Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a heads up on a damn fine documentary that's about to hit the festival circuit that you good folks should know about.
Right out of the gate, you do know who Stephen Tobolowsky is. He's a character actor. You've seen him before and more than likely dug his work. For me, his defining role is Ned Ryerson in GROUNDHOG DAY. "Bing!" For those who don't like good Bill Murray comedies from the early '90s and might not have seen GROUNDHOG DAY, how about Sammy Jankis from MEMENTO? Tobolowsky is one of the great character actors working today and has been in everything from MISSISSIPPI BURNING to SPACEBALLS ("You idiots! These aren't them! You've captured their STUNT DOUBLES!!!").
Now, this documentary isn't about him working inside the Hollywood system or the trials and tribulations of a familiar face with no sellable name in the business. Hell no, that would be boring. What I didn't know (and what I bet you didn't know) is that Stephen Tobolowsky is an amazing storyteller. He's one of those people that have had an incredibly interesting life and has the enviable ability to verbally string together a well structured, funny and perfectly paced version of his life's events for those around him.
This 90 minute documentary is essentially a one man show starring Stephen Tobolowsky, telling story after story after story as he's getting ready for his Birthday Party. At the beginning he's on a beach telling a story about a past birthday directly to the camera. In this story, he's swimming off the coast of Baja California and while he's out where his feet can't touch he sees a fin break the surface of the water. It stops about 10 feet in front of him and he's thinking he's about to get chomped in half. This is it. His mind races with what he can do. He says he just kept thinking about the opening scene in JAWS where the girl was scissoring her legs in the water. He stops kicking and immediately sinks, so he keeps kicking to stay head above water. He also thinks of hearing that if you're ever attacked by a shark you punch it in the nose, but now that he's in the water he realizes what a stupid piece of advice this is because while in the water you have no momentum for the punch so there's no power to it.
Then the creature breaks surface and it's not a shark. It's a dolphin. A bull dolphin about 8 feet long. This dolphin looks Tobolowsky in the eye and the eye contact creates an instant inter-species communication. That look says if you move I will kill you. Then he sees behind the big dolphin a bunch of little fins. Baby dolphins swim toward the shore to play in the waves, followed by what Tobolowsky assumes are the females (slightly smaller and more elegantly shaped than the male staring him down) and then the scarred up elder dolphins.
Tobolowsky believes the male dolphin thought Tobolowsky was protecting his friends on the shore, while the dolphin was protecting his group. They were out there for about 40 minutes just floating watching each other. This story also has one of Tobolowsky's friends trying to speak "dolphin" to the lead male, which the lead male didn't particularly find amusing. Tobolowsky told him, "You don't know what you're saying... you could be calling him an asshole for all you know... Plus it's just rude, it's like going up to a Chinese guy and going Chow-chun-ping-ching-chang-chong."
Tobolowsky's stories are always well told, interesting, funny and sometimes really powerful. What's best about this documentary is how, at the beginning, it feels like Tobolowsky is telling you his life's stories personally. He's not addressing a camera, he's talking directly to you, telling you about how he tried out for Ronald McDonald back when McDonalds introduced the character, or the time he found out he was going to be a father. He's at his house preparing BBQ for the birthday party that night as he's telling these stories. So, as he's telling these stories, he's working the stove, the grill, distractedly breaking off when the sausages are plump and ready and then picking the story back up. Very informal, very personable, extremely engaging.
By the time the guests arrive to the party you feel like you've known Tobolowsky for longer than half a documentary and feel like one of his friends at the party. From here on out, when he's telling stories he's addressing the group and it once again it feels like you've been invited to his Birthday Party and are sitting there with Mena Suvari (by the way, did anyone else see her clean up at the last Celebrity Poker Showdown? That lady can play her some cards!) and the rest of his friends watching Stephen tell story after story after story.
Now, how much of what he says is true and how much is tall tale, I have no idea. He could be completely honest, "Just the facts" for all I know, although I suspect he sprinkles a touch of exaggeration here or there. Some of his stories are just bigger than life, including a the time he was held hostage at gunpoint.
This section has my favorite stories of the whole documentary. They primarily grab me because he tells most of his set stories, his movie stories, here. I love set stories. The film industry is so inbred that there's at least one person on every production... maybe it's a grip, a carpenter, an actor, an assistant, the hair and make-up people... but there's always someone with a thousand stories to tell that are beyond cool and more often than not there are dozens of someones with thousands of stories to tell.
I remember when I visited the set of Robert Altman's THE COMPANY I spent most of my time chatting with the sound guy that began his career with Stanley Kubrick. Since he had to hold the boom and was a necessity, he was always around Kubrick when working on A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Kubrick hated having so many people around him, so whenever he could get a chance to push the production crew away he would. This guy was there with Kubrick and the camera operator when they shot the famous scene of Alex and his droogies walking by the water, towards the camera in slow motion. You remember, it's the scene where Alex reasserts his alpha male status of the group. And this guy was there! Right there! He also worked on THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, another favorite of mine.
Anyway, I love set stories and we get a couple good ones. One really funny one surrounding Tobolowsky's work in BIRD ON A WIRE where he got to have a fist fight with Mel Gibson that sent him into a piranha tank, and one amazingly effecting one about his work on MISSISSIPPI BURNING where he was preaching to a group of KKK members. About 1/3rd of the extras there were card carrying Klan members and Tobolowsky's story about these men getting riled up by his dialogue and a little black boy named Joshua will stick with you for a long time.
Now, the movie itself looks very sharp. It's directed by a guy by the name of Robert Brinkmann, who is a damn good cinematographer. He shot Roger Avary's RULES OF ATTRACTION (a great looking film) and THE CABLE GUY among others. I think this film may have been shot on a new 24p camera, but it looks as sharp or sharper than film. There is no shaky cam, poorly lit, shitty video documentary style look to the film. The crystal sharpness of the cinematography helps you to believe the screen is more like a window. You're not watching something pre-recorded, you're there.
This is an excellent film, a great insight to a great character actor and a helluva fun time to boot. If you have the opportunity to see this film, don't pass it up. It will be screening at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen on Thursday, February 10th at 4:45pm at the Isis Theater and then again at the Isis on February 11th, 12:30pm. It'll also be playing Cinequest Film Festival and SXSW in March, so keep an eye out.
You can also visit the official website for this flick to keep an eye out for more screening info. You can also click below to watch the trailer and get the beginning of that dolphin story I related!
CLICK IT HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL SITE!!!
Anyway, that's about all I got to say about the movie. I've got an interview with an extremely influential horror director who strangely enough doesn't like horror movies that has a project coming out this year in the process of transcription, plus my KONG reports are hitting, so keep an eye on the site squirts! Lotsa goodies coming. 'Til then this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu!
-Quint
