Tapeheads - Verrückt auf Video

In the 80's, back when MTV actually played videos, I spent plenty of time with it on in the background, the way radio was in earlier decades. Tapeheads captures that in spades - the glitzy, superficial, just plain stupid, yet weirdly captivating 80's music video scene, from behind. With spoof videos like King Cotton in the "Roscoe's Chicken and Waffle Commercial", and Devo backing Cube-Squared's video ("The hottest thing from Sweden since Abba") in mock-Swedish, and some stunningly good performances by "The Swanky Modes" (Sam Moore and Junior Walker), it sticks in your head. This is no "The Shawshank Redemption" or "Grosse Point Blank" - If you're seeing it for Tim Robbins and John Cusack - this is late-80s throwaway kitsch, and it shows - and there's nothing wrong with that. If you think more "Better off Dead" or "Cadillac Man", you're in the right ballpark. Frankly, it's refreshing to see them in something early in their careers, having some fun. If you enjoyed your videos in the 80's, it's worth checking out.

...oh, yeah, most people are braying morons who wouldn't know a whip tight 80's comedy if it came out on DVD 15 years later with jokes that could still bite a chunk out of Adam Sandler's/Ben Stiller's/even Will Ferrell's ass. I saw this in the theater when it came out and couldn't fathom how the rest of the country wasn't chanting "Let's get into trouble, baby!" Then I remembered the country's median IQ and dismal reading levels and it was clear that this flick just moved too quickly for cinema dwellers who were looking for something a little less challenging than "Mannequin". "Teach me to read." "Sign my butt." "Don't bulls--- me! I'm a big cello fan! Casales died years ago!" "Josh is a visual visionary he communicates in images not antiquated verbosity, maybe that's why he's been so hard to understand recently." RENT-A-FACADE. "The Blender Children are mulch!" "Waffles' just pancakes with little squares on 'em." Not to mention the fact that the whole shebang is a slap in the face to Mtv produced by the creator of the network, Mike Nesmith. If that ain't subversive enough for you then go rank "Mannequin 2: On the Move" a ten and leave the real comedy to those that get it.

Ivan Alexeev (John Cusack) and Josh Tager (Tim Robbins) try to break into the L.A. music scene in the late 1980s. Quirky Samantha Gregory (Mary Crosby) tries to help.

I caught this back in the late 1980s at a small art house. The audience loved it and it was held over for a few weeks. Back then I thought it was just great. Seeing it now, 20 years later, its charms have faded. It is very energetic and Cusack, Robbins and Crosby are just great. There's also a large cast of character actors in small roles that help. The commercial parodies and music videos are funny and inventive. BUT the film gets repetitious real quick--the same jokes are made over and over. It's also very dated (you have to laugh when a character says "Video is the future"), has plenty of bad jokes and some real mediocre songs. Still this has enough good moments to give it a 7 and the closing song/video during the closing credits is lots of fun! Ex MTV DJ Martha Quinn appears as a--music TV DJ! This might work better with an audience.

This oddball comedy delivers an arguably valid comment on the booming music video culture of the 1980s, with John Cusack and Tim Robbins playing two underachievers dreaming of making it big as video producers. The direction is so unskilled and the writing so erratic that the film almost becomes a gaudy curiosity deserving of a cult following. But just almost. If watched with low expectations, it has its moments. Look for 1980s music parody phenomenon "Weird Al" Yankovic in a small role as himself. The director Bill Fishman subsequently continued his career as a music video director, but also directed a few other feature films during the 1990s.

More than just a few similarities between these two 80's cult films. Both have punk rock elements. Both have major settings in downtown LA's industrial area in the 1980's, well before the arrival of loft buildings and gentrification (post 2000). At that time, only misfits, hard core artist types and homeless were living there. Both parody media of the times, including music videos. (Repo Man specifically skewering televangelists and Tapeheads specifically roasting self-help types like Tony Robbins, or more likely Don LaPre.)

Both have goofball government agents chasing after the protagonists. Repo Man has The Circle Jerks doing bad lounge music in a dive bar. Tapeheads has Fishbone doing bad country music in a dive bar. Both have authority figures with "perverted" sex secrets (Tapeheads' Norman Mart with his spanking games, and Repo Man mentioning that John Wayne was gay.) Both films were produced by Michael Nesmith. (Sure The Nez must have been on familiar ground here with Fishman's script, just coming off Repo Man a few years prior.)

As others mentioned, director Bill Fishman employed a number of Cox's previous collaborators, including Zander Schloss, Xander Berkely and Courtney Love. So, was Fishman intentionally, slavishly copying Alex Cox with Tapeheads?

Honestly, I don't care, but the similarities are just so striking that I could not write a review of this film without mentioning them. If Repo Man is a 10, then Tapeheads, a similar take on LA in the 80's is an 8, the film's rating elevated largely by the game, appropriately goofy performances of Cusack and Robbins as the two leads. Cusack is really great in both comedy and drama, especially considering he would go on to a heavily dramatic (and successful)role in Stephen Frears' The Grifters only a couple years after this film.

It's not for everyone, and people use the term "quirky" far too much for my tastes. But this movie really is a quirkfest of the highest order and one of my personal fave pet movies.

(I should also note the similar plot point from Christopher Guest's movie The Big Picture, released about a year later, where the protagonist leaps from obscurity to fame after directing a no-budget, goofy music video which gets his name mentioned on MTV, by Richard Belzer of all people. Yet another element for me to confuse in my addled brain...wait, wasn't Richard Belzer in this movie? Oh no, that was The Big Picture!)

If you haven't stumbled across the movie, and you like Repo Man, early MTV or goofy 1980's comedies, you should check this out. And be on the watch for super brief cameos from Michael Nesmith, Weird Al Yankovic, Bobcat Goldthwait, Courtney Love and Jello Biafra. There's a cast list for ya, film fans.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm really hungry and could do well right now with a Scoe's Special from Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles.