"I taped it for fun": a requiem for Freddy Got Fingered

When Hermann Nitsch does this, it's "art", but when Tom Green does it, it's "the worst movie ever made." 

Freddy Got Fingered was released in 2001, but it also marked the culmination of Tom Green's brief moment of mega-stardom, which began in the twilight of the '90s with The Tom Green Show. It was also pre-9/11, so it was still basically the '90s. (Trying to imagine a post-9/11 Freddy Got Fingered is impossible.)

Freddy garnered almost universally negative reviews, with New York Times critic A.O. Scott as one of the few holdouts. The film chronicles the misadventures of an aspiring animator named Gord (Green), and his fraught relationship with his disapproving father (Rip Torn). For Gord, the path to success is long, and littered with horse dicks, blowjobs, and cheese sandwiches.

In a mostly negative review, Roger Ebert conceded that maybe he just didn't get it, and that one day the film would be viewed as a "milestone of neo-surrealism." Freddy Got Fingered won 5 Razzies, and when onstage at the awards ceremony "Green began to play the harmonica and did not stop until he was physically dragged off."

Pictured: a winner.

Here's what some of the critics had to say:

"If ever a movie testified to the utter creative bankruptcy of the Hollywood film industry, it is the abomination known as Freddy Got Fingered." (Stephen Hunter, Washington Post)

"Tragically awful." (Wesley Morris, San Francisco Chronicle)

"Nothing onscreen is abused quite so savagely as the audience itself." (Susan Wloszczyna, USA Today)

"A movie so unrelentingly gross, disgusting and imbecilic that one mourns for the state of humanity while watching it." (Steven Rosen, Denver Post)

"Many years ago, when surrealism was new, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali made 'Un Chien Andalou,' a film so shocking that Bunuel filled his pockets with stones to throw at the audience if it attacked him. Green, whose film is in the surrealist tradition, may want to consider the same tactic. The day may come when 'Freddy Got Fingered' is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

"Bet your boots it's a Le Baron. Good car. Convertible."

The day Ebert prophesied may have come at last. The Wikipedia page for Freddy Got Fingered now has a section for "Resurgence", which refers to how this initially reviled opus has won cult status thanks to a sensibility that some consider avant-garde or akin to performance art.

Nathin Rabin of the A.V. Club (who coined the phrase "manic pixie dream girl" in his review of the treacly Cameron Crowe pantload Elizabethtown) neatly summed up Freddy's exceptionalism in a fantastically on-point review:

Studios exist precisely to keep films this audacious, original, and transgressive from ever hitting theaters. I've never seen so much as a single episode of any of Tom Green's various shows, but I watched Fingered with open-mouthed admiration. It's the kind of movie you feel the need to watch again immediately just to make sure you didn't hallucinate the entire thing the first time around.

...I think it helps to see Fingered less as a conventional comedy than as a borderline Dadaist provocation, a $15 million prank at the studio's expense. Fingered didn't invent the gross-out comedy, but it elevated it to unprecedented heights of depravity. It might have killed Green's career, but oh what a way to go.

If a toilet can be a fountain, why not an underwater cave?

And Ebert found himself haunted by the film's dazzling audacity:

But the thing is, I remember Freddy Got Fingered more than a year later. I refer to it sometimes. It is a milestone. And for all its sins, it was at least an ambitious movie, a go-for-broke attempt to accomplish something. It failed, but it has not left me convinced that Tom Green doesn't have good work in him. Anyone with his nerve and total lack of taste is sooner or later going to make a movie worth seeing.

Chris Rock is a confirmed fan, and no doubt others will come out of the closet eventually. But you don't have to look far to find evidence of Freddy's influence; the heirs to its deranged brand of humor are everywhere. It could be argued that shows like Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Wonder Showzen, and just about the entire lineup of Adult Swim original content since Freddy owes a significant debt to Green's over-the-top, absurdist aesthetic.

You know "Zebras in America" would fit in perfectly between "Beat Kids" and "Winobot".

Vadim Rizov makes exactly this point in a spirited article for IFC.com (IFC!):

“Fingered” would probably do at least a little better if it were released today. For one thing, the animated show Green’s character/stand-in Gord creates (“Zebras In America”) is full of the kind of deliberately abrasive non sequiturs and were-they-stoned? moments that typify the “Adult Swim” line-up; the idea of someone having a show like that now isn’t far-fetched at all.

And even if you hate all of those shows (as plenty of people do), there's actually a lot more to Freddy than meets the eye. As Rizov smartly notes, beneath the film's jizz-stained surface is a "nakedly sincere" story about growing up, following your dreams, and yearning for parental approval.Or maybe all the horse dicks are cover for an even more disturbing Freudian subtext, as this article from Cinema de Merde suggests.

Either way, there's a lot more to the film than the juvenile gross-outs that many viewers dismiss it for. It's like Breaking Away (swap bikes for doodles, and both are comedies about eccentric heroes following their improbable dreams despite the discouragement of a disappointed father) as directed by Luis Buñuel, with funnier jokes.

"I'm sick of symmetry."

In a featurette on the film's DVD, Rip Torn—with an absolutely straight face—even calls Green the best director he's ever worked with.

And Torn is not exactly an actor known for his easygoing manner with directors; when outraged by his direction on the set of Maidstone, he hit Norman Mailer in the head with a hammer, while Mailer's children screamed for mercy. (Perhaps this was karmic retribution for Mailer headbutting Gore Vidal.)

Killing cops and reading Kerouac listening to Madball: punk rock video game soundtracks.

August, 1999. Moviegoers were abuzz about the shocking twist at the end of M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, where you find out that the whole thing took place in the mind of an autistic child (played by Bruce Willis). Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? was a TV sensation, Madball was hard at work on their opus Hold It Down—and a young cyclist and cancer survivor named Lance Armstrong had just won a glorious victory in the Tour de France, inspiring viewers around the world.

"How is it possible for your body to be stronger now, than it was before the disease?"
"I have no idea. I can't answer that."

But the US Postal team capturing the maillot jaune (French for "victory blouse") wasn't the only sensational story happening in the world of wheel-based athletic pursuits (which at the time were called "Xtreme Sportz"). At the end of August, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was released.

There had been skateboarding video games before THPS (most notably the Skate or Die games on NES, the second of which actually features the guy from from Leviathan on the cover), but THPS rendered them all obsolete. It was a perfect example of "easy to learn, difficult to master": just about anyone could pick it up and start kickflipping, but scoring million point combos took real (by which I mean fake) skill.

Rip, skate, never hesitate.

While THPS' infectious gameplay soon embedded itself in the muscle memory of a generation, one of the best things about it was the soundtrack. Instead of the generic rock and sampled grunting of earlier skateboarding games, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater featured a soundtrack full of licensed songs from real bands—and most shocking of all, some of them were actually, you know, good.

Let's take a closer look.

It's hard to imagine now, but it really was pretty shocking to start playing THPS and hear the echoing chords of the Dead Kennedys' "Police Truck". Not only was this a totally legit punk rock anthem, but it also had some seriously biting lyrics that were just filled with swears.

You can just imagine some unsuspecting mom buying THPS for little Jimmy, thinking "oh, this looks so much more wholesome than that dreadful Mortal Kombat." Little did she know that little Jimmy would soon be bombarded with lyrics about KICKIN' ASS and SUCKIN' DICKS.

With "Police Truck", the message was clear: THPS wasn't kidding around.

Unfortunately the game also sent some mixed messages; "Police Truck" could easily be followed by something like The Ernies' "Here and Now", which seemed to suggest that it was totally fucking kidding around. And then there were the unforgettable stylings of REO Speedealer—who contribute a two-song suite that ends up actually sounding kind of like the New Bomb Turks or the Candy Snatchers, but unfortunately starts off sounding like somebody farting in your face.

"Fuck, I just couldn't concentrate with that stupid song playing!"

But as good as THPS was, it was the sequel where everything really came together. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 took the mechanics of the first one and refined them with tighter controls, better levels, and all the trimmings necessary to ensure countless productive hours lost. (Most notably, it added the ability to connect long strings of tricks with manuals, making you feel like Rodney Mullen on an ice skating rink.) The overhaul also included a much better soundtrack.

Millencollin. Lagwagon. Swingin' Utters. Bad Religion. It was like a symphony of '90s skate punk symphony. (Also, some hip-hop songs.) Best of all was a song from Consumed, a Fat Wreck Chords band from England. Just listen to this shit:

Don't be alarmed if you look down and discover you're now wearing a World Industries t-shirt.

The THPS soundtracks ignited a revolution, displacing whole cadres of Japanese men who'd made their bones composing MIDI symphonies for games like Castlevania and Final Fantasy. Tragically, their bleep opuses were no longer needed, and they were reduced to begging for change from drunk salarymen.

Video games would never be the same. The fondest dreams of children everywhere were finally fulfilled with the release of Grand Theft Auto III, the long dreamed of game where you could "do anything"—which in practice meant blowing up cops and killing prostitutes. Most of the music in GTAIII and the earlier games in the series was produced in-house, and the licensed tracks were often by unknown artists. But all of that would change with the sequel, Vice City.

Vice City's soundtrack transformed the game from a run-of-the-mill murder simulator into a day-glo time machine so authentic it made your teeth numb. You couldn't hijack a car in Vice City without hearing some iconic signifier of the 1980s, whether it was "Love My Way", "Raining Blood", or "Clear".

The core game still revolved around murdering hookers, though.

The sequel, San Andreas, followed suit with a perfectly imagined suite of 1990s radio fodder. There was a dedicated new jack swing station, generous amounts of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, and rock jams ranging from "Mother" and "Unsung" to "Cult of Personality" (the radio edit version, for maximum immersion). And, naturally, Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day" made an appearance—except in GTA, it's not a good day unless you use your AK to kill numerous people in south central L.A. (Sorry, "Los Santos.")

After that, curated video game soundtracks where everywhere, and they just got more and more detailed. Case in point: by the time GTAIV came out, there was a dedicated minimalist ambient station featuring Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Roach. I'm sure it was really popular with the game's fans.

This guy is into atheism, Game Of Thrones, and aleatoric minimalism.

But a crucial (in every sense of the word) development in the field of deep licensed soundtracks came with the True Crime series, and particularly the second installment, New York City. Just look at this lineup. If hearing "Police Truck" in THPS felt surreal, it was nothing compared to beating up old women to the strains of Youth of Today and fucking Madball.

This forced Rockstar to step up their game for GTAIV, and in response they included a ripping NYHC/metal station (in case you somehow got tired of listening to Aphex Twin and jazz fusion).

This flyer is actually a viral advertisement for the next GTA game. In one mission you have to dress up as a crusty and infiltrate ABC No Rio.

The surprisingly good licensed video game soundtrack is now a sort of fait accompli; we don't even really think about it anymore. They could come out with a hovercraft racing game featuring tunes from Infest, Nocturnus, and Masonna and I wouldn't even blink. What a time to be alive!

Can a Skate or Die reboot featuring music by Leviathan and Sockeye be far behind?

Soundtracks of our lives: "Angus".

"Girls want guys who are dangerous. Have tattoos, play the guitar."

For a brief window in my youth, ice skating became the cool thing to do. Kid would lace up their skates, hit the ice, and try to "spray" by stopping suddenly and creating a blast of ice chips, a technique familiar to seasoned hockey players everywhere.

At the rink by my house, they would play music as we endlessly circled the ice. This was 1995, so you could expect to hear "Gangsta's Paradise", "Fantasy", and that U2 song from the Batman movie in an endless loop. (After listening to that Mariah Carey song for the first time in about 15 years, I have to say: what a sick fucking jam.)

The video—which features Mariah kicking back at an amusement park full of menacing clowns and overweight children—is also impossibly bizarre by modern pop standards.

But one day I heard something that stopped me in my skates.  It rocked harder than any of the Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins songs I was accustomed to, but it had a wistful edge that left me feeling all nostalgic and reflective even though nothing had happened to me yet. It was "J.A.R." by Green Day, their contribution to the Angus soundtrack.

Green Day had broken through into mainstream popularity a year earlier with Dookie, and I think by that point I was already acquainted with "Basket Case" and "When I Come Around" from the radio—but "J.A.R." grabbed me in a way that nothing else had. It was pretty much the best thing I'd ever heard.

To be fair, the competition at that point was not particularly intense:

When I heard this song on the radio I didn't realize he was talking about the Miami Dolphins, and I thought Hootie just meant that the eerie majesty of dolphins reduced him to a state of infantile wonder. This is still how I choose to interpret it.

That year I received the Angus soundtrack as a birthday present, and found that it featured numerous other gems—and pretty soon I had a copy of Dookie, which led to ...And Out Come the Wolves, which led to Minor Threat, etc. Before long, I was arguing about The Locust and collecting Japanese hardcore records.

You know times have changed when someone's arguing that The Locust are the real deal and some other band is "gay hipster bullshit".

When I was in college, I revisited Angus, with some trepidation. Having long since lost or sold my copy, I picked one up at Amoeba in Los Angeles and hit the 101 to the familiar strains of "J.A.R." But I was afraid that the seminal album of my childhood would have lost some of its luster for me—like the pizzeria you loved as a kid, but revisit as an adult to discover that the pie tastes like cardboard and tire and you really only liked it because they had Street Fighter II.

It turns out that I was totally wrong; if anything, it sounds even better to me now, like the girl next door who grows up to be a total knockout.

Somehow this still makes me feel kind of skeezy, even though I'm only like a month older than her.

To my jaded ears, Angus is as good a compilation as any released in the '90s, and a manifesto for the artistic validity of a style—pop-punk—viewed with disdain by most scenesters. (Very little has changed, other than that nobody uses the word "scenester" anymore.) 

The lineup is a delicate balance of mainstream alternative rock and underground legitimacy, as bands like Weezer and Love Spit Love rub elbows with Lookout luminaries like Pansy Division and the Riverdales.

They didn't use this Pansy Division song, though.

Everybody brings their A game too. Pansy Division's "Deep Water" is an unusually moving song from a band known for their cheeky sense of humor (see above), while Weezer's "You Gave Your Love To Me Softly" is the bridge between the blue album's sunny power-pop and the murky Japanophilia of Pinkerton. (The analog synth also foreshadows the Get Up Kids and their fellow travelers).

And then there's Ash, the only band to contribute more than one song. They epitomize the record's balance of pop-punk and more mainstream alternative: "Jack Names the Planets" is a quintessential piece of '90s slack pop (complete with movie tie-in video featuring bedroom moshing and singing band posters), but "Kung Fu" could practically be a Teenage Bottlerocket song.

I wish you'd come back; everything's ready for you.

And the song that at first seems the most out of place actually turns out to be one of the best on the entire record. "Ain't That Unusual", a deep cut from the Goo Goo Dolls album A Boy Named Goo, is basically the best Replacements song never written, complete with title and lyrics so redolent of Paul Westerberg they should be wearing sunglasses and swearing on live TV.

The album closes out with Love Spit Love's gorgeous ballad "Am I Wrong?", which is used in the movie's opening, with the marching band nicely integrated into the tune. (Notably absent is Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You", which plays when Angus and Melissa dance; it's a very pretty and apropos song, but one that admittedly wouldn't have fit into the album very well. This isn't the Joyride soundtrack.)

This is what high school was like, in my mind.

Of course, your mileage may vary. But for me, Angus is one of the quintessential '90s albums and honestly one of my favorite records of all time. In two years, Angus will be 20 years old(!), and I can't think of a more appropriate comment than what Angus says to the jock bully Rick (James Van Der Beek, in the role he was born to play) at the film's climax:

"I'm still here asshole. I'll always be here."