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TV PILOT REVIEW *EXTRA*:

IFC’s Three New Shows: Hopeless Pictures, Greg The Bunny, and The Festival

By Matt Singer

August 16, 2005

Poop Shoot Prez Chris Ryall was kind enough to give me the floor of TV Pilot Review this week to spotlight the new Friday night lineup on IFC.

As those of you who read my column already know I’ve been writing for IFC’s website for about a year now, and just last week I got a significant job upgrade: I’m now the new host of the channel’s on-air IFC News segments, which run in the breaks between the movies. The first batch of clips is already on the air, including some from Comic-Con that also feature footage of our very own Kevin Smith. If you’re channel surfing keep your eyes peeled. In my capacity over at IFC, I got a sneak peak at their three new original shows which, in an unusual bit of formatting, total an hour in length, and debut this Friday at 10 PM.

This piece, then, is an obvious conflict of interests. “Matt,” you might say, “you’ve become a corporate shill!” “Reader,” I would respond, “you are kind of correct.”

I would feel uncomfortable with that role, if not for the fact that these shows are refreshingly good all across the board. If I didn’t like these shows and didn’t want to recommend them, I wouldn’t. I’d let Chris make fun of them because, really, that’s his gig, not mine. I make fun of bad movies, not TV shows.

The first show, the 20-minute cartoon HOPELESS PICTURES, is the unquestioned standout. Created, written, and performed (in part) by Bob Balaban, HOPELESS tells the story of the staff of an ineptly run Hollywood studio. In the pilot, we meet Mel Wax (Michael McKean), Hopeless’ beleaguered president. Last night’s test screening of the studio’s newest film, DIRTY FEET, did not go well (FEET was originally titled THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS, but no one seems to remember when or why it was changed). “Poor is not the word,” he tells his boardroom of yes men executives, describing the test screening. “Impoverished is the word.”

Improvised is a better word. I don’t know how HOPELESS is made, but it feels remarkably spontaneous for an animated cartoon, as if the actors get together in a room, crack each other up for a few hours, and then send off the funniest take to be animated. Balaban’s cast, featuring fellow Christopher Guest comedy veterans like McKean, Jennifer Coolidge, and the invaluable John Michael Higgins talk in long, rambling riffs, tossing away gags that lesser shows would pound into the ground. It’s something of the anti-LOONEY TUNES: with its neurotic, shrink-obsessed cast (they all consult Dr. Stein, played by Jonathan Katz) this is one of the least visually oriented cartoons I have ever seen – save the one surprisingly (and hilariously) graphic sex scene, replete with plenty of flashes of cartoon breasts and a disturbing number of buttsex references.

It’s only one episode, but HOPELESS PICTURES has a lot of promise: it’s unlike any other cartoon on TV (it’s perhaps the first in half a decade that doesn’t seem wholly inspired by THE SIMPSONS) and has too many genuinely creative voices involved to run out of steam any time soon.

Next is a brief 10 minute short from GREG THE BUNNY, returning to its original home on IFC after a sojourn on Fox (Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know it started on IFC either). Though it appeared as a sitcom, here GREG is largely a series of film parodies; the first new episode is an absurd puppet version of ANNIE HALL, with a credits sequence that adorably apes THE A-TEAM. In “Bunnie Hall” Greg – doing a superb Woody impression – replays the famous lobster-cooking scene from ANNIE, only to find himself more attracted to the lobster he can’t bring himself to cook than the Cabbage Patch Doll he’s dating.

GREG doesn’t fall into the trap of obsessing over the details of parody; it is, after all, a 10-minute version with puppets. Instead, the creators draw broad strokes that remind us of the formal techniques of the real ANNIE HALL, while crafting a gag-laced love affair capped by a surprisingly touching finale. The short running time is the right length for the format as well, as the characters remain lovable and the jokes don’t get a chance to grow stale.

The hour rounds out with THE FESTIVAL, which, like HOPELESS, has obvious debts to the mockumentary form of Christopher Guest. It follows an aspiring 26-year-old filmmaker named Rufus (Nicolas Wright) who has come to the Mountain United Film Festival (or M.U.F.F.) with his first film, THE UNREASONABLE TRUTH OF BUTTERFLIES. In typical Guestian fashion, THE FESTIVAL’s cast is littered with adorable eccentrics, like Judy Macon, director of M.U.F.F. volunteers, who pronounces the word film “fill-ims” and who admits that she doesn’t watch movies very often (something I’ve heard is sadly true of more than a couple real festival employees).

It’s hard to get a feel for where THE FESTIVAL is going; the pilot has a lot of good characters crammed into a little over twenty minutes, and it features an unsettling number of silly names (one character, for instance, is named Marshall Stack III). Still, Wright is a strong, funny lead, with a good handle on the denial and ego-tripping at the heart of his character (He doesn’t “live” with his parents, he “stays” with them – he only lives “in the moment”).

Even better, the series’ conceit, that a film crew from IFC is on hand to record the proceedings, allows director and co-writer Phil Price to tease his bosses. “Goddamn IFC!” Rufus declares after the film crew abandons him by the side of the road. The line, and the whole hour of shows really, prove the goddamn network has a good sense of humor.

If you don’t have cable, or you just want a preview, head over to IFC.com, where you can watch the first episodes of HOPELESS PICTURES and GREG THE BUNNY for free.

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