Why The Seltzerberg Movies Fail

Spy Hard, Scary Movie (partially), Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet The Spartans, Vampires Suck, and the upcoming The Starving Games and The Biggest Movie Ever Made 3D.  None of them are good.  The best among them is generally considered to be Scary Movie, which was composed of three screenplays mashed together.  Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have yet to create a movie that rates higher than "bearable if you're doing something else while it's on".  Why is that?  Well, obviously, because they suck, but let's look a little harder at why they suck.

The movies are allegedly parodies.  Let's start there.  The first problem is that most of the time it's pretty obvious Seltzer and Friedberg have not actually seen the movies they are attempting to parody and instead think that just having seen the trailers they are qualified to mock them.  As a result, their parody is shallow and witless and usually involves jokes of which everyone else has already thought, if there are any jokes at all and they are not just recreating a scene from the trailer with their own actors.  Occasionally, they just steal jokes from other comedies and think that counts as doing a parody of said comedy.  But I digress.  To do a parody, you have to actually be familiar with the subject at hand.  My policy on parodies is that they should be funny to anyone, but get funnier the more familiar you are with what's being parodied, something that simply cannot be true when the writers have not actually seen the movie or, quite often, not even looked up its summary on Wikipeda or IMDB.

Now, a quick side-rant before I continue.  Most subcultures have a sense of humor about themselves.  That is, the D&D players, the metalheads, the goths, the science fiction nerds--they are all aware that what they're doing is at least a little bit ridiculous.  They take it seriously, just not 100%, and the people who do take it completely seriously are the ones that no one likes.  Despite the stereotypes of these groups being composed of the rabidly antisocial and humorless, most of them are perfectly nice people who happen to share an affinity for a certain game or genre or style and the culture surrounding it.  Back to the subject at hand:

As Mel Brooks said, "You have to love the things you parody."  When a parody is made with love, it will itself be beloved.  Many great parodies, such as Galaxy Quest, Metalocalypse, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and many episodes of Community are beloved by members of the culture they mock because of their affectionate touch.  In fact, in many cases, they even work as part of the genre itself (Dethklok's albums have sold quite well; Batman: The Brave and the Bold has some genuinely touching moments; Galaxy Quest won a Hugo Award.)

On the other hand, more direct or Juvenalian parodies such as Shrek (yes, it's a kids' movie, but hear me out) are made with a great amount of bile and hatred for their subject of parody (in Shrek's case, for squeaky-clean Disney values), but these can still work, if not quite as well.

The Seltzerberg movies, however, do not do any of that.  They are not motivated by feelings towards a particular film or genre, be it love or hate.  They are motivated by a desire to make money.  You'll recall in my Hot Chelle Rae rant I said "they don't want to make music, they just want to be musicians"; here, Seltzer and Friedberg do not want to make comedy, they just want to be comedians.   The result is a creatively sterile and utterly ineffectual non-parody of nothing in particular.

Of course, some parodies work even despite this.  Airplane! derives surprisingly few jokes from its genre of choice, aside from the overall story.  Instead, Airplane! makes use of a premise the writers found to be naturally ridiculous and instead of a parody, most of the jokes can be though of as using the premise as a vehicle for the Zucker-Abrahms-Zucker style of comedy, and it worked.  However, Seltzerberg fails at this because they do not write jokes.  They write references.  Airplane! uses plenty of references, but it always makes sure the reference doubles as a non-reference joke, even if it simply means ending the scene by having someone run into a control tower.  Seltzerberg movies reference pop culture trends and quote famous movies without thought of context or humor, thinking that just by pointing at something else they are being intelligent.

Now, why the Seltzerberg movies continue to exist is the subject for a rant for another time, but I always find (and hope that others who read this agree) that one of the best ways to learn how to do something better is by watching someone else fail and learning from their mistakes.  If nothing else, Seltzer and Friedberg have succeeded in providing a number of excellent non-examples of how to do a parody.

My Public Enemies List

Where I "honor" the "contributions" of those who have made the world that much worse by their continued existence or lingering presence.

- "The Best of Pauly Shore" is an oxymoron.

- Advice to writers: read Twilight.  Do the opposite.

- To music producer Mr. Bangladesh:
Beethoven and Mozart, yes, could famously compose entire pieces in their heads.  This is not what you are doing.  It is called "schizophrenia".

- From what I can tell, Beyonce has gone through what can only be described as an unending cavalcade of bad break-ups where the man was entirely at fault, each and every time inspiring her to write and perform a song on the topic.  Perhaps she has some sort of sac or auxiliary organ in which she stores bile and hatred for future use.

- Chris Brown thanks his fans for his success.  Makes sense, since we know it wasn't his musical ability or personality or that he deserved it.
His greatest hits album is coming out, by the way.  Most of them are to the face.

- I don't think I can properly make fun of Jack Chick.  Anything I say would just make him seem less ridiculous than he already is.

- Whenever I get frustrated while trying to draw something, I like to think, "Well, worst case scenario, it's still better than Rob Liefeld."

- Ronald Reagan raised taxes and increased the deficit while somehow convincing modern political actives that we can and should decrease taxes and spending like Ronald Reagan did.

- Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church disliked a verdict held in Sweden that incarcerated a preacher for using hate speech to decry homosexuality.  So they did what they did... well, not "best", but "most often".  They picketed.  They did not picket the Swedish government, or a Swedish embassy, or an area of the United States with a lot of people of Swedish descent.  They picketed a local vacuum store, one of whose brands was originally from Sweden.  I wish I were making this up.  Oh, by the way, as American citizens, their votes count exactly as much as yours does; more, actually, if you live in a populous state.  Ponder that one for a minute.

- Rush Limbaugh clearly speaks for the common man, as does everyone who makes $55 million per year working three hours per day.  From what I can tell, his opinion counts for about 3,250 times the common man's.

- Congratulations, Hot Chelle Rae.  I award you the title of "Musical Unflavored Oatmeal".

- Here's my hypothesis on Jane Eyre: it was published as a series of literary articles in England during a key period, when scientists were first learning about the causes of disease, specifically cholera, in this case.  Also during this time period, paper was considered a commodity, thus people were unlikely to dispose of it.  Jane Eyre was published to encourage the use of bathroom hygiene by making paper that was certifiably useless and which no one would want to keep.  No one had the heart to tell Charlotte.

Sex and Profanity in Comedy

I don't have a problem with it, strictly speaking.  Jokes on the subject have the possibility to be hilarious.  There are comedians who use it very cleverly and effectively.

I do, however, had a problem with the fact that comedians have for some reason taken this fact and drawn the conclusion that "sex/profanity = funny, no exceptions".  Now, technically I have this problem with just about everything, as anyone in the voting section of Memebase can tell you that just because a joke contains some potentially funny element it is automatically funny.  Sex and profanity just happen to be the most prevalent.

Presented for your consideration, Pauly Shore:

The man is not funny.  Just simply... not funny.  There is no funny there.  If funny were to be measured by scientific instruments a recording of his shows would be a flat line at zero.  However, because he throws in a brigade F-bombs he gets a few laughs.  Hollow, soul-crushing pity laughs.  This is cheap, lazy comedy at its worst.  Comedy is defined by cleverness and lateral thinking, and this man has neither.  If someone wrote a computer algorithm to make jokes in the 1980s, using a computer of the era, it would come up with precisely this kind of recycled, flat-soda commentary unfounded in reality, but perhaps with an "insert name here" where he says "Hillary Clinton" where you could instead say, oh, Geraldine Ferraro.  He does not deserve to have a career as a comedian; if I ran a comedy I would not allow him to perform if he paid me.  Profanity is his crutch, and the fact that it can be used as such is why I am speaking out against it now.

On the other hand, George Carlin:

He doesn't use dirty language or strong ideas because he can't get laughs otherwise, he does it because it's the right thing to do for his set.  Because of the way he uses it, with obvious practice and forethought, he maximizes the effect of what would already be an poignant and hilarious piece of rhetoric.

The same problem has to do with sex, which again can be an delightful fountain of amazing jokes but can just as easily become a millstone around the neck of a viewer or listener.  Remember, about 60% of any William Shakespeare play is two male protagonists talking about each other's penes (which is the correct plural of "penis", by the way).  Think I'm kidding?  Go re-read Romeo and Juliet.  Still, he's hailed as a master of the craft of writing because they were subtle, thought-out, and creative.

Another problem: oftentimes a movie will insert some cussing or a boob shot in order to avoid getting a G or PG movie and being labelled by the public as "for kids".  I would like to remind you that just because something is not good for kids does not make it good for adults.  Comedy does not work by the process of elimination.

So I realize my point hasn't exactly been clear.  What it comes down to is this: I am neither explicitly for nor against dirty jokes.  However, make sure that they are good jokes and not just dirty.  Here's an exercise: if you can prove to me you can be consistently funny without foul subject material, I will be okay with you being as filthy as you want to be.