Funny Pages makes nerds feel seen—and smelled—for the first time
Owen Kline's portrayal of comics-obsessed losers eclipses American Splendor and Ghost World in a story so vividly unpleasant it should have stink lines
Film Reviews Brian Michael Bendis
This generation is being lied to. It will take years of deprogramming to undo the damage. After a decade-and-a-half of Marvel films dominating popular culture and a cascade of other IP derived from comics slipping in through the door they’ve bashed open, we’ve gone way beyond the concept of “hip to be square” to create a zeitgeist where being a “nerd” elicits cheers and acceptance. This is a fabrication. (Liking the most popular movie franchise of all time certainly does not qualify in making one nerdy.)
Those of us familiar with true social barnacles—the unwashed, unacceptable, unwelcome losers who grow like mold in comic book shops—know this world has never really been represented on screen. (American Splendor, you pushed the needle, but everyone in that is far too presentable.) Funny Pages is the first film to really look into the dark, howling abyss of the long box.
The first feature from Owen Kline, Funny Pages is not a dramatic masterpiece, but its setting, tone, look, feel, and casting would send real comic book geeks off doing cartwheels—if only we possessed the coordination. Instead, it will have to suffice to sit there, mouths open with the typical drool, thinking “I feel seen.”
Funny Pages understands that being truly committed to comics, the lowest form in all the arts (except for performance poetry, of course), is an express ticket to a life of social misery and alienation. The best you can ever hope for is time shooting the breeze with other misfits in the back of the store, ranting about esoteric subjects that no one with a family or a real job could ever care about. To see the pig without its lipstick like this, especially as Disney+ force-feeds mass culture more watered-down superhero product, is the true marvel.
No one in Funny Pages cares much for superheroes anyway. It’s the hardcore stuff—underground filth like Zap Comix, MAD Magazine, or the strips owned by King Features Syndicate—that inspires their misdirected passion. Most of the references won’t land with common folk outside of Popeye, Dick Tracy, and Scrooge McDuck. Sure, you could call these people “gatekeepers,” but there’s only one problem with that—who in their right mind is trying to get in!?!
Funny Pages is extremely light on plot, but what’s there follows the coming-of-age map. Daniel Zolghadri plays our shrimpy hero Robert, a college senior who should be headed off to art school (he’s an amazing cartoonist). His mentor is an off-beat art teacher at his Princeton, New Jersey (e.g. wealthy) high school, Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis). Mr. Katano urges Robert to always be honest, to search for truth, and then, after stubbing out a joint, disrobes so his pupil can get a good look at a distended, rotund stomach, wobbly scrotum, and shriveled male sex organ. (This is at school, by the way; this teacher should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)
After a freak accident that isn’t Robert’s fault—but isn’t 100 percent not his fault, either—Mr. Katano dies. Robert decides to quit school, leave home, and move into a repulsive (illegal) apartment shared with two shockingly grotesque older men in Trenton, New Jersey (e.g. poor).
The horrors of that apartment must be seen to be believed, but eventually our young hero ends up meeting Wallace (Matthew Maher), a possible sociopath who once had a marginal job in the comics industry. (He separated colors for Image.) To Robert and his acne-riddled pal Miles, Wallace is a celebrity, and potentially a pathway to a real career in the world of illustration. But to Kline’s tremendous credit, he tells it straight—this man is a disaster, and there is no bonding road trip in this duo’s future. Following your dreams will only bring you heartache. “Not everyone gets to be an artist!” Wallace shouts during the movie’s climax. It is a refreshing smack in the face after 500,000 movies and television shows shoveling b.s. about believing your dreams.
Failure is a topic seldom covered in cinema. Who would ever want to watch it? If we want to look at disgrace, all we have to do is look in the mirror, right? But somehow Owen Kline pulled this off. The 30-year-old director, who you may remember as the younger sibling in The Squid And The Whale (and, it’s worth recognizing, is the to-the-manor-born child of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates), has created something extraordinary here in its bleakness and pitch black hilarity. Roll over Todd Solondz, tell Terry Zwigoff the news.
The film is produced by the Safdie Brothers (Kline worked on their shorts as a teen) and the verisimilitude found in their films and Ronald Bronstein’s, another producer seen here, too. Between the casting, the locations, the use of Super 16mm stock, and emphasis on close-ups, my God, you can smell this movie.
Unfortunately, the ending doesn’t really land for me, but complaining about it just feels greedy. This is a movie in which Ron Rifkin, Louise Lasser, Andy Milonakis, and one of the brothers with the crazy hair from Uncut Gems all make brief appearances. I’ll be over with Funny Pages’ equivalent of movie fanatics, rambling about why that’s so fantastic.
43 Comments
Sure, you could call these people “gatekeepers,” but there’s only one problem with that—who in their right mind is trying to get in!?!Oh, believe me, no matter how obscure and/or mocked a topic is, there will be people claiming that newcomers to it are “fake”. As if it was some great honor to belong and that the gatekeepers are making sure the high quality of nerdosity is maintained.
Yeah, the whole art thing is a delusional lie for most people. I followed my dreams and came nowhere close to getting anywhere. i shouldve got into something real for a career. I guess the only upside is that youre never wondering “what if”? You know what if, you tried and failed.
I guess the only upside is that youre never wondering “what if”? You know what if, you tried and failed.That ain’t nothing. As someone who trained for and pursued a life in the arts, I learned that I wasn’t talented enough, but more importantly, didn’t want it enough to succeed. But I don’t regret making the effort at all. I still learned a lot about myself, and I’ve used some of that training to succeed in other ways. If I had done what my mom suggested (go to law school), I probably would have made more money but still be haunted by “what could have been”.
yeah, i think thats what happened to me. Even if i did have the talent it takes so much more than that to get a career going.
As a kid I played a board game called Careers, where you started by setting a secret formula of Fame, Money and Happiness points, then ran around the board trying to collect enough of each to win the game by hitting your targets of each. I’ve come to understand that success in the arts, and particularly the performing arts, requires hitting a formula made up of Talent, Desire and Luck. Most successful artists acquire some of all 3, and some get there with an overabundance of just 2 (e.g. William Hung from American Idol, who had lots of Desire and incredible Luck but not much Talent). But there are plenty of people that never hit enough of all 3 to have a successful career. People with Talent and Desire but who never get the Lucky break, or people with Talent and Luck but not enough Desire to put up with the long grind that it takes to work your way up through the ranks.
Yeah, i started with 2, now i just have 1.
Yeah, that was a more interesting (and I think realistic) game than the better known Game of Life on the same topic. An interesting bit of trivia about Careers — its creator James Cooke Brown went on to create Loglan, an artificial language with an unambiguous grammar.
It’s a shame people take an all-or-nothing approach to artistic talent — either have a big, splashy career, or don’t bother at all. I don’t have the drive (or the time) to make it as an artist, but making art just for myself is a big part of my self-care. My friend with a very successful corporate career spends her nights playing the flute in an amateur music group, and I think that’s wonderful.
yeah itd be nice if that was enough
Being able to settle down on my piano at night has greatly benefitted my sanity (among other things). I’m really not good enough to even perform with an amateur group, but just the pursuit is enough to satisfy an artistic need.
I think the idea of success in art is just really skewed. Very very few people get to have a name that most people know. But if you go see Beyonce play a stadium, every single creative person on that stage and associated with the production has “made it”. Every musician, sound person, dancer, choreographer, lighting designer…they put in their 10,000 hours and they are making a living practicing their art.
Yes. Ages ago I saw a local (to Boston) musician play, and after I commented how cool it was that he was successful. My friend’s boyfriend said he didn’t see how he was — not on the charts, not on TV, no national audience — but my point was that he was able to make a genuine living touring the Northeast and selling records. That’s pretty good!
Same! It’s an oddly satisfying feeling. I went to film school…learned that, for whatever reason, there was an impenetrable boundary between the shit I enjoyed writing and getting people to enjoy my writing…and then fell backwards into editing. Now I have a pretty good career in that field, it’s still fairly creative in many aspects, AND I get to know “what if.”
“Not everyone gets to be an artist!” Wallace shouts during the movie’s climax. It is a refreshing smack in the face after 500,000 movies and television shows shoveling b.s. about believing your dreams.On one hand, sure, not wrong. But on the other, though:The 30-year-old director, who you may remember as the younger sibling in The Squid And The Whale (and, it’s worth recognizing, is the to-the-manor-born child of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates)This just makes it kind of grating. Like, fuck off dude, there’s like a 99% chance you’re only in a position to make art that shits on other people’s dreams of artistic success because of who your parents are.
Nah. Owen Kline’s been doing stuff you haven’t seen for years. He could have easily done the acting thing and leap-frogged over a lot of folks because of his parent’s fame.
Giving him a 1% chance of making it on his own was generous.
“This generation is being lied to. It will take years of deprogramming to undo the damage. After a decade-and-a-half of Marvel films dominating popular culture and a cascade of other IP derived from comics slipping in through the door they’ve bashed open, we’ve gone way beyond the concept of “hip to be square” to create a zeitgeist where being a “nerd” elicits cheers and acceptance. This is a fabrication. (Liking the most popular movie franchise of all time certainly does not qualify in making one nerdy.)“This is some bizarre ass gate keeping and you should go fuck off.
I think you’ve completely missed the point. Or maybe you are being ironic? Schrodinger’s internet post, i guess.
I think there’s some kind of editorial mandate to include a contrived jab at Marvel in every article. It probably impacts their engagement metrics somehow.
I don’t think this is “gatekeeping” so much as “self depreciating humor”.
To get the level of “nerd” that comic book or star trek fans experienced in previous eras, you would have to be into weird manga or something (Is that even equivalent? I don’t know. I’m not a nerd). The author has a point about how the “nerd” experience now, liking the most popular movie franchises of all time (Star Wars, Marvel) is not equivalent to what liking the same stuff would have been like in the 90s and how the label has lost a lot of its meaning.
I think the contemporary equivalent of an old-fashioned shunned and ostracized nerd would be someone with very specific fetishes that are best left to the imagination. (See: rule 34)
I mean, just think about that equivalence between liking something that is juuuuuuuuuuuuuust left of centre but still beloved by millions making you the subject of abuse and then now having to skirt close to making a government list. God, the world was a horribly cruel place back then and you can totally tell with these people who want to go back which side of the abuser/abusee coin they landed on.
I agree and disagree. Yes, the people who are saying “we are the real nerds and therefore better than the rest of you” can go fuck off. But on the other hand, I think that it is pretty misleading to say SF/Fantasy nerddom is popular just like it is to say math/science geekdom is popular. Things like the Lord of the Rings movies or Marvel movies may be popular, but that doesn’t translate to a widespread popularity of reading fantasy novels or reading comic books. The people who like those are still considered nerds by pop culture (and not in a good way). Similarly, people these days may understand that knowing math and science are often helpful for getting a well paying job, but it’s the job they respect — they don’t necessarily respect the geeks who like math and science for their own sake.
Wearing glasses was enough to get one bullied back when I was going to high school, so I get the desire to hold onto one’s victimhood, but it’s probably best to let these things go. We live in a age of a fragmented media landscape (as well as a burgeoning time for exploration of identity), so the notion of tying an outsider status to one particular pursuit is less likely. However, I think “true” nerd status probably still lies with those that devote an unhealthy amount of time and energy to that particular pursuit. For instance, the proliferation of RPG podcasts (in tandem with a greater push from many publishers toward accessibility/ease of use) has taken them out of the stereotypical basement. However, less casual versions—LARPing, wargaming, extremely niche/experimental RPGs—is probably still far from mass acceptance.Granted, you should take all this with a grain of salt since it’s been…30(!) years since I was a high school kid. However, I somehow doubt that bullies have ceased to exist and that high school has turned into an egalitarian utopia since then.
Although I didn’t get to the “go fuck off” point, I agree with you. In high school (late 80s), “Trendy/Jock/popular (non-nerdy?)” kids didn’t bat an eye at an X-men, watchmen, or dark knight shirt, or reading them at school. It was a not an issue. No one cared. Now if you had on your CoC, snfu or MDC shirt, you may get beat up (only happened once) or threatened fairly often. I say this because the same argument gets made when some people my age see some kid or “star” wearing something like a Misfits shirt. “I use to get beat up for wearing that!”. So. You should be happy kids are not being beat up because of some sub-culture they belong to (or advertise) and worry about real things like racism, sexism, nationalism… not how your “sub-culture” is not realistic portrayed in modern entertainment. Ha, I see that I got on the soap box. sorry
I was a teenager in the late 90’s / early 00’s, so I was only there for a brief window of time when it was still uncool to be into nerdy shit like D&D or comics. That all changed with (in my opinion) the 1-2 punch of comic book movies suddenly crushing it at the box office, and the debut of the Cute Nerd character on the teen soap “The O.C.” But the only people I saw get their asses kicked were kids who wore skater clothes but did not, in fact, skate. “Poser” was the worst thing you could call someone.
It’s not gatekeeping. Those are the jokes.
“our shrimpy hero Robert, a college senior who should be headed off to art school (he’s an amazing cartoonist). His mentor is an off-beat art teacher at his Princeton, New Jersey (e.g. wealthy) high school, Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis).”I’m probably never going to see this film to find out, but everything about this review suggests “high school senior” not “college senior”. Isn’t “art school” basically an undergraduate university?
Part of the Kinja-ing of the site has included what appears to be the elimination of basic copy editing and proofreading.
And, to engage in a little bit of esoteric gatekeeping of my own, the author also means “i. e.” (id est, “that is,” in Latin), and not “e. g.” (exempli gratia, “to provide an example”). It’d be cool if these sites could either get editors again or writers who genuinely know how to use the language.
His mentor is an off-beat art teacher at his Princeton, New Jersey (e.g. wealthy) high school
I think you’ve confused “e.g.” and “i.e.” here.
There’s a really simple mnemonic device for this, too: E.g. = for ExampleI.e. = In other words
Maybe this movie is not as off-putting as the review makes it seem, but as a lady comics reader who has a friendly relationship with my (clean, non-smelly) local comics shop, I’m not particularly interested in yet another portrayal of comics being the domain of greasy awkward young men. They do exist, of course, and probably moreso in the past than now, but why would I want to spend a feature film hanging out with them?
It’s not an inherently appealing world to me either, but I’ll watch almost anything tagged with “A24″ and “A-”.
A24 is a distribution company, they have nothing to do with films until well after they are finished with production, fyi.
That doesn’t matter. They only acquire and distribute excellent films, which is why their “brand” is so meaningful.
I agree with your point, though A24 has had some stinkers here and there too. But typically they have a good eye for films. (and fwiw, re: Lilnapoleon’s comment: while they are typically only the distributors, they have also gotten into actually producing films within the last couple years, too).
That’s actually not true, it depends on the film. I’ve worked on four movies released by A24 and only one was an acquisition. They are very directly involved in development and production for a lot of their releases, especially these days.
I enjoy most of the MCU stuff but I agree the “Geek” community is not exactly a bunch of fringe outcasts. This article from a few years ago summed it up well:
https://reprobatepress.com/2019/03/24/the-unbearable-banality-of-the-nerd/
meeting Wallace (Matthew Maher), a possible sociopath who once had a marginal job in the comics industry. (He separated colors for Image.)But Image never employed in-house color separators though? The company is outsourcing the task to outside company, such as Olyoptics.
“Robert, a college senior who should be headed off to art school (he’s an amazing cartoonist). His mentor is an off-beat art teacher at his Princeton, New Jersey (e.g. wealthy) high school, Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis)“
Wait, Robert was supposed to be 18 though… how is he a senior in college?
This may be the most aggressively cynical mainstream movie review I’ve ever read. Kudos!