“To the critics: Movie
43 is not the end of the world. It's just a $6-million movie where we tried to
do something different. Now back off. To the critics: You always complain that Hollywood never gives you new stuff, and then when
you get it, you flip out. Lighten up.” – Peter Farrelly, via @Farrelybros
Twitter account, January 26th
“Movie 43 is going to get about an 8 on Rotten Tomatoes' meter. The
critics are gonna freak out at this thing, but the college kids, high school
kids, 20-somethings, and anybody who smokes weed is gonna flip out.” – Peter Farrelly, via Farrelly Brothers Facebook, January 25th.
Dear Peter Farrelly,
I never take things to heart when I don’t have to, and I
never take anything personally unless I remotely have any sort of emotional
investment in them. I don’t even care when people slight critics as a
profession, because – and let’s be perfectly honest here – none of us should be
in this business if we can’t dish it out and take it in equal measure. No one
will like everything you do 100% of the time on either side of the equation.
I’ve been called everything from an “illiterate cocksucker” to a “useless piece
of garbage who wouldn’t know joy if it bit them on the ass” from filmmakers
before, and I never felt the need to start any sort of shit with them because
within those letters were impassioned defences of the work that they had done
and what they had accomplished. They stated facts and reasons why I was wrong,
and while I didn’t necessarily agree with them I just let it go because it was
their opinion. I could dish it out. I could take it. Their blood was up, but it
never got mine up.
You sir, have gotten my blood up because in a week where
several other films could give your piece of trash sketch comedy movie a run
for its money in the “worst film of 2013 department” you were the only one to
take it personally, and buddy, you picked the wrong horse in your entire
filmography to back if you feel persecuted about the critics – all of whom PAID
to watch your movie since the studio refused to screen it for anyone – and how
they negatively reacted to your work of pure ego and arrogance that you are
attempting to mask as populist fare for the masses.
Right off the bat, let me state that I don’t think your
movie is “the end of the world” or that it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I
also understand that your movie is an anthology film and that you aren’t the
only person involved. I’ll even openly admit that I chuckled a few times in the
pieces that were directed by James Gunn, Rusty Cundieff, and Griffin Dunne.
They still weren’t great skits overall, but they had something that made me not
hate them and made your entire multi-year labour of love somewhat worth it. So
to think that I outright hate anything and everything about your film, that’s
not true. I’ve only seen a handful of films in my life that I have found to be
completely irredeemable, and this isn’t that.
But you in particular need to know something that seems to
escape your memory entirely. This “different” kind of movie you wanted to
produce already exists and has been done better. Sketch and anthology comedies
have been around in full force since the early 70s and they never really went
away - even if they ended up more likely going straight to video or to cable.
It’s a fate your film should have suffered, but no. You’re Peter Farrelly. You
had a trio of major hits with your brother Bobby in the 90s, and your careers
never really went away no matter how diminished the box office returns were.
Your films were never great critical successes, and I still defend some of them
to this day. Even Movie 43 still has
its defenders within the critical community or else it wouldn’t have made it to
that coveted 8% on an already bullshit aggregated website that I never hope to
be a part of because of how it kills the dialogue that I love about film in the
first place.
But you didn’t do something different. You took an old
formula and hoped that the new generation doesn’t recognize it. To say that you
did something different is an unnecessary tooting of your own horn. I’m sure
any asshole writing an Adam Sandler movie could come up with a dude with balls
on his neck dipping them in butter or putting them in Kate Winslet’s mouth
after giving her a kiss on the forehead. Anyone could create a framing device
that ends so lazily that it might as well just tell the audience to fuck off
because you have their money anyway. You didn’t even tell most of the people
working with you to step their game up, either. Do you even realize how unhappy
everyone seems to look or that they’re just putting in the bare minimum because
they were probably making bare minimum wages or doing favours for friends? Have
you even watched your movie from start to finish? Wait… that was a bit harsh.
You had to or else you wouldn’t be defending it this much.
But let’s talk about that framing device, which consists of
Greg Kinnear as a studio executive getting held at gunpoint by Dennis Quaid’s
crazed writer to get this sketch movie made in the first place. It’s a sloppy
framing device that never goes anywhere. First it’s about Quaid acting crazy,
and then it’s about a cuckolded Kinnear trying to kill his boss (Common) and
forcing him to blow a security guard (Will Sasso). And instead of having a
punchline, you end it with a smug, botched special effect that leads your
leading men to literally turn to you and tell you to abandon the project and
just run the last sketch (which honestly isn’t even the last one, and shame on you
for relegating James Gunn’s gross, but still kind of inventive sketch to the
middle of the credits when any sane people left the theatre already). Your
whole movie reeks of that shrugging and walking away from a project that only
an awful film has.
It’s an oddly critical remark within a project that you had
to think was ultimately critic proof, or else why would Relativity Media refuse
to screen it for anyone? I’m actually one of the few people who can understand
the reasoning behind such moves, but you clearly think and thought that
yourself. It presumes that paying audiences can’t think critically about a
movie themselves.
There’s no doubt in my mind, Peter, that you made this film
just to amuse yourself first and foremost, and that you are:
1. Deluded into thinking you know what an audience really
wants from a comedy.
2. Not even bothering to care what they thing and simply
shrugged and said “Well, if they like it they like it.”
3. You’re sadly right and we’re all fucking doomed.
None of those are the right answers, but the second one
comes closest to being any sort of a sane and understandable answer. But your brief
tweets seem to insist that you are out of your ever loving mind.
I don’t find it adorable or amusing that you feel the need
to say your film is a Hollywood production, because by
championing it as such you make every other product coming out of LA look
terrible by association. You spent years on this and you never ever would have
been able to make this film if you didn’t have the last name you had. You
wouldn’t have attracted all of these directors or actors to this project if you
weren’t you. You insinuate that this kind of film could have been only made in Hollywood
because outside of making this kind of thing in your own basement no one would
have been stupid enough to let you do this film otherwise.
You also twist the definition of “Hollywood”
to suit your own personal gain and agenda. There are plenty of “Hollywood”
films that do things differently and that people really seem to like. They are
called AT LEAST HALF OF THE BEST PICTURE OSCAR NOMINEE, PETER. Hollywood
gives critics new and unusual things to praise and condemn all the time. We’re
only calling your movie out because it’s truly a piece of shit.
I also abhor how you feel the need to say your film only
cost $6 million dollars. Sure, by Hollywood standards
that’s pretty low, but it’s that same kind of nit picking arrogance that
suggests you’ve taken bigger shits than what your movie cost. It’s the same
kind of bullshit that led Mark Wahlberg to say that his $55 million dud Broken City was a tough film to make on such
a “low budget” last week. You never would have even gotten that amount if you
weren’t someone with three $100 million hits under your belt, and I bet you
probably could have done the noble thing and shown this was a true passion
project and sell all your shit away for a project that you truly believed in.
THEN you might have a reason to bitch, but what reason do you have, Peter?
Drop the “man of the people act” and the conceit that all
critics are bad. You’ll make your six million dollar cash grab in no fucking
time with or without us, and that’s a fact. You’ve already won the game. You
probably made that back on international sales alone since your own
distributors and studios seem to be doing the bare minimum for your film to
begin with. I can see the appeal to “the college kids,
high school kids, 20-somethings, and anybody who smokes weed,” of which I only
occasionally belong to that last category, but I remember actually being the
other three.
And I’m not saying that you’re
entirely wrong. I know that comedy, almost moreso than any other genre outside
of a straight up art film, is subjective. Some of them may very well get a huge
kick out of the film. It didn’t happen in my screening on Friday, which was a
little more than half full, included eight walkouts, and only a handful of
chuckles with zero actual belly laughs. But again, I didn’t poll people on the
way out, so I wouldn’t know. The only comment I even heard among the stunned
silence was one such twenty-something saying “Man, that was a lot of dick
jokes.”
But if you want to keep up this man
of the people bullshit, know that you are fleecing the poorest people possible.
Does anyone under the age of 20 outside of the extremely privileged have the
money to blow on this shit? Fuck, do people who routinely buy weed have the
money to blow on this shit? I’ve had funnier nights in my 20s stoned out of my
mind counting the stairs on a staircase than I did watching your movie. I had
more laughs in high school trying to run up a snow drift and falling down
numerous times and I nearly broke my leg that night.
You are counting on these people to
essentially give you six million dollars that you probably already cleared just
signing up for a potential Dumb and
Dumber sequel that isn’t even a done deal or one of your producer credits.
I get from your tweet that I’m not exactly your target demographic, but I don’t
have the money to blow on this bullshit either and I have no truck calling you
out on how much of a hypocrite you are whether you realize it or not. Do you
even know what good most of the people who see your movie could do for
themselves and others with the six million dollars you shat all over the
screen? Do you know how many better filmmakers could have made dozens of films
with your “paltry” six million dollars. I’m not one for moralizing about this
kind of thing, but since your movie is so ugly that it looks like it cost maybe
a tenth of that, I feel somewhat justified to make that point.
Fuck being a critic Peter, I’m
talking to you as a human being right now. Talk to anyone who knows me and they
will tell you that I’m not some silver spoon fed asshole who whips his dick out
to get off on a stack of Eclipse Series Criterions. There’s not a single thing
that I have gotten to in my life without scraping or earning any of it, and I
still haven’t made shit. You spent four years making this movie? FUCK YOU. Ask
me what I spent the past four years doing. You wouldn’t last four days in my
life, the hell with four years. Ask most of YOUR POTENTIAL AUDIENCE what they
spent the past four years doing. Cry me a river that people don’t like your
movie, Peter. When I think of some depressed or stressed person from your
implied demographic who just wants a laugh going to see your movie because they
want a laugh and leaving potentially feeling worse about everything or feeling
taken for a ride, I feel awful and I couldn’t give a shit less if any review
cost you between $5 and $18. Why do we go to the movies? We go to feel happy,
or scared, or amused, or provoked by thought, and your film does none of that
beyond questioning how it got made in the first place. I have never been one who
looks to forward any agenda, and I think by and large most critics aren’t like
that. I’ll freely admit that some who just seem to love the sounds of their own
voices, but to have something this negatively received means you probably
screwed up more than you succeeded.
And don’t get me mistaken, I’m not
jealous of your success in any way, and it’s not that you don’t potentially
have another good movie in you. I’m sure you earned most of your chances just
like so many great artists have done. I’m saying that based on those tweets
you’ve forgotten where you came from and what your movies meant to people. Dumb and Dumber holds up. Kingpin holds up. There’s Something About Mary holds up. The movies you did with your
brother are largely not that bad overall. You guys took chances with The Heartbreak Kid and Hall Pass, and no matter how much I think they didn’t work, I admire to
some extent what you were trying to do. Movie
43 isn’t anything. It’s a perfect null-set piece of shit, but at least it
incited a reaction in me, which some movies can’t even muster.
But overall I severely disliked the
majority of it and I never wanted to contribute to the chorus of people shit
talking your movie, because here’s the biggest kicker and fallacy of all: If I
wrote a pan and said all the things I hated about your movie, to some degree it
would elicit curiosity from people to go and see your film. I wasn’t about to
give your movie that satisfaction and I was fully prepared to forget it ever
existed. I was just going to set it aside and let people find it on their own.
To your credit, it probably is critic proof.
But then, you had to go and run your
mouth and act like an arrogant jerk, Peter. Let me be very frank and honest
with you since I haven’t pulled any punches yet and I think I’ve been pretty
diplomatic and forthcoming that your film isn’t the worst thing ever. For the
past several weeks I’ve been questioning why I even do this job. I was ready to
just throw it down and walk away until I realized that people like you are why
people like me exist. I would have honestly ignored you if you just didn’t say
anything. I was going to be the bigger man, but pointing out how ludicrous your
argument is actually gave me the energy to go on. I’m pissed off at you now.
I’ll be fair to you in the future. And I want to thank you for this gift that
you have given to me. By calling out all critics, you made me want to be a
better one.
You’re right. I flipped out over Movie 43, but not because it sucks or
because you’re proud of it, but because you can’t take the heat and you should
get out of the kitchen.
I feel so energized by your lazy
movie and thoughtless hit-and-run styled comments where you can’t even really
be bothered to defend your movie to anyone. You’re like that 50 year old guy
driving down the street in the rain in an overcompensating sports car through a
red light on your way to work, splashing the poor people you’re think you’re
catering to. What you never think about is that one of those people getting
splashed could create something better than your unimaginative junk.
So thanks, Peter. I’m not going
anywhere. I will continue to treat everyone I meet in this industry with the
utmost respect until proven otherwise, but unless you can respond to any of
this like a man and admit that you made an unoriginal movie or even bother to
explain why you think it is, you’ll just be seen as a coward to me on this one.
I don’t know you from anyone else, and on a personal level you might be a
decent guy who just let his mouth get away from him. It happens. I might be
doing it right now. But there’s not a single thing that I’ve written here that
I regret.
-Andrew Parker
Film Critic
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