Freddy the Precognitive Retard
 

Here's a short film I made a few weeks ago.

http://www.amfproductions.com/freddy/freddy_big.mov (12mb, 3 mins.)

Comments would be welcomed!

(Hope no one is easily offended! It's supposed to be so over-the-top that you should feel free to laugh)

The title is offensive and prevents me from any having any intrest in watching it.

Jay

Oh well, suit yourself.

Title sounds good. I'll take a look when I get off work. The more politically incorrect a feature is the more apt I am to enjoy it.

Well...I almost hate to admit this, but I thought parts of it were hilarious! The opening scene really got me laughing.

Your work is quite good, Bryan--I found it enjoyable and impressive from every standpoint of production. I may try to view some of the other movies on your Web site.

BTW, I've got a college-age kid myself, so I understand your rather "incorrect" humor. Judging from your production notes on the other movies, I'd say you and your friends have enough creativity, intelligence and talent to really go places.

Sorry, I'm with Jay. Not funny.

Thank you very much Lorinda, I really appreciate your comments.

Marco, I'm sorry you feel that way. But why should it stop you or Jay from, at the least, viewing it? I just want to make people laugh. Sure the comedy may not be "PC," but my aim is not to offend.

Good Job.

Well put together piece. Made me laugh.

You have to understand that anytime that you do something like this many people will not agree. It just goes with the territory. In fact I believe much of the humor in it is knowing that you are not supposed to be laughing at what you are seeing, but can't help it.

I would have been perfectly happy to have had the opportunity to laugh. But I just ended up frowning through it. Sorry. Not funny.

Decent production values though. I had no trouble understanding what was going on, I just didn't see any humor. Irony yes. Humor no. Keep trying.

Yeah, I realize this type of comedy is not for everyone. Ah well! I have several different kinds of comedies available for download on my website. I always enjoy trying different approaches to the genre.

Bryan,
Actually, I did download it, but couldn't get it to play. I'm on a Mac. I'm certainly willing to at least try and find out where you are coming from, but from the title I'm not encouraged. Personally, I think a lot of people hide behind terms like "un-p.c." as a way to excuse all kinds of hateful behavior. I'm not saying you are, because like I said, I couldn't get the clip to play. But you might want to ask yourself if this really is the kind of company you want to keep.

Not to over-analyze, but the difference of opinion here interests me. I took Bryan’s disclaimer to heart when I watched, gave him the benefit of the doubt (that he wasn’t making fun of handicapped people), and concentrated on the other aspects of the movie.

We all know that comedy is quite subjective—for various reasons. One, we run much of what we see through the filter of our experiences. I laughed right from the start at the choice of musical instruments because we actually have them for sale in the music store where I teach! Like banjos, their bigger counterparts have spawned countless jokes. (Besides that, I just thought the actor did a good job.)

I liked “Freddy” because of his good heart. Yet I could laugh at the end purely because the visual was funny – not because of the concept. Chalk that up to too much Wily Coyote/Roadrunner as a kid, I suppose. Admittedly, I cringed at the two “episodes,” but there again, I concentrated on other things.

Finally, I actually appreciated the irony--thought it was clever.

If I had to pigeonhole this particular piece I might liken it to some of Steve Martin’s work. I know many people who don’t care for his stuff at all, but I think some of it is good. (I’m one of the FEW people I know who thought a good portion of Bowfinger was funny. There again, some of my own experiences played a part.)

A dear friend of mine from the East Coast tells me that humor there is more sophisticated than here in the West. That may be so, but I am okay with the fact that I can laugh at the “lower end” as well as “sophisticated” comedy. Sometimes I feel like people could stand to lighten up a little. I’ve watched a few short movies and read a few posts on this forum that have offended me because of my beliefs, etc., but I don’t moralize because it was my choice to view them.

Thanks for posting, Bryan; I’ll be watching for the next one.

Humor is a tough target to hit. The target is different for every observer. So where do you aim?

The answer, as Bryan already knows, is to aim where you laugh, and the heck with everyone else. If you are trying to make a living doing it, then you make compromises. But if it is just for your own satisfaction, and to share with others, no compromises are required or desired.

However, Bryan will not know who did, and did not, find it funny unless we tell him.

I would not consider my self particularly sophisticated when it comes to humor. I consider Robin Williams to be the funniest man on the planet. And while I am not particularly proud of it, I find this little piece to be very funny. My wife assures me it is probably just "Guy humor" but what can I say?

http://txc.net.au/~mapie/JurrasicFart.wmv

Oh my gosh, Steven, that's crude!!! And of course, I laughed.

Your assessment of the humor thing is dead-on. BTW, Robin Williams is a perfect example of someone who's humor yanks me around--I hate some of it and laugh until I hurt at the rest.

Half of me was intruiged the title, the other half was offended by it.


Dude, this has to be *THE* most offensive video I've ever seen posted here. You've got some big balls to put it up, and attach your name to it. I did laugh all the way through, but I felt really, really, really bad for laughing. It was pretty f-ing funny.

However, for making fun of the mentally handicapped, I have to rate your film one middle finger up.

Owing to various family circumstances I have spent a lot of time around special needs children and those who work tirelessly to support them. I have to say that the piece was not funny in any way that I could recognize.

Bryan is a video maker
 

... but not much of a writer.
Here's my thought: Go and study Tom Green. He's a Canadian. His career began like yours is seemingly doing so on a track toward, with a few basic differences.

Nice to see the 'maricans who were quick to chime in and show yourselves for what is basically right with the convictions to state that this trash is beyond the line. I'd understand if Bryan were stoned when he thought up the story for this, but sadly, the fact that he was stone sober is likely the truth.

Bryan, you can ask anyone here about my persona and operating code. I mean no harm and I truly support the creative medium to which we all subscribe. But for the time until you mature, you should probably just evaporate from this board. It just doesn't qualify as humour in any interpretive sense.
Insensitive garbage.

I watched it. I didn't think it was funny. Didn't offend me, just wasn't funny. Guess I'm one of those East Coast Sophisticates? ;-)

Yikes, if this is how Tom Green started...well, I'd hope you'd never want to grow up to be like him but maybe you're headin' that way.

Oops...my Mom taught me that if I don't have anything nice to say, shut the h&ll up (NOT quite a direct quote), so I'll leave it at, "No redeeming value whatever."

The End.

I'm a big fan of Bryan Harley, but found this to be his worst film.

Glen Chua
www.moonlitefilms.com

Tom Green ...?
 

Man, that's not a career I'd emulate.

What can I say but sorry to those that have been offended. I knew going into this that not everyone would think it was funny. It was just a short little, pointless piece that I put together for an online film fest (I took second).

I'm not an insensitive or hateful person. I'm simply exploring the comedic genre. You can see my other comedy shorts at www.amfproductions.com. I tried to make the Freddy character so terribly farcical and over-the-top, so that he wouldn't really be representative of an actual mentally-handicapped individual. But again, sorry to those who have been offended.

Okay I'll chime in.

I think you set yourself up by calling him a retard in the title. It immediately puts in my mind that you don't really have any liking for your character.

That said, the film itself is okay. Freddy does have a good heart and you don't hate him. However, you are making fun of his condition. There isn't really anything particularly funny about him acting mentally handicapped by itself. The Steve Martin example is closer to the mark but from "The Jerk" I don't really know if Martin is mentally handicapped or just really really stupid.

Your story wouldn't work unless Freddy is in some way unable to communicate so either way you'd be making funny of him being mentally handicapped, really really stupid, having a speech impediment, being an ESL learner or having braces or something like that.

The first part where he is trying to save the guy from dropping his ice cream is a funny set up but the timing and editing is a bit off. The bit with the gnome got me laughing because it is even more wacko than the ice cream bit. I don't think much about him being hit by the guy in the car who is so angry about his ice cream that he wants to run him over. That doesn't really make sense.

I don't agree. This is what makes the internet a wonderful thing. Everyone being able to post their art and have others post their opinions on it.

I thought the film has potential, but like Keith said, there needs to be some changes in the editing. I'm no expert, but as a critic, I think the editing could be better.

Keep up your work Bryan. Also, unless you like to spark these types of threads, you may want to reconsider renaming your title, and then let the audience choose what hadicap (if any) your main character has. Remember, film is told visually, give the audience something to mull over for a while. Like what was mentioned earlier, was "The Jerk" mentally challenged or just really really dumb? That's what makes it funny!

I laughed at the hero's misplaced assignment of importance to trivial treasures. His sentimental love for the ice cream and the garden gnome was his downfall.

I don't see how sourcing comedy from the developmental flaws of a disabled person is fundamentally different from sourcing comedy from the character flaws of egocentric persons (Seinfeld).

Who among us is not retarded in some fashion?

a few (hopefully) lighthearted replies
 

That's just great, RKS. You had to light a match to THAT powder keg. I understand your line of thinking, but you may have joined me in the group that, if I read correctly, gives A-mericans a bad name.

Which reminds me, Jimmy. It's spelled "Americans." Not that I was offended.

And Boyd Ostroff-- proof that sophisticated wisecracks abound on the East Coast. Good one!

Re: my comment "The End" below.
Well, I've always listened to my mother, but too rarely heed her wisdom...I was really intending to stay out of this discussion but I can't help myself.

Bryan, therein may lie whatever value your Freddy piece may have; with a tasteless (and to some "offensive') clip, you've spurred a broad and spirited discussion -- a wonderful thing as long as we are all remain civil with one another in the process.

By contrast, I could post some of my more scientifically-oriented video clips and only a few technophiles would enjoy watching them and virtually nobody would feel particularly compelled to comment on them.

To expand on my own opinion on your clip: as presented, it was a waste of my bandwidth to have downloaded it. But by even slightly rescripting it to develop Freddy as a likeable character who the viewer can identify with and feel sympathy for, it could have been made into a comic tragedy that more clearly made a positive point.

Re: Seinfeld
Indeed, consider the SOURCE (a very funny standup comedian, who AFAIK has yet to make his mark in the realms of ethics, law, science, or for that matter, any learned discipline at all). I presume Jerry's quote came from the show or one of his comedy routines? If he was truly being serious when he said that, then I'd be forced to lump his funny self in the "egocentric" category. BTW, I DO see a difference.

Re: Americans
The comments about 'maricans/Americans are bait for political arguments and I fear that's the bigger "powder keg" here. LET'S NOT ALLOW OURSELVES TO START DOWN THAT PATH HERE...political discussions are as off-limits as personal flames. The sad way of the world is that no matter where you're from, stereotypes of your national/religious/ethnic cultures or heritages are looked down upon by many, if not most, people who don't share them.

Re: East Coast Sophisticates
Hmpphhh. The East coast ain't the only place that's sophisticated y'all know. We have opera and ballet in Texas. We just call 'em ".38 Special" and Football. (Can you tell I'm not a native Texan?). Stereotypes are easy, eh?

Hi Pete,

You're making points here that seem to fall into traps, but I need some help pulling the specifics out of my brain. Here's my first thought: I see a double standard at work.

It's all right for one person to slip in a comment that maybe YOU don't see as, say, derogatory, yet as soon as a counter comes along, all of the sudden it's off-limits. Why didn't anyone hop on the first one? Too ambiguous?

You pull the stereotypes card (yes, I'm assuming you were being lighthearted in your "Hmmph) at the end to prove a larger point--precisely what I was trying to do in my last post! Maybe it was too ambiguous, as well.

I think it's fascinating. And I'm sorry I can't articulate my thoughts better. Let me chew on it a while and maybe it'll gel. Or not. :)

Hi Lorinda,

Jimmy dangled some bait with the American-Canadian thing and I saw some nibbling at that bait. I don't moderate this particular forum, but since I decided to comment further on Bryan's short I just went ahead and gave a reminder that we may not detour into that territory. No harm, no foul so far...just want to stay that way.

The thread is about Bryan's work, not the "sterotype cards" we could play against each other or our localities. Yes, my Sophisticates comment was also supposed to be silly humor (specifically ribbing Boyd -- since he is Director of Design and Technology at the Opera Company of Philadelphia and IMHO rightly deserves the title of Sophisticate!); sorry if it didn't come across well -- just as any humor in Bryan's piece didn't come across for some of us.

If you still feel that's a double standard or some kind of trap after chewing on it, fair enough. Freddy is Freddy, however we all interpret it.

Hahaha! Beautifully put. The nice part is that even if differences of opinion manage to persist in some area, we can agree to disagree.

Oh, and I meant that my earlier post was ambiguous--not yours. :)

No political re-direct intended. The mild vernacular was intended in no sense as a put down. I can't begin to ammend my comments with enough glowing adjectives to compliment those whose position was that there is just no artistic merit in the title or content of the short. No matter what peice of terra firma you hail from.
Back to the top of the string: Bryan did ask for comments and he got a mitt full of 'em.
His job is to distill from that how his work is perceived by the masses. If no change is wrought, his character is stead fast; and my comments like others should be treated as perspective and not fodder. See ... I really care! I'm sure that's crystal clear among the sophisticates gathered here ... OK I'k kidding on that last one!!!
Bottom line: Bryan, keep producing! We're all watching!
Best regards from Jimmy the poutine eating, snowmobile driving, nature loving Ken-eh-jan ... eh?

Oh, man. Pete, do I have to leave that one alone?? There's a point/comparison there just begging to be made!

Okay...I'll not touch it. :)

Go ahead. I have thick skin. You don't have to wait for approval from someone else to state your case.
Please don't let me get in the way of the original intent of this thread. To do so would put this into the realm of MSN messenger.
Please return this thread to Bryan's original query: Comments on his short.

Okay, I'd stayed away from this one...but finally watched it and felt compelled to comment.

I'm the last person in the world to be easily offended, and I actually like to see that there are people out there doing things that will spark conversations such as these. This thread alone is proof that in some way there is value to such work, if for nothing else to give people a specific example of what might be considered "off limits." Are there any limits to what should be made fun of? Should comedy be kept to the safe an inoffensive topics? Interesting discussion, that's for sure....and for that I think this work has some value.

Subject matter aside....I have to say that I just didn't think it was funny.
I wasn't offended, but it just didn't make me laugh.
Humor from mentally handicapped characters is difficult to pull off, and I would agree with the post that mentioned it was obvious that you had no love for your character, and that makes a big difference. Look at the way the Farrelly Brothers deal with similar humor in 'Something About Mary' and 'Stuck on You.' They walk a fine line, but it's always clear that they respect their characters as people. Their characters don't ever come off as 'handicapped characters,' but instead they seem like people who happen to be handicapped. There's a big difference between those two.

That's something that's not in your short at all.
Freddy is nothing more than a retard (to use your title's terminology).
He's not a person, he's a handicap.

Another important point is that in something like the Farrely brother's work, the disabled characters generally wind up on top. As an audience, we want to see the underdog win, and we want to see those who are mean to the disabled be taken down a peg. Instead, in your short, we have the mean guy kill the "Retard" by running him over with a car. Very very difficult to win your audience over with that.

In comedy, it's alright to laugh along as we see our characters suffer, regardless of who they are....but we want to see that everyone is alright at the end.
It's a comedy after all.... Wiley Coyote may fall off the cliff to certain doom, but we want to see him climb out of the hole and dust himself off at the end.

I don't see how sourcing comedy from the developmental flaws of a disabled person is fundamentally different from sourcing comedy from the character flaws of egocentric persons (Seinfeld).

I'm not sure if that comment was sincere...or supposed to be sarcastic.
But I would point out that there is a fundamental difference.

Egocentric persons suffer from a character flaw, something that they could change if they tried. They are not 'good' people by most standards because of their character.

Handicapped people suffer from developmental flaws, as you pointed out. Through no fault of their own, they are mentally handicapped and cannot change that no matter what they do.

So I would say that there is a major difference in sourcing comedy from something which is a choice versus something which is unchangable about a person.


Just my 2 cents.

I have to agree. I wasn't offended by it in the least, I just wasn't entertained by it either.
When I read all the fuss this thing was causing I figured that it might be pretty good. Often things that cause a lot of emotional recoil are good. Sadly, Freddy failed on many levels. It wasn't well shot, it wasn't well edited, it wasn't well written, it wasn't funny, and it really wasn't offensive. It wasn't anything really. Just another example of the evils of the new era of inexpensive cameras and editing software.

So there. Just another opinion.

I wonder if Freddy knew ahead of time that this short video would suck?
-Ethan

Good points, Luis, and VERY well stated. Thank you.

Thank you Lorinda.

And, just so Bryan is clear on where I stood on his work...I would disagree with Ethan. I think the shots and the edits showed that you definitely have a grasp on production. I thought is was a solid piece, perhaps a bit too slow in parts, but overall well shot and well edited for the budget you were working at (which I assume was the cost of the ice cream cone).
:)

I've done more than my fair share of short films in that way...and I would say that as far as the technical side of things go, you're definitely on the right track.

I got the ice cream from my fridge and the cone from my pantry. There were no costs. ;)

And Ethan, ouch. Have you seen any of my other work?

But the Seinfeld players can't help themselves out of their character flaws: this is precisely the comic tragedy of the series. George is symbolically doomed to his egocentric neuroses, Jerry to his egocentric phobia of commitment, Elaine to her banal pursuit of superficial relationships, Kramer to his kooky free-lunch pie-in-the-sky schemes. As people, they show no capacity for growth, no inclination toward just valuation, vain guilt but no true responsibility toward the errors in their choices; they are deficient, they are handicapped, they are disabled, they are helpless to rectify themselves. If George one day made an effort to take responsibility in his job and genuinely get along with other people, if Jerry accepted his girlfriend's faults for what they were, as all people have faults, if Elaine fell in love with a man not for his social status or his virulity but because she felt affection in his companionship and promise in their partnership, if Kramer set himself on a course of honest work rather than his sideshow of absurd gambles and Pyrrhic victories, then they would cease to be caricatures and become characters, and the comedy would vanish.

I agree with Louis too, I found it to be not so offending, but not really entertaining either.
And the reasons are basically the same as Louis said.
But, maybe other people did find it funny and humor is very subjective, so every person his own thing.
I wish you luck with the making of your coming movies.