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Poster (c) Warner Brothers
Christopher Guest’s second mockumentary (and first he directed) is Waiting for Guffman, a very funny trip to Blaine, Missouri. It will most likely be compared more to Spinal Tap than Best in Show or A Mighty Wind because it was the first one. It has all most of Guest’s posse including Michael Hitchcock, Fred Willard, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, and Bob Balaban. However, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean are nowhere to be seen.
Guest is Corky St. Clair. He’s a stage director who is hired to produce Blaine’s sesquicentennial musical, “Red, White, and Blaine”. Some of his previous works include “Backdraft: The Musical”. The theater burned down. The townspeople try out for the musical. They’re horrible. Some include Dr. Allan Pearl (Levy), one of the only Jewish people in town, Ron and Sheila Albertson (Willard and O’Hara), and Libby Mae Brown (Posey), who enjoys her job at the local Dairy Queen. They all have to learn their roles with the demanding Corky, and the whole thing is shot in documentary form.
First things first: if you don’t like documentaries, you won’t like this picture. Although it isn’t true, the whole movie is very talky and doesn’t have any action. If you enjoy quirky pictures that can be uneven but also funny, this is your type of movie. It has many funny moments, especially from Corky (“You people…are…bastard people!”). At times, I’m sure what the actors had to go through was embarrassing, especially when Willard and O’Hara were doing their duet. A way that that was put into perspective for me was when our school put on a performance of “Bye Bye Birdie”, and the person who played Gloria Rasputin, a glitzy dancer who is not very good, commented how embarrassing it was to be bad.
The photography was amateurish, especially in the beginning, but that gave it a more authentic feel to the documentary-type it is. However, if this is all supposed to be a documentary, then there are a few shots that don’t seem right. The townspeople are knocking on Corky’s door, and then we see Corky sitting in the bathtub. Also, right after scene was done in the musical; we follow the actors going backstage. If the camera was just in the audience, how can it get on stage?
Much of the dialogue was obviously improvised, and it tells. Whenever someone just got a whiff, they went on to talk about whatever, and it’s often very funny. Some of the deleted scenes on the DVD are just improv, especially from Fred Willard, who is just hilarious.
Something that makes this different from other movies is that there is no background music, because this is supposed to be a documentary. It really put more of an authentic feel. Another point that I loved is the combination of a regular movie and an ensemble movie. Instead of having some well-developed characters or no characters to care about, Guest put in deep characters, that have back-stories that we actually care about, and it’s amazing that he can put all of it in in 80 minutes. Waiting for Guffman is a very funny piece that isn’t as much about the bad actors but the interesting story that goes on behind the scenes.
Rated R for brief strong language.
Review Date: May 2, 2003