Movie Details
| Title: | Tapeheads | |
| Director: | Bill Fishman | |
| Year: | 1988 | |
| Genre: | Buddy Movie | |
| Times Seen: | 3 | |
| Last Seen: | 08.02.09 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 08.02.09 | Home DVD | Watched this for the third time in a month. This time with my wife. Hot damn, I still love this movie... and enjoy it more with each viewing. On this viewing I realized what a textbook psychopath Cusack's character was. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the tell-tale signs of a psychopath: // Early factor analysis of the PCL-R indicated it consisted of two factors. Factor 1 captures traits dealing with the interpersonal and affective deficits of psychopathy (e.g. shallow affect, superficial charm, manipulativeness, lack of empathy) whereas Factor 2 dealt with symptoms relating to antisocial behaviour (e.g. criminal versatility, impulsiveness, irresponsibility, poor behaviour controls, juvenile delinquency). // Yup... that's pretty much Cusack here. The scene that best reflects this is the sequence after his success with The Blender Children where he drinks with Samantha Gregory, slaps her for no reason, and completely ignores everything she's saying in favor of trying to hook up. It's a great scene, but the guy is clearly disconnected from reality. I'm on the brink of coming up with a theory that explains the moment where TAPEHEADS leaves the realm of our reality and goes into an alternate nutzo universe (for example, the scene with the Virtual Guardian or the Grabbing Beers On The Road sequence), but I'm not quite there yet. I'm also seriously considering doing a novelization of this movie. Seriously. |
| 07.11.09 | Home DVD | Wow... after watching this movie the second time in three days, I can say it has amazing rewatchability. I had some friends over tonight to watch UFC 100 on PPV. Afterwards, one friend stuck around and I popped this in at midnight because I wanted to "see what you think of the first few minutes." 90 minutes later, we'd watched the entire thing, and I'm pretty sure he loved it as much as I did. The fact that this movie isn't more well know is a shame. I reminds me a lot of Office Space in that there's something amazingly good going on in every frame of the film. There's literally no boring bits. (As an aside, I had a friend in junior high try to describe his favorite album to me like this "It's the best CD ever, man.. every song is *decent*!" So... I'm not saying it's a great movie because there's no boring bits, I'm just saying one of the ways you can tell it's a great movie is that there are no boring bits.). And the quotes... I can't think of a movie I've seen recently that's had as much potential to work itself into my vocabulary as this movie did. And... not to be dramatic... but Cusack's mantra of "I'll do what I have to do so that I can do what I want to do" has hit me on a somewhat profound level and - to some degree - colored my view on work (which is good, since I ended up having to work all weekend long... I just kept playing the Tapeheads OST and runnig Cusack's mantra in my mind). This is one of those movies where you can tell everyone involved was having a hell of a time. I'm so glad I've finally discovered this one. I'm sure I'll be revisiting it sooner rather than later. And man... can we get the return of psychotic/energetic John Cusack ASAP? It seems like we've had a lot of the worldweary/sage Cusack as of late. Current Favorite Quote: Negativity festers in you man! |
| 07.08.09 | Home DVD | This movie - which I'd never heard of until this week - vaulted into my top 10 films of all time list. And it even surpassed High Fidelity as my favorite Cusack movie. I watched it two days later, so in this entry, I'll just post my livetweets as I was discovering the film: :: Watching TAPEHEADS (1988) #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9r9id :: It's got Tim Robbins. #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9r9mg :: It's got John Cusack aka @shockozulu #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9ra9r :: It's got Cusack and Robbins doing a synchronized hand slap routine. #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9rad1 :: And it's also got Clu Gulager and Susan Tyrrell. I can't believe I've never seen this movie. #tapeheads :: Hot damn... There's 12 kinds of awesome jammed into this frame. #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9raqm :: Prosperity Through Exploitation? Written by Bobcat Goldwaith? It's like this movie was written for me. #tapeheads :: "Waffles just pancakes with squaaaares on'em" #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9rba6 :: Babydoll!!! #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9rbw2 :: There's Tyrrell and Clu. #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9rcoi :: New Master Plan: Do what I gotta do so I can do what I want to do. #tapeheads http://twitpic.com/9rd4p :: TAPEHEADS = Insanely fun and quotable. I can't believe it took me 21 years to discover this movie. #tapeheads |