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Why Can't I Be A Movie Star - The Best Of Trailervision 1
In many ways, parody is the easiest of all forms to make. A filmmaker does not have to come up with an original story, plot or characters. Just rip off someone else, exaggerate the bad qualities and you're in.
Because of that, though, the market is absolutely flooded. Not Another Teen Movie, every Zucker film starting with Airplane!, Scary Movie, Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 27 are but just a handful of examples.
The only form of comedy as prevalent as parody might be industry satire. When you get a town filled with pompous, self-righteous jackasses like Hollywood, it's easy to take shots at its inflated self-worth.
So, enter Trailervision. A low budget outfit, the troupe of actors, directors and writers (and, because of the low budget, soundmen, cameramen and lighting experts, too) skips the full film and sticks in the two-minute realm of movie trailers, lampooning films in short bits on its website (http://www.trailervision.com).
Why Can't I Be A Movie Star? is a sort of "best of" from the group. The "feature" itself is an excuse to shoehorn in as many trailers as possible; a frustrated commercial actor tries to figure out what separates himself from top movies stars like Patrick Brannigan, even when Brannigan himself may or may not be dead. This leads to interviews with other stars, after which we see the trailer from one of their recent films.
The humor in such a collection comes from the trailers themselves, so here are some of the highlights:
Pourquoi? and Pourquoi Pas?: The ugly American version of French farce. It captures the essence of spots for these types of films well: "Be smart and pretentious! See us ask obvious questions about life!"
Moon Attacks 2000: Actually, pretty poorly done, but gets a pass for the Die Hard-esque climatic line, "Feliz Navidad, mother[expletive]."
Rave Cops: Crowd footage from actual raves goes a long way towards making it look like Trailervision had an actual production budget.
You've Got Hell: The funniest trailer on the disc. It's not a direct parody as much as a statement about Hollywood films in general. A man that can communicate directly with modems must get into AOL before it destroys the Internet. It has the added bonus of Tanya Pillay, who makes me laugh almost every time she shows up on the disc. And I have a crush on her. There, I said it.
The problem with Why Can't I Be a Movie Star? is that the joke wears thin long before the end of the disc. There is so much here, so many different jokes, that Robin Williams would be proud; it seems to come from the "throw everything at the wall" school of comedy. But individual moments here can be shocking and hilarious.
The DVD
Audio/Video:
It's tough to describe just how poor the quality is here of the trailers. This is not only low-budget filmmaking, but filmmaking for Internet distribution, meaning that high quality sound and video would simply make for bigger downloads. The transfers themselves are fine, but the source material looks pretty terrible.
Extras:
The best of the extras is "The Hoax," clips and explanations of the Trailervision folks' visit to the Toronto Film Festival, where they pose like movie stars and get much more access than they should. It's very funny, funnier than most of the other material on the disc.
There is also a commentary with three of the main minds behind Trailervision – Albert Nerenberg, Nick Appleton and Ken Leonard. The track is disappointing in many ways, as the three spend most of their time explaining why some bits are funny, rather than talking more about the process of shooting all this for such little money.
Cast biographies, deleted scenes, outtakes and, yes, previews for other Trailervision projects are included.
Final Thoughts:
One has to question what kind of shelf life a DVD like Why Can't I Be A Movie Star? has. Will Jesus 2000 still be funny after the fifth viewing? But the Trailervision crew is funny enough that paying for something without a good chance of replay value is worth it.
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