Is Freddy Got Fingered

I love Ebert's zero-star review (which you've clearly read):

Many years ago, when surrealism was new, Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali made "Un Chien Andalou," a film so shocking that Bunuel filled his pockets with stones to throw at the audience if it attacked him. Green, whose film is in the surrealist tradition, may want to consider the same tactic. The day may come when "Freddy Got Fingered" is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny.

My brother and I watched this with wonder and awe. My sense of humor may have morphed in the intervening years but I still love and have much respect for comedy which makes no concessions for its audience.

When the skateboarding fall happened and Tom Green started licking the exposed bone on a compound leg fracture, I calmly reached over, picked up the remote and turned off the movie. I have never once in the subsequent years felt an instant of regret or remorse for making this choice.

It's not for everyone. Possibly not for most.

Generally speaking, I feel that judging a book by its cover, or a film by its title, is beneath me. This was not the case in the instance of "Freddy Got Fingered" starring Tom Green.

http://cheese-list-movies.blogspot.com/2011/07/freddy-got-fingered.html

This movie is funnier than 90% of that Onion list

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F8ZDLORhu_Q/ThoEWlNH8gI/AAAAAAAAAVc/byyarX1eT_w/s1600/ben.png

This movie is funnier than 90% of that Onion list

Counterpoint: no it isn't

http://i.imgur.com/DK7arn2.png

this is up there with empire of the sun as far as autobiopics go.

also less morally repugnant and disgusting than wolf of wall st.

If more than three people were likely to participate, it'd be fun to run a poll of this movie's most OMGWTF moments.

there are so many choices... the kid getting sucked into the jet engine at the end is up there. licking the compound fracture, skinning the deer and wearing it then getting hit by the truck, the fact that this movie has multiple helicopter sequences.... but the most disturbing scene has got to be Rip Torn bending over and begging Tom Green to fuck him. The fact that the whole movie is a result of parental neglect makes this even more fucked up.

That's like maybe 7% of the fucked up moments in this movie you just listed.

There are a bunch of funny, non-fucked up bits, though. "HELSINKI, BOB?!"

"DADDY IM A FARMER DADDY IM A FARMER!!"

this movie is a really tiring grind but has a few sequences, 3-5 minute bursts, that are some of the funniest things i've ever seen, like vertigo-inducing

I remember laughing at swinging the baby around by the umbilical cord. but in retrospect...

i remember almost nothing else tbh.

about that whole year of my life

not even 9/11?

Was 9/11 the one where the guy sprayed his dad with elephant jizz?

Well, yeah. That happened in Pakistan.

Has anybody engaged with anything Tom Green has done since Freddy Got Fingered? I don't feel like reading his book. Doesn't he have a podcast now? I feel like this movie was so ahead of its time and still utterly unique, it definitely seems to have had an influence but it didn't inspire a million copycats like Tim & Eric. I also don't really see echoes of it anywhere except in its total nihilism. Like someone said upthread, its total disregard for the audience is still unparalleled imo. It's an incredibly personal movie, moreso than any of the Adult Swim or internet comedy stuff like Balloon Shop.

The book explains the movie. It's incredibly personal because it came from his life, though there is only one scene where this is literally true.

idk about copycat but there's definitely shades of him in eric andre

Oh true, I definitely see that. Eric Andre is definitely more tolerable/balanced? somehow, because a little Tom Green goes a long way. I feel like Eric Andre will be around for a while.

Eric Andre is id with some degree of intention behind it, whereas Tom Green just seems like id + the occasional horse penis.

i'd agree with that as far as the tom green show went but the movie was a different, very intentional horse.

i really need to watch this movie.

Pre 9/11 shock comedy

This movie is definitely the zenith of pre-9/11 innocence & decadence

Mike Fitzgibbons' son is a nuclear physicist

daddy would you like some sausage

we can live like kings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFEyFlRljss

great film

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Ebert gives it too much credit. it's a pretty mediocre comedy leaning heavily on gross-out humor.

if it is surreal then it is cynically, predictably surreal.

This movie was so far ahead of its time that time still hasn't caught up to it yet. Eric Andre's like a halfway point, at best.

this movie is hundreds of times more watchable than major network prime time reality shows

Accurate

saw it when it was released and didn't like most of it. saw the "daddy would you like some sausage" scene last year and cracked up. also: sandwich factory.

the recent sbc flop "the brothers grimsby" also had an elephant cum scene.

So is that an IMDB category yet or is there someone we need to petition

brothers grimsby was ok but it was some stepped on shit compared to his previous work

His positive review of this movie made A.O. Scott as a film reviewer

where's my lebaron?

how had I not voted in this

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/tom-green-has-a-good-freddy-got-fingered-conspiracy-theory.html

And you got to make Freddy Got Fingered. I have the distinction of having seen that movie in the theater.
Actually, a lot more people saw that movie in the theaters than is reported. Dramatically more.

Why would it have been reported differently?
It made $14 million at the box office, okay? Which basically means that it actually made its budget money back. But there was also a pretty scientific understanding that all of my fans were buying tickets to Crocodile Dundee and then sneaking into my movie because it was R-rated. You literally couldn’t get a seat in a theater where my movie was playing that opening weekend. All over Los Angeles the theaters were packed. A lot of things about the way people write about that Freddy Got Fingered are unfair.

I’m sorry, I was teasing.
The movie cost $14 million to produce and it made $14 million in its opening weekend and it made over $25 million on DVD and video. So it was a totally profitable movie even when you include the ten million dollars in promotion that the studio put into it. That’s a wildly financial success story for a comedy movie. And people say, “The movie bombed.” It didn’t actually, you know?

I didn’t mean to offend. I was just joking around.
No, I know. It’s just so often that I’ll do an interview and people say, “Oh yeah, Tom Green, the guy who made the worst movie ever made!” Meanwhile, I can’t go to an English-speaking city in the world without people shouting at me, “Daddy, would you like some sausage?” Doesn’t matter what city I am in in the world, people will be shouting out lines from the movie at me.

I can’t go to an English-speaking city in the world without people shouting at me, “Daddy, would you like some sausage?”

For whom is this not true, though, tbf.

like everyone I know has seen this movie but I think it's one of those "Super Troopers" things where no one actually saw it in the theater

My brother and I were there opening night.

#humblebrag

I definitely saw it in the theater