Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

I cannot accurately pinpoint the moment Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story became my go-to lounge film. I saw it in theaters upon release only because one member in my group of friends insisted that we all go, and I found it enjoyable but too broad. I picked up the DVD to see the extended cut (so appropriately subtitled "The Unbearably Long, Self-Indulgent Director's Cut" that I'm still not sure whether the filmmakers released it as a joke on the crass manipulation of justly cut footage as a promotional device or if they were simply trying to protect themselves from backlash), watched it once and filed it away in the "to-sell" pile.

Before I could hock it, however, something compelled me to re-watch the film's theatrical cut. What I got was one of the funniest comedies of the decade, and the only genre parody in that time to even approach the level of hilarity of the films (and transgressive sitcom) directed by Edgar Wright. To say that I see new jokes with these new viewings would imply that I'm a gibbering idiot, as Walk Hard hedges to the Mel Brooks side of parodies, that of vaudevillian broadsides that can be seen from outer space. I know my way around enough of the musical mythos of the mid-'50s through the end of the '60s, though even a cursory knowledge is unnecessary to pick up on the flagrantly stressed digs at rockabilly, Bob Dylan and The Beatles (the only reference that might slip by those without a curious interest in classic rock is a Brian Wilson-esque studio meltdown). Unlike the most nuanced of comedies -- including the greatest rock movie of them all, This is Spinal Tap -- Walk Hard will not surprise viewers with new gags on repeat viewings.

What those viewings do reveal, however, is one of the most endlessly quotable comedies in years, especially for those who understand that, for all the movie's jabs at the various styles of pop in the mid-20th century, Walk Hard skewers not rock music but the increasingly banal, prefabricated manner with which it is documented in puff pieces posing at cinematic biographies. With promotional material most clearly establishing the film as a parody of Walk the Line, Walk Hard openly references other contemporary biopics like Ray and even classic documentaries like Don't Look Back. However, like Brooks' classic parodies, Walk Hard does not limit itself to specific genre satire. It cannot afford to, as it fits into that realm of parody that relies on a joke every minute, either a visual gag or a sharp one-liner. Of all the types of comedy, this method is the hardest to pull off and the one that usually results in the worst films, but the more I watch it, the more I think Walk Hard manages to walk that line (hard).

Certainly, one could (rightly) attribute much of the film's success to its perfect casting of John C. Reilly in the lead. Reilly can switch between dramatic gravitas, everyman relatability and broad comic absurdity like no actor since Tom Hanks. Like Hanks, Reilly is dashing enough to enjoy a steady career while being just off-center from typical Hollywood looks (and thus closer to the center of the rest of the populace) to make an audience feel more familiar around him, even when they're looking at his face magnified to the size of a giant screen. Reilly's casting alone seems on some level a reference to Jamie Foxx and how Ray practically erased his previous career as a comedian in the public consciousness and established him as a Serious Actor. Walk Hard approaches this from the other end; Reilly established himself as a dynamic character in the beginning of the new millennium, building off his memorable turns in Boogie Nights and Magnolia to win numerous plaudits for his work in Chicago (for which he received an Oscar nomination), Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Aviator and A Prairie Home Companion. By 2007, however, Reilly had already begun to reinvent himself as a more comedic performer, having appeared in Talladega Nights and the Tenacious D movie, as well as starting up as a regular on the avant-garde comedy program Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

Reilly's Dewey Cox is modeled after Johnny Cash, of course, and the film's opening moments are also its most tasteless, as writer-director Jake Kasdan plays on Cash's traumatic loss of his brother in a table saw accident that plagued the artist with guilt for the rest of his life. This farcical remix shows young Dewey and his brother Nate, a child prodigy on the piano, engaging in wildly dangerous acts, all the while insisting that nothing bad can come from them before a machete fight (no, really) ends in disaster.

Crass as this intro may be, it finely sets up Walk Hard's strategy of parody as the ultimate exaggeration. Once the film settles on Reilly, who takes over for the child actor even when Dewey's meant to be a teenager, Walk Hard moves away from this quasi-offensive material into an unrelenting attack on biopic tropes. At various stages, Reilly openly declares how old he's meant to be despite the lack of any effort to disguise his real age -- hysterically bad makeup is used for Dewey's elder years. Every actor appearing as a real musician, from Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly to Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman as The Beatles, remind the audience routinely who they are playing, fitting comfortably into the practice of biographical filmmakers who cater to those who don't know the stories of each artist while still placing focus on the apocryphal myths that shape that person's legend. The incessant 3rd-person self-referral underscores why this practice neither sparks enough interest in the unknowing moviegoer to impress and alienates the true fans who feel as if they're being condescended to.

Elsewhere, Kasdan mercilessly frames some of the most crowd-pleasing aspects of biopics in unflattering close-up. Dewey, having dropped out of high school and run away from his father, who never forgave Dewey for the incident with Nate -- to this day, I cannot watch Raymond J. Barry in a performance given before or after this without thinking of his refrain, "The wrong kid died!" -- realizes his dream when offered a recording contract. But that uplifting feeling of satisfaction catches in the throat when, just before, Dewey attracted the attention of producers when he fills in a club spot for an injured black rock artist, whom he completely rips off, down to stage banter. Dewey's musical career itself goes through all the ups and downs you might expect, from his random snatches of inspiration when he says something we know will become a song title, and he pauses as he understands it too. Meanwhile, he only spends enough time with his first wife (the always wonderful Kristen Wiig) to impregnate her, only to return to the drugs and groupies on the road.

Anyone who's ever watched more than one biopic within a close time range knows how many elements often overlap, and the greatest joke of Walk Hard is how, when Dewey is locked in detox to overcome drug addiction or trying to win the love of a woman who knows him well enough to avoid a committed relationship, it is not immediately apparent which artist/biographical film is being spoofed. The conceit of biopics is that they show us profiles of those with more interesting and unique lives than a normal person's, but the cycle of success, drugs, fallout and quiet recovery is so ubiquitous that these celebrities seem to be hitting marks even in real life. Goofy as it is, Walk Hard forces one to consider that biopics largely get picked up because they come with a built-in audience base and continue to enjoy critical raves from those who so rarely spot how many are the same.

Cox's story, like Spinal Tap's, gets maximum comedy from its musical element because it does not tie its protagonist to one genre. In fact, Dewey only ever remotely resembles Johnny Cash when he records the title song, sings with June Carter stand-in Darlene (Jenna Fischer), and when Dewey finds himself in the same soul-crushing, watered-down variety show Cash found himself hosting after he got sober but found that he'd burned too many bridges in his wild days. Reilly impressively runs through a convincing pastiche of rockabilly, Roy Orbison balladry, Dylanesque political awareness and surreality, experimental pop pomp in the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds/Smile -era, even proto-punk when an amphetamine-addled Dewey forces his band to run through "Walk Hard" at warp speed. Each of these snippets, some longer than others delve into the hypocrisy of these various rockers, from Orbison's plaintive ballads standing in contrast to the casual adultery of road touring to the supposed mind-opening properties of drugs serving mainly to help drive genuinely talented but already unbalanced people like Brian Wilson to madness.

In all of these twists and turns, Walk Hard never fails to throw out a one-liner at every turn. Nuggets like "learn to play the fucking theremin!" and "I do believe in you! I just know you're going to fail!" are just some of the nearly endless supply of quotable lines to be found in the film. At two separate points in the last month, I found myself talking about Walk Hard with people online, and in both cases the conversation led to posting various lines we loved, a back-and-forth that lasted hours because everyone had their own favorites. Where so many films in the loosely defined boundaries of the Apatow "collective" separate their one-liners with their heart, Walk Hard avoids the issue altogether by dispensing with any life lesson to focus entirely on parody and satire. Each zinger in Walk Hard can be said out of context between buddies, but they also contain barbs that flesh out the film's parody. I correctly pegged Walk Hard as an unsubtle movie when I first saw it, but I did not recognize that its lack of nuance is its strongest asset.

Reilly is boosted by entertaining supporting work from Chris Parnell, Wiig, Barry, Fischer, Tim Meadows and more, but no one sells the silliness of it all like the star. Lightweight as the movie is, Reilly does give one of those performances that makes the film, stretching himself farther than most who eventually collect awards for the more ponderous interpretations of the stiffly structured blueprint lampooned here. His bashful yet cocky delivery of the insanity of the dialogue gives lines funny on paper life, balancing the line between the innocent kid caught in a hedonistic lifestyle that overwhelms him and a battle-hardened veteran of the trenches that all films about rock stars from humble origins -- even the joke ones -- must demonstrate. There have been a number of better comedies made in the last decade of various levels of sophistication, but I simply have to respect this lowbrow goof-off for being more instantly watchable, endlessly quotable and just plain raucous, than anything short of In the Loop. Lord willing, enough other people might come to believe this that it slips into what The A.V. Club terms the "New Cult Canon."

Eastbound & Down — Season 1

I've been watching Jody Hill's career with great interest ever since I caught his funny but uneven low-budget debut The Foot Fist Way. That film, as well as his follow-up, the ambitious but occasionally reprehensible Observe and Report, showed a demented talent who filtered the "Judd Apatow formula" -- honestly, Kevin Smith was doing it a decade earlier, and better -- through a lens of poor Appalachian bitterness and cynicism. His view of the feral madness bubbling beneath unassuming suburban schlubs plays like a white trash David Lynch. He took the darkness of Punch-Drunk Love and tried to force it back into Adam Sandler's normal comic persona, and that's why his streak of noble failures are so frustrating. He's got a hell of a goal, but he hasn't quite found the means to pull it off. Until now.


Eastbound & Down, a collaboration between Hill, his writing partner Ben Best and his favorite player, Danny McBride, gives the twisted trio the time they need to flesh out their warped yet strangely plausible microcosm and the even weirder characters who inhabit it. McBride has always played a redneck variant of the Will Ferrell persona, that of the incompetent athlete or craftsman who believes himself to be the best in his field no matter how many times he fails to do anything right, and Ferrell himself even guest stars in two of the episodes. But his Kenny Powers is something more, a devastatingly funny combination of Ferrell's "mediocre American man" and Ricky Gervais' David Brent.

Powers was once a professional baseball player. Starting with the Atlanta Braves, he made a name for himself in his rookie year with his cannon of an arm and, later, his unfiltered mouth. With his trademark catchphrase "You're fucking out!" and his appalling statements concerning women, homosexuals and minorities, he became the Bad Boy of Baseball, as renowned for his unbelievable ego as his 101 mph pitch. I would say that the fame went to his head, but you get the idea that fame went to his head before anyone had even heard of him. He bounces from team to team, and the hard living takes its toll on his talents, until at last his slowed pitch and a steroids scandal force him out of the majors.

Down but not -- in his addled mind -- out, Powers returns to his hometown in what he believes will be a triumphant return that will fuel his comeback. Indeed, a few townsfolk are overjoyed to see him, but Kenny is so blinded by ego that he's as likely to punch them in the face as sign an autograph. The rest of the town, however, is indifferent to their fallen idol. Kenny moves in with his brother Dustin (John Hawkes) and his wife Cassie (Jennifer Irwin), who urge him to get a job as they know the glory days are behind him.

Kenny eventually relents and heads to the local high school, where he starts as a substitute gym teacher and fills in full-time when the old teacher dies. He sees it as a chance to impress the town's youth and a way to provide a steady income until the big leagues come calling back, and soon he's the most inappropriate teacher who ever dared to stand in front of a class and lecture. The only way he could be any worse a teacher is if he had a relationship with a student, but he does just fine being a monster without crossing that hurdle (and thank God Hill never takes it that far, unlike the disturbing rape sequence in Observe and Report).

Kenny brings that same blind, unwarranted optimism and energy to his coaching -- even though he never seems to teach the kids anything beyond what a legend he is -- and soon his mania has won over the oddball band teacher Stevie Janowski (Steve Little) -- who may or may not be mentally challenged -- and milquetoast principal Terrence Cutler (Andrew Daly). He also attempts to rekindle a relationship with old flame April (Katy Mixon), now engaged to Terrence. April is the second most engaging character after Kenny, as she has clearly moved on in life, but she has a darker side that comes to the fore as Kenny relentlessly tries to woo her. Mixon handles both sides perfectly, and you can buy why such a person might fall for Kenny beyond mere plot contrivances.


Hill, Best and McBride wrote all six of the season's episodes, which they justly dub "chapters." Eastbound & Down certainly plays like a novel, directly continuing where the last episode left off. That planning allows the cast of improv heavies to do their thing without letting the show spin out of orbit, and the situations Kenny finds himself in do not seem simply like setups. His excursion to the local BMW dealer (run by Will Ferrell in his best role in some years) initially seems little more than an excuse to put their star executive producer in the show, but Ashley Schaffer is such a brilliantly loony character in his own right that he makes the episode stand out. We return to the dealership a few episodes later, where Kenny must face off with his old, also-shamed baseball rival, played by Craig Robinson, and the results are magnificent. The entire show is based on the perversion of the small town hero story, and the face off between the two manages to skewer epic sports showdowns with their laughable display.

Naturally, Kenny has a handful of highs to accompany his many, terrible lows, as watching someone being kicked in the gutter constantly loses its appeal; having him slip and fall back in the gutter as he finally tries to get out, however, is gold. The final episode ends with a minor cliffhanger as Kenny is called back to the majors, jeopardizing his budding reconnections with the people around him. Then there's a final twist that makes you wonder if Kenny will repeat the cycle all over again in the next season.


It's hard to fault this excellent first season for anything other than its brevity. Not only are the characters hilarious and their interactions the most cringe-worthily funny outside of a Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant collaboration, the show looks great as well. Three of the six episodes are directed by indie darling-cum-budding comedy giant David Gordon Green, who also made Pineapple Express a damn pretty piece of escapism. Obviously, they aren't pulling out their hair over the rule of thirds here, but some establishing shots look downright superb.

My only qualm with this season is that it rushes itself near the end to get to a definite conclusion. Kenny decides to put his former life behind him after a particularly embarrassing night, but the shift is too sudden and the reason not quite valid enough to suggest such a 180. Also, it's episodic nature might turn off viewers looking to return to their favorite moments, as the show needs its whole season to fully work. Nevertheless, this is incredibly daring television, all the more rewarding for how damn funny it is. The idea that they got away with this, even on HBO, is astounding. I look forward to Jody Hill honing his craft in films, as well as seeing Danny McBride get more work, but right now, I can think of nothing I'd rather see them do more than this superb series.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

2008 is shaping up to be a banner year for romantic comedy the same way that 2007 wound up being a revival for Westerns. Hot on the heels of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Wall*E” (which is technically a children’s film but calls to mind the great silent romantic comedy “City Lights”), slacker guru Kevin Smith offers up “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” a film that stacked up controversy long before it hit theaters thanks to its provocative title and its tongue-in-cheek posters.

It’s also one of the funniest films of the decade and the perfect blend of Smith’s own “Chasing Amy” and “Clerks II.”

The plot is summed up by the title: Zack and Miri, two lifelong best friends who find themselves on the verge of bankruptcy after letting the bills pile up, decide to get out of debt by making, you guessed it, a porno. Along the way, they recruit a gang of cast and crew, think up erotic film parodies and ultimately confront deeper feelings for each other. On the surface it looks like a standard romantic comedy with a wacky premise, but that doesn’t take into account Smith’s gift for dialogue.

Fans of Smith’s will recognize the vulgar, rapid-fire wit and the pop culture references, but this time around he also injects moments of truly uncomfortable humor that calls the sitcom “The Office” to mind. After all, this is a film about two friends who have to come to terms with how they really feel for one another; awkwardness is part of the equation. Rogen plays his usual schlub, but for the first time you can buy that he’s paired with an impossibly beautiful (and impossibly single) woman.

The characters, from the leads to the supporting cast, are all quirky and interesting. View Askew alumni Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes hold their own against Rogen, the current king of comedy, while newcomer (in America, at least) Ricky Mabe gets a lot of laughs with a handful of screen time. Porn starlet Katie Morgan and infamous ex-porn star Traci Lords show off some surprising chops, and Justin Long’s cameo as a gay porn star is brief but instantly memorable. The best of the supporting cast is Craig Robinson, who steals nearly every scene he’s in as Delaney, the racially sensitive de facto producer of the porno.

The only downside of the film is that it’s looser than Smith’s usual fare, perhaps due to the influx of all these improvisers into the film of a man who prefers his actors stick to the script. As a result, occasionally meanders, and a speech from Robinson near the end is so formulaic and schmaltzy that it’s almost uncomfortable. But, as Roger Ebert noted, Smith throws so many gags at you so rapidly that anything that doesn’t connect is quickly lost beneath three jokes that do. The rapid-fire humor is all the more surprising considering how plot-relevant most of it is; most comedies exist as a series of gags, but this is one long joke.

Probably the most refreshing and surprising aspect of the movie is Miri, and by extension Elizabeth Banks, who is breaking out in a big way this year (“Role Models,” W.”). Females in slacker comedies, be they Smith’s films, Judd Apatow’s, or even the British sitcom “Spaced” are often the focal point of maturity. The ladies will hang out with the dudes, but they always grow up a lot faster. Miri is an exception; she swears with the best of them, avoids work even more studiously than Zack does, and, unlike most female slackers, not only gets the pop culture references but makes some herself. Yet she is also keenly aware of her femininity, another rarity in the slacker world. Miri is, quite simply, the best, most charming, most relatable female character to come along since Daisy from “Spaced.”

Ultimately, the film’s brief lags and the rare moments towards the end where the inevitability of romantic comedy cliché seeps in cannot derail such a continuously uproarious flick, and the surprising chemistry between the two leads and strong supporting cast make this possibly the most outrageous comedy since “There’s Something About Mary.” Any moment that feels stale or awkward is as necessary as the big jokes; the discomfort makes it all the more real and tender, and the romantic dialogue is the most powerful, realistic and original since the dialogue in Smith’s own “Chasing Amy.”

Smith’s most accomplished film yet is a surefire hit, and you’d have to be crazy to miss it. Oh, and sit through the credits.

Pineapple Express

This year has already given us one great Apatow Production in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (still the funniest film of the year so far), but the second Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg written film, Pineapple Express, gives it a decent run for its money. It’s not as well crafted as FSM, but, like that film, doesn’t go more than a few minutes without raising a laugh.

The story follows Dale Denton, a processing server who loves weed, and his amiable drug dealer Saul, who flee a drug supplier (Ted Jones, played by Gary Cole), his hitmen, and corrupt cops after Dale witnesses Ted murdering a member of a rival drug supplier. What follows is a hilarious if slightly uneven mash of action and comedy, and it’s sure to entertain.


Seth isn’t really exploring new ground here. All his characters are slight tweaks on a core model: in 40 Year Old Virgin, he was a gruff but lovable schlub whose was eloquent enough to get laid. In Superbad he was a simple cop who used his position to try to look cool. In Knocked Up, he was just a schlub full stop, initially a prick but eventually lovable. Here, he’s a pathetic schlub thrust into an impossible scenario. Seth’s kind of a chubby Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks. He’s just different enough in each role to not make me worry for his acting future the way I do for Michael Cera, but he’s still getting a little too one-note for comfort.

James Franco, however, puts in the performance of his career. In the Spider-Man films, I found him great as the pained kid who just wanted his father’s love, but I found him insufferable, whiny, and completely un-intimidating when he became the New Goblin. Here, he positively inhabits the role of Saul, capturing all the blankness of a habitual pot smoker without going out of his way to highlight his short term memory loss or his empty-headedness as well as making him lovable. It’s a strange year when, in the first 7 months, the two finest acting performances are a clown villain in a comic book film and a stoner in an action-comedy.

After Dale witnesses the murder (and they don’t mess around, you only have to wait about 8-10 minutes before the plot gets underway), the two ineptly dodge Ted’s vengeance: they run to the woods but forget that Ted’s bought cops can track their cell phones. Even when it dawns upon Saul, they don’t take proper steps. They go see Red, Saul’s middleman supplier who buys from Ted and sells to Saul, even though common sense would dictate that Red would be the first person Ted went to. From there it spirals into an explosive, if predictable action-comedy that errs on the side of action.

The focus of the jokes isn’t so much one-liners (though there are plenty of those), but in capturing the absurdity of Dale and Saul’s situation. Conversations are jumbled; everyone frantically talks over one another, making lines hard to filter out. I, however, like this method, because too many comedies let people in an argument speak one at a time so jokes can be heard. Here, it feels like you’re really watching two paranoid stoners who (quite rightly) think they are going to die at any second. The comedy only gets better when Red is introduced. He is at first an asshole and seemingly an antagonist, but, in the film’s third act, manages to steal the show even from James Franco. He’s crazy, simple, and screamingly funny. By the end of the film, he is somehow alive and somehow the best part of the film.

The action scenes are too jump-cutty, but they are where the film stands out. There is a massive fistfight, car chase, and a massive ending gunfight to keep you entertained. The scenes convey a great deal of the film’s humor, yet they are fairly decent action scenes in their own right. It’s not nearly as good a blend of humor and action as Hot Fuzz, but it’s a damn sight funnier than just about anything else out this year.

It’s not all great, though. Seth’s girlfriend serves no purpose other than to make him look pathetic, and her story ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly. My biggest complaint is actually Gary Cole. I love Gary, but he’s at best mediocre as a crazed drug supplier and, at worst, awful. His right hand man is a corrupt cop, played by Rosie Perez, who one can actually understand these days. Both mistake Dale and Saul for professionals sent by their rivals The Asians. Mistaking idiots for pros is uncomfortable familiar to Dumb & Dumber and a host of other films, and this doesn’t really feel unique enough to forgive that. Also, there is a predictable romance between Cole and Perez that is forced and doesn’t even manage to be funny in a “hey look how forced this is” way.


Anyone who goes into this film hoping for a great pot comedy will be crushingly disappointed; pot is merely the MacGuffin here. However, I was relieved; there are few things less funny than pot humor, and I was afraid the film would be a misfire. In fact, not only is the film not pot humor, it shows the flaws of stoners. Don’t get me wrong, the film is purely pro-pot, but Rogen and Goldberg write two stoners who are lovable but pathetic. Dale is in a job that requires little effort just so he can smoke all the time, and he is dating a high school girl. She keeps begging him to meet her parents, but he is scared, which is probably smart since she borders on jailbait. Saul is even sadder: he sits in his apartment watching old 227 reruns surrounded by electronic gadgets so he never has to leave. Pot comedies beat you over the head with how guys who are normally losers are thrust into a magical world of adventure and hot chicks when they smoke pot. Pineapple Express shows two guys who could possibly survive their ordeal if they’d just stop smoking for 2 hours.

As I said, there’s too much action and not enough comedy, but James Franco and Danny McBride make this movie and keep me rolling for the entire film. Gary Cole was weak, but I think the writing has as much to do with that as his portrayal. It’s not the best film I’ve seen, but I must say I laughed more than I do with all but the best of comedies.