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We Didn't Walk Out Of <em>Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie</em> Premiere Last Night
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Feb 16, 2012
Modified Feb 16, 2012
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Feb 16, 2012
Modified Feb 16, 2012
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When we read about the angry walkouts at the Sundance screening of Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, we resisted the temptation to download the film on demand and held out for a theatrical viewing experience. Unsuspecting viewers being immersed in the duo's work is as tantalizing as the prospect of a Tim & Eric movie itself. But contrary to the initial report, Tim Heidecker exhibited no trace of "glee" in discussing the Sundance walkouts when we talked to him at the New York City premiere at Nitehawk Cinema last night. "Where'd you hear that? Did you call someone at Sundance? I don't trust you guys, you guys didn't do your homework. It's not real reporting, it's blogging. Junk journalism."
So, people didn't walk out of the film? "Some did," Heidecker conceded. "It's Sundance, people don't know what they're walking into. Obviously the movie's not for everybody." We asked the pair to name the last movie they walked out on. "Umm, I don't remember," Eric Wareheim replied. "I'm not slanting this interview towards walkouts," Heidecker added.
If anyone walked out of last night's screening at Nitehawk, it was to keep from peeing themselves. Tim and Eric play Tim and Eric: self-centered Hollywood producers who blow a billion dollars of the Schlaaang Corporation's money (Wareheim tells us their budget was "under $3 million") on a short film starring a man they believe to be Johnny Depp. To pay back the furious CEO of Schlaaang (the delightfully crusty Robert Loggia), the two decide to take over a run-down, post-apocalyptic, wolf-infested mall in the middle of America.
The film is a superb balance of disgusting, visceral humor (throats are slit, bowels are emptied, saliva and ejaculate are audible) with the low-fi, Dada public access aesthetic that makes Tim & Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job! so uniquely hilarious. A few gags linger too long, but the movie is an Airplane!-esque study in cramming in as many jokes as humanly possible.
B$M's bold-faced names don't disappoint, (Will Ferrell, Will Forte, Jeff Goldblum, Zack Galifianakis, and a perfect John C. Reilly as the sickly mall resident Tacquito) but as is true for the show, it's the awkward, unknown character actors that shine, particularly the father and son who run the mall's used toilet paper business. Fans of Robert Axelrod and Tennessee Winston Luke won't be disappointed: they appear in the appropriately titled "Understanding Your Movie" vignettes to assist the audience in digesting what's on the screen (the Food Tube guys also make an appearance).
Heidecker and Wareheim have made the sort of breathtakingly absurd comedy that is the antidote to the Apatow archetype, and it's understandable that some will choose to walk out on something so shockingly different than, well, everything else on the marquee. Hell, people walked out of John Cage's "4:33." "We didn't take very many notes from anyone," Wareheim said. Qualifying his assertion that the movie "isn't for everybody," Heidecker added, "We didn't just make it for the fans. You didn't have to go to Tim & Eric school to like the movie."
Tagged
dobis
nitehawk
schlaaang productions
shrim
tim & eric
tim & eric's awesome show great job
will ferrell
williamsburg
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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