1X1 2: PART TWO: FREDDY GOT FINGERED

Friendly greetings, pod listener and follower of the TGTPTU. Stay excite: Season 17’s concluding 1x1s of very special one-off movies cultivated by show regulars continues this week with host Tom’s pick of a fellow Tom’s directorial debut, that being distant relative of Al Green and the rapper, the writer, the MTV’s late-90’s darling with a hit show and #1 single, the Tom of all trades, Ontario Canada’s very own (and once Drew Barrymore’s very own before she made what has to be the greatest regret of her life, I mean, even more than dancing on David Letterman’s desk or falling for the two killers in Scream or being Steven Spielberg’s goddaughter or in that third Adam Sandler movie, even if it meant she could later date Justin Long, that regret being her amicable divorce from…) Tom Green and his co-written and lead role in his romantic-inspirational-comedy magnus opus, FREDDY GOT FINGERED (2001). 
 
The film that help give rise to the American indie wave of small-budget (under $15M) studio comedies at whose crest would launch the careers of such luminaries as Todd Phillips, Adam McKay, and David Gordon Green (no known relation to Tom) follows the trials and tribulations of a misunderstood, aspiring cartoonist Gordon “Gord” Brody (played by Tom Green) as he, through increasingly charming and absurd antics, reconnects with this father (played by Academy Award-winner Rip Torn), re-earns the love of his paraplegic girlfriend (played by Marisa Coughlan), and, by believing in himself and his slanted view of the world so strongly, wins over the head of an animation studio head (played Anthony Michael Hall) with a marginally fictionalized version of his life experiences and thereby elevates himself out of the grind of service industry and factory work and is able to vacay with his daddy.   

This seminal and often overlooked work of the early 00s was the wellspring for new types of movie humor and visual storytelling. It is alleged that Al-Qaeda delayed their deadly attacks until after film had its worldwide release so they could catch it as an inflight movie. They had rightly suspected that their attacks on 9/11, originally commissioned by the Bush Administration for 4/11 (MIHOP), would shut down theaters and movie exports. Unfortunately, these same attacks would irrevocably change the face of comedy in the 00s, altering the tenor of the humor landscape, as discuss this episode. Given its highly personal nature of the film and its excellent cinematography by the great Mark Irwin, it’s little wonder that Freddy Got Fingered would appear as #2 on American-born auteur and skateboarding enthusiast Stanley Kubrick’s Sight & Sound list for the Year 2001, a year that he and best-selling author Arthur C. Clarke co-invented.   

This ep, Xennial host Ryan explains TRL (and pre-streaming television) to Thomas; Thomas comes dangerously close to almost nearly agreeing partially with Ryan; and Ken makes a Seinfeld comparison (take a drink), concurs that Tom Green is the Pavement (a popular 90s band) of moviemaking, and does in fact want some sausages.   

As mentioned during the show, Netflix (as DVD.com) shipped hard media even after the two world-shattering events of early 2020: start of the global COVID-19 pandemic and of TGTPTU: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-dvd-the-final-season     

Japan4.  

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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Ken: Ken Koral
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