Director: Jaz Garewal
Stars: Tony Eckstat, Raj Garewal, Jonathan Northover, Haley Pinyerd and Chris Wolf
The proposed web series for which
BlamBlamBlam, ClickClickClick is apparently the pilot, failed to reach its Kickstarter target but I hope that writer/director Jaz Garewal manages to get funding somehow because I'd really like to see what he spins out from this. It's dark humour about as dark as it gets without being sixty years old and British. So much of what we're shown in the nine minute running time is wrong in every way, and given that it focuses on a pair of inept hostage negotiators, you can imagine how wrong it gets, but it's all done very right indeed. Garewal and his production company, Skinny Bones, have made a few short films and even a feature, 2006's
On the Cutting Room Floor, though this is the only one I've seen thus far. Given that the others tend to feature many of the same actors, including the deliciously dry Tony Eckstat, I really need to track them down.
Eckstat is one of the hostage negotiators, Lt Leo Darden, who works for the Bayhook PD Hostage Task Force. His partner is Lt Rick Carter, played by Raj Garewal, and he's just as capably inept. In this pilot episode, they're tasked with defusing a hostage situation at a bank, where Ben Lambert wants his life back, having been fired by the man who's sleeping with his estranged wife. I can't count how many films have been spun out of this scenario, but this one sits alone in its aims. I'm sure you can picture what Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis or even David Caruso would do when faced with this sort of thing, but they're all about action with comedy an underlying second priority. In this short, action is ruled out as non-viable for the budget and so comedy is all that's left. What the Skinny Bones folk do is relish in how inappropriate their humour can get without ceasing to be funny. It's a fine line to walk but I think they walk it pretty well.
No comments:
Post a Comment