Waiting for Guffman and Kicking and Screaming: Humor Outside of the Mainstream

The films of Noah Baumbach and Christopher Guest are instantly recognizable to anyone that has analyzed or closely watched any of their films. Noah Baumbach’s work is known for its witty dialogue, smart characters that are usually immature in some way, and characters who are trying to make a big transition in their lives but need to be nudged in the right direction. The work of Christopher Guest is characterized by light comedy that pokes fun at simple people who have simple pleasures. His films are shot in documentary style and many of the scenes are improvised. Both styles are very distinct and their films play out in ways that are typically not found in Hollywood films. The comedies of these two filmmakers can be seen as the antithesis of Hollywood comedy.

Kicking and Screaming was the debut film for Noah Baumbach in 1995 when Independent film was experiencing one of its periodic creative and commercial booms. This film hits very close to home with anyone that has gone to college and especially those that have experienced the period that these characters are going through, which is the transition from college to the real world. None of the characters in the film seem to be ready to make this jump and all of the main characters are very intelligent but very immature. This is indicated by the title which implies that the characters in the film must be taken into the real world, as if they were small children, kicking and screaming.

Throughout the film the male characters show that they are not prepared for life after college. The beginning of the film shows them at a graduation party where we learn about the core group of friends. There is Grover (Josh Hamilton) who has just broken up with his girlfriend Jane (Olivia d’Abo). Jane actually knows what she wants to do with her life, which is go to Prague and further her training in writing; this obviously bothers Grover. He assumed that the two of them were going to live together in Brooklyn after graduation. By the way Jane talks to him about her decision; it seems as if she has already brought this up to him. However he seems to have ignored her wishes and went on ahead with planning their lives himself. This is never explicitly stated in the film, but it seems as though Grover should not be so shocked that Jane is going to Prague. Instead of being happy for her, Grover picks a fight with her and they break up. This leads him to a summer of yearning while he spends time with his best friends: Max (Chris Eigeman), Skippy (Jason Wiles), and Otis (Carlos Jacott). The four of them spend much of their time at a bar run by Chet (Eric Stoltz).

Throughout the film, the four friends spend their time basically procrastinating, and they are afraid to make their entrance into life. All of them are unable to push themselves into the real world. None of them have any viable employment and none of them seem to be seeking it. Chet works as a bartender at their main hangout, but he is a permanent student who seems even less willing to let go of college than the other characters. At the graduation party he is mistaken for a faculty member because of his age. He quickly begins discussing previous graduation parties and rates which ones were the best. Otis tries to leave for graduate school, but as he is waiting at the airport he talks himself out of going. His exasperated friends leave hoping he will get on the plane, but he decides against it and comes home with them. The only one of the four friends in the movie that gets a job is Otis, but it is at a video store. And he even had to go back for a second interview to get that one.

As Emmanuel Levy says in his book Cinema of Outsiders, the film is “Written with dexterity (and financed for $1.3 Million), this satire examines the impact of changing times and shifting notions of work and friendship on bright, hopelessly neurotic youngsters.” This perfectly specifies the mood that permeates the entire film. The quartet of friends are obviously very intelligent; that is judging by their vocabulary and their conversations. Yet they do not behave in a very intelligent manner. They are unable to move on with their lives and find a stimulating job to apply their college training. They are neurotic because they don not see anything wrong with the way they are living. It seems to be perfectly fine to them to spend their days doing absolutely nothing. They behave as if they were older men who had just retired instead of as young men in the prime of their lives. They spend every night at a bar talking about college. During the day they sit around their house and do nothing. They may have academically prepared themselves for life after college, but they are in no way emotionally prepared for that transition.

Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman tells the story of a small town in Missouri, called Blaine, holding their 150th anniversary of their accidental founding. To honor this momentous occasion the town is putting on a production to celebrate their town’s history. The director of this play is Corky St. Clair (Christopher Guest) who lives in an apartment decorated with his musical posters and with his wife that no one has ever met. The stars of the play are Ron and Shelia Albertson (Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara) along with Dr. Allen Pearl (Eugene Levy). Rounding out the cast is local Dairy Queen worker, Libby Mae Brown (Parker Posey), Johnny Savage (Matt Keeslar), and Clifford Wooley (Lewis Arquette).

Waiting for Guffman is filmed in a documentary style. To go along with this many of the scenes were improvised during filming. This almost makes the film just as realistic as an actual documentary. Because if Guest achieves his goal of having each actor inhabit their character, they will be able to act spontaneously as the character just as a subject would in a documentary. In fact Christopher Guest popularized, if not created, a whole new genre of film known as the mockumentary. He began this style of filming with his “script” for This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984), which told the story of aging heavy metal rockers and the difficulties of putting on a show. Even though Spinal Tap was quite popular grossing over $5 Million on a tiny budget, Guest had great difficulty getting Waiting for Guffman made at all. “There would simply be no discussion with studios about this movie,” Guest recalled. “People have been under the misperception that, because Spinal Tap was a cult hit, it opened doors. It didn’t. The climate has changed: If you brought the Spinal Tap idea to studios today, they’d say, ‘Where’s the three-act script?”[1]

This is the type of film that could only be made in the independent world. Christopher Guest was already an established film and television actor long before Waiting for Guffman went into production. Nevertheless, he could not find anyone that was willing to fund an ingenious low budget project. These types of projects are always ones that tend to fall by the wayside in the film world. If it does not adhere to a strict pre-ordained formula, a studio does not want to touch it. They writing can not be too clever, or else the studio fears that the majority of the population would not be willing to sit through it. Unfortunately this trend in filmmaking tends to be escalating instead of dropping. The majority of films that hit the number one spot on the weekend Box Office Grosses Index are typically the films that require the smallest amount of thought to sit through. This is not an indictment of filmmaking as whole, but it is more of an indictment of studios who are too spineless to finance something that is actually intelligent and thought provoking instead of something that is trash that can help get through two hours of your day without thinking. There is a major problem within the studio system that existed in ten years ago, and it still exists today. This problem came into full view when it was evident who the frontrunners were for the Academy Awards for the year in film of 2005.

When the nominations were released for the award ceremony, analysts noticed something startling. The film that had made the most money as of the announcement was a film in the Best Documentary category, March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet, 2005). Of the Best Picture nominations only one of them was not an independent film, Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005). But even this film was a disappointment compared to typical Spielberg numbers. Munich, which cost $75 Million to produce, only grossed $47 Million. This is compared to the $234 Million that his War of the Worlds remake made earlier that summer, and the $77 Million that March of the Penguins raked in on its $8 Million budget. The highest grossing film that was nominated for Best Picture was Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005). As of today that film has brought in $83 Million on a $14 Million budget, which puts it only $6 Million above March of the Penguins. However it took Oscar buzz to get it over that hump. Even after all of the dust had settled; none of the Best Picture Nominees had broken the $100 Million mark which indicates the modern blockbuster. Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005) only grossed $28 Million, some of the worst films of the year pulled in this amount of ticket sales on their opening weekend.

While most studio executives will argue that they are just catering to the audiences taste, this seems like the easy way out. Any Studio is willing to hedge their bets and go with a sequel or a remake of a popular movie than finance an intelligently written and poignant film about a group of college students trying to figure out their lives. Or they are willing to put into production the next video game adaptation for the big screen than to give an established comedic writer/actor a chance on a brilliant idea that gently pokes fun at middle America and the culture of celebrity. It is ironic that Guest would be able to make such a film with an insider perspective since all the cards would have been against him being a celebrity at all. This film could not see the light of day in the studio system which tends to be the only way to move up to the A-List in the celebrity world.

Waiting for Guffman and Kicking and Screaming are the complete antithesis of the types of films, particularly comedies, which are released by studios every weekend. While a typical Hollywood comedy is usually more of a broad comedy, an indie comedy is centered more on dialogue and character development. A Studio film will have its actors express the humor through falling down, bending their face, or trying to gross out the audience. An indie comedy will usually make you think, or at least pay attention to what is happening. That is not to say most indie comedies are boring or hard to follow, they just demand a little bit more from the audience.

Whenever a mainstream comedy dips into the world of satire it is usually cruel, demeaning, or perhaps just ignorant and unfunny. However indie comedies are typically much more gentle and understanding of their subjects. Emmanuel Levy states, “The small town amateurs in Waiting for Guffman cultivate their belief that their trifling musical tribute will go to Broadway. Like the fictional Spinal Tap, the troupe is clumsy in a charming way, echoing what Guest calls “a larger idea” than just this little group of people. The film “is not about offending hicks in the sticks, but seeing how its human nature to want to be a star.” Guest very gently ridicules the simple people that inhabit the town of Blaine, Missouri. However he never makes them out to be stupid and it is never cruel. He points out how humorous they act, but they are humorous and strange in a charming way. He uses this small town to illustrate what it is to be an American living in modern society.

The films of Christopher Guest and Noah Baumbach are hilarious, insightful, and poignant. These seem to the qualities that make a good comedy. Unfortunately these also seem to be the qualities that keep these types of films from being seen by a wide audience. These films are well made, but from a studios standpoint not appealing enough to a wide audience to deserve their support. This can be detrimental to the careers of filmmakers who want to make these kinds of films, but they can also be inspiring. A filmmaker knows that with just limited resources they can make something meaningful that could eventually find its audience. These films give comfort to the fact that you don not have to make a film that is formulaic and trite to get it made. However you have to be prepared to be patient to allow your film to grow and find its audience, and one day hopefully that audience will be able to walk into a multiplex to see these types of films.


Bibliography
Levy, Emmanuel. (1999) Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. New York: New York University Press.
[1] Levy, Emmanuel. (1999) Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. New York: New York University Press.