Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
This is part review, part preview, part set visit report. I don’t know what to call this article, in much the same way that I don’t know what to call this movie. One thing is for sure... maybe the only thing that’s for sure:
New Line’s THE REAL CANCUN, which they describe as “the first reality movie,” is going to make a giant assload of cash.
And it deserves to. It’s freakin’ great.
Now, I get it... everybody likes to say that they don’t like reality shows. I mean, come on. There are way too many of them. They’re sleazy. They’re all the same. At their worst, they’re televised freakshows, right? They indulge all our basest instincts. I don’t know a single person, aside from the fearless Hercules The Strong, who admits to liking or even watching reality shows.
But I do. Sometimes. I can’t help myself. I’m a lifelong documentary nut, and when a reality show works, it’s because the cameras vanish, the “stars” open up and drop their guard, and a little bit of honest-to-God no-shit reality somehow slips through. Despite the fact that it’s been on for over a decade now in one form or another, one of the shows I’ll always at least check in on remains MTV’s THE REAL WORLD. By now, it’s got to be acknowledged as the pioneer and enduring giant of the genre, the starting point for the entire current wave of reality programming.
There was something very particular about the combination of sensibilities that occurred when soap opera survivor Mary-Ellis Bunim and documentarian John Murray decided to combine their efforts. Their creation lies somewhere between their two extremes. As they shoot their shows, story editors watch all the incoming footage so they can make important decisions about where to send cameras, who to follow, and what to shoot. Theirs is a reactive process more than a creative one, which isn’t to say it’s easy.
If it were easy, then 99% of what jams the airwaves right now wouldn’t be crap.
When New Line asked me if I wanted to be one of the 20 or 25 reporters who recently went to Cancun to visit the set of their upcoming “reality movie,” I wasn’t even aware they were making a reality movie. Within 24 hours, I had learned about the race between New Line and Universal to make spring-break themed reality films this year. Universal’s releasing THE QUEST, which they were originally going to put out smack dab between X-MEN and THE MATRIX. Just this weekend, though, they backed down, and their film is currently unscheduled. Theirs is an all-guy movie, a group of friends on the prowl for trim in Cabo San Lucas. The press release makes it sound like GUYS GONE WILD, especially since the producer is Mike Fleiss, the auteur of THE BACHELOR. This is the same guy that Howard Stern is currently suing the shit out of for ripping off ARE YOU HOT? from Stern’s long-running E! show.
We live in a culture, by the way, where more than one network thought it was a financially sound idea to do an ARE YOU HOT?-style show. These are the last days of Rome, folks.
What convinced me to go to Cancun was the involvement of Bunim-Murray. There were a lot of reasons not to go. America was literally days away from deciding whether or not to go to war, and the idea of international air travel made me nervous. My father had just had major surgery, so if I was going to take a trip, I was more interested in going to see him. The most compelling reason not to go was because they wanted me to leave town on the morning of my girlfriend’s birthday.
Still... the idea of walking into the middle of a Bunim-Murray feature film was undeniably interesting. So on March 22nd, the first day of the war, the day before the Oscars, I was crammed into a coach seat en route to Mexico. I got there just as the cast was taken to Fat Tuesday’s for a Snoop Dogg concert. We weren’t taken anywhere near the cast at that point. We didn’t see them until Sunday night, after the last frame of the film had already been shot. The cast joined us for an Oscar party and Mexican buffet in the lobby of the hotel where they shot the film.
I met a few of them over the course of the evening, but only one of them really made an impression on me, a friendly, Richie Cunningham style Texas boy who was a self-proclaimed “LORD OF THE RINGS geek.” He joined the journalists to watch the Best Visual Effects award get handed out. Our corner was probably the only place at the party where you could actually hear the television. We started talking about films in general, and it was obvious that this guy was just like pretty much every film literate college-aged geek I’ve enjoyed meeting over my time at AICN. Smart, personable, and blessed with all the social panache of Anthony Michael Hall in SIXTEEN CANDLES.
We spent Monday interviewing the cast, and I was on a plane Tuesday. That was the 25th of March. And on the 25th of April, New Line’s going to have the finished film in theaters.
Even more incredibly, it’s already done, and it was screened for a few members of the press and for New Line staff last Friday morning. Oh... and I think I may have mentioned this, but it bears repeating. It’s not just watchable. It’s enormously entertaining, both funny and filthy, like the best John Hughes film he never made.
It’s an incredibly simple premise. There’s no big twist or surprise a la JOE MILLIONAIRE, and no one’s competing for any sort of cash prize. Sixteen college students were chosen to go to Cancun to live in a hotel that was taken over by Bunim-Murray and wired for sound and picture. Every night, a different party at a different club, and every day, a different trip to do something. Add hormones and alcohol in liberal doses, and what you’ve got is aggressively dirty at times, and it’s all relatively unfettered thanks to the outer limits of the MPAA’s R-rating. The storylines themselves are as ripe with stereotype as any teen romp released in the last few years. You’re introduced to Nicole and Roxanne, twin hotties who can’t wait to unleash their inner strippers. There’s Casey, the oldest of the “kids,” a 28-year-old male model with the fogged-out delivery of Jeff Spicoli as he asks everyone he meets, “Anyone wanna get naked and make out?” Jorell and Paul are lifelong friends from Inglewood, neither of them betraying even the slightest discomfort with being the only two African-American guys on the trip, both of them drawn to Skye, an ebony beauty with a mercurial temper.
The film opens with an introduction to Matt and Jeremy, pampered and pretty college oys who actually train for spring break. “I’m the guy girls come to Cancun to hook up with,” Jeremy confidently tells the camera. Laura, a small-town girl from Ohio, is evidently one of those girls, and Sara seems to get hooked on Matt despite her repeated mentions of her boyfriend back home. We also meet Heidi and Dave, platonic friends when they arrive, both of them determined to just remain friends since they’re about to be geographically separated as Dave goes to school in Boston and Heidi heads to California.
And, yeah... there’s Alan. The good kid. The one who has never had a drink before. The virgin who really just wants to see “some boobies.” He’s not the butt of some joke, though. Remember... this follows the same rules as a John Hughes movie. The geek is going to get his moment to shine, that epiphany where he cuts loose. Alan steals the movie, and he deserves to be embraced as a geek icon, the Ferris Bueller of the 21st century.
The film plays like a flat-out comedy, and it played on Friday morning to the same sort of shocked and hysterical laughter as the SOUTH PARK or JACKASS movies. It’s edited with a canny sense of humor, and any hint of self-importance or pomposity in these kids gets immediately and brutally lampooned. It’s an affectionate film, though. Make no mistake... these filmmakers like these kids, and they’re at their best when they’re showing you why they like them. The reason Alan becomes the star of the film is the same reason Paul and Jorell stand out... they’re good kids having fun. It’s infectious, and there’s one scene in particular, when Alan finally embraces the full potential of Cancun, that is one of the funniest, most human moments you’re going to see in a theater this year.
In the week before the film comes out, I’ve got some cool interviews I want to run, including one with John Murray about the reality craze. For now, you might want to check out the Official Site, complete with a total cocktease of a trailer which showed up on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE over the weekend. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
