Los Angeles show review

[buffcoat]

I went to the second Cinefamily show in LA. This being Los Angeles, there was no talk of a meetup beforehand.

The first show was sold out; this one was about 3/4 full. I saw Andy Kindler as I was waiting in line. He had been the guest at the first show - he said hi to Sparkiepop and pointed out that she had been the one to introduce him to Tom.

Saying, "Hi, I'm the buffcoat," to people who don't know what the hell that is could lead to police being called in certain situations, so I didn't interject myself there. Andy Kindler said he'd been onstage for the earlier show but he and his wife were going home and there would be other guests for this one.

I went in - Cinefamily is a fairly straight-up independent theater, not unlike the Varsity in Chapel Hill. I heard Steve from NoHo's voice coming out of the guy in front of me, so I introduced myself.

Tom and Jon came out first. Tom let us know right away that they wouldn't be doing the variety show this time in LA but promised to come back and do it in LA in the future. I hope I'm here that week. They talked for a few minutes about the movie we were going to see, American Harmony, and said they'd be back onstage to discuss it with some friends after the show.

They showed a crazy ad for the theater, a trailer for the movie Roar (as mentioned by Jefferton from TX), and then "We're Newbridge, We're Comin' to Get Ya," which Tom described as the Adult Swim infomercial that wasn't "Too Many Cooks."

Then the movie started. Holy cow. If you haven't seen it, and you almost certainly haven't, you should definitely get a copy right away. I was talking with fellow FOT Lee H after the show, and he said he was going to buy a bunch of copies and make it his calling card. I certainly understand that impulse.

The audience laughed at the sad, freaky dudes who do this as their consuming passion, and then about halfway in, we all started rooting for the ones we knew to win and became spellbound by the eventual outcome. Great filmmaking. Tom said that was the way the audience reacted every time.

After the show Tom, Jon, Nathan Fielder and Coco Hames discussed the movie and took some audience questions. That went on for about 20 minutes. Then Tom and Jon said they'd be signing posters in the courtyard. I wanted to meet our heroes, and I have a slight compulsion to give them money when I can, so I stood in line and bought the poster. I had met them at the Gathering of the FOT at the Iron Monkey in 2009, but this time I got to talk to them a little more.

I introduced myself as the guy who runs the Newbridgctionary and was happy they knew about it. It was great seeing them and being at the show. It was more "a movie hosted by Scharpling and Wurster," than a full-on cavalcade, but it was a great way to spend 10:00-1AM on a Sunday. And hey, I got a parking space.

[liz_noise]

Saw a pretty great photo of Tom and Jon taken by Lance Bangs.

[JeffertonFromTX]

Oh, man, that picture is amazing.

[Pixmintro]

I got to check out the early screening last night and what a show it was! American Harmony is flat-out such a strange movie, I have to show it to everyone now! Jeff Oxley is the most arrogant, smarmy barbershop singer ever, and the crowd looooooved him.

The early screening sounds like it went pretty similarly to Buffcoat's description of the late screening. Main difference being Andy Kindler and John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats joined Tom and Jon for the post-movie Q and A. They had a pretty funny discussion about John Darnielle wishing every Beach Boys master track would be wiped out forever. Not too many people asked questions, everyone was there to just see them riff.

Tom and Jon were signing merch in the back patio after the show, nice meeting them! I didn't have much to say though. The screen-printed Scharpling & Wurster poster is magnificent! I totally blindly walked past Andy Kindler while getting into line for the show, then missed him again while I was in line for merch, doops. Rebecca Sugar and Ian JQ were also at the show.

This is only the second time I've gotten to go to Cinefamily and damn it, I might want to get a membership there. So much cool shit being shown! Got to go a couple weeks ago when one of the guys who did The Lego Movie and Clone High hosted a bunch of the original animators of the Canadian feature, "Rock & Rule".

Great show last night guys! Please come back to LA soon!!!

[brancron]

I was at the 7:30 show and thought the laughter was pretty condescending for the most part. It seemed like a "look at these fat idiots, we're so much better than them" sort of laughter, and I think John Darnielle was annoyed by it too.

But despite the audience, the show was really great.

[RemyLBO]

I don't know brancron, I think it's a much more nuanced emotion than 'look at these fat idiots, we're so much better than them'. 

Sure there was tons of laughing at people saying absurd things.  But they were saying absurd things, I don't think anyone outside of their strange bubble would disagree.  The disconnect between how passionate they were about barbershop singing, and how dispassionate we were was the source of the laughter.  But it's not just 'we feel we're better'.

But I don't think anyone could watch that movie and not be awed by the dedication and talent of those singers.  Except for some of the assholes in the movie, I think the audience was truly celebrating in the strangeness of the scene.  It was bizarre, it was funny, but it also was incredibly relatable to see this fervent niche of weirdos obsessing over this thing that noone else seems to care about.

I mean, as FOT's, we all should relate to that somewhat. 

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Man, everyone I know was at the late show!

Had a similar experience, and love Cinefamily. Was great to see Tom again -- I think the last time I saw him in person was at WFMU, before my eldest son was born. Now my son (now 4.5) is a FOT who always asks to listen to TBS.

Brancron, you're projecting. There's no way to know what kind of laughter that was, and Darnielle defended the craft of the singers but wasn't exactly praising the music or the culture. My wife is from Indiana, where those kinds of male choral groups are huge. They're much bigger and more relevant than alt-comedy nerds (guessing from the crowd at the contest in the movie, this might be true nationally as well as in Indiana). She thought the movie was hilarious, but laughed out of recognition. But if you wanna hate all the people who like what you like, go for it.

Personally, my biggest laugh came from the insane scoring system. I found the mustachioed goofballs pretty endearing.

[buffcoat]

Yeah, I looked for you, Grote. I slept on the first show but grabbed the second show as soon as it came up.

The scoring system was out of this world. Why is 8,300 the magic number? What? I also liked that the movie made no attempt whatsoever to explain how they were judged - it could be audience participation, a panel, a great big wheel spin, numerology, anything.

I also didn't get a sense of any meanness from my fellow FOTs. It's fascinating that somebody would say that all these hipsters - and I mean that in the most endearing sense of the word, my bearded and mustachioed brothers and my tattooed brothers and sisters - were laughing in superior derision at a guy who lives in a multimillion-dollar Dallas McMansion, gets paid to sing all around the country and couldn't give the tiniest, tiniest fuck what a group of 200 LA nerds in an old theater think about him.

I live in an enclave of North Carolina that is also home to Jon Wurster and John Darnielle, but I don't ever forget that most of this state is much more likely to be fans of and go to the International than a Best Show meetup.

[John Junk]

I was at the late show and I had a great time. I was laughing at some of the silliness, but it was ultimately a pretty interesting movie. It was sort of a real-life Christopher Guest movie. The movie was edited with a light sense of humor, and the barbershop guys were aware of the essential absurdity of it, in spite of working like crazy and getting super into it. The fact that the whole audience went "NOOO!" when Max Q got second place proves to me that people got into it. I actually thought it was interesting because I was also aware of my own geekdom for The Best Show during the movie (I was clutching a box of drawings I later gave to T & J) and realized a similar movie (maybe a 10 minute short) could be made about the FOT. To me it seemed like it was like a real-life Newbridge documentary, or in keeping with the best show callers like Spike.  Guys who are over the top and absurd, but who you're rooting for in the end.

[buffcoat]

I wish everybody had had on name tags.

[Mr. Spacely]

Very cool to read these reviews. I would have loved to gone, but Sunday night at 10:30 is not easy when you've got kids. Still, the kids will get GOMP'ed (or hung up on? Well, taken to a sitter) if/when Scharpling & Wurster do the full-on live show here in LA.