Alphabetical Movie – Look Who’s Talking
I think I set a record with the Look Who’s Talking trilogy.
As has happened a few times before, I was gifted this trilogy of films by a friend who enjoys the fact that I’m a stickler for the rules of the Alphabetical movie project. If I own the movie, I will watch it.
Even if I hate it.
So what better way to screw me over than to give me a trilogy of films that get progressively worse until you reach one that is inexplicably awful. How it failed to kill John Travolta’s career (again) is beyond me. Kirstie Alley’s career has always been beyond me.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
Alphabetical Movie – Lolita
Since Lolita is a story about pedophilia, I’m going to tell a story about pedophilia.
Doing Vilification Tennis at the Renaissance Festival is a dicey proposition. We are doing a show that is pretty vile and vulgar and the audience likes it that way. However, we are doing it at a venue that is advertised as appropriate for all ages. That means you have to walk a pretty mean balancing act between offensive humor and trying to ensure parents who are walking by don’t have to explain too much to their kids later. Because parents hate that. More on that later.
Most days I think we do an admirable job of walking that tighrope. Every now and again, though, there is a complaint. I take the complaints seriously and I do my best to keep the performers from getting out of hand. Our show is best if we flirt with the line without merrily skipping across it.
On occasion, we get an instruction from the festival management about the kind of material they would like us to avoid. Most of the time, the request is a little odd and when I ask for clarification, I find it was one joke that caused the problem.
Thoughts about a Successful Failure
Sometimes you come up with an idea for a show and it seems to fit perfectly with your vision as a company. You think you have a great idea how to approach it. The audience laughs and you feel you had a success.
And in one way, you did. Most of the audience left the theatre thinking your show was hilarious. You can’t please everyone so it is foolish to try. However, it is the way in which you displease those audience members that says a lot about the success or failure of your show.
Friday’s Vilification Tennis show was, by most measures, a success. We only had one structure that didn’t work and we got a lot of laughs. Most of the people who left the theatre thought it was a very funny show and they told us so.
Not so the people who left the theatre early. Clearly we crossed a line that made them uncomfortable. Too uncomfortable to stay in the theatre.
New Vilification Tennis Silliness
We’ve been having a few problems with the Vilification Tennis website as of late so updates have been slow to come. This week, though, we have managed to get things a little bit sorted out and there is some new stuff to read and listen to.
Specifically, I wrote a new Movie Dick article about the Oscars. I think it captures the averager person’s opinion of the Oscars pretty well.
There’s also a new Vilification Tennis podcast that involves a whole lot of misogyny in preparation for our February show, the White Male Priviledge show. Don’t worry. It’s ironic misogyny. That makes it better, right?
New Show art!
I’ve not been showing off art for shows the last couple of months because the last two Vilification show posters are good but got thrown together at the last minute. For the March shows, we got a little ahead of the game for the first time in a while.
The March Vilification Tennis show is one of my favorites – the Game Show. I love putting this show together and I love performing it. We all do. It’s one of the reasons we have it on our schedule every year.
My biggest problem is balancing the number of performers who want to appear in the show with the number of performers I can reasonably cast.
Well, it’s coming up and again and to celebrate, here’s the art by John Newstrom! Also, here is a link to show information!
It is Monday Morning – Must be Time to Gloat
It’s been over a month since we recorded a Vilification Tennis podcast and even though we were tired as hell, we decided we should record it after the Fearless launch party on Saturday. This could have been a horrible decision had the event been a disastrous failure.
The event was instead a huge success. Thanks to a great many people, we raised better than half of our operating budget for the year and it is rumored that the wacky comedy to which we subjected our audience was both wacky and comedic.
All things considered, we were blown away by the success of the event. That meant we were pretty euphoric when we recorded the podcast. Which beats the alternative. Eric had also prepared humus and salsa. That goes a long way to creating a positive podcasting environment.
So if you are a fan of the podcast, you should listen to this week’s episode. I think we were somewhat amusing.
Monday morning comedy – The Flashback version
I have a new Movie Dick article up over at the Vilification Tennis website today.
Actually, it was up last Monday but the site was down for the majority of the week so you didn’t have the pleasure of reading my witty observations on last year’s most popular movies. Now you can do so!
I know you are sick of 2012 “best of” lists and that is really what the article is all about. So please read and have a chuckle or two.
New Monday Morning Silliness
This week’s Vilification Tennis web updates include a few new things by yours truly. The re-make of Red Dawn naturally inspired me to think about what the next re-make of Red Dawn might be like. So I wrote a Movie Dick article about it.
We also recorded a podcast right after our Vilification Tennis show on Friday night. It’s a little bit different from most of our podcasts. We skipped fucked up news and spent a while talking about the show we’d just done. We also talked about a lot of other comedy ideas, including rape jokes. Seriously – trigger warning. If that is the sort of thing that bothers you, I would hope you have already decided not to listen to our podcasts.
Matt got on a roll near the end of the podcast that will either offend the hell out of you or entertain you. I can’t say which. If you like it, great. If you don’t keep in mind he hit his head pretty hard earlier that evening.
Art for January’s Vilification Tennis Show
So for January, our theme is gambling. I’m actually looking forward to some of the crazy structures we’ll come up with for that show. As a f’rinstance, all of the participants will be determined by drawing ping pong balls. Theoretically, someone could show up for the show and never perfrom.
I’d laugh my ass off if that happened.
I’ve managed to toss artwork to a few extra people this year and Geoffrey Brown came up with the logo for this show. Check it!
Monday Morning Comedy Orgy!
Lots of new content over at Vilification Tennis this morning and I had a hand in most of it!
First, you can check out an article I wrote about the aftermath of the recent election.
You can also read a new Movie Dick article that explores the most important reason for the success of Skyfall.
And finally, we have recorded a Vilification Tennis Podcast at the convention. It was recorded late at night and everyone was pretty drunk. And by “pretty drunk,” I mean “completely wasted.”
So please listen, read and enjoy!
Grail Diary 