Two More Socks for Miller & Mullet

This past weekend, we completed two more appearances, our third and fourth, on Ed & Red’s Night Party. Back in December, I had written about our second appearance and our experience in a multi-camera situation.

Our third appearance is a cameo, at the end of an episode where Ed the Sock has decided to sell his studio and has allowed potential buyers to look at the place while they’re shooting. We cap this gag with our arrival with our bags packed at the end of the episode, and we may appear in the closing credits, fighting beside the desk. As in our earlier appearances, the producers gave us a very loose description of what we were to do (a cue line and the instructions to fight beside the desk), so we went out and did it. It was fun, but I don’t think it was as good as our earlier appearances. Maybe the editing will prove me wrong—I’m going on my gut response to what we did without having seen the raw or edited results. I think I wasn’t fully prepared for the cameo, and I think it will show. Mullet said he wasn’t comfortable with it, either. But it’s in the can, and the only thing to do is learn from the experience and move on.

Mullet has plenty of improv experience, so he’s more adept at winging it. But I’ve always worked better in situations where I plan things out in advance, like with a script. As a duo, we realized after the cameo that collectively we work better with a plan.

Our fourth appearance is our first appearance in a sketch rather than as part of the show itself, so the producers gave us more structure this time. Without giving too much away, we were part of a parody of high culture, ballet to be specific.

The producers shot it before the actual episode as an isolated segment. This meant we didn’t have to worry about any cues outside of the sketch itself. After the dinner break, we went into the studio to work it out and shoot it.

They’d told us the day before what we were to do in the sketch, so we’d had time to start thinking about what we were going to do. We talked over what I would do and what Mullet would do and what our motivations would be. We came up with a pretty good idea of the beats we’d follow, who would do what and when. If the sketch was to change, we’d have to rethink things, but we were prepared, at least, to adapt our plan or come up with something new, if needed.

We weren’t alone in the sketch—there were 6 others appearing on-camera (Liana K., 3 of the bikini girls, and 2 dancers)—so we had some logistics to work out on top of the beats of the sketch itself.

At first, we went with the two dancers to the studio floor with the director and the crew. The dancers worked out their moves with the music and then Mullet and I walked through what we had planned. Everyone laughed at the right times, so we knew we’d made the right plan.

We had to change one thing—I was facing away from the closeup camera, so I had to turn to my left instead of my right. Not a big deal—Mullet helped by approaching me on my left side. A few more walkthroughs and we were ready to go.

We got to use breakaway props for the first time. We had enough props to do one take, so we didn’t even rehearse with them. When the props were unpacked and placed on the set, the producer made sure cast and crew knew where they were and that they were fragile. Fortunately, the props broke in the sketch and not before.

I liked one of our final rehearsals—it got a laugh from the rest of the people on the floor, and it felt good. We did one more to make sure the cameras were in the right place, and then it was time to go to work.

Liana and one of the girls introduced the segment, the dancers danced, the other bikini girls heralded my entrance, I did my thing, Mullet came out and did his thing, we broke the props, and it was done. All in one take with all four cameras on our set. I ended the sketch on the floor, trying not to breath hard after a bit of a workout, until they’d made sure everything in the trailer was okay. Then we were done.

I liked that second-last rehearsal better than the actual take, but I was working to the audience of cast and crew in the rehearsal—that laughter wasn’t there during the take because they’re all doing their jobs when the tape is rolling. We did get applause backstage from the other people there, so it must have looked good on the monitor there.

I’m looking forward to seeing both performances. Watch our website www.millerandmullet.com or join our Facebook page for updates on airdates.

Walk Hard: the Review

Happy New Year! This week, I’m posting a review—the software testing is going slow with all the holiday distractions, but I hope to have enough done to post some results next week.

Mullet and I saw Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story this weekend. It likely won’t stay in the theatres that long as it failed to make the top 10 box office list, which is sad.
The movie itself is a really good parody of the music-related bio-pics that have come out in recent years, particularly the Johnny Cash bio Walk the Line, along with a swipe or two at the Ray Charles bio Ray. Walk Hard also references Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson, as well as portraying The Beatles, Elvis, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper.

I thought about my favourite comedic music-related movie, This is Spinal Tap, afterwards, and I realized that there was something missing. Don’t get me wrong--Walk Hard is funny (the punk song, the Beatles, and the angel-dust freakout being my favourite scenes), but it wasn’t a great comedy like Spinal Tap is.

Webster’s online dictionary defines parody as:

a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule..

It also defines satire as:

1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

The difference, for me, between Spinal Tap and Walk Hard is that Spinal Tap is a satire of the then-dominant heavy metal/hard rock segment of rock music in the 1980’s, and Walk Hard is a parody of musical biographies. Spinal Tap shows a heavy metal band on the brink of extinction, with interal dissent, led by their slighty-smarter manager, through a North American tour in support of an album that few outside the band seem to want to hear. Gigs are cancelled or changed to smaller venues, the set list changes to older material, and the manager eventually leaves in favour of the lead singer’s girlfriend. Only a place on the Japanese charts and a subsequent tour keeps them together in the end. Throughout the movie, the music business is ridiculed by showing a rotating cast of record company personnel, promoters, radio, and retailers spark, mismanage, or barely survive mishap after mishap. The band’s personalities collide frequently, with large egos battered and bruised as they take 2nd place to a puppet show and end up at an Air Force dance. Spinal Tap is not a parody of anything else other than rock documentaries of life on the road, but as a satire it shows no mercy.

Walk Hard, on the other hand, mocks not the subject of the musical bios but the bios themselves. It mocks the plot and characters of Walk the Line most of the time, but breaks it up with parodies of Brian Wilson’s wall-of-sound 60’s burnout, Dylan’s wordplay, the Beatles’ trip to India, and even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. You could argue that Walk Hard holds up human vices and follies to ridicule (Dewey’s drug addictions, multiple wives and children, etc), but when the movie does so it is lifting something from Walk the Line and exaggerating it for comedic effect.

The poster itself parodies The Doors original poster and DVD artwork, but, alas, there is no walk in the desert for Dewey, nor do we get a chance to see him confront the rise and fall of disco, punk (aside from a drug-fuelled romp through his biggest hit), New Wave, hair metal, boy bands, etc., etc. A satire certainly would have done so, but the parody has to follow the path of its target, so we skip from the 70’s to the 90’s via a hilarious transition device that I’m not going to spoil here.

Parodies have returned with a vengeance the last few years (Epic Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, Scary Movie, etc., etc.), but there have been very few satires by comparison. Scream satirized the horror genre, and itself was parodied by Scary Movie. Walk Hard avoids the gag a minute frenzy of those movies (and the earlier parodies like Airplane! and the Naked Gun series). This, however, seemed to confuse some of the audience we were part of—a few walked hard for the exits, actually. Knowing the sources of parody helped, to be sure, but these people were not in the mood to sit and wait for the jokes.

There are some great comedic performances in Walk Hard. John C. Reilly, a great character actor in both dramas and comedies, proves he can carry a movie (and sing). Jenna Fischer is also great in this as the femme slightly-fatale, as is Tim Meadows as Dewey’s longtime drummer. The four men playing the Beatles steal their scene effortlessly, as does Jack White as a knife-packing young Elvis Presley.

Go see movie. It’s better than recent parodies, but it’s not on the level of a Spinal Tap.