Okay, like, this morning, I saw an ad on the side of a bus for this stupid show that said something like "Your vote determines who will be America's top director" or something ridiculous like that? And I wondered how that was going to work, because the news last week was that the show was supposedly combining its "performance" and "results" shows into one. But at the beginning of the show, they tell us that there's still voting, so I have no idea what the hell is going on, and I'm not sure anyone's going to tell me. Anyway, tonight, they tell us that five of the fifteen remaining directors are going to compete against each other. Notably, the three contestants who got cut last week don't even appear in the credits, which fits well with the show desperately trying to forget everything it does from week to week, and also with the Fox network trying to erase whatever meager memory we may have of the token foreigners that were triply bounced last time.
Adrianna (they couldn't have gone for another hostess change?) has to shout over the "cheers," which means that either she's too dumb to calm the audience down/wait for the audience to calm down or she's yelling over fake cheers, which is a hundred times sadder and thus probably the truth. Carrie looks like even her plastic surgery is rebelling at how fake everything around her is. Our guest judge is Michael Bay, and much like Joe R, I completely hadn't heard that he has a film coming out. What was it again? Adrianna says that the final fifteen want to be the Michael Bay, like, don't even joke about that, and then we get clarification that ten of the contestants are going to get to sit with their thumbs up their butts this evening, and tell me those ten didn't hotbox whatever tiny cubby they get as a dressing room. So we're going to see five films, with these parameters: they can't be longer than three minutes each, and they were done in five days. I wonder what the big deal is, because if they had access to a professional crew like they did last week, that's not that tough, kids. I mean, it might be tough to make the films really good, but that hasn't been much of a concern so far. So:
Cute Sam! After film school, he did a short called Lazy Monday, which Adam Stein (yes, the one in this competition) actually wrote and acted in, and he was "an internet success." There are models for internet success in film, Cute Sam, but YouTube isn't one of them. His film, Broken Pipe Dreams, is about a guy who loses the ring with which he's going to propose to his girlfriend down the toilet, and he has to get it out despite "a scarring experience he's had with toilets in the past." Oh, Cute Sam, you couldn't have stopped at Farting Through The Ages? So, the protagonist "comedically" drops this ring, with all the clichéd presentational cuts and angles you'd imagine, and he's afraid of the toilet because his dead fish from his childhood got flushed down the toilet? Or something? I mean, some of the execution is reasonably funny, especially a part where he's got all these differently colored towel threads stretched out and he's trying to figure out which one to cut like he's defusing a bomb, but...well, let's not dwell on thinking about how he manages to use the toilet for numbers greater than one. (Hey, Hilary started it.) Anyway, then there's some stuff with physics and Foley guys on crack, and then he breaks a pipe and gets sprayed with super-fake-looking toilet water, and he gets back the ring and the fish from decades ago. I'm not really sure what to say. Sam, I still think you're cute?
Carrie's nemesis in life is apparently a toilet, so she really identified with the film, although if you're paying attention, she does manage to not-so-subtly slam the end of Revenge Of The Sith, which gives her more than one point in my book. Maybe Spielberg wrote that line for her. Michael Bay gets off kind of a dickish line (that could be because he's kind of a dick), although he follows that up by saying the film could have been about a minute shorter, which is at least on the right track, if you take my meaning. Garry Marshall literally makes no sense except for implying that he's incontinent, which I can believe.
up is Trever, and show, if you're going to write copy for Adrianna calling him "our resident cutie," you might not want to have him up immediately after Sam. Trever tells us that he worked at the local movie theater in the small Montana town in which he grew up. His film is Teri, and he talks about all the favors he had to call in to get the film done. I'm so confused -- he had to get camera gear from his old film school, when last week he had access to a professional crew? What skills are they testing here? Trever signs off with some inadvisable bullshit arrogance, and then we're in his film, where a cute guy named Ben with a British accent is nervously waiting for his blind date to show up. Well, he's a lot cuter than a toilet. Less cute is his series of nightmarish visions of women he imagines himself on dates with, none of the visions worse than the one where Teri is a guy! They may do that sort of thing in Wyoming, but not in Montana! Anyway, the real Teri is very pretty for far too boringly long, and I suppose many people might think this was cute, but as far as the actual amount of story...well, it's lucky the guy was cute, or I might have been having fond thoughts of Peeing In A Cup.
Carrie liked it, although she does call him out for the guy-date-as-biggest-nightmare point. Michael Bay babbles some industry-speak that's completely meaningless in an applied manner ("You gotta work on your photography and a bit more on style"? Can we get you a phone to speak into?). Garry didn't like it, thought the golf story was better (...ouch), and thinks "funny means money." Well, this show isn't funny, so that math sure works out.
Third victim, speaking of Peeing In A Cup, is Hilary. After we learn that Michael Bay has a movie coming out over Thanksgiving, we recall how Hilary deserved to go home last week, and we find out that her film is called The First Time I Met The Finkelsteins. She says she grew up in the sticks of New Hampshire, and she's the thousandth person to talk about "the odds" of going home tonight, and maybe you could all stop worrying about probability and start worrying about NOT SUCKING. But no: a guy is bringing his girlfriend home and admonishing her never to be caught alone with his mother. The father is stereotypically loud, tin-eared, and bigoted, the mother's just as embarrassing, there's no story arc or anything that's not entirely expected and clichéd, the part about being alone with the mother is never paid off, and even the laugh track (don't tell me that was the audience) sounds like it wants to hang itself in shame.
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Carrie says that she thinks Hilary can write, which I guess officially makes her the Paula of this show. She didn't like the hand-held photography, which normally I'd agree with, since it's not a staple of comedy, but this was so unfunny that it hardly seems worth making a fuss over. Some people on the boards thought the close-in style was intentional, in order to create a sense of claustrophobia and discomfort, but I'm not inclined to give Hilary the benefit of any doubt here. Michael Bay drops the pretension in saying that he roundly hated it, and perhaps not surprisingly, I'm starting to like him a little bit here. Garry echoes Carrie's sentiments (SHE CAN'T WRITE, MORONS) and says he's rooting for Hilary. Over exactly how many other people in the field? I'm just asking.
Fourth up is Adam, and it seems a little cruel fate/possible conspiracy that he and Cute Sam are competing in the same group. Adrianna biffs her line when talking about Adam's challenge "to get it up on the big screen," and Adam's face is like, "Seems like the classy thing to do would be not to draw attention to it." Adam tells us how he worked any job that would get him closer to film, which is an unfortunate follow-up to Adrianna's comment, and then he's telling us about his experience in finding a location for his film, like, were these their submission films? I really am lost here, not that I'm guessing I'm alone, but...people are going to be judged on work produced on completely different playing fields? As if the show weren't already meaningless enough. Adam's film is called Dough: The Musical, about "two people who are destined to meet." Adam says that Sam and Hilary are his toughest competition, and here's where if I'm Trever or a Player To Be Named Later, I'm pissed. We hear AGAIN about the one-in-five chance of being sent home, and then a baker is singing about his baking ancestry. Meanwhile, the girl is singing about how she needs a job. There's a lot of parallel singing and purposely overdone ladies-in-waiting action that totally works, the lyrics get funnier and funnier, and the woman gets the job despite some amusing hiccups along the way. I'm not a musical guy, but that was pretty effing brilliant, especially given that within the same time frame as the others, he had to come up with a good script that doubled as good lyrics (and presumably write the music as well).
Carrie: awesome, original, brilliant. Michael: loved it, but suggests tailoring the visual style more toward classic musicals. Eh, not sure I agree, but Michael is the one with a movie coming out this Christmas. Garry also liked it but says the actors had to look at each other more for chemistry, and if that isn't the dumbest thing I've ever heard, it's certainly in the top ten.
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Last person up tonight: Shalini. Her film is called Laughing Out Loud: A Comic Odyssey, about a gay South Asian comic. More talk about the production difficulties, which of course are the same for everyone, right? Speaking of the same for everyone, what are the odds of going home this week again? After Shalini tells us, we see the film, which is a three-minute collection of sound bites disguised as a documentary. Well, I admit I'm being very reductive here, but the fact is that the guy just isn't very interesting. For a gay man from India, the experiences he relates sound exceedingly banal. I would have liked to hear something about how his difficulties led him into comedy, but all he can spout is a bunch of "be yourself" bullshit that makes me think he doesn't know why he got into it himself. I mean, maybe she didn't have that much footage to choose from given the five-day window, but then maybe don't make a documentary, you know? The interviews certainly had some (albeit derivative) visual flair, but still.
Carrie liked it but hated the "be yourself" part, and I'm going to have to drink a whole to more to get used to the idea that we're sounding like the same person tonight. Michael Bay says she gave him a chill, in a good way, and says she has the best visual style of the five, which…not based on this, because while it looked good, it hardly looked new or creative for this genre. Garry babbles a long time about style and women filmmakers, but given that his only real comment is that she needs to work on "engaging" people, Adrianna's enthusiastic "Not bad!" seems mistimed at best.
Judges favorites: Carrie's is Sam's, Michael's is Shalini's, Garry's is Adam's. The other filmmakers (in their completely objective opinions) picked Shalini's movie as the best and Hilary's as the worst. So it looks like that performance/results thing starts week, as they'll do the same thing but tack on an elimination. They'll probably make room for that by not having to talk about the fact that Michael Bay has a movie coming out Valentine's Day. See you Tuesday, Adrianna!
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