Tapeheads - Verrückt auf Video

"Tapeheads", a scrappy, intermittently funny spoof of the music video business, might have been the perfect comedic short, and stars John Cusack and Tim Robbins are effortlessly in the swing of the nonsensical chaos involved. They play two semi-savvy security guards in Los Angeles who start their own company, Video Aces, making hilarious videos for rock groups, parties, and one deathbed star. It's too bad the filmmakers had to invent a dim side-plot to pad the running time (shenanigans involving a crooked politician and his henchmen which doesn't do much except take away from the movie's primary strength, sending-up the music culture of the late-'80s). Still, Cusack and Robbins create a couple of originals here: nerdy but loose, street-smart without being hipsters or posers, these guys are on the same nutty wavelength, and they never put each other down. They're the real thing in buddy-comedies. **1/2 from ****

starting with the opening credits with the song "bet your bottom dollar on me" and the line "dad put his fingers in it!" i knew this was a cult classic in the making. this film should not only be awarded posthumous awards for sheer, naked drop dead funny lines ("work time's over, drinkin' times begun") to obnoxiously funny music video parodies (can anyone forget the feathers in "my baby doll"?) to bobcat goldthwait as a pre-tony robbins influential speaker (cash-flow, cash-flow, cash-flow). my best friend and i watched this movie for years, and now a dvd release...to hell with extras, this is TAPEHEADS... btw, if anyone has the soundtrack....

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.

I can't explain why but I've watched this a hundred times and I keep laughing, alongside Cusack's Better Off Dead. John Cusack and Tim Robbins were still playing losers and became good friends off camera when they made Tapeheads, as they play bumbling would-be music video makers. In order to get their boyhood heroes The Swanky Modes (played by real-life singers Sam Moore and Junior Walker) the gig of all gigs, they scam and plug their way through unpaid work, Roscoe's chicken and waffles, relentless hitmen and a vengeful politician. Great character acting by Jessica Walter, Don Cornelius and Clu Gulager. Cameos by a ton of folks, including executive producer Michael Nesmith (from the Monkees), Jello Biafra, Fishbone and the Nuge. Along the way are all kinds of catchy little jokes that you either like and remember forever or. just don't like. "We love Menudo." "On spec." The mounting parking tickets. At least watch it for Cusack and Robbins passing the Brothers Against Drunk Driving (BADD) alcohol test: going through the alphabet backwards with your eyes closed, skipping all the vowels and giving the hand sign for each letter.

The DVD is letterboxed and has a strong analog track with Nesmith, director Bill Fishman and production designer Catherine Hardwicke. Much of the time it is as light-hearted as the movie and interesting. Unfortunately, Fishman brings up tons of scenes that were deleted from the film but aren't included on the DVD. I'm sure there's some reason for this, maybe they just weren't available, but it's kind of frustrating - they actually sound funny instead of the usual deleted scene that deserved to be cut out and forgotten. I was surprised that so much stuff was actually cut out, and that Cusack and Robbins wanted to play the opposite roles when they auditioned. But, this ain't the high theater either. At times the analog track has some of those "Remember when that happened" stories, that only work if you really really like the film. But then, why else would you watch the whole thing with the analog track on?

...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.