Because I'm taking the next two weeks off from writing these, I thought I'd give you all a bonus film "sermon" this week. This film is so incredibly wrong on so many levels--to be fair, it is a dark comedy, so it's kind of supposed to be. It's raunchy and heavily R-rated, but I think it taps into our desire for payback for slights committed against us during our youths, real or merely perceived. It seemed especially fitting this particular week to revisit this particular movie.
This
week, as you've no doubt heard, Faizan Zaki won the Scripps National
Spelling Bee (he was the runner-up in last year's Bee). His
winning word was éclaircissement, a fancy word that most of us--myself
included--had never heard of that simply means, according to The New York Times, "a clearing up of something obscure."
(FUN
FACT: 100 years ago, 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser of Louisville,
Kentucky, was crowned the first National Spelling Bee winner. His
winning word was "gladiolus." Clearly, the words have gotten harder
over the last century.)
When
I was in junior high school, my goal was to compete in the National
Spelling Bee. After some rather disappointing turns in the sixth and
seventh grades, I finally came in first in my school in the eighth
grade. One afternoon, my principal drove me to the school in our county
seat to compete against the winners from the other schools in Orange
County, Indiana. Whoever won that competition would go on to the
regional competition.
I
ended up pulling what I call a "Reverse Dan Quayle." Many of you may
be old enough to remember when, as Vice President of the United States,
Quayle visited a classroom in Trenton, New Jersey, and observed an
elementary school spelling bee in 1992. When William Figueroa correctly
wrote the word "potato" on the blackboard, V.P. Quayle gently
"corrected" him by picking up the chalk and adding an "e" to the end of
it. Sadly, for Quayle, he was still trying to live down the infamous
"Murphy Brown" incident (you can look that one up) and this latest gaffe
certainly didn't help.
Similarly,
in my situation, I was given the word "potatoes," and I spelled it
without the "e," which I could have sworn was an acceptable variation in
my spelling text book the year before. However, the Spelling Bee
officials didn't agree and I had to hear the dreaded bell of
elimination. Actually, now that I think about it, I committed my error
in 1988. Therefore, I didn't pull a "Reverse Dan Quayle." He pulled a
"Reverse William Allen." I suppose either way, there's a joke in there
about the Indiana public school system, but I'm not going to make it.
Anyway,
when I returned to seventh period Study Hall and my fellow students
heard that I had lost, I was given a lot of grief for losing to a girl
(it was the 1980s when that kind of behaviour was still mildly
acceptable). The truth is, I wasn't upset about losing to a girl at
all. Aside from the fact that my seventh grade spelling text book had
apparently lied to me, what really pissed me off was the fact that I
lost to a fifth grader. It was my understanding that fifth graders
weren't allowed to compete. At least in my school it was only open to
sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. I was denied another year of
competition for no apparent reason, certainly not a good one, as far as I
could tell. As you may have guessed, I never made it to the national
level. Eh... life goes on.
It's
with that bit of personal history and this week's momentous events in
our nation's capital that I recommend this week's bonus movie.
In
this film, Jason Bateman stars as Guy Trilby, a 40-year-old proofreader
who has discovered a loophole in the rules that would allow him to
compete in the Quill National Spelling Bee in Los Angeles. While he
comes across as... well, frankly an asshole, especially to his juvenile
competitors, he does have his reasons for sabotaging the Bee which,
coincidentally, is being nationally televised for the first time. Even
though he goes out of his way to win at all costs, his real target for
public humiliation are the adults running the show. In spite of the
fact that this movie is, to quote my late father, "crude, rude, lewd,
and socially unacceptable," it does have some rather sweet moments,
particularly at the end.
Written
by Andrew Dodge, and directed by Bateman (his first theatrical feature
as director), the movie debuted at the Toronto International Film
Festival in September of 2013 and was released in America the following
March, a week after being shown at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film
Festival in Austin, Texas. Co-starring Kathryn Hahn, Allison Janney, Ben Falcone, Rohan
Chand, and the great Philip Baker Hall, please enjoy Bad Words.
Until
I return, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember
that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for
you.
Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!
The Reverend Will the Thrill
No comments:
Post a Comment