Well, my favorite was Jane Lynch as “Laurie Bohner”. That had to be the perkiest portrayal of an ex-porn star I’ve ever seen. And when she explained the tenets of W.I.N.C. (“Witches In Nature’s Colors”), I just lost it.
(Christopher Guest seems to like saddling Ms Lynch with double-entendre character names. She was “Christy Cummings” in Best in Show.)
Nope, I heard it on the show New Ground hosted by Chris Douridas (who also worked as music supervisor on movies like “American Beauty” and the upcoming “Down With Love”.)
For those of you hearing Folksmen songs besides those in the movie, be aware that McKean/Shearer/Guest have been performing as the Folksmen since the Spinal Tap days. They performed on SNL in 1984.
My favorite thing about A Might Wind was the return of Harry Shearer to the troupe. He has some of the funniest lines.
The music really kicked ass, too. I liked The Folksmen songs the best; I was pissed that the New Main Street Singers did Never Did No Wanderin’ because the Folksmen did it so much better.
SolGrundy said:
“I never would’ve thought Eugene Levy could sing.”
Levy sang a couple of ditties with his “wife” in Best in Show, and they harmonized really well.
And if this movie has Parker Posey in it, I’m going!
Singing partner & I just saw it with our respective wives. Many slow bits, but the funny bits were FUNNY! The music was spot on–the harmonies were exactly what they should have been, and the playing was perfect. The concert at the end was wonderful. We were humming:
Well, there’s a puppy in the parlor and a skillet on the stove
And a smelly old blanket that a Navajo wove
JohnM: Run, do not walk, to the nearest place you can get the DVD of Waiting for Guffman. Break in if you have to. Watch the additional material!
“These pants are so big I could wear them backwards!”
PS Does anyone know whose art collection is in Steinbloom’s office? My wife, the professional artist, totally lost her breath. Millions of dollars worth of painting–maybe more, she says.
You said it. I want to change my answer. I was re-watching Best in Show the other night, and it didn’t even click with me until then that it was the same actress. Most of the others, you get the sense that they’re improvising, constantly trying to come up with a funny line, but she seems as if she’s really that person, or at least that her entire part’s been scripted. She even knows exactly the right time to wink.
(One funny bit from Best in Show I’d forgotten about; when they’re doing the morning talk show, the first thing she says to the host is “You’re so short!” but delivers it so cheerfully. Exactly the kind of unintentionally emasculating thing her character would say.)
It was really cute, but…
There’s a lot to satirize about folk music, and this movie inda backed off of it; a three-minute song by Tom Lehrer packed more satirical punch than this whole movie.
–Folkies cultivate toe-scuffing hayseed personas, but most of the prominent ones are well-heeled graduates of elite universities. You wouldn’t know it from A Mighty Wind. This has to be the single biggest possible target for satire about folk music!
–They make really embarrassing political gaffes. Pete Seeger is the most notorious in this regard, but I think Peter Yarrow topped him by, within a week, signing public petitions that supported both sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Eh, I should make my own damn movie on the subject.
I just heard about this movie yesterday (not living in one of the “selected cities” it’s playing currently). I remembered the Folksmen from a Spinal Tap “sequel” (not really a true sequel, more of a concert film/continuation of the original) that I had seen. They were sort of the “opening act” for Tap. I thought then that the group would make a good movie.
“This is Spinal Tap” is, to me, one of the funniest movies ever made. I liked “Waiting for Guffman” and “Best in Show” too, but I didn’t feel they matched up. Maybe it’s because, to me, the cliche rock references make the film. If I knew more about dog shows or small-time theater, maybe I’d find those other two films funnier.
Mrs. Z and I saw this last weekend.
We both felt that it was very good but not as good as Guffman or Best in Show. I think the main problem was that there was very little dramatic tension in the overall story. Best in Show had the dog show. Guffman had putting on the play and waiting to see if Guffman (shouldn’t that have been McGuffan?) would show up. But this really had very little in that department. Also there were really too many characters so many of them got very little screen time. (Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge) Their stories don’t really develope they way the stories do in Best in Show.
I also read where originally the Folksmen (the Spinal Tap guys folk band) did a folk version of What a Feeling from Flashdance. I really wanted to hear that but it wasn’t in the film.
Heh. Saw it yesterday and loved it!
Wonder if Mitch was that spacey back in his glory days.
How did Jennifer Coolidge’s character get her job? Sleep her way in?
I was surprised that they left out the whole political dimension; I knew very little about folk music, associating it with Bob Dylan and radical politics.
I think Christopher Guest’s humor has been getting more and more desperate. Spinal Tap was a great film. There’s a lot to make jokes about in rock music and there’s even more to make fun of in rock documentaries. Spinal Tap sounded like it was by someone who knew about the rock music scene and knew what deserved parody.
Waiting for Guffman was weaker. What does Guest know about small-town celebrations? I remember years ago going to a play put on by a small city to celebrate its 150-th anniversary, and it was well written and well acted. It struck me that Guest decided that he knew that all small-town people are dumb hicks, so he didn’t have to do any research for the film.
Best in Show was weaker still. I can’t think of anything less ripe for parody than dog shows. The only remotely interesting character in the film was the character played by Guest himself. Guest really hates most of his characters.
A Mighty Wind was even further from reality than the others. In some sense it was funnier than Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show because the characters were so surreal that they could be appreciated for that surreality, but that meant that any pretense that it was an accurate parody went out the window. If you want to parody something, you actually have to understand it. It was clear in Spinal Tap that the filmmakers understood and liked rock music. The group Spinal Tap were basically decent guys, not particularly smart perhaps, but the sort of musicians who think that they have to keep a band going long after any reasonable amount of popularity (let alone anything interesting in the music) is gone. You sympathized with them even when you thought they were more than a little stupid. There was nothing in the three folk groups in A Mighty Wind that made you sympathize with them. They only superficially resembled any real folk groups.
Christopher Guest needs to find something else to do with his life.
I think Christopher Guest’s humor has always been desperate. But I think it’s still funny. I particularly enjoyed the music and the goofy lyrics in Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind–but then, I’m a musician.
Re: Guffman
It’s hard to see how one would make a comedy about a well-written, well-made play.
Re: Best in Show
It’s not about dog shows, it’s about people. Of course, it’s hard to take seriously anyone who is so involved in showing dogs that they don’t have anything resembling a real life–but that’s true of anyone who gets so involved in one particular activity…
Not that I know, but I don’t get the impression that Guest hates his characters; I think he loves them. They’re so totally clueless but they somehow manage to achieve something, or believe they do, anyway.
Tap: His band reforms and tours because they have a hit single. BiS: He wins the dog show. Guffman: He produces the play and it’s a success. Wind: His group was famous once, and is gigging again.
He may not be making parodies any more, but they’re still funny (in spots, I’ll admit).
I think attempting to compare these three films to Tap is misguided, because the earlier film is very much a parody (although not a pointed one); the later films aren’t really – they’re just pictures of people living small lives, but they’re really funny.
I thought Wind took a while to get going, but once it started chugging it was the best of the three, and also was the one least afraid of doing drama – in particular the Mitch & Mickey scenes.
Yesterday I read an interview with Parker Posey about the film, the final cut of which she had not yet seen. She noted that some of the troupe were disappointed by how small their parts were in Best in Show, and I felt sad to think of how she’s going to have the same experience when she sees this one. (They shoot 60-80 hours for these films, and then Guest finds about 90 minutes for the finished product.)
One thing I found amazing was how some of these actors could play such disparate roles – in particular Jane Lynch, who played the ice queen in Best in Show.
–Cliffy
I think the songs written for the film were spot on. They really sounded like the more mainstream folk singers of that era.
Some PBS stations run a folk reunion concert during pledge weeks and you can hear a lot of groups that sound like the Folksmen. It’s pretty scary.
I loved that movie! I’m still chuckling, remember some of the scenes, especially the model train line, the exasperated stage manager swatting the son, and everything with Fred Willard. I’m going to have to go out and see Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman.
The last scene people mentioned to be a little jarring, was, I think, supposed to emphasize the group’s similarity to Peter, Paul, and Mary. The New Main Street Singers were supposed to be the New Christy Minstrels. Mitch and Mindy were … Ian and Sylvia? I’m not sure about that one.
I really liked it, but my dad loved it. I think it was largely because he lived through that era of folk music, and a lot of the humor in Wind is very subtly referencing things that were before my time. Most people have never even heard of the Kingston Trio or of the “couple” singers that Mitch and Mickey were a take-off of. Couple drop-dead laughs:
The model train scene: “I’d like to see…”
Fred Willards first interview and Wha’ Happen?
Fred Willard in public: “Wha’ happen? I guess they shot the mayor…”
Fred Willard whispering in the ear of the head main street singer after his “idea” that just killed me: the rest of that bit seemed desperately goofy, but that little move at the end was priceless.
“…and also a penis”
Thank goodness for model trains…
The press agent lady trying to hum
Both best in show and this movie, however, had clunker endings. Best in Show managed to go the entire movie without resorting to stupid dog jokes: but leg humping was just not up to the standards of that film. Likewise a crossdressing joke. Just lame, overdone, and possibly offensive when being played for laughs.
This movie was no Best in Show. It had some cute moments and some laughs. The songs in Spinal Tap were pretty funny; I didn’t think any of the songs in this one were particularly memorable or witty no matter how “dead on” they were. Would you buy the soundtrack? If they liked the music a little less, they might have made the songs funnier. The costumes were good, though, and I liked the colour spirituality thing.
My singing partner and I will be buying the soundtrack immediately and learning at least 3 songs from it for those Acoustic Open Stage moments. Just for fun, you understand.
My take on the final, “crossdressing,” scene is this: life is change, how it differs from the rocks, but some things go on… (pharaphrased) “I was a balding, bearded folk musician, now I’m a blonde, female folk musician.” It’s the music that’s important!
I just saw this on DVD and loved it. Does anybody else find themselves really enjoying the songs in the piece (especially “Wanderin’” and “Kiss at the End of the Rainbow”)?
I wondered if when the film was still in the early days of shooting if the character of Mitch Cohen was supposed to be as surprisingly touching and tragic as it turned out. That movie was Eugene Levy’s finest moment, proving that he’s great both in comedy and drama (and he and Catherine O’Hara [had they been 10 years older] COULD have made it as 60s folksingers). He should have received an Oscar nomination.
I saw a travel show on cable starring The New Christy Minstrels that HAS to have inspired The New Main Street Singers (speaking of which, I loved Paul Dooley as the group’s lackadaisical original member). And I didn’t find Shearer’s bit at the end at all offensive- I thought it was hysterical (especially the way his friends accepted it).
Ea_ a_ _oe’s.
Also, Eugene Levy sounded so much like Max Wright (Willie on ALF and a guest star on a thousand other shows) that I actually wondered if it was intentional.