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Comedy Bang! Bang! Review: “Jack Black"

“Jack Black” might be the most glaring example of Comedy Bang! Bang throwing together ideas that are sort of half-baked or unoriginal, and still turning out a pretty great episode. Anyone who is a fan of this show or of the podcast knew where most of these bits were going, but they somehow still worked, even when you could see the punchline coming from a mile away.

I think “Jack Black” pulls this off because it, at times, feels more like a series of callbacks than it does general laziness. For example, during Scott’s latest reality show “Nice Work, What a Jerk!,” where they see how people react to a person leaving their cell phone behind at a restaurant, I couldn’t help but feel like I had seen this before. That’s because the general conceit was used for “Tsk-Tsk or Attaboy.” Then for “Soap or Dope.” And “Winner or Sinner.” I know this because “Nice Work, What a Jerk!” just so happens to be a “Tsk-Tsk Attaboy/Soap or Dope/Winner or Sinner Production.” It’s still fun to see these reality shows escalate to weird points, even if it has been done over and over again on the show.

I’ve also found that Comedy Bang! Bang! episodes work best when they either have a very rigid structure or an incredibly loose one. “Jack Black” is very much on the latter scale, with Reggie proclaiming they’ll lose their stunt budget if they don’t fill the episode with plenty of stunts. Reggie has hired two stunt performers, Dead Eye Darrell Dean and Quiet Wyatt Tharp to do stunts throughout the show, yet they just want to rob Reggie and Scott for the money. Of course every time this concludes in a stunt, Scott willingly gives them the money they are owed. The stunt idea isn’t all that funny, but at least it gives us a bit of stunt casting, with Adam Scott as Plumber Pierre, who pops up occasionally for little-to-no reason.

I think it’s expected that when Jack Black appears on something, he has to be all high-energy and nuts, but thankfully Black is calmer and more subdued than usual for his first trip to the couch. He’s pretty funny when Scott asks him about King Kong’s bing bong and when a Reggie hologram spews pixellated milk from his third nipple all over the studio—but very little of this segment is funny due to Black himself. In fact, the highlight of the interview is a nice nod to the podcast, when Black tries to sing “Happy Birthday,” to which Scott mentions that they don’t have the rights to play that song. Damn you Patty and Mildred Hill, you old miserly crones!

Of course any episode with Paul F. Tompkins is a delight, especially since he’s appearing as J.W. Stillwater, fan boat mechanic by day, vigilante crime fighter by night. The biggest problem with bringing a known character to the show is trying to catch up the new audience on already-known facts about said character. This often seems to be a problem with Tompkins’ characters, which are filled with backstory. Stillwater’s appearance is mostly comprised of material that we’ve heard on the podcast, but there are some wonderful new moments thrown in, such as a discussion of different types of hammers. And when Scott says that no women probably watch the show, Tompkins replies “Ladies don’t get high?” It’s the perfect example of what always makes the Aukerman and Tompkins dynamic so great. Plus, with these two and Black together, it’s also a fun little Mr. Show reunion.
Even when an episode of Comedy Bang! Bang! doesn’t feel all that original, it can still pull off a fun time with tried-and-true elements that still work wonderfully when thrown together.

Game of Thrones

Workers of the Union Pacific Railroad

The Andrew J. Russell Collection, The Oakland Museum of California

In the West

Construction got a slow start in Omaha, Nebraska, eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad. By April 1864 the jubilance of groundbreaking had long ago faded into the ether. Chief engineer Peter Dey continued to suffer setbacks in putting together his stalled project. Chief among these was a dearth of labor. Neither Dey nor the firms he wanted to reward with construction contracts could find enough men for the massive job. "It is impossible to do anything in the way of letting this work now without some provision for furnishing men," the engineer wrote to railroad executive Thomas Durant, adding that some provision must be made toward importing an army of men. Durant in turn asked the War Department to ship Dey some portion of those slaves freed by the ongoing Civil War. The government declined. Union General Grenville Dodge offered use of Indian prisoners from his winter campaign. But no practical solutions were forthcoming. By the end of 1865, only 40 miles of track had been laid across the inviting valley.

Veterans for the Railroad's Ranks
 
The end of the Civil War brought a change of fortune for the Union Pacific. Thousands of demobilized soldiers were eager for work. Additionally, by 1866 the railroad had managed to import Irishmen from the teeming cities of the eastern seaboard. Suddenly swarms of men surrounded Dodge, who had replaced the frustrated Dey as chief engineer. Joining him that winter in Omaha was construction boss Jack Casement.

Military Precision
 
Working in tandem with his brother, Dan, former Brigadier General Jack ran his men with a military precision that hinged upon the efficient division of labor. Teamsters piloted small horse-drawn carts along freshly-laid track. Men on either side of those carts unloaded rails and moved forward to place them parallel to one another on embedded ties. Gaugers stepped in to ensure the rails were the correct distance apart. Bolters knelt down to join the contiguous rails on either side of the track. Spike men followed behind, dropping spikes onto the grade. Hammer-wielders picked up the spikes, tapped them gently into the ties, then with three heavy strokes of the sledgehammer drove them home, securing the rail to its bed. Teamsters drove their carts forward along the new track, and the whole process repeated itself again and again, an assembly line moving forward on the product it assembled. Behind the workers followed flat cars loaded with supplies, and behind those the portable bunkhouses in which workers resided. On average Casement's men finished nigh on two miles a day. On occasion General Jack was known to complete mind-boggling stretches of much greater length.

Working on the Railroad
 
Pay varied according to responsibility. Teamsters and graders received the least, while the iron men got the healthiest sum of anybody save their foremen. Like their Irish counterparts on the Central Pacific, the Union Pacific men had a staple diet of beef, bread, and black coffee. Water-borne illness was often a serious concern. Personal hygiene was all but unheard of. The men slept together on bunks in the rolling fortresses Casement had designed for them the previous winter. They were tight quarters in which conditions could be squalid. "To tell the truth, we were troubled by 'cooties,'" remembered one veteran of the crews. Also troubling were fears of the Native Americans across whose land the laborers built their road. There were Native American snipers, raids, livestock rustlings, scalpings, and burnings all along the railroad right of way. Indian sightings sufficed to spook men, and line surveyors did not always return from their routes. News of the slaughter of troops at Fort Philip Kearny on December 21, 1866, "the Fetterman Massacre," was enough to convince many a worker there were better ways to earn a living.

Hell on Wheels
 
In the early days of construction there was little to keep the men entertained but liquor. Many attacked it with a passion. Purveyors of entertainment, including those who were in the business of selling vice, found a captive audience. As the railroad progressed westward, the phenomenon called Hell on Wheels followed in close pursuit -- saloons, gambling houses, and brothels opened their doors at the end-of-track towns that sprouted along the route, and prospered from the hard-earned cash of the Union Pacific laborers.

Game of Thrones

Jack Black, THE GOLDBERGS, MANHATTAN: Coming Podcasts

This week on the Nerdist Podcast Network (subject, of course, to scheduling and production stuff…):
Jack Black will be on the Nerdist Podcast for a discussion of Matt Mira’s new glasses, what he’s watching on TV, weddings, Tenacious D’s current status, and playing a fictional R.L. Stine in the Goosebumps movie, out October 16th.

Adam F. Goldberg, creator of ABC’s The Goldbergs, is coming to the Nerdist Podcast, and as you might gather from the show, he’s in love with pop culture in general and ’80s pop culture on particular. So Adam and the guys go deep into classic movies (some of which, it turns out, don’t hold up), and pro wrestling, and way more.

A hostful Nerdist Podcast is on tap, too. If you guessed they’d be talking about weddings and engagements and stuff, you’d be right.

Manhattan creator Sam Shaw and Executive Producer
Thomas Schlamme discuss the making of the returning WGN America series on Nerdist Writers Panel.

Andy Wood returns for Part 2 of The Todd Glass Show After Dark.

And that Nerdist Writers Panel we promised you last week from the recent panel at NerdMelt Showroom with Damon Lindelof and other top writers? We’ll have it this week. I hope.

Plus a lot more. Head on over to the Nerdist Podcast Network homepage and the Nerdist Podcast Network Facebook page to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

‘Goosebumps’ Premiere: Jack Black Channels R.L. Stine, Predicts Oscar Gold for Himself

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October 5, 2015 | 08:05AM PT

Malina Saval

Associate Editor, Features @MalinaSaval

 

Jack Black stayed in character at Sunday afternoon’s spooktacular premiere of “Goosebumps,” director Rob Letterman’s big screen adaptation of the best-selling — and heavily monster-populated — R.L Stine children’s books made popular during the 1990s.

“I wrote the books, I’m R.L Stine,” Black told reporters, affecting a devilish glint in his eye as he made his way down the press line outside LA’s Regency Village Theater. “I think you have me confused with the actual Jack Black. Twenty-five years ago when I wrote these books I had no idea they would become the worldwide phenomenon that they have. I’m so thrilled beyond measure to be in a Neal Moritz production of a Rob Letterman film with Jack Black at the helm.”

Also present at the premiere were “Goosebumps” stars Dylan Minnette, who plays the new kid in town; Odeya Rush, who plays Stine’s teenage daughter — “Jack (Black) is always so sweet, always so nice, always telling us a joke or singing us a song,” she said — and writing team Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, “who came up with the idea of making R.L. Stine a character” in the horror-light film, penned by screenwriter Darren Lemke.

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“There’s a great balance between being really scary and really funny at the same time,” said Alexander. “ ‘Goosebumps’ is interesting as a franchise in that it’s really entry-level horror for kids who want to be scared but don’t want them to be scared too much.”

“We call them safe scares—things that could never happen in real life but in movies they’re scary and fun,” said producer Deborah Forte, who’s been involved with the project since its original conception in 1993. “This is a very proud moment for ‘Goosebumps’ and for me and for R.L. Stine.
He’s very happy with the movie. He’s very excited and the fans are very excited.”

When Letterman was pitching to direct the film, he was very much inspired by such innocuously scary classics as “The Goonies” and “Gremlins.”

“When Neal (Moritz) gave me the big concept of R.L Stine being part of the movie I was really thinking hard about some old Amblin movies and how much I loved (them),” said Letterman. “I loved how they weren’t family movies — they were general audiences movies—and I hadn’t seen something like that in a long time and when Neal pitched to me the idea I thought what a perfect excuse to do that kind of movie. Every little aspect of the film embraces the spirit of this.”

The spirit of “Goosebumps” definitely carried over from screen to street at the film’s haunted house-themed after-party. Zombies, ghouls and gnomes lumbered around the outdoor Westwood fete while pumpkin-headed scarecrows towered high above the crowd. Guests were treated to treats like cheese pizza and hotdogs on a stick and decorated Sprinkles cupcakes with Halloween toppings in the way of sugary bats and eyeballs. A small haunted house, DJ-spun tunes and an Oculus Rift virtual reality “Goosebumps” experience kept guests both young and old entertained.

But nothing was more amusing than Black, determinedly, and quite admirably, committed to his role as the famous Scholastic book author.

“My first choice (to play me) was Morgan Freeman and when they told me Jack Black I thought, ‘Is he really the right choice?’ I tell you I’ve seen the film five times and I’m just mesmerized by his performance. He’s such a brilliant actor. My God, Matt Damon, eat your heart out. Daniel Day-Lewis. Sorry, Charlie. Not this year. Mark my words: Jack Black will walk away with the (Oscar) statuette. Otherwise it’s just a crime.”

The Brink: Is Jack Black's New War Comedy Da Bomb or Just a Bomb?

In HBO’s The Brink, which premiered Sunday, a low-level bureaucrat, a drug-dealing navy commander and the U.S. Secretary of State were faced with the rise of a schizophrenic dictator and the dawn of World War III.

 

The dark comedy, starring Jack Black (School of Rock), Tim Robbins (Mystic River) and a pornstache-less Pablo Schreiber (Orange Is the New Black), is meant to serve as an over-the-top satire on present-day geopolitical affairs. Unfortunately, its heightened reality and trio of drugged-up caricatures make it hard to see how the overall product will play out as anything more than some warped fantasy.

Let’s introduce the aforementioned clan and the role they play in The Brink‘s international kerfuffle:
Alex Talbot (Black) is a middling State Department employee working at the United States embassy in Islamabad. Though he uses his international gig as a chance to score weed and party with local women, he once dreamed of working for the C.I.A. When he and driver Rafiq (The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi) get caught in the midst of a military coup d’etat, they flee to the home Rafiq shares with his parents, his sister and renowned psychologist uncle Hasan to keep from harm’s way. It’s there they learn that the riot was championed by former Pakistani general Umair Zaman (Iqbal Theba, Community), a egomaniacal lunatic once treated by Rafiq’s uncle. Despite losing in his nation’s general election, Zaman has seized control and intends on using nuclear warheads to annihilate Israel in wake of recent drone strikes.

Walter Larson (Robbins) is the Secretary of State under President Navarro (Esai Morales, NYPD Blue). When he isn’t butting heads with Secretary of Defense Grey, he’s cheating on his wife with Asian call girls. He’s called upon by the president when the CIA gets word of the nuclear arsenal’s vulnerability, but his desire to forgo military action is overruled by Israel’s own intentions of launching a preemptive strike should the U.S. refrain from getting involved. Grey’s motion to bomb Pakistan as a preventive measure is ultimately favored by Navarro once Alex faxes over Hasan’s confidential medical records that reveal Zaman himself is a truly loose cannon. Once Walter’s advice is disregarded by POTUS, he alerts assistant Kendra of his intention to go rogue to prevent a mass war from breaking out.

Zeke “Z-Pak” Tilson (Schreiber) is a well-respected lieutenant commander for the United States navy. When he isn’t busy protecting our nation or impregnating the navy’s public affairs officer, he’s dealing pills to fellow servicemen as part of a “covert” operation with ex-wife/supplier Ashley. En route to Islamabad, it becomes clear the pills he and his co-pilot popped prior to takeoff were not Xanax, and their high-as-a-kite, “hell of a ride” to Pakistan continues on with the loopy duo authorized to bomb the residential Pakistani area.

As the episode fades to black on Zeke’s trippy excursion, it immediately becomes clear that The Brink‘s misadventures have only just gotten started. And though the cabler will rollout the 10-episode comedy weekly, it might ultimately be better served as one five-hour binge. We haven’t ruled the war comedy out quite yet, but it’s going to have to be, well, funnier, in subsequent half-hours.

The Oscars to Movie Audiences: We're Doomed

A look back at how Birdman, Jack Black, and Hollywood lambasted Hollywood at last night's ceremony.

At this year's Oscars, Hollywood let 34.6 million viewers know how much it hates itself.

The 2015 Academy Awards opened with a musical tribute to history's magical qualities. Neil Patrick Harris, Anna Kendrick, and a fleet of dancing holograms tipped their hats to cinema in Broadway style, throwing back to blockbusters new and old. The Wizard of Oz, Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, Field of Dreams, and The Avengers were all part of the showstopper. It was a masturbatory congratulations to and from Hollywood studios, but a snappy one with Harris in the spotlight.

Halfway through the number, comedian Jack Black doused the idyllic tribute with a bucket of 21st-century reality. While the Yellow Brick Road manifested itself behind Harris, Black's lyrics painted a future as dark as the Wicked Witch of the West. But as a goof! As he put in song:

This is what you sound like: "Movies, movies, wow they rock!"
Well, once they did, but listen kids, it's all a big crock.
Now it's market trends, fickle friends, and Hollywood baloney
Believe me, Neil, you're better off just polishing your Tony.

This industry's in flux. It's run by mucky-mucks.
Pitchin' tents for tent poles and chasin' Chinese bucks.
Opening with lots of zeroes
All we get are superheroes.

Superman, Spider-man, Batman, Jediman, Sequelman, Prequelman — formulaic scripts!
And after Fifty Shades of Grey, they'll all have leather whips!
In a world where our brains are becoming machines
The only screens we're watching are the screens in our jeans!"

Ha! Get it? Today's Hollywood is a product assembly line that would do Henry Ford proud! It's an industry living under foreign thumbs, catering with computer graphic carnage, eye-exploding 3-D, and Transformers knock-offs! Soon, humans will serve iDevice overlords, skipping the theaters and plugging straight into the 18th Iron Man sequel via USB! Get pumped for the inevitable future!!!

Solid joke.

This year's winners countered the industry's toxic cynicism with cries for social awareness. Boyhood's Patricia Arquette demanded action for women; Common and John Legend moved audiences with a performance of their Selma song "Glory" and second time with a racially aware acceptance speech; Imitation Game writer Graham Moore related to Alan Turing, citing his own failed suicide attempt as a segue to his real message: "Stay weird." Hollywood's mega-franchise servitude has nothing on the plights of the world. Stars made good on exposing real issues.

Unfortunately, the Oscars are only one night. An acceptance speech makes a five-minute impact, maybe surfacing on YouTube the next day for one more breath of air. Movies, on the other hand, prevail. It's what Harris's "Moving Pictures" number tried to remind us. A movie isn't just a movie. They crystalize ideas  and maintain a temporal moment. They all say something, harrowing or sweet. "Best Picture" winners are even more important. They carry on the legacy each time we catch them on DVD or on cable. They continue to reckon with themes like family (The Godfather), war (The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Deer Hunter), race (In the Heat of the Night, 12 Years a Slave), evil (No Country for Old Men), hope (Schinder's List), romance (Annie Hall), and stair-climbin' human spirit (Rocky). Films influence and shape us—and most of us are watching big Hollywood movies. The movies we parade through the Oscars become more vital than the socially conscious quotes uttered by the stars that fill them.

Which makes this year's pick a downer. On top of Black's "Requiem for Quality Movies," Birdman's Best Picture win was Academy voters throwing in the towel. Truth: The film is deserving. In director Alejandro G. Iñárritu's hands, the existential comedy is as thrilling as Gravity, Michael Keaton's downward spiral accelerated by bright colors, soaring camera moves, and an all-improvised drum score. It's a great time at the movies—a harmonious death knell for Iñárritu's industry of choice.

Iñárritu is not a fan of Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Jediman, Sequelman, or Prequelman. He told Deadline last October that there's little "truth" in comic book movies. "The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don't respond to those characters. They have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and shit that doesn't mean nothing about the experience of being human," he said.

That mentality is easy to detect in Birdman. Michael Keaton's character, Riggan, is an actor who can't escape his superhero moment. Even when prepping his Broadway debut, journalists ask him about a potential Birdman 4. Not that an ambitious theater career imubes him with automatic integrity; As he mounts his Raymond Carver adaptation, Riggan wrangles farcical actor-types, runs in fear from the Twitterverse, and grapples with critics who write him off. He's caught in a sensational ouroboros, where all creative endeavors are doomed to fizzle into comic book shlock. What does it take to make great art? To be a great artist? Iñárritu wonders on screen.

Academy voters have a thing for movies about show business (see: 2011's Best Picture The Artist and 1929's The Broadway Melody). Like Harris's song-and-dance, exalting Hollywood's potential is a theme worth backing if you're one of the people involved with making movies. So Birdman isn't a surprising win, but it's a modern, mildly depressing spin on the grand tradition. The Oscars gave Iñárritu's anti-Hollywood screed the stamp of approval. "We're sick of superhero movies too!" voters seem to say. The honor replaces action, whining by way of golden statues. Really, there's too much money on the table—domestic and Chinese—to embrace Iñárritu's rebellious attack. So they'll keep on pumping them out. Reluctantly.

Which isn't good for anyone—superhero fans included. After this year, the takeaway should be that great films can still be made with the right support. Producers took a chance on spending a little each year and came out with Boyhood. Faith in Wes Anderson to be Wes Anderson and for audiences to respond to Wes Anderson turned The Grand Budapest Hotel into a huge moneymaker. Whiplash is a Sundance movie that beat the drum all the way to the Oscars. "Weird" Al made a Whiplash parody. 

It's zeigeisty. And if the Hollywood elite is going to be a bunch of sourpusses when it comes to comic book movies, fans wind up on the losing end. We can get great superhero movies from people with great ideas. The next batch of Sam Raimis, Christopher Nolans, J.J. Abramses, and Steven Spielbergs, whose Indiana Jones movies are genetically linked to everything Iñárritu rails against in Birdman, are ready to be discovered. We could have Mom-n'-Pop blockbuster directors who deliver thoughtfulness and panache on par with our Oscar movies, if anyone was willing to try.

Before Jack Black could melt into a puddle of self-loathing, Neil Patrick Harris undercut his all-too-true interlude. Together, they could avert apocalypse.

Harris: Yes, greenlit films can stall.
Kendrick: Scripts can hit a wall.
Harris: Stars may pass
Kendrick: …or fire your ass
Harris: and weekly grosses fall. But when they hit, you must admit, they sometimes change your view a bit, in ways both big and small.

The Oscar ceremony is an echo chamber. Voters went in feeling blockbuster-provoked fatigue and came out with Birdman, a wagging finger of shame that's as fantastical as Guardians of the Galaxy, as Best Picture. Harris is right: Sometimes hits "change your view a bit." But sometimes it's easier to make fun of the problem rather than solve it. There's a nine-picture DC Comics slate running through 2020 that needs to be executed, after all. And maybe it would be better with whips…