So I just got home from taking myself out on a date... I don't know if I'm going to get lucky yet, but the night is still young...
Anyway, I went to PF Chang's and had what Californians have described as crappy fake Chinese food, but what I as a New Yorker find to be one of the closest things I can find to "New York Chinese food" as I can find in the Bay Area.. But I'll get into a rambling discussion on what a real eggroll is some other night... Let's get to the movie, shall we?
Funny People has been markedly maligned since it's release. Most people who went to it expected the next Forty Year Old Virgin, or Knocked up... But it was not what those flicks were at all.. In the past, Judd Apatow has created zany, wacky, fucked up comedies with shitloads (literally?) of dick, fart, blowjob, and pothead jokes each with a certain core of heart and reality at their center. In Funny People, that heart takes center stage. Yes, there's some wackiness, there's some zaniness (is that a word?), but it's the drama and tragedy of the human condition that is brought to the fore. My only complaint might be that there wasn't really enough scenes with the triumvirate of LA roomies (Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Jason Schwartzman) that really made for some more of those classic Apator moments...
Then again, when I think of classic Apatow, I think back to the heady days of Freaks & Geeks... One of those fine moments in television history when people just didn't fucking get it.. No wonder we're stuck with "American Idol" and "So you think you can dance" and whatever the fuck those assholes high on coke (and cock?) think up next down in the smoggy 'Wood...
Anyway... I don't think I've ever been to a movie that spoke to me... Literally.. Don't get scared.. I'm not saying it was like my dog telling me to go out and dismember people.. He was actually an awesome standard poodle who once stood up to a fucking pickup truck, left a dent in it, and trotted happily away.. I'd like to think that if he had shoulders, he would have shrugged them. Sadly he wasn't so lucky when it came to bladder cancer (rest in peace, Kelev).. But when you have a name as rare as "Ira", you can't go to a flick that constantly has Adam Sandler barking orders at you and not think maybe you should run out to the refreshment stand and get the man a diet coke.. Yes, not since the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers has a character named Ira had such an impact in a film ("He looks like my Uncle Ira.. He sounds like my Uncle Ira.. But I'm telling you, THAT'S NOT MY UNCLE IRA!!").. Okay, maybe in When Harry Met Sally ("Someday you're going to find yourself singing 'Surrey with a Fringe on Top' IN FRONT OF IRA!!")..
Okay, okay... So I'm biased.. But there was more going on in this flick than the constant reiteration of my somewhat unique name.. In case you hadn't heard yet, the film centers around two characters. Adam Sandler essentially plays himself: an altogether too-well-known comedic actor who has done a lot of extremely silly comedies. Albeit, the comparison stops there. George Simmons, the Adam Sandler character, is a womanizer who lives alone in a huge mansion on the coast, whereas from what I understand Adam Sandler is a family man. He finds out he has Acute Myelocytic Leukemia and is, in all likelihood, going to die. (They should have had a little more medical advice on the flick tho.. Right at the beginning he's told he has a hemoglobin of 7 and he was looking FAR too healthy for someone with a crit hovering right around 20%). So he decides to keep the news to himself and in search of some kind of reconnection with his youth, he throws himself back into standup comedy. He arrives on an Improv on a Wednesday night and that's where he meets Ira Wright, a young struggling comedian played by a newly svelte Seth Rogen. Ira is bumped from his slot to make way for the celebrity talent and is forced to follow, but Simmons act is so incredibly dark and depressing that he can't help but use at least half of his time ripping him a new asshole. They meet outside the club where Simmons nearly runs him down in his Escalade pickup (yes, that about sums up the character in many ways), but later finds himself calling Ira up to ask him for help writing some new material.
And so the 'unlikely friendship' is forged.. After some initial success at a Myspace (fuck, I am writing this on a Myspace blog aren't I? I'm such a fucking sellout..) corporate event, George hires Ira as an assistant as well as to help him with new material as he tries to revitalize his standup career. As such, Ira is the first person to learn of George's illness.
I don't want to go too much more into the plot of the flick as it unwinds over the course of over 2 hours and manages to wander a little, but I think it did a damned good job of staying somewhat real. There are a lot of celebrity cameos of primarily standup comedians playing themselves (Dave Attell and Sarah Silverman come to mind immediately) as well as one of the funniest scenes ever committed to celluloid involving Ray Romano and Eminem.
Things got a little too personal for me at one point, however. When Ira finally convinces George to go public with his illness, he looks up an old flame (played by Leslie Mann) who has since gotten married and has two children by her largely absentee businessman husband (played by Eric Bana). Spoilers may lurk her, so please don't fucking blame me when you find out the chick from the Crying Game was sporting trunk.. When she finds out that he's got leukemia, she flies in to LA to see him and there's a somewhat heartwrenching scene (there's actually a lot of these in the movie... a lot of awkward scenes, a lot of heartwrenching scenes.. still thinking this should have been marketed as Judd Apatow's next Forty Year Old Virgin??) where they confront their past and reconcile.
This is the personal bit.. Back in 1998-1999, I had kind of a shitty year.. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in December and spent nearly the entire next year getting biweekly chemotherapy followed by nearly a month and a half getting radiation treatments in a manner that would have made Bruce (or David, if you're more a fan of the tv show) Banner cringe. A couple of months into my chemo, I reached out to an ex via email that I was, shall we say, severely estranged from. We happened to be living in the same town at the time, but I hadn't seen her in at least 2 years. Anyway, I mentioned in my note that I had been diagnosed with cancer and that I just wanted to let her know.. In all honesty, I really didn't expect a response at all (yes, it was *that* bad). She actually replied within a day or two and this was followed by a brief email exchange that then ended rather abruptly. For five years, I had no fucking clue what the fuck had happened... what had set her off to the extent that she ended up signing off by calling me a 'psycho ex boyfriend' (I believe that was her term) and to never contact her again..
It came to me late late at night while driving back from somewhere out in the Valley (that's the Central Valley, southland people... not everything is taking place in San Fernando... except for some very vanilla porn, learn a thing or two from the Armory, shitheads!) during my old job (RIP).. I'm pretty sure I was merging on to the 205 from the 5 south when it hit me. You see, this ex of mine had lost her father to cancer shortly prior to my coming into the picture. She had to watch him waste away from a horrible illness and here I was coming along years after our rather ugly breakup telling her I had a similar condition.. I finally put the pieces of the puzzle together.. In her penultimate email to me (not the last one where she had the more colorful language), she'd suggested meeting up sometime for coffee and catching up.. Now I'd been through some real serious shit with this woman.. and honestly, I wasn't really ready to just jump into seeing her again.. And I said so.. I'm not really sure how I put it.. I'm assuming the way I just did, as I was being honest.. What, I found myself thinking all these years later, if her wanting to see me was some kind of test..? To see if I was really sick? And it hit me... Hard. This woman actually thought that I would make this shit up just so I could play my way back into her life?? After I'd known what she'd gone through with her father???? GRRRRRRR... Fuck.. That anyone would ever do such a thing is morally reprehensible at least, and likely deserving of a painful tearing off of a scrotum at best.
I never did get to tell her, of course.. To this day, I imagine she still thinks that I would really have done that to anyone, much less her... Eh, fuck it dude (let's go bowling).. Life goes on.. But it does still irk me a tad...
Why this digression into my own fucked up sordid personal life, anyway..? Oh, right... Because in the movie, after George and his ex have their reconciliation, a visit to the doctor reveals that the experimental 'Canadian' medication he was placed on has actually worked and he is one of the lucky 8% of people who have experienced near complete remission from the treatment. So thus ensues some wackiness where George hooks up with his ex (tho apparently he only gets to go down on her and never actually gets it wet, that sounds sadly familiar.. no, really, I don't mind it all that much.. but anyway), her husband shows up back early from his business trip to China, and much wackiness ensues.
Apparently I've missed out on the opportunity to capture the "irasexira@yahoo.com" email address from the movie (Damn you, Apatow!), but I have recently acquired "irasexira69@yahoo.com" (I'm just so fucking witty, aren't I?).. So if anyone wants to ever yell at me over anything I've ranted about in this most recent (yet infrequent) bout of blogging, feel free to try it out... And if I remember to check it, I'll be sure to be properly berated.
Anyway, Apatow, congratulations on making what I thought was, for the most part, an excellent film.. Everyone who had issues with it should really give it a second chance when it comes to DVD and try to just not compare it to his earlier comedy 'megahits'. I really think they might find a few more positives to experience from it with that mindset.
And, of course, it doesn't hurt if you happened to be named Ira...
pt...
Ira E...
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