Survived another Monday, friends!
Quarantine be like
Good news for movie lovers: my favorite release of 2020 thus far, Kitty Green’s The Assistant, is now available to stream on Hulu! In under an hour and a half, you’ll get a film that’s both aesthetically precise and thematically relevant. (Once you’re done, be sure to check out my interview with the writer/director, too.)
On a less exciting note, this one goes out to the predominately millennial subscribers of this newsletter: 🗣 WE ARE NOT IMMUNE TO SUFFERING FROM COVID-19. If you need to get scared straight, please take a look at this terrifying compendium of stories by CNN from the odd cases where people aren’t getting over the coronavirus like it’s the common cold. This one, from 28-year-old TV writer Morgan Swank, chilled me to the bone:
She's back to working out, and in addition to boxing gloves, she now keeps Albuterol inhalers with her boxing gloves in her gym bag. The inhalers help her finish her workout.
"I have to use an inhaler every couple minutes to reinvigorate my lungs," she said.
Even short conversations can be a struggle. "I hear it in my voice just talking to you," she said in a phone interview. "I'm winded."
Getting sick again is her biggest worry, and she feels like her immune system is now compromised.
"I really wish people would wear their masks all the time," she said. "If I get another respiratory infection like the flu and my lungs get damaged from that, I may have to be hospitalized."
And, as always, a reminder that my employer is matching donations to a number of justice-oriented organizations (all of which are listed and described in this nifty spreadsheet). Make your money go twice as far by noting your organization of choice in a Venmo payment (@marSHAffer). Closing in on just $100 left to match! Want to end this recurring section of The Distancer you probably know to skim over by now?! You can be the change you wish to see in the world!
Now, what you came for…
DAY 130: Best in Show (available on Hulu)
The mockumentary format has been done to death in recent years thanks to the successes of The Office and Parks and Recreation. Even so, it’s still worth going back to the root and examining a clear inspiration for some of the millennium’s most influential comedies: the works of Christopher Guest. His movies still undo me on repeat viewings like few others, and none crack me up quite like his dog show satire Best in Show.
I think the X-factor for Guest movies is his understanding of a key component of human nature that it took most people until the advent of social media and smartphones to realize for themselves. Everyone will make themselves the star of the movie in their heads if you give them the platform. I was trying to pinpoint his precise attitude towards the odd menagerie of characters he puts on screen — is it pity? Mockery? Amusement? I think it’s something else entirely.
Guest assembles an ensemble of skilled sketch and improv performers to develop their characters, trains his camera on them and simply lets them run free on the take. (Famously, Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy spend ample time creating the characters and almost no time rehearsing or plotting out how the scenes will play out.) The filmed moments go where they go, and it’s often in an absurd, ridiculous … yet wholly believable direction. What we’re watching feels like the entirely logical conclusion of shining a spotlight on people who are convinced deep-down that this is what they have always deserved.
There’s very little explanation of the hilarious mayhem of Best in Show that wouldn’t be better served by letting the characters introduce themselves. The film centers around the handlers and owners of various dogs competing in the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show, an odd but entertaining bunch of kooks and eccentrics. The competition aggravates and amplifies some of the entrants most grating tendencies — most of which we can sense from their introduction, but all of which prove hysterically entertaining. Especially once the show itself begins and we get the bizarre color commentary of Fred Willard’s Buck Laughlin on top of all the other antics, the film enters a whole new level of comedy glory. (AND we get some great pupper action?! 14/10 best boys.)
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall