were some touching speeches and interesting moments, but the whole thing was seriously lacking on surprises. Yawn.

Some things I loved and hated were:

Meryl Streep (Loved)
Who doesn't love this bitch? She just seems so cool and down to earth, like some one I'd want to hang out with. Also, she looked amazing. At first I thought her dress (designed by Project Runway alum Chris March) looked very 80's shoulder padish, like something she would have worn in Death Becomes Her, but as the night wore on, I grew to really like it.

Also, did anyone notice how good the lighting on her was? Seriously, everyone else looked like they were in normal, theater audience lighting, but Meryl had inexplicable radiant light, perhaps from heaven above. Girl looked good, s'all I'm sayin.

George Clooney (Hated)
Seriously, what's this dude's problem? I've never seen someone maintain a sourpuss for 3+ hours straight. Jezebel has a great collection of his faces here. You don't want to be there, you're over it, fine, then don't show up! Nobody is forcing you to come to this awards ceremony with your hot, ESL, probably dumb as a bag of rocks girlfriend. Stay home. What a douche.

This Bitch (Loved)


How awesome was this? That poor directorgay was just getting started into his sappy speech and then everyone's drunk aunt had to come up and ruin it. Still, great TV.

20 Minute Long Best Actor/Actress Circle Jerks (Hated)
So unnecessary. Do we really care that Michelle Pfeiffer thought it was fun working with Jeff Bridges a hundred years ago? Or that Vera Farmiga was super stoked to work with George Clooney because he is "attractive?" No. Nobody cares except for these self-indulgent assholes.

You know what I would have LOVED though? If they did this for best supporting actress, and Pumkin went up to talk about the time Mo'Nique called her "the whore of Charm School." That would have been awesome.

Catherine Bigelow Winning (Loved)
Granted, I didn't see The Hurt Locker, and I know a lot of people don't think it was the best movie of the year, but it was still kinda heartwarming to see her win and how emotional she got. Also, it's pretty cool that the first female winner for Best Director got it for such a non-traditionally female film. So, props to her.

Sandy's Big Win (HATED HATED HATED HAAAAATED!)
Look, I'm sure Sandra Bullock is a nice person or whatever, but seriously, fuck that. I know a lot of people are saying that she derved it, and it was her time, but to that I say, "What do you mean she deserved it?" Sandra Bullock builds a career out of doing mediocre performances in shitty movies, and then she makes one film that was decently acted, and now she deserves an Oscar? And for THIS movie of all movies? Blech. I will say her speech was touching though.



So yeah, those were basically my highlights. Other things I liked were Sean Penn's usual awards show weirdness, Gabourey Sidibe working it during the intro, and a surprise appearance by Oprah. Those were all great. The rest though? Predictable masturbatory snoozefest.

Oh, and WTF was up with the length? 3 and a half hours is unacceptable. And how could they leave Bea Arthur and Farrah Fawcett out of the dead people segment? Shameful!