Seth Harris

The Pryor/Wilder Quartet – Silver Streak

Silver Streak (1976, dir. Arthur Hiller)

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George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) is taking the Silver Streak train from Los Angeles to Chicago. While onboard he meets and spends the night with Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh), the secretary to a prominent art professor. George claims he saw the professor dead and thrown from the roof of the train and his investigation the next morning leads to him crossing paths with paid goons and being tossed from the train. A conspiracy behind the professor’s work is uncovered and George must team up with Grover Muldoon (Richard Pryor), a thief who ends up drug into the mess.

When Silver Streak was released, Gene Wilder was at his career peak. He’d come off of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Previously, Wilder had struggled to find a breakout role. In retrospect, films like The Producers and Willy Wonka are spoken of fondly but at the time they were considered box offices failures whose love only came later with home video in the 1980s and 90s. Richard Pryor was as big a name and arguably bigger than Wilder at the time. By 1976, he’d had three comedy albums that went gold and hosted what became one of the great Saturday Night Live episodes. Before that, he’d cut his teeth as a writer on Sanford and Son as well as Blazing Saddles. He was set to play the co-lead with Wilder in Saddles but his volatile nature connected to his drug use caused studio heads to nix that idea.

The film was directed by Arthur Hiller, one of the big directors of the 1970s with features like Love Story, The Out of Towners, and The In-Laws. He worked frequently with playwright Neil Simon, however, Silver Streak was the work of Colin Higgins. Higgins was the screenwriter behind Harold and Maude and would go on to write and direct Foul Play, 9 to 5, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

The biggest thing you’ll notice while watching Silver Streak is that Pryor doesn’t appear onscreen until a full hour into the film. He’s billed third behind Jill Clayburgh and this appears to be because his roll was not meant to be as stand out. After reading the script, Wilder told the producers that the only way to keep elements in the film from becoming offensive would be to hire Pryor for the Grover role and allow him to bring his personality and point of view to the role. He was exactly right because, in scenes like the blackface disguise moment, Pryor is able to comment on white people and their exploitation of blackface in a way that most certainly came from his own mind. It’s very apparent to see why Pryor and Wilder would be teamed together for the next 15 years because they do have a wonderful chemistry together.

Speaking of chemistry, the relationship between Wilder and Clayburgh is one of the most convincing I’ve seen in a film. There was a certain type of naturalistic acting that worked its way into mainstream cinema in the 1970s that I think is present in the interaction between these two actors. It doesn’t hurt that both of them just have very magnetic, genuine, and charming personalities. You just can’t help but smile during their flirtation because it feels like you’re watching a real moment between two people who are attracted to each other.

The supporting cast is one of those great character actor showcases: Ned Beatty, Scatman Crothers, Patrick McGoohan, Ray Walston, Clifton James, and Richard Kiel. The roles are not that meaty on the page, but the actors bring dimensionality to the characters through their choices. The film is also very well-paced with Wilder’s series of ejections from the train marking the act breaks in a very clever manner. This will definitely be the strongest of the four Pryor/Wilder films in the series and serve as a benchmark to compare the subsequent pictures.

Movie Review – I Am Not a Serial Killer

I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016, dir. Billy O’Brien)

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John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records), a teenager with sociopathic tendencies, lives in a bleak Midwestern town, seemingly under a permanent blanket of snow. Against this wintery landscape, a series of killings begin. Cleaver gets a front row seat to examine the corpses due to his family’s prominence as the only mortuary in town. He quickly discovers each body is missing an internal organ or body part. The bodies also appear to have been cut apart with a chainsaw or toothed blade. And there’s that sizzling black oil at all the crime scenes. Cleaver struggles to control his own compulsions to hurt school bullies and the need to connect with others while trying to figure out whose sinister hand is behind the killings.

I did not expect what I got from this film. I knew going in from the atmospheric trailers that it was going to be moody and dark. There is plenty of gore due to the mortuary being a key location. We never see victim’s faces until more than halfway through the film. In many ways, this is from the perspective of Cleaver. He sees the bodies as simply hunks of meat at the beginning, parts of a mystery he wants to uncover. When the victims become people he personally knows the weight of the crimes set in.

Despite this darkness pervading the film, there is humor and softer moments. Cleaver frequently visits his psychiatrist, Dr. Neblin. Instead of Cleaver lying on a couch and unloading his feelings, the two meet in outdoor locations having sessions in a park or on a rooftop while birdwatching. The doctor comes across a very human and truly working to show empathy to the young man while attempting to stoke the fires of empathy in his patient. The family dynamics between Cleaver, his mother, aunt, and older sister feel very genuine with lots of tension around the holidays that the film knows it doesn’t have to get expository about.

The look of the film is grainy and textured. Handheld shots in moments of extreme horror and tension add to the despairing atmosphere of the crimes. It’s clear that slasher horror of the 70s and early 80s influenced the tone and visuals of the picture in all the most positive ways. The movie is also confident in letting itself wander through landscapes. There’s not hurry to wrap up the story. Instead story elements are allowed to simmer and we get some wonderful performances from young Max Records. His most notable role thus far has been as the lead in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. It’s apparent that he understands emotion and subtlety and gives a very honest performance of a very troubled character. Cleaver is never presented as angsty, he’s contemplative and seeks understanding of his condition, even if it means communing with a killer.

There is a major twist halfway through the film that is not presented in any of the trailers I saw and should be avoided at all costs. The shock of what the film becomes in that moment was one of the best elements of the picture. The director manages to take elements that could be eye-rollingly ludicrous and add some emotional weight. If you are looking for a horror film that lives in the “real world” I Am Not a Serial Killer will do the trick.

Pop Cult BC #2 – The Hike

The Hike by Drew Magary
Published Viking, 2016
Purchase the book here!

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Our next book in the club will be The Hike by Drew Margary. The Hike tells the story of Ben, a businessman who sets out for a hike in the woods behind his hotel before a dinner meeting with a client. Ben ends up in a world of bizarre fantasy and strange creatures playing out a very D&D-esque scenario. Or that is what the blurb hints at. Reviews are referring to the book as “Cormac McCarthy’s Alice in Wonderland” and “a more cynical version of The Phantom Tollbooth”. Sounds like a lot of fun.

The read begins on September 1st and the review and discussion hit the website on September 30th. Good reading!

Comic Book Review – The Sheriff of Babylon Volume 1

The Sheriff of Babylon Volume 1: Bang, Bang, Bang
By Tom King and Mitch Gerads
Purchase the book here!

2015-12-03-sheriffofbabylon Florida cop Christopher Henry has a new job training the law enforcement forces in Baghdad. It’s 2003, and he is in the heart of the Iraq War. There is the standard level of chaos and violence in the city but things get personal when one of Henry’s Iraqi trainees is found murdered. Henry teams up with Nassir, an ex-cop still hanging on in the city. In the background is Sofia, an Iraqi-American who has come back to the city to help with the rebuilding process while attempting to take control of the organized criminal underbelly. This is the tv series HBO wishes it had the budget to make.

The Iraqi Occupation has been the topic of numerous films and documentaries, but Sheriff of Babylon is clever in its genre-mashing, bringing the detective noir into play. And it works better than you might expect. The instability in Iraq has blurred the lines of authority and no one can be trusted, not even if they do wear a nice shiny uniform. Between the various sub-groups with the American military, privately contracted forces, insurgents, politicians jockeying for power, and a myriad of other factions Baghdad is an incredibly confusing and scary place.
If you are a regular reader of this blog then you know I love Tom King’s work. I’ve previously read his run on DC Comics’ Omega Men and am still enjoying his work on Marvel’s The Vision. This was the first work I’ve read of his that wasn’t within in the superhero genre, though those previously mentioned titles aren’t superhero stories in the traditional sense. King was an intern under writer Chris Claremont for many years before joining up with the CIA in the wake of 9/11. He worked for seven years in counterterrorism which is very apparent in the detailed storytelling present in Sheriff. The series is written with a level of knowledgeability that doesn’t get too jargon-filled and is still comprehensible to a civilian. The story perfectly hits the notes a good noir should, especially on the protagonists increasing confusion as he navigates the labyrinth. There’s also great moments where we see the effort towards good turned to a pretty hopeless def babylon02 eat, as all noir needs to have.

The artwork is exceptionally well done. It’s very photo-realistic with human expression and faces, but with a gritty abstraction in the right moments. In an interview, artist Mitch Gerads explained that a fan who is also a veteran of the war said the book captured the feel of the environment in its colors. Everything is colored in earth tones and primary colors only appear when something needs to pop out of the landscape around it. The uniformity of color also perpetuates a sense of confusion because military people purposefully become hard to differentiate.

The Sheriff of Babylon is a 12 issues mini-series so this volume is just the first half of the story. I enjoyed it quite a bit and reminds me of a really quality cable drama. No character is ever a stereotype and layers are revealed over time and at key moments in the plot. If you’re seeking out a modern war comic, something dealing with the more complex and gray areas, this series has a lot to offer.

Pop Culture BC Review #1 – A Head Full of Ghosts

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Published by Harpercollins, 2015

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The strongest feeling I had reaching the conclusion was a sense of sadness for the main character. I don’t see how anyone could feel anything but that for Merry Barrett. She will never have closure because she is the only one left alive and obviously doubts her own interpretation of what happened to her family. This is the aspect of A Head Full of Ghosts that elevates it to that premiere level of horror in my personal opinion. It is comfortable with ambiguity and it uses that lack of information/understanding to make its horror tragic yet still frightening.

A Head Full of Ghosts doesn’t shy away from its influences. In fact, portions of the text outright name drop books, films, and authors to make it clear that Tremblay acknowledges these antecedents but works to present a narrative that plays with their tropes. By bringing in elements such as the reality tv show, the fractured point of view of a child, and a modern fan blog he tells a familiar story from a seemingly varying number of perspectives. When we reach the halfway point and learn adult Merry is the author of the The Last Final Girl blog we realize the author is saying that a single person’s point of view can be more complex than originally thought. And it also brings us back to the title of the text, A Head Full of Ghosts and how it doesn’t simply apply to the plight of Marjorie Barrett.

Tremblay has publicly stated that the novel is meant to be open for a multitude of interpretations. The big question when you reach the end is of course “Was Marjorie really possessed?” By not including direct transcripts of The Possession reality series, only having their events filtered through The Last Final Girl blog and Merry’s memories, we are forced to crane our neck around bedroom door frames in an attempt to see what truly went on in that house.

The most terrifying moment for me in the book was the encounter between Merry and Marjorie in the basement. The production crew for The Possession had just moved into the Barrett home and was setting up. Merry ends up down there looking for snacks if I recall correctly. The two engage in a conversation about their father’s understanding of Marjorie’s condition, specifically how he, through the guidance of his priest, believes his daughter is possessed by Satan. Marjorie laughingly rebuffs this notion but goes on to say that she *is* possessed.

“Ideas. I’m possessed by ideas. Ideas that are as old as humanity, maybe older, right? Maybe those ideas were out there just floating around before us, just waiting to be thought up. Maybe we don’t think them, we pluck them out from another dimension, or another mind.” Marjorie seemed so pleased with herself, and I wondered if this was something new she just thought up or something she’d told someone before.

Tremblay has contributed to the modern Lovecraftian horror scene. My first read of his work came in The Children of Old Leech, a tribute anthology to Laird Barron. In that collection is Tremblay’s short Notes for “The Barn in the Wild”. This particular quote from Marjorie struck me as a very Lovecraftian in its existential nature. That sort of cosmic horror is often about horrors that transcend our notions of good and evil as well as existing before our concept of time began. Later in the text, Marjorie makes mention of a minor Lovecraftian demon and this is taken as her doing research online behind the backs of the production crew and clergy. It should be noted that Notes for “The Barn in the Wild” is also a found narrative short story presented as fragments of a “discovered” journal, yet another narrative construct whose validity comes into question.

There’s just as much presented in A Head Full of Ghosts that can lead the reader to believe Marjorie is deteriorating from paranoid schizophrenia or some other similar mental illness. Again, we only hear the story from the point of view of someone who was a child and the younger sibling of Marjorie. Many mentions are dropped that Merry was in no way fully aware of what was going on in her own home fifteen years ago. It’s no surprise to anyone who has read the novel that the biggest shock comes in the third act when we learn through a very casual, distant mention that Merry’s father, mother, and sister all died of poisoning that is publicly contributed to the father. Merry’s memories of the events leading up to that moment are some of the most chilling parts of the book. It’s very telling that in how she remembers the poisoning she is the one who taints the food. Moments later she discusses the trouble she’s had remembering her aunt entering the home and saving her after she lays there with the dead bodies for weeks. But then Merry admits that’s not what happened and she was told in retrospect police entered the home to save her.

This is where we are left, with Merry unable to know what really happened. We have just enough pieces of the story to fashion a narrative but not enough to understand what it meant. Great horror understands that it’s not a monster or scary house or the Devil that wrenches at our soul and tears up our eyes. Horror comes from a place of very raw truth when we confront our powerlessness. Childhood trauma can bring the toughest tough guy to their knees. That is horrifying. So many people seek out professional help to bring closure to those scarring moments of their pasts, but never truly move past them, only learn how to manage their emotions in relation to them. A Head Full of Ghosts posits “What if you were completely unable to move on?”. Whether it be heredity or demons, what if you were damned to spend the rest of your life both haunted by your childhood yet unable to fashion a working understanding of what it meant?

Discussion Questions

What was Merry hoping to achieve through her blog deconstructing The Possession?

How do you interpret the exorcism scene? What really happened? What was imagined by Merry in her memory?

What did Marjorie seek to gain from Merry attending the exorcism?

Are childhood memories simply a sense memory fabrication or is there factual truth within them?

Daniels – The Short Films – Part 1

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Swingers (2009)

Daniels have mentioned the absurdist comedy of Tim & Eric as an influence on their style and Swingers is a strong example of that. The directors star in the film but are billed as Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, the lead actors from the 1996 indie film Swingers. That seems to be the end of any sort of connection between the two works. Daniel Scheinert swings while Kwan pushes him. Reality is suddenly broken when Scheinert becomes suspended in mid-air. Kwan investigates only to have momentum restored and Scheinert is slammed into him. The result is a very primitive digital face swap and the two characters devolving into screaming nonsense. Every element of the short film is very reminiscent of Tim & Eric’s twisted deconstruction of comedy into its “stupidest” elements.

Happy Holidays (2010)

Here we have a twisted video Christmas card that tells a complete story. A young boy eagerly descends the stairs to begin tearing into his presents from under the tree. However, the presents are living being and he is leading a genocide. Presents run screaming from his grasp as his parents smiling dotingly over him. What makes this video particularly in line with the tropes of Daniels is the twist at the point you might think the video has ended. The presents rebel and begin violently attacking the family. There are some very dynamic uses of focus zoom in the opening and animation effect of the presents is done very well.

Dogboarding (2011)

This short film is yet another a collaboration between Daniels and Foster the People (It won’t be the last). It also plays with the idea of a living thing being used an inanimate object. In this instance, that is dogs as skateboards and inline skates. This feels much more experimental and a test of special effects. No plot or story, just people skating on dogs.

Puppets (2011)

This short starts out as a fairly cliche date scene between a man and a woman. Then we get the reveal that they are people puppets Daniels are operating to film a scene with. From there it devolves into a special effects slapstick fight. There is the trademark escalation into cartoon style violence and the reveal of layers of reality beneath the surface. Like Dogboarding, this feels more like playing with special effects than an actual story.

Comic Book Review – Paper Girls Volume 1

Paper Girls Volume 1 (Image Comics)

Writer: Brian K. Vaughan | Artist: Cliff Chiang
Purchase this book here!

PaperGirls_Vol01-1 I had no idea what Paper Girls was, not even who wrote or drew it. I just saw the cover and thought that looks interesting. To my joyous surprise, I learned it was written by Brian K. Vaughan (Saga, Y the Last Man, Lost) and illustrated by Cliff Chiang (Wonder Woman, Tales of the Unexpected). I also had wondered what the title meant by “Paper Girls” and found it was so clear I should have figured it out: They are girls who deliver papers.

Paper Girls is a story set in 1988 and begins with its focus on Erin, a 12-year old paper girl going about her route in the pre-dawn darkness of November 1st. She runs into a trio of fellow paper girls who help her deal with some neighborhood bullies and things get…weird. Mysterious shrouded ninjas. A fleshy Cronenberg-esque device hidden in the basement of a home under construction. Pterodactyls. These are just some of the things our protagonists come across in the first arc of the series.

I hadn’t planned to read this right in the wake of finishing Netflix’s Stranger Things, but I’m very glad I did. It ended up being the perfect compliment and spotlighted a bit rougher edge to the 1980s. The girls in this series are a great balance between childhood badass posturing and vulnerability in the face of the unknown. It’s always grating if a series tries to present a tough girl or guy without layers and dimensions, but here we get to learn a lot about how each of these characters thinks as they put through some extreme and bizarre situations.

Vaughan is able to balance some pretty wild elements with grounded real life problems. While there are strange masked creatures wandering the neighborhood he takes the time to have a paper girl deal with her alcoholic step-mother. The visuals by Chiang are remarkable. He creates the sense of those early morning dawn hours so perfectly. And setting the story the morning after Halloween allows many characters to appear in costume and adds to the visual strangeness of the story.

The actual meat and potatoes plot of the first five issues is pretty crazy. I won’t go into a ton of detail but the series definitely goes places I wasn’t expecting. It was also refreshing to pick up a comic I had zero hype or real knowledge about and be delighted to find such a well-told story. Image Comics has become one of those companies that I am willing to do that more and more with. Their move to a home for stand alone creator-owned projects makes them a fertile soil for some of the best non-superhero comics work out there right now.

Much like Vaughan’s Saga, there is an immediate sense that this is the first chapter in a much larger and sprawling story. Tonally we’ll end up with something very different, more grounded but still with those more outlandish elements. If you are suffering from a lack of Stranger Things and wanting a wonderful companion piece, find this volume.
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Great Books You Should Read #1

The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier

celia I became a lover of Jorge Luis Borges’ writing in college. If you’re not familiar, he was an Argentinian writer who trafficked mostly in short stories that evoked magic realism and played with the ideas of authorship, fiction, and meta-reality. Brockmeier doesn’t get as deeply academic as Borges would, but still touches upon the same ideas. The Truth About Celia begins with the mysterious disappearance of the title character, the daughter of science fiction author Christopher Brooks. The book’s structure is that of a collection of short stories written in the seven years since she vanished that revolve around that tragedy. Some are directly about Celia other opt to explore more fantastical spaces.

At one point, Brooks latches onto the medieval legend of the green children of Woolpit, a supposedly true event where two strange green-skinned children showed up in a village speaking an unknown language and only consuming particular foods. The fictional author Brooks composes a story where his Celia is one of these lost children, tossed through time into the past. Another story involves the toy phone in her bedroom ringing one night and Brooks engaging in a series of conversations with her.

Celia is a very sad story, but a very rewarding one. It’s not a novel about the investigation of a child’s disappearance and very little closure ever comes in the book. It is a story about how people cope with tragedy, particularly parents when they lose their children. Brooks’ fiction becomes his tool to his heal his pain and invent infinite lives for his daughter.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Wind-Up-Bird-Chronicle I picked this novel off the shelf at a bookstore my sophomore year of college knowing absolutely nothing about it. Over a decade and a dozen books later I consider Japanese author Haruki Murakami one of our greatest living writers. Murakami is unlike anyone else you will ever read and has always felt more like film than literature. He’s about setting a mood and examining characters in their spaces. He’s about hinting at mystery and fantasy but never letting the lens explore it too closely.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle begins with protagonist Toru Okada’s cat running away. Okada begins searching his neighborhood and discovers the boarded up house next door and it’s well. Poking around the property leads him into encounters with a psychic prostitute, a teenage girl obsessed with the macabre, a veteran of World War II, and a truly evil politician. The novel operates as a series of interconnected vignettes and has a lot of Murakami’s common tropes. His main characters are wanderers and observers, they are passive to the point of frustration at many moments. But within that passivity is a sense of peace and stillness. Characters exist in the moment, conversations become the chief action of the story.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

Blood-Meridian I was in the dorms the summer between my sophomore and junior year when I read this novel. I was blown away. It was my first encounter with Cormac McCarthy and I knew I had read one of the great American works of literature. Surprisingly, this is a variation on the story of Davy Crockett. That is never clear but if you are familiar with some of the tropes you begin to see them underneath the surface. The story follows a character known only as The Kid born under mysterious signs who encounter a powerful figure known as Judge Holden. Holden becomes a recurring figure throughout the novel and might possibly the Devil. The Kid ends up working to help expand America into the west by exterminating Apaches. The landscape becomes a surreal nightmare plane seen through the eyes of the Kid. Blood Meridian is one of those pieces of literature that you must imagine nearly killed the author to write. It is supremely intense, violent, and sprawling. It outright spits in the face of the romantic Western genre by making us seeing the horrible brutality and biblical horror of a lost time.

Podcasts You Should Be Listening To #2

Tanis (Pacific Northwest Stories, Hosted by Nic Silver)

tanis While I really don’t enjoy found footage horror films, when the genre is applied to literature or, in this case, audio drama, it works much better in my opinion. The premise of Tanis is that journalist Nic Silver is attempting to uncover what Tanis, a word mentioned in a myriad of sources, is. Is it a person, a place? Why are famous occultists obsessed with it? How does it connect to other urban legends and modern horrors? If you are a fan of slow burning, very creepy, conspiracy theory stories Tanis will provide you with many hours of entertainment. Currently, Season 1 (12 episodes) is available with Season 2 on its seventh of 12 total episodes.

Filmspotting (WBEZ Chicago, Hosted by Adam Kempenaar & Adam Larsen)

filmspotting This was the first movie podcast I ever listened to starting way back in 2005. At the time it was Adam and Sam Van Hallgren hosting, but the latter has moved on to a producing role. No matter the hosts, the film has always maintained a high level of discussion about film. Kempenaar is an instructor at the University of Chicago and Larsen spent over a decade reviewing films for the Chicago Sun-Times. Both men have a very deep knowledge of film and work to spotlight picture beyond what has currently opened at the cineplex. This podcast has probably been the biggest inspiration to my love of film introducing me to filmmakers like Wim Wenders, John Cassavetes, and Robert Altman. Even if you have an extensive film knowledge you will learn something from listening to this series.

How Did This Get Made? (Earwolf, Hosted by Paul Scheer, June Diane-Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas)

how did this get made Inspired by Mystery Science Theater 3000 and a plethora of books detailing the “worst films ever made” these three comedians and actors set out to make a series where they explored travesties of cinema in depth. Episode One spotlighted Burlesque; Christina Aguilera and Cher’s gaudy passion project. From there they have looked at films like The Last Airbender, Masters of the Universe, and Zardoz. Some particular highlights have been A View to a Kill, Glitter, and the god awful sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive. A very high energy podcast that has very charismatic and witty hosts that make watching bad films a pleasure.

With Special Guest, Lauren Lapkus (Earwolf, Hosted by…?)

Lauren Lapkus had become a staple on Comedy Bang Bang thanks to her variety of characters. When she decided to start her own podcast instead of hosting she opted to make the host rotating and to play a different character on each episode. This lets the guest come up with the concept of the show, the topic of conversation and even the basics of Lapkus’ own character. In fact, Lapkus doesn’t know any of this information until they start recording the episode and loves being made to improvise it all on the spot. A nice surprising podcast that never fails to present something unique and funny.

Daniels – Selected Music Videos Part 2

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Foster the People – “Houdini” (2011)

Daniels seem to have a very positive working relationship with the band Foster the People, with this being their second video together. Here the band plays themselves getting killed second into the video. They are turned into elaborate puppets controlled by the music studio. Very quickly they turn into a late 90s style boy band and everyone involved in the production couldn’t be happier.The marionette motif would turn up again in Swiss Army Man as part of Paul Dano’s education on life to Daniel Radcliffe.

The human body is a durable and pliable object. Slow motion is mixed with explosions and violent movement by the human body. The narrative is not overly complex but does have a clear structure. It should be noted Daniels are characters in the video but played by actors.

The Shins – “Simple Song” (2012)

Very overtly comedic with some sentimentality woven through it, Simple Song is probably the most complex video and my personal favorite of Daniels. Once again, the band are characters in the fiction of the video. A family gathers to watch the video of their deceased patriarch played by band frontman James Mercer. The story cuts between present day, where the adult children violently search the house for a deed, and the past, where we learn why these children have such a strong hatred of their late father. The line between past and present is blurred and eventually characters meet their past and present selves. In some moments the past is represented through home video footage, which I believe is standard film footage digitally filtered to appear like the older style of media complete with tracking line and static.

As always, and becoming more frequent and honed in their work, are the explosions of debris and dust with bodies flailing through the air. We briefly glimpse a singing corpse, tying back to the animation of the dead in “Houdini” and looking forward to Swiss Army Man. The video’s themes are heavily influenced by the work of director Wes Anderson, particularly The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited.

Tenacious D – “Rize of the Fenix” (2012)

While there are the touches of Daniels’ personal style in this video, it is more heavily influenced by Tenacious D’s established comedic tone which was developed alongside their longtime collaborator, Liam Lynch. The premise of the video is that of a rough cut, not intended for public viewing yet. The video starts out normal enough but about a minute in we begin to see unfinished special effects, placeholder effects & art, and exposed green screen. Some images even have their stock photo watermarks stamped on them. Digital crowds of fans are obviously cut and pasted.

The lyrics and visuals of the video emphasize the slight negative aftermath of The Pick of Destiny’s poor performance at the box office. Tenacious D, having a very good sense of humor about themselves, don’t shy away from playing it up as if they are desperate for a comeback. The grand finale of the video where finished effects begin to return reminded me strongly of the work of digital animator Cyriak Harris. A music video where Daniels bring together technique and narrative in perfect synthesis.

Passion Pit – “Cry Like a Ghost” (2013)

Return to the woods and the nightmare of the aftermath of the party. The female protagonist exhibits spontaneous dance and movement. Reality blurs as the intensity of the party increases. Much darker, very little humor in this video. The focus is balanced between the dance of the character and the tragic story around her.

Right away the tone of this video stands in stark contrast to the majority of Daniels work at the time. It seems to go back to pieces like “Underwear” and “Pigeons”, but with more refined technique. Thematically the video deals with the dark side of the late night party atmosphere. A young woman has somehow ended up in the woods and reflects back on what brought her here. She engages in a series of meaningless one-night stands and consumption of alcohol. Her emotions are volatile and erratic. The exact chronology of her encounters becomes more blurred as the video progresses. Daniels never seem to pass judgment over her and the ending of the video leaves her next steps a bit ambiguous.

The story of the video is expressed through two modes. First, the central figure is overwhelmed with the sense of dance and gives into her body’s commands. She dances through scene after scene which is the second element. Through both practical and digital effects, the bars, clubs, and bedrooms erupt from all directions and form around the dancing young woman. Eventually, it culminates with three of her encounters acting as backup dancers to her central performance.

DJ Snake + Lil Jon – “Turn Down For What” (2014)

Likely the most iconic and well known Daniels music video. Here we have the core elements of what most viewers associate with the duo: Powerful and destructive human bodies, sexuality as a dangerous weapon, and lots and lots of dance. The central figure is operating outside societal norms and people react with real terror. However, they become infected with the same frenzy. The dark humor of the video places it as a funnier compliment to Daniels exploration of the dark side of the party scene.

Joywave ft. Kopps – “Tongues” (2014)

Daniels inverts some of their tropes in this NSFW video. We return to the woods where a group of people shed their clothes and dance about in the woods. They are stalked by hunters whose weapons launch clothes onto their victims. The nude revelers manage to turn the tide and begin stripping down their assailants. There’s even a star-crossed romance between a hunter and a nudist which turns into a B-horror film to bring the video to a close. A very interesting divergence from Daniels’ work up to this point. However, the explosion of clothes harkens back to the performance of Daniel Kwan in “Underwear”.