DORM
DAZE: WORST MOVIE EVER?
6.) National Lampoon’s Dorm Daze
Though only experiencing a very limited release, this latest “National
Lampoon” release proves just how insignificant the brand name
has become. Though aimed at the “American Pie” audience,
“Dorm Daze” couldn’t even be counted on for decent
juvenile humor or charming gross-out gags. “Daze” was
a nonstop parade of appalling acting, hilarious nude body doubling
(the only thing funny in the film, and it wasn’t even intentional),
and rancid coincidence-themed screenwriting that wouldn’t
pass muster even on an off day on the set of “Three’s
Company.”
- from: Filmjerk.com - - The 10 Worst Films of 2003, Brian Orndorf
So, Worm - you might be asking – what does it feel like having
written the 6th worst movie of 2003?
Well…kinda shitty. Though it is significantly better than
having written the 1st worst movie of 2003 -- poor Down With
Love; the first half of that movie was decent enough.
1. A POX ON FILMJERK…
Needless to say, upon first discovering the Filmjerk article through
a vanity Google, my reaction was not joy. I’d suddenly gone
from being the co-writer of a film, to being the co-writer of a
film that, out of the 200 plus movies made that year, was apparently
one of the ten worst.
This was January 2004, and by that point Dorm Daze had
already garnered an overwhelming plethora of bad reviews from its
select-cities theatrical test release. If there’s a standard
way to prepare oneself for bad reviews I certainly hadn’t
heard about it. Sure, I’d been insulted before. I’d
had my work negatively received before. But these insults were in
the newspaper, and worse - on the Internet (some jerk-off in a Bucharest
cyber-café could find them.) I was getting pity phone calls,
“Gee, read that review in the Trib’, they sure hated
your movie.” My mom read them! Then came this list…
Truthfully, the Filmjerk list didn’t affect me much itself.
I mean, conversely, their 6th BEST movie of the year was Charlie’s
Angels: Full Throttle, which was stone cold terrible. What
the list was, was the perfect capper to all the reviews, a finishing
touch. Reviews start to wash over you after a while, but being on
a list is more concrete, like receiving an award (ours for badness.)
The easiest reaction would be to say “Filmjerk? Who the hell
are they? I’ve never even heard of these assholes before.
And what kind of stupid name is Orndorf?” But that’s
a dangerous road to go down, considering we proudly tout that Hey,
Stop Stabbing Me! was named one of the 10 Best Movies of the
Year by the critical geniuses at the Nashville Scene…who,
naturally, we’d also never heard of before. In fact, aside
from Film Threat, all our positive reviews come from sites
we weren’t originally familiar with. It’s pointless
to try and pretend that one obscure site’s opinions are necessarily
more valid than any others.
So sadly, I’d like to be able to swing my fists and go down
defending the film, but frankly there’s no reason. The movie
is kind of crappy.
2. EXCUSES, EXCUSES…
It’s funny to listen to yourself at a party uttering industry
clichés so cliché that you knew them before you even
entered ‘the Biz.”
“It got fucked up in production.”
“The director ruined it.”
“Our original script was better.”
As a lad, when I read such stereotypical screenwriter statements,
I’d think to myself, “You wrote a shitty movie, just
own up to it.” Now I’m caught there; I’ve become
the cliché, and I find myself believing both sides. Yes,
the original script WAS better…but…maybe it wasn’t
so great to begin with either.
My original plan was to get all scholarly on your asses and analogize
my Dorm Daze experience with Kubler-Ross’ 5 stages
of dying (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.)
When I found myself straining to think of a ‘Bargaining’
phase I realized this comparison was rather tacky. Not to mention
the fact that my actual progression was more along the lines of:
Blank Staring, Displaced Rage, Denial, and Melancholy Acceptance.
Since the first two stages offer no particular insight into the
life of screenwriting…
3. DENIAL…
When you find yourself having birthed a second-rate film, as a screenwriter,
a key part to Denial is the profound realization that nothing is
ever your fault and that everyone who disagrees with you is amazingly
stupid. It is during this stage that you often find yourself in
the nonsensical position of simultaneously defending your brilliant
work and blaming everyone else for its suckiness.
“Though only experiencing a very limited release, this latest
“National Lampoon” release proves just how insignificant
the brand name has become.”
What would have become of the film had it not been National Lampoon
presented? I’ll never know. When Mr. Pat and I sold the script
we did not sell it to Lampoon. While the movie was being shot it
was not Lampoon. It became a Lampoon movie almost a year after principal
photography, and by ‘became’ I mean Lampoon lent its
now pitiable logo to the producers in exchange for part of the profits.
No one even told us until the decision was final. Fools! We knew
the movie would never get a fair shake now, because critics have
too much fun cracking wise about the dismal state of Lampoon films
and, even worse, we didn’t design the film for Lampoon fans.
“Though aimed at the American Pie audience, Dorm
Daze couldn’t even be counted on for decent juvenile
humor or charming gross-out gags.”
See! Dorm Daze was never intended to appeal to an American
Pie audience. It was supposed to be one of the Amazing Schlock
films. Given the almost universal praise for Hey, Stop Stabbing
Me!, I feel that Dorm Daze would have been better received
if it had been made by and starring college-student-nobodies with
a budget of $200. It was not designed to be a ‘real’
movie.
“Daze” was a nonstop parade of appalling acting,
hilarious nude body doubling (the only thing funny in the film,
and it wasn’t even intentional)…”
Yeah…about the nudity. Also not our fault. The movie was supposed
to be PG-13, but the MPAA gave it an R because the storyline involved
a prostitute as a main character. Apparently that’s some rule.
Did you know Pretty Woman was R? I didn’t. Anyway,
the movie got an R and Lampoon was not interested in releasing an
R movie under their banner without any titties. Thus a woeful dream
sequence and some embarrassingly comical body-double inserts were
added. Did I mention we had nothing to do with either of these?
“…and rancid coincidence-themed screenwriting that wouldn’t
pass muster even on an off day on the set of “Three’s
Company.””
Idiots! That was part of the joke. It was supposed to be coincidence-themed.
It’s a farce! Have these assholes never seen a stage or screen
comedy from the 30’s and 40’s? Of course we have a Foreigner
who speaks absolutely no English. Of course when someone loses their
glasses they become like Velma from Scooby-Doo and go completely
blind. These are all screwball standards. No one understands our
brilliance! GAAAAH!!
4. MELANCHOLY ACCEPTANCE…
Sigh…
Okay, for one thing, though I do think being a Lampoon film brought
us undue criticism, it also brought us undue success. Cause despite
the producers’ gallant efforts, Dorm Daze was never
going to be a theatrical film. It just didn’t have the chops.
It was written to be a student film and we never changed it. It
had to go straight to video – where without the Lampoon brand,
stamp of crap it may be, DD wouldn’t have made it
to most video stores, and it certainly wouldn’t have attracted
enough renters for there to be a sequel. Double-edged sword and
all that.
Dorm Daze is a strange sort of thing, as it’s both
a parody of and loving homage to screwball farces (the ‘Überfarce,’
we called it), and how does one really parody a comedy? Apparently
not super well. So, on the “people just don’t get it”
front, the obvious response is – what is there not to get?
Socrates said that a failing student was a fault of the teacher,
not the pupil. And though a large percentage of critics have undeniably
terrible taste, as a comedian, it’s a lame copout to just
say people ‘didn’t get’ your joke without bothering
to wonder if, maybe, it simply wasn’t that funny to begin
with. The most annoying kids in film school were the ones who made
movies that made no sense and would sit there and try to explain
them to you rather than trying to fix the problems. I don’t
want to be that guy - especially with a National Lampoon movie.
Denial aside, Dorm Daze has plenty of failings that had
nothing to do with Patrick or myself. It was very low budget and
unfortunately ended up with the flat lighting and sets-that-look-like-sets
of a made for Comedy Central movie. And the movie’s Mickey
Mousing score (music that works like sound FX; think Looney Toons)
is also far too intrusive and ever-present. I’ve been told
it becomes maddening after a while.
The producer/directors also added some things to the script we didn’t
agree with: namely the bizarre human-pyramid scene, the moments
where characters break the forth wall and speak directly to the
camera Zack Morris style, and the twist ending. Other than that,
though, the shooting script was almost exactly as Patrick and I
wrote it in 2001. And since none of the directors’ changes
were big enough to really affect the film - and some people, such
as my parents, actually liked the twist ending - I’ve slowly
and begrudgingly realized that the main problem was there from the
start.
5. A SCRIPT TOO MUCH…
That main problem being - DD was never a movie so much
as it was a screenwriting exercise. The biggest compliment we used
to get about the script was, “I can’t believe you actually
made all the story lines come together at the end!” At the
time I couldn’t think of a better compliment, since that’s
exactly what we were trying to accomplish – a dizzying labyrinth
of set-ups and pay-offs: the Überfarce. But normally when people
are complimenting a script they’ll point out specific scenes
or specific characters they liked, whereas DD’s comments
were universally about the script as a whole. We were so giddy with
how deftly structured the script was, we didn’t pay much mind
to whether or not it would work on screen.
We also didn’t have much of a concept going into DD.
I’m not sure how we would have pitched it to someone if we’d
had to. “Um, we have a bunch of different subplot ideas, none
of which are necessarily that clever on their own, and we want to
cram them all into one movie!” I can’t even say our
concept was doing ‘a farce in a college dorm.’ The only
reason we had such a setting was because all our Amazing Schlock
actors were college-aged and we had a dorm we could shoot in for
free.
One of the two big casualties of our conceptless approach was -
the Characters. TV is were farce is usually found, in situational
comedies like Fraiser or, yes, Three’s Company.
DD is a sit-com movie, the only difference is that sit-coms
use characters we already know and like. DD’s characters
are just pawns for the dense web of comical situations - completely
2-D and intentionally clichéd. We thought it fit in with
the rest of our oeuvre, like Stabbing Me, full of cartoony
characters, but the plot contrivances were so abundant that it gave
the movie zero emotional impact.
Since DD doesn’t have actual characters with, you
know, personalities and stuff - that means that all the humor in
the movie comes through the advancement of the plot. There are only
three scenes I can think of at the moment that are solid dialogue
scenes, where the humor comes through what is being said between
the characters, but in two of those scenes all the dialogue is just
riffing on a single misunderstanding. So if you don’t find
the misunderstanding funny, that means you have to sit there for
a few minutes listening to essentially the same joke rephrased over
and over and over again. Now that I think about it, it’s actually
kind of impressive that we wrote a movie with so much activity and
so little story.
The other big casualty of our approach is the film’s pacing.
Despite all this poo-pooing, I’ve talked to a lot people who
actually liked the movie, and I have read positive reviews, but
most seem to agree on one thing: the movie is grueling. Even the
people who loved the movie will say to me, “It was great,
but it was sooo long.” These people are understandably shocked
when I inform them that Dorm Daze is only 97 minutes. Part
of our Überfarce approach was to remove all down time so the
whole movie would play out like Act III of a regular farce. Oops.
…how embarrassing.
6. FINAL THOUGHTS…
It’s been over a year since I first planned to write this
article in a fit of furious annoyance, but as with all things, DD
has become less embarrassing the farther it moves into the past
– like an old haircut.
And it is now, in the final throws of this over-long and unfocused
essay, that I’m questioning what exactly the point of this
thing was. Catharsis, maybe? Reading over everything I just wrote
I can’t imagine anyone wanting to run out and rent DD,
but making the movie seem like a pile of shit wasn’t my intention.*
I mean, Dorm Daze certainly didn’t set the
industry abuzz with what comedic geniuses we are, but to be fair
to Mr. Pat and myself, for a movie written by two 22-year-olds,
it wasn’t a terrible script. In the context of when and how
we wrote it, I’d say it was pretty damn good. I’d definitely
recommend the film to anyone who enjoys screwball comedies and farces.
I guess when it comes down to it, Dorm Daze’s major
crime was that it made a lousy National Lampoon movie. I’d
always wondered what we would have done with the script if we’d
known it was going to become Lampoon. Well, I should have been careful
what I wished for, as they say, since shooting just wrapped in June
on National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze II.
Since the powers that be wanted DDII to be as much like
the original as possible, while also being more of a Lampoon movie,
Mr. Pat and I were essentially given a do-over (something I’d
grown less eager to do.) Well, we tried to solve a lot of the problems
I mentioned above. No, the film is not going to be pure Animal House
genius, but hopefully it’ll be less trying and have more straight-forward
laughs this time around. “Know your audience” is a good
creative maxim, so we tried our best to make it more appealing to
the Lampoon crowd (i.e., lots more nudity and sexuality.)
Will Part II be better than the first, or, as with most sequels, much worse? Personally, I think the intended audience will like it much more, but we’ll have
to see how it all turns out. Who knows - I might find myself at
a party a year from now saying the same goddamn things all over
again…
“It got fucked up in production.”
“The director ruined it.”
“Our original script was better.”
- Worm Miller – 7-27-05
* For
a short and to the point review of Dorm Daze that addresses
some the same problems with the film that I did, but still makes
the movie seem good instead of unwatchable garbage CLICK
HERE. |