Tapeheads

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....

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?

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.

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.

"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 ****