a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
mk  ·  3168 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Isaac Kelley: Freddy Got a Bum Rap: Tom Green’s Film Triumph

I agree it was a terrible movie. It was sloppy and lazy. At the same time, I can understand (just a bit) where Kelley is coming from. FGF did break some ground in an artistic sense, when you consider the venue and distribution, but Tom Green did a terrible job framing it, and as a result, it was ineffective and uninteresting. I can see where Kelley feels the need to point out an artistic effort, but Green failed in the presentation. Because it was so uneven, FGF can be written off as a bad movie, and deserves that fate.

On some level, for art to succeed in spite of taste, it must be compelling. However, once that ground has been broken, everything in the same vain is usually uninteresting, the novelty is gone, and novelty was so much of what the piece had going for it.

There are eight urinals in the world that are called Fountain, approved by Duchamp, and there are numerous replicas. If you pull it off just right, you can get people to covet garbage for the artistic ground that you broke. But when the message is the medium, then you need to make the message clear. FGF could have been a compelling movie, but it is only uncomfortable.

Personally, I think the outtakes at the end of the movie sabotage any artistic goal FGF arguably had.