This past weekend I sat down with
three comedic talents from the upcoming film, Rapture-Palooza; Craig Robinson,
Rob Corddry, and Rob Huebel. The press junket was held at a hotel, as they
often are. This time it was in Beverly
Hills
The interviews were to be held in
hotel room which had tables and chairs in place of beds. Waiting for the talent
to arrive, I found myself needing to use the facilities, releasing that fancy
water from the oblong-shaped bottle back out to sea. As luck would have it, I
was exiting the restroom at the same moment that Corddry was entering the room.
As is the case in nearly every hotel I have ever been in, the restroom is
located near the room’s only entrance, so Corddry and I had an awkward shuffle.
As we sat down, Corddry asked how long I had been in the restroom. I looked at
him with complete seriousness and responded, “I’ve been in there since last
night. This is my hotel room. I have no idea what is going on.”
There was a great deal of joking when
I talked to these three guys. Robinson even broke into a little impromptu
singing when discussing his improvised vocal riffs in the film, but there was a
serious aspect to the interviews as well. The film is a comedy, but one which
was filmed during a time that some seriously believed there was a possibility
it would soon come true. It is a film about the coming of the end of times, and
the production took place during the May 21st predictions of 2011.
On the evening before, director Paul Middleditch made an announcement to his
cast and crew, saying “if I don’t see you on Monday, obviously they were
right.”
It is no secret that when Hollywood
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| James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, and Danny McBride in This Is the End (2013) |
Rob Corddry has been in three
post-apocalyptic comedies recently, including last year’s Seeking a Friend at
the End of the World and the zombie romance, Warm Bodies. Craig Robinson has
two out this year. As Corddry puts it, “We as a people are obsessed with our
own mortality.” But how is it that this obsession has become so humorous in the
past year? Rob Huebel informed me with deadpan expression that he believes the
end of the world is “probably going to happen this year.” Could he be right? Or
is there another explanation for this sudden shift into apocalyptic comedy.
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| Rob Corddry as a zombie in Warm Bodies |
In Hollywood Genre: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System, Thomas Schatz proves that film genres are both a ‘static’
and ‘dynamic’ system. What this simply means is that there are elements of
films, of all genres and sub-genres, which will always remain the same as long
as those particular films continue to be made. Conversely, there are aspects of
a genre which are forever in flux.
Schatz agrees with a “lifespan” of genres as
stated by Henri Focillon in The Life of
Forms in Art. This lifespan plays out in stages after the genre first
appears in films. The first is “an experimental
stage, during which the conventions are isolated and established”.The
second stage, the classic stage, is
described by Schatz as a time when the conventions are “mutually understood by
artist and audience”. These are the films that conform to the expectations from
the experimental stage. The third
stage is the age of refinement,
“during which certain formal and stylistic details embellish the form”. During
this stage, the films are becoming more self-aware. Style replaces substance,
as the substance becomes more familiar to audiences. Reviews for Oblivion have praised the visual
appearance of the sci-fi apocalypse blockbuster, while the film’s plot seems a
hodgepodge of many similar films.
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| Book of Eli |
The final stage is a baroque stage, “when the form and its
embellishments are accented to the point where they themselves become the
‘substance or ‘content’ of the work. These are the films that can only exist
with the knowledge of previous genre patterns. This is where the apocalyptic
comedies seem to be coming in recently. When the initial wave of apocalypse
films popped up, the emphasis was on the fear and hopelessness of the
situation. In films such as The Road,
Book of Eli and countless zombie
films, the future looked bleak and the end of the world was no laughing matter,
but these movies work as a cathartic tool for helping society to address
specific social anxieties, making it possible for the arrival of a new wave of
films which allow us to laugh at these same fears. “Religion, and God, and the
Apocalypse is a real fascination for me,” admitted Coddry, “so it’s fun to
pepper that with F-bombs.”
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| Rapture-Palooza |
But even the comedians can appreciate
the reason for the new wave of these films. Work is work, and as Corddry puts
it, “if you’re gonna throw a dart a movie, you’re gonna hit an end of the world
one.” Screenwriter Chris Matheson (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) created
a film about The Rapture in Rapture-Palooza,
but it is also in many ways a satire about the state of modern America
Even though the film was on a
“micro-budget” and was shot in only 18 days in Canada
Rapture-Palooza will be released in theaters on June 7th, 2013.
Rapture-Palooza will be released in theaters on June 7th, 2013.
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