Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Fame Is

I'm embarrassed to say for as long as we've lived in Cleveland, and for as gay as we are, we've never attended the Cleveland International Film Festival.  I know, right??

Well, we can now claim that we have.

Maybe deep down, I knew it was an operational nightmare.

It's great if you have a season pass or buy your tickets weeks ahead of time.  If not, you take a voucher, then get in another line to exchange it for a 'stand by' ticket and then stand in another line and hope there might be a seat for you - assuming the regular ticket buyers and season pass holders don't take every space.

And forget about sitting together - especially if there are four of you.

We went to two gay-themed movies, one you get today, one you hear about tomorrow.  Hey - I'm milking this fucking thing for blog entries. I'm not a moron.

Well..........I might be but.......

So, the first movie that was selected was He's Way More Famous Than You.  

Some folks we went with "liked" the movie and thought it to be "quirky".  I found it to be poorly written, horribly acted and amateurishly directed.

How's that for a critique?

Two of the "stars" also wrote the screenplay.  Michael Urie, the gay guy from Ugly Betty directs - he's also in it.  For the entire movie he is referred to as 'the gay guy from Ugly Betty'.  It was a C-rated show (at best) and that is how you want to go through life as being known?

While I won't give spoilers (the entire movie is spoiled) but it basically revolves around a chick who was in an indie film years before and really has a less than floundering career since - so she writes / stars in a movie in hopes of gaining some kind of career or fame.

She uses real people she worked with on that film (Jesse Eisenberg) and real other movies either she or her boyfriend were in to build a crappy script around.

It'd probably be a lot more self-indulgent if it weren't horribly accurate.  The female lead (I just can't keep saying star and putting quotes around it) actually had a minor role in that indie and you've never seen her before or since, so she created a vehicle for herself with this movie, just like she does in her movie within a movie.  (Hold onto that thought too, because it carries over to tomorrow's post as well.)

I'd say the premise doesn't work, but somehow the CIFF got suckered into showing it.  TWICE.   So score one for the screenwriter/actress.  Minus one for anyone who had to sit through this piece of garbage.

...and what I don't get is people in the audience were laughing, but at times when I wasn't sure there was even an attempt at humour.  I couldn't even turn to 710 and say anything because the writer/female lead was sitting not to far from us.

Oh, Ben Stiller is in it too, but only because he's contractually obligated to appear in every shitty movie ever and give an equally shitty performance (which doesn't vary from any other performance he's ever given)!

Who knew that Ralph Macchio would have grown up to be not bad looking and the best one in the cast - which includes Meryl Streep's daughter.


I'll kind of jump to the end with no huge spoiler alert.  We had no idea who 'he' is from the title.  None. Was it Stiller?  Eisenberg?  Any random guy sitting in any Starbucks ever?


It's released to theaters in May and for live streaming next week.  Save your cash.


2013 Movie Count / Goal:   3 of 12. (though 710 says I get double points for sitting through this.)



Song by: Crowded House

1 comment:

Erik Rubright said...

The writer/female lead was sitting near you and you DIDN'T offer her any constructive criticism? WTF? Who replaced Blobby??