I was watching this movie that I’m pretty sure Jaime Kennedy directed or produced or whatever, since it mostly followed him. It was called “Heckler”, and it was about heckling. It was trying to understand the motivations of hecklers by talking with some of them, and talking with many famous people that’ve been heckled in one way or another. It also dealt with film critics.
Here’s my problem with it, and it’s funny to me, because the concept of the film is interesting and if well done, I wouldn’t be critiquing it like this. The whole film comes off as Jamie Kennedy having had his feelings hurt and he’s trying to understand why it happens. When he interviews hecklers, the editing afterwards is clearly intended to make them look stupid (asking them their jobs and listing them, as if what job you have is a qualification for thinking something sucks). Except instead of on stage, where at least he can react to them, they have no legitimate way to heckle him back, because it’s a film. How hypocritical.
Other parts have celebrities that make fools of themselves on a regular basis, like Paris Hilton, reacting to what people say about her and so on. Why should anyone care? Yeah, she’s a famous person. She got famous from being a dumbass, and if she doesn’t like being known as a dumbass, perhaps she should stop doing stupid things on a regular basis? How often do you see Natalie Portman getting ripped on in mainstream media? Not that damn often, since she comes off as a classy lady.
I generally separate hecklers (let’s just say anyone that critiques/trashtalks) into two catagories (this is very dumbed down but this entry is long enough). One, a catagory of people unwilling to attempt anything themselves who heckle because they’re miserable people. Two, people who heckle/critique because they know someone could do a lot better. People who enjoy laughing at others making a fool of themselves can fall into either catagory (which was what Cosfu was about, or at least, it was for me!).
One of the people in the film was involved with Batman Forever and after he heard the people saying it sucked, his defence was “it’s just a comic book movie”. That kind of attitude is such fucking shit. Saying that in a year when Dark Knight came out and smashed the box office into pieces should make him realize what a bullshit statement it was. The former shows an example of someone who embraced mediocrity and the latter shows a team of people that loved a project so much that they made an amazing blockbuster, regardless of it’s “comic book” origins. I can’t stand that, when someone works on something but clearly doesn’t give a shit or have any respect for it, so they release utter garbage.
Here’s an idea, work on stuff you’re proud of and try your best, and then it won’t matter if people critique you, and you won’t have to make a crappy film about it. Also, Jaime Kennedy is an awful comedian and I hate standup more than ever because a lot of the people they interviewed were little baby princesses.
