Once upon a time, actors could make awful, terrible movies that went straight to the $1 VHS bins at fine gas stations everywhere, and not worry that anyone besides bored suburban stoners would ever know about it. Why they made these terrible movies is not known. Maybe they looked better on paper; more likely, it had to do with how much they owed their coke dealer. The point is: They could make them, cash their checks, and go back to Oscar-grubbing by playing ugly retarded serial killers, or whatever.
But now, thanks to the miracle of the internet and the persistence of muck-rakey bloggers, these terrible movies — or at least their trailers — can now be preserved forever and shared to all. Much thanks to Videogum for digging up the trailer for Tiptoes, a movie that Gary Oldman and Kate Beckinsale probably prayed no one would ever find out about. (Matthew “Naked Stoned Bongos” McConaughey has no shame, he probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass.)
We knew about dwarves in 2003, right? It was only six years ago! So why is this movie acting like the normal reaction is to flee screaming from them, and the world is in desperate need of a PSA to let us all know that Dwarves Are People, Too? Don’t Look Now was made before I was born, no one really thinks they’re all stabby maniacs anymore. Come on!
There are many, many questions raised by this trailer: Are we really supposed to believe Beckinsale is Jewish? Why is the announcer so unbearably smug, like the movie won a dozen Oscars? What the hell is up with the way McConaughey is dancing at 1:23?
But the most puzzling question has to be: It looks like they got every dwarf in America to be in this movie, including Peter Dinklage and The Man From Another Place and a blonde woman I’m pretty sure is a porn star. SO WHY DIDN’T THEY GET ONE OF THE ACTUAL DWARVES TO PLAY THE MAIN PART??? Instead they have Gary Oldman walking around on his knees, in what is described as “The role of a lifetime”.
Well, that phrase isn’t necessarily complimentary. “The most soul-blightingly humiliating role of a lifetime!”
What am I supposed to do with my perpetual Gary Oldman boner now?!?
I know, right? It’s like acid on my soul knowing he made this. I wonder what he needed the money THAT badly for.
I’d agree with the “no idea this would ever come out” except that by 2003, it was pretty well established that the movie would be counted on IMDB and cross-related to all the rest of the works by an actor. I recall an NPR interview with an actor more of the “in six billion 1970s episodes of CHiPS, Love Boat, and One Day At A Time” who said “We just took the work that came to us - we had no idea one day it’d all be counted up for people to see.”
Greatest thing ever or greatest thing ever?
Was this because in 2003, two years after tragedy, America was ready to laugh again? Too soon, Oldman. Too soon.
But Jason, I’m NOT saying they thought no one would ever know, that’s kind of my point: The days of anonymous straight-to-DVD rent-paying flicks are long over. Nowadays all the shameful, cringe-inducing dreck on an actor’s CV is preserved forever like a fly in amber. THANK YOU, AL GORE!
I really want to see Herzog’s dismissal of this thing…
“Stupid Americans, I had to wrangle the little ones with my bare teeth when I made my film. Performance of a lifetime? Half of the ones I worked with died of rickets during post-production!”