Here’s the Kicker

Cinequest: Friended to Death

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FRIENDED TO DEATH
FRIENDED TO DEATH

What kind of douchebag would fake his own death to see who shows up to his funeral?  Indeed, in the comedy Friended to Death, there’s a reason why everyone calls Michael Harris a douchebag.  He is a colossal jerk who revels in the misfortunes of others.  In his job as a parking enforcement officer, he’s a gleeful Johnny Appleseed of misery.  Worse yet, he is a social media addict who narcissistically insists on constantly blasting his escapades on Facebook and Twitter.  He’s oblivious that his own social media proves himself to be the asshole everybody says that he is.

You know that Michael is ripe for a comeuppance, and he gets a dose of his own medicine when one of his premature vehicle tows unleashes an unhinged enemy for life.  There are plenty of madcap moments as Michael (Ryan Hansen from TV’s Friends with Benefits) and his reluctant co-conspirator Emile (James Immekus) frantically try to conceal their hoax.

Friended to Death writer-director Sarah Smick and co-writer Ian Michaels archly comment on the “social” in social media.   Their Michael Harris says “I have 417 friends – you don’t expect me to know ALL of them!” and “I speak in text”.  Really smart comedy writing is pretty rare, and Smick and Michaels have the gift.  Michaels got the idea after reading about a guy who faked his own death and wrote scathing rebukes to those who missed his faux memorial.  By dropping that kernel into our current environment of over-sharing, Smick and Michaels were able to alchemize it into a biting social satire.

Smick and Michaels are longtime collaborators who married last October.  In 2011, Smick and Michaels brought their equally funny Here’s the Kicker to Cinequest; (Michaels directed that one).   Here’s the Kicker is available streaming on YouTube and is also is out on DVD.

In Friended to Death, Smick and Michaels play characters trying to expose the fraud.  They are very good in their roles, as is veteran Robert R. Shafer (Bob Vance in The Office) as that boss who just can’t restrain himself from yelling.

In Friended to Death, TMI becomes LOL.  Pointedly smart and well-crafted dark comedies don’t come along every day.  Don’t miss Friended to Death, playing again at Cinequest tonight and on Friday.

Another visit to Cinequest by Friended to Death filmmakers

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The indie comedy Friended to Death has its US premiere tonight at Cinequest, and it’s not the first time for the filmmakers. Friended to Death writer-director Sarah Smick and co-writer Ian Michaels brought their Here’s the Kicker to Cinequest in 2011 (Michaels directed that one).  Smick and Michaels also act in both movies.

In Here’s the Kicker,the relationship of a prematurely retired football player and his girlfriend is being battered by their dead-end jobs in LA; (she is a make up artist – in porn films). To save their relationship, he agrees to move back to her hometown in Texas where they can open a salon/saloon: a combo beauty parlor and sports bar. Just as they are leaving on the road trip, he is offered his dream job as a football scout. When is he going to get the nerve to tell her? Along the way, they pick up his obnoxious former teammate and, most hilariously, his dad, who does NOT want to return to alcohol rehab. Many guffaws ensue in this all too rare occurrence – a satisfying American film comedy.

As the girlfriend, Sarah Smick succeeds in remaining sympathetic despite being continually aggrieved – no easy accomplishment. Luce Rains is great as the drunk dad.

According to Ian Michaels at the Cinequest screening, Producer/Cinematographer/Editor Chris Harris made the key decision to cut some early scenes so the road trip could commence sooner. Obviously, that move worked. Here’s the Kicker deserves a wide release.

Good news. Here’s the Kicker is available streaming on YouTube.  It’s also is now out on DVD.  Please go to the movie’s Netflix page and click SAVE – once it gets enough SAVES, it will become available on Netflix.

It’s hard to write comedy. Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies. That’s why it’s worth tagging along on the uproarious road trip in Here’s the Kicker.

2013 at the Movies: Most Fun at the Movies

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The Movie Gourmet had a great year at the movies and here are the highlights:

1.  Taking The Wife to Bad Girl Night at the Noir City Film Festival.  Noir City is the great San Francisco celebration of film noir, and Bad Girl Night is an annual double feature of noir’s nastiest femmes fatale.  Now The Wife loves it too!

2.  Interviewing Cinequest’s international film programmer Charlie Cockey – a film finder extraordinaire and a man who devours culture in any form.   Watch for the interview when I preview the 2014 Cinequest.

3.  Seeing three wholly original films at Cinequest:  the German dark comedy Oh Boy (the debut from talented writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, the absurdist Czech comedy Polski Film and the offbeat The Dead Man and Being Happy, with its gloriously wacky road trip through the backwaters of Argentina.

4.  Seeing five of the year’s best films (Mud, Stories We Tell, Me and You, The Spectacular Now and Before Midnight) in a May fortnight that included The Movie Gourmet’s Film Rampage.

5.  I was the only audience member for Not Fade Away. I love sitting all alone in a theater because it makes me feel like a movie mogul in a studio screening room. Because I see lots of obscure movies at odd times like Monday nights and Sunday mornings, I am often part of a very small audience (five or fewer). But I hadn’t been the ONLY viewer since El Mariachi in 1992.

6. The DVD release of Here’s the Kicker featuring a blurb from The Movie Gourmet on the DVD cover.  I enjoyed this indie comedy, and I hope my blurb will persuade folks to see it.

heres kicker dvd

Here’s the Kicker now available on DVD

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Good news. The indie comedy Here’s the Kicker, which I labeled the biggest surprise at San Jose’s Cinequest film festival last year, is now out on DVD.

Please go to the movie’s Netflix page and click SAVE – once it gets enough SAVES, it will become available on Netflix.

It’s hard to write comedy.  Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies.  That’s why it’s worth tagging along on the uproarious road trip in Here’s the Kicker.

Blogging from Cinequest: Here’s the Kicker

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The biggest surprise at San Jose’s Cinequest film festival so far is the indie comedy Here’s the Kicker, written by its star, Ian Michaels.  The relationship of a prematurely retired football player and his girlfriend is being battered by their dead-end jobs in LA; (she is a make up artist – in porn films).  To save their relationship, he agrees to move back to her hometown in Texas where they can open a salon/saloon: a combo beauty parlor and sports bar.  Just as they are leaving on the road trip, he is offered his dream job as a football scout.  When is he going to get the nerve to tell her?  Along the way, they pick up his obnoxious former teammate and, most hilariously, his dad, who does NOT want to return to alcohol rehab.  Many guffaws ensue in this all too rare occurrence – a satisfying American film comedy.

It’s hard to write comedy.  Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies.  So Ian Michaels deserves some recognition, and, above all, to get more screenplays greenlighted.

As the girlfriend, Sarah Smick succeeds in remaining sympathetic despite being continually aggrieved – no easy accomplishment.  Luce Rains is great as the drunk dad.

According to Ian Michaels at the screening, Director/Cinematographer/Editor Chris Harris made the key decision to cut some early scenes so the road trip could commence sooner. Obviously, that move worked.  Here’s the Kicker deserves a wide release.