Everyone loves a stool! (Waiting for Guffman (DVD))

Member Name: venice105

Product:	Waiting for Guffman (DVD)
Date:	04/07/07 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A very funny Christopher Guest film

Disadvantages: Dreadful Ditties stuck in your head!

Waiting For Guffman was the first film I saw of the now numerous Christopher Guest "mockumentaries". Love him or leave him, Guest is widely acknowledged by many comedians, including the likes of Ricky Gervais, as a strong inspiration. Indeed it seems impossible to imagine if "mockumentaries" -films, television, etc., which are fiction but have some style to indicate they are real life, would be flourishing today were it not for Guests's initial pioneering film "This Is Spinal Tap". Yes, there were films such as Albert Brooks' classic "Real Life", which was a precursor to Guest's sendups, and also elements of Woody Allen's style were arguably so naturalistic they might fit, but he took the genre and expanded it into something people either seem to love or loathe, and is arguably one of the more influential forces in comedy today. From The Office to Peep Show, from Curb Your Enthusiasm to Arrested Development, it is hard to imagine these shows would have come about in quite the same way without the influence of Guest.

Guffman (tries not to snigger) was the second mockumentary Guest appeared in after Spinal Tap, but his first as a director. There was a gap of over ten years between the films so it is curious to wonder what drove Guest to return to improvisational comedy after ten years of apparent supporting roles as a dramatic actor.Guest and his actors construct these films without scripts, relying on comedic inspiration that comes from their own ideas about their characters/the film. That said both Guest and Levy are the sole writing credit here so I'm not quite sure how it works. Guest himself says it is "real behavior, rather than real manipulated behavior. The actors know what the intention of the scene is, but there are no lines written down, and the first time you hear it and see it on the screen, that's it—that's the first time it was said." Apologies for the back story, but I think anyone who has never seen a Guest film might need a slight initiation, also I don't know how on earth I am going to describe this, one of my favourite films.

The premise of this film revolves around a small town amateur theatre group. The town is called Blaine, it is a kind of generic Midwestern American town, of course it is a sendup and brutally mocking, but it is also hysterically sharp. Guest by some miracle here assembled his motley crew of actors, plumbing veteran improv theatre talents like Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, and the queen of indie films, Parker Posey.

The film opens with a scene of a town meeting of Blaine, Missouri, where the local councilors are discussing the upcoming 150th anniversary celebration of the town's founding. At first it appears terribly "normal" and mundane, parades and all American wholesomeness seem the order of the day, until one of the local leaders discusses the serious need for snipers to prevent the littering problems they encountered at the last parade! This is all done in such a low key way that on first watching it you really might not notice the insane things that come out of these seemingly mundane Midwesterners' mouths. Blaine's history of alien encounters is introduced early in the same matter of fact manner, and it is a perfect setup for the subversively silly delights that the rest of the film delivers in spades.

The subject of the local amateur dramatic production to celebrate the anniversary is then brought up, and we learn through posters of past productions of the boundlessly ludicrous ambitions of the theatre troupe, evidenced by a fiery production of "Backdraft". We are then introduced to Corky St.Clair, the artistic director who is much revered locally for his various "off off off off Broadway" adventures in New York. Played by Christopher Guest, Corky is difficult to describe/do justice to. He is everything cringe making that theatre types can be, self reverential, deeply insecure, devoid of irony yet a self-proposed expert at it, flamboyantly closeted ("we started talking about panty house...but that's not the point of the story"), and has an inability to express himself articulately yet expresses with such emphasis that everyone around him must feign deep comprehension. Like I said very hard to describe but to me he is the most ingenious creation Guest has made, Nigel Tufnel included (gasp!).

The auditions for the production of Red, White, and Blaine bring out some of the depthless well of talent in the town, from seasoned regulars to first timers (one particularly funny bit is a rather unconvincing monologue from Raging Bull). The auditions reveal that Red, White and Blaine is to be indeed a spectacular production as Corky is inexplicably confident in his terrifically talentless troupe.

The choreography for the show is devised by the man himself, of course, and is for me one of the most side splitting scenes, no matter how many times I watch it I just (nearly!) wee myself laughing. The sight of Corky lurching about in his backwards trousers (because he is an artist whose wardrobe is of mind boggling diversity) is just pure joy. As the production gets into rehearsal mode we learn more about the cast, from the travel agents who have never ventured beyond Blaine to the local dentist, Allan Pearl (Eugene Levy), whose deep desire to be an entertainer sadly is not reflected in any noticeable ability (this is some feat for Levy who is inherently funny!). The local theatre veterans, Ron (Fred Willard) and Sheila (Catherine O'Hara), seem to have carved out a comfortable space as local celebrities, with Fred Willard in his usual fine form as a pompous buffoon who finds the learning of lines not always necessary as you can always just "make stuff up" - ingenious when it comes to Waiting for Guffman, yes, but less so in "real" theatre! And his long suffering wife who has stood by her man through thick and thin - literally -er, you'll have to watch the film as that joke is not fit to print!

The excitement behind the play begins to build as Corky receives word that a famous New York producer, Mr. Guffman, is going to attend the play. Needless to say, hopes are raised and the Blaine folk begin to have big dreams of Broadway and Hollywood. Their delusions are completely untempered by their more experienced director, as Corky has obviously just been waiting for his big comeback. Of course as with most theatre productions there are tears before the curtain rises, Corky in particular is given some priceless room to express his despair at things not going to plan. Anyone who has ever been involved in a play will recognise so many home truths, wrapped in a subversive comedy bow of course, but it is just so true despite the ludicrousness of the situation, the theatuh always has divas, hacks, underappreciated grunts (the musical director in this case), and inevitably someone throws a strop the closer to opening night the thing gets. The director's vision is often one that he/she isn't 100% successful at communicating, yet everyone feigns complete understanding. Also mocked soundly is how actors have to do ludicrous (yet fun!) warm up "exercises" to break down boundaries. There are bits of this that are really eerily accurate, except the bizarreness of it is magnified by the fact that not one of these characters has a foggy clue what they are doing.

The culmination of the film is the play, Red, White and Blaine, shown in its complete glory. If you are a real fan of musical theatre, it might pain you! If like me you dislike most musicals, it will give you shivers of gleeful delight at the wonderfully awful production. Despite this, many of the songs are insidiously catchy (not unlike those of Spinal Tap!), and don't be surprised if you find yourself humming a ditty about stools (Blaine being "the stool capital of the world!" during its industrial heyday). The sheer audacity of Guest in subjecting his audience to this dreadful (yet delightful!) play in its complete glory, is why this film is to me truly great. It is cringe inducing, yet also funny and lighthearted.

Like subsequent Guest films, the delights of this one are all in tiny, hard to describe moments based on comedy improvisation. The sometimes gleefully juvenile humour is sold by the deadpan delivery, the characters all feel real. The subtle moments that might pass you by on first viewing (Corky's attentiveness to the young mechanic, Dr.Pearl's wife's "um's", Parker Posey's every line), really do make this a cult classic. Unlike his more recent efforts, I find this one almost entirely devoid of self reverence. While I liked Best in Show, I found A Mighty Wind a bit too pleased with itself (so much so that I haven't yet seen For Your Consideration). I cannot help but think this film, being Guest's first directorial foray, was his statement, it was also an unknown quantity in certain respects, they did not have the burden of success to produce something that an existing audience was waiting for. Don't get me wrong, I still think what Guest is doing is important and better than 90% of the "comedy" produced by Hollywood, but for me this film is a benchmark which the others have not quite lived up to. That said, it is always fun to see which incarnation the talented actors will take up in each film - for instance in Guffman, Michael Hitchcock plays a very small role as the local councilor, but he always makes me laugh with his bizarre, unexpressed devotion to Corky that spills out in the end - "Corkyyyyy!", and in other films he plays bigger roles so it is rewarding to see them all develop in different ways. These are all top comedy actors, so it's not surprising that Eugene Levy and Jennifer Coolidge (who is not in Guffman) have become successes in their own right with numerous roles in bigger films.

I think anyone who likes Guest's films would enjoy this one immensely, it seems not to have caught on as much in the U.K. as in the States, where it had a cult audience which grew with Guest's successive films. I find it hard to be biased as I think it is hysterically funny but it is a specific kind of humour that some people might not appreciate, so if you don't like the Office or other things of that ilk this film might leave you cold. This has a more sweet, silly humour and is less painful to watch than the Office though it is a tiny bit poignant in its way. It is chock full of memorable quotes, unique characters, and numerous buried jokes, so it holds up well on repeated watches; in fact it is one that gets better with each viewing in my opinion. There are no extras on the dvd, which is a shame but the film is ten years old so maybe at some stage they will add some.

The film is rated a 15 certificate for some relatively minor swearing

It runs at a tidy 84 minutes

Summary: Fantastic, lesser known Guest "mockumentary" which preceded Best in Show et al.