Maybe if they'd brought in an *actual* spotwelding torch...
So I finally managed to slip the credit card out of Shoemom's sight long enough to purchase the Bob & Ray movie. (On the principle of making hay while the sun shines I also bought the Not Always Right book, and am loving it, but that's another post).
At any rate, yes, the B&R movie. An Award-Winning Film.... all twenty minutes of it. Plus a lengthy written insert by Keith Olbermann, video intro by Jeffrey Lyons, a Mary Backstayge episode set to a picture montage and -- inexplicably, esp. given that the rights to all of their own TV series eps combined would probably have been less expensive -- three Carson-era Tonight Show appearances.
Well.
[harrumphs slightly]
*****************************************************
I really should've known better. You know the interview avoidance technique described in this post? The post I wrote? Buy this movie for a live-action demo.
I was off in my initial impression; the filmmakers don't want to crack their artistic code, they think it's really cool that they haven't. You can tell, because the first five-ten minutes -- showcasing the duo 'relaxing' before an afternoon's taping -- are shot in that peculiarly Sixties art-house style, the one where the more random the conversation gets the more incredibly cool it must be. In this case: not so much.
Which would not be even as awkward as it is had Olbermann not recounted, in his excellent essay, being treated to a fine display of backstage charm not much later at WOR (Ray, on correct nautical terminology: "Don't want to have them step on some whale ship. We can't say that on the radio...").
And there are other indications in the current subject that they know exactly what they're doing; notably a certain funny half-smile Bob gives the camera at one point, that's mirrored in several of the still pics. Also Ray's restless dark eyes, noticeably too sophisticated for a podgy middle-aged face. After awhile the viewer starts following them as the last best clue to why anybody thought this film worth creating...
Meaning that what we have here is a documentary whose major theme is that the subjects really didn't care about being in this documentary. Lovely.
It gets better once they settle down to work -- a couple on-the-fly promos, one Matt Neffer episode recreated from a script, and a rework of the Komodo Dragon sketch -- inasmuch as the camera goes from unwanted to utterly unimportant, and the indifference becomes part of the show.
It still resembles nothing so much as a documentary I once saw on twins who'd created their own language. Worlds conjured up literally off a few muttered cues and the degree of slyness in a grin. There's one really incredible sequence in which their producer (the guy whose mustache is bothering them in the YouTube clip) throws a bunch of non sequitur sounds into their scripted taping, and they're just effortlessly caught up and twirled into the vortex.
...all of which, it must be said, essentially boils down onscreen to 'two guys who happen to be very, very good at making each other laugh.' You think we could get a bit of the larger picture over here, please? Creative, historic, what they had for lunch that day, whatever? Olbermann's essay would've been a lot more effective as an interview cut into the film, along with any others they could round up.
The special features don't help a lot. Some of the pics are cute, especially the oldest ones, but very few are exclusive, and -- although they do find most of them -- there's ultimately only so much you can do with the visual of two guys at a mic. Of the (undated) Tonight Show clips, one is the Slow Talkers of America, one is an obscure-but-deserving tale of a legendary pizza flipper... and in the third Ray looks distressingly ill, not to say a bit too realistically out-of-it. Major 'the hell?' factor happening there.
Ah well. Reminders of imminent mortality excepted, not a bad waste of an hour. Definitely a waste of at least fifteen of the thirty bucks, but that's OK, I'd probably have just blown it on Starbucks' punkin scones anyway. Now, I get the scones and complete indifference from a couple comic geniuses. It works out.
At any rate, yes, the B&R movie. An Award-Winning Film.... all twenty minutes of it. Plus a lengthy written insert by Keith Olbermann, video intro by Jeffrey Lyons, a Mary Backstayge episode set to a picture montage and -- inexplicably, esp. given that the rights to all of their own TV series eps combined would probably have been less expensive -- three Carson-era Tonight Show appearances.
Well.
[harrumphs slightly]
*****************************************************
I really should've known better. You know the interview avoidance technique described in this post? The post I wrote? Buy this movie for a live-action demo.
I was off in my initial impression; the filmmakers don't want to crack their artistic code, they think it's really cool that they haven't. You can tell, because the first five-ten minutes -- showcasing the duo 'relaxing' before an afternoon's taping -- are shot in that peculiarly Sixties art-house style, the one where the more random the conversation gets the more incredibly cool it must be. In this case: not so much.
Which would not be even as awkward as it is had Olbermann not recounted, in his excellent essay, being treated to a fine display of backstage charm not much later at WOR (Ray, on correct nautical terminology: "Don't want to have them step on some whale ship. We can't say that on the radio...").
And there are other indications in the current subject that they know exactly what they're doing; notably a certain funny half-smile Bob gives the camera at one point, that's mirrored in several of the still pics. Also Ray's restless dark eyes, noticeably too sophisticated for a podgy middle-aged face. After awhile the viewer starts following them as the last best clue to why anybody thought this film worth creating...
Meaning that what we have here is a documentary whose major theme is that the subjects really didn't care about being in this documentary. Lovely.
It gets better once they settle down to work -- a couple on-the-fly promos, one Matt Neffer episode recreated from a script, and a rework of the Komodo Dragon sketch -- inasmuch as the camera goes from unwanted to utterly unimportant, and the indifference becomes part of the show.
It still resembles nothing so much as a documentary I once saw on twins who'd created their own language. Worlds conjured up literally off a few muttered cues and the degree of slyness in a grin. There's one really incredible sequence in which their producer (the guy whose mustache is bothering them in the YouTube clip) throws a bunch of non sequitur sounds into their scripted taping, and they're just effortlessly caught up and twirled into the vortex.
...all of which, it must be said, essentially boils down onscreen to 'two guys who happen to be very, very good at making each other laugh.' You think we could get a bit of the larger picture over here, please? Creative, historic, what they had for lunch that day, whatever? Olbermann's essay would've been a lot more effective as an interview cut into the film, along with any others they could round up.
The special features don't help a lot. Some of the pics are cute, especially the oldest ones, but very few are exclusive, and -- although they do find most of them -- there's ultimately only so much you can do with the visual of two guys at a mic. Of the (undated) Tonight Show clips, one is the Slow Talkers of America, one is an obscure-but-deserving tale of a legendary pizza flipper... and in the third Ray looks distressingly ill, not to say a bit too realistically out-of-it. Major 'the hell?' factor happening there.
Ah well. Reminders of imminent mortality excepted, not a bad waste of an hour. Definitely a waste of at least fifteen of the thirty bucks, but that's OK, I'd probably have just blown it on Starbucks' punkin scones anyway. Now, I get the scones and complete indifference from a couple comic geniuses. It works out.