dr_midnight32

In my early 20s, Nyabinghi in Youngstown was a 15 minute drive to one of the best bars around. Crapy-oke in Wednesday night was a weekly staple, the regular bartenders were great (heaviest hands in Youngstown), and it had the most eclectic jukebox I've ever encountered in my life. On the weekends, the bands that played there were just as eclectic. We didn't go every weekend, but we went every time Gil Mantera's Party Dream played.

FAR from anything close to the normal music I listen to (mostly oldies), Gil Mantera made me a fan with their anything goes performances, solid synthpop music, and stream of consciousness lyrics. The energy in the room was unlike any other band I've ever seen perform. Anything could happen at any time. Yes, that phrase is often used where it's not really applicable, but here, it's the truth. You see some of that in the doc. At first blush, they just looked like they were making asses of themselves. Yet, when the music kicked in and they started spraying down the crowd with PBR, lighting their public hair on fire, or going off on each other, you got drawn into the spectacle, performance, and free-floating energy.

In my life in suburban Ohio, I would NEVER think that anyone would make a documentary about anything I experienced first-hand around here. Yet, when I stumbled across this, I was both flabbergasted and unsurprised (after I thought about it) that they were the subject of a doc. Thankfully, it's a well-made work that tells their story in a very entertaining way, chock full of performances and insightful interviews.

Nyabinghi is long gone, my then friends have all scattered, and we all woke up from the Party Dream. Occasionally, one of their lyrics or a bit of their banter would pop into my head and I'd wonder what became of them. It's nice to finally know.

I've been hearing Eddie Pepitone on Dana Gould's podcast for a while now, loving his thoughts, jokes, and take on the world. When I saw that this doc was on Amazon Prime, I had to watch it and man, was I rewarded.

It's well worth it to see this for Pepitone's stand-up alone, but the peaks behind the curtain to get a feel for the real struggles this guy is going up against are really what pulled me in. Hilarious but tortured is a common statement for a lot of stand-ups and Pepitone fits that perfectly. Yet, while he's struggling with a lot of different aspects of life and himself, you do get the sense that he's making progress, understanding and coping to the extent that he can and getting better or at least trying to. Some of the people interviewed cast him in lesser light or go after him because of his level of success hasn't reached their level of respectability which shows their own lack of understanding in our niche media world. If he's able to be successful enough to live in LA by just doing stand-up and bit parts, then he's on a level that most people who dream of doing that will never achieve. Perhaps some of his recovery would be stronger if he dropped the friends that seemed to just use him as a punching bag.

Soapbox aside, I heartily laughed at the comedy and the by the numbers "working my way up to a big show" end was easy to give yourself over to since the charm helped you believe in it more. His show-stopping heckler bit at the end was genius and the highlight of the show.

Watch this one now.

Some movies are bad, yet are funny bad. Some movies are bad, yet you can see that they tried and just fell short of what they wanted. This is neither. Atrocious audio, terrible acting, long stretches of padding just to fill out the running time, and one of the worst stories I've seen set to film (and I've seen Nutty Professor II: The Klumps). If you need to fall asleep, throw this in and let the Sandman take you. Not even worth watching drunk.

I'm from the area that this was shot in, yet I still cannot get behind this film. Local pride doesn't even make up for the abject boredom that this movie emanates. Avoid at all costs.