**march 29, 2019**
OK folks....time for VHS of the week:
A clown lies passed out next to a toilet. A young boy enters the bathroom to relieve his bladder. The clown awakens violently and is immediately blasted by a ferocious hangover. Also, the boy is pissing on his head. The clown leans over and retches into the toilet while the boy continues to simultaneously piss on his head. “Get the fuck out of here!” the clown roars at the young boy. He then crawls onto the vomit-soaked toilet and shits. In the living room the clown finds his barely-remembered conquest from the previous evening in the form of Carol Brady. Like...seriously....it is the actress Florence Henderson. She asks if she will see him again. He tells her that she should not count on it...as he is Shakes the Clown. AND this is probably as good a place as any to end this review! I’m thinking this is probably where most people stopped watching this movie...if “people who have seen Shakes the Clown'' is a group of people that actually exists. I know I shut it off after the first few minutes back in ’92...but I decided to check it out again...for reasons that are not clear to me. In many ways this film is the fabric that ties the universe together. I mean...not really...but read on:
Written and directed by my main man Bobcat Goldthwait, Shakes the Clown was released in 1992 and famously used a pull quote from a Boston Globe review that calls the film “The Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies.” This, of course, was not intended as a compliment as there are no other alcoholic clown movies. I had always assumed that Bobcat just saw the drunk clown scene from Uncle Buck and thought to himself “I wonder what became of that clown!? I should make a movie about it!” What DID happen to that clown? “What are you, Mother Cabrini?? You never touch the stuff?” I mean...pitch “drunk clown goes to kids birthday party” and it’s pretty much turn on the confetti cannons and pop a bottle of Asti Spumante and watch the bux come rolling in. Those sort of scenes only make up about 3 minutes of this flick’s 87 minute running time. The other 84 minutes is pretty much some famous and some not yet famous comedians sitting around dressed as clowns ad libbing. There isn’t really much of a plot to speak of. Bobcat is a clown named Shakes and he is an alcoholic. He lives in a town called Palookaville that is 100% really just a shitty part of North Hollywood. At the top of the flick he goes to a kid’s birthday party wasted and threatens to twist the kid’s dad into “a fuckin’ balloon animal”. The kid’s dad is Tim Kazurinsky...who has appeared in 3 out of the last 4 VHSOTW. Timmy K...wherever you are...you control the world! Later, Shakes goes to a bar called The Twisted Balloon where drunk clowns sit around and talk shit. Like one of those Fernet-slinging service industry after work hangouts...but with clowns, you dig? Despite being an extremely disgusting philandering drunk clown, Shakes has a girlfriend..and she’s played by MTV personality Julie Brown. Now....pump the breaks here a second: if y’all grew up watching MTV in the 1980‘s you might remember that they had not one but TWO Julie Browns! But see the one who isn’t in this movie was black...so they called her DOWNTOWN Julie Brown so folks wouldn’t get confused. I mean...doesn’t that seem a little bit racist? Unless she gave that name to herself. Then...I don’t know. ANYWAY....Julie Brown’s friend is perennially grouchy comedian and permanent resident of Donald Trump’s shit list Kathy Griffin. She thinks Brown should break up with Shakes because “a bad clown will fuck you up.” I laugh. It’s at this point I notice that one of the clowns is totally a young Adam Sandler. So there’s that. Basically all of the clowns want to get on this public access TV show and are all super bummed when the gig goes to a clown named Binky. Binky is an asshole. He’s also Spongebob Squarepants! (see...universe control!). There’s some suggestion that Shakes should stop drinking and his clown friends try to sober him up but he has serious DT’s and starts to vomit and isn’t this supposed to be a comedy?? You gotta go to the hospital to sober up when you are a cirrhotic clown! It doesn’t really matter cuz dude can’t stop pounding booze. He gets to another kiddie gig and guzzles a bottle of brown stuff and attacks the children and destroys the house. I do not laugh. Back at the Twisted Balloon Binky is trying to buy cocaine from a gang of rodeo clowns. He’s also complaining that nobody likes him. “They might as well call me Binky the Doormat!” he says. I just about leap out of my seat because “Binky the Doormat '' is the name of a song from R.E.M. seriously underrated 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I check the interwebs to see if this song takes its name from Shakes the Clown....and it friggin’ totally does! Head: explodes. So I don’t know...the coke deal goes bad and Binky ends up killing the clown boss and dad who forgot Molly Ringwald’s bday in Sixteen Candles. They frame Shakes for the murder...so he has to hide out in a mime community run by academy award winner and sadly departed comedy giant Robin Williams. This mime scene goes on for like 1/3rd of the movie. Like...they had Robin for one afternoon and just turned on the cameras and hoped magic would happen. It does not. Binky kidnaps Julie Brown and there’s a chase scene and a big showdown in the public access studio and...honestly...I had a tough time staying awake until the very end. My notes just say “Thirsty...rehab.” I think Shakes kicks the hooch and lives happily ever after. Some folks say this flick ruined Bobcat’s career but the year after it came out he opened for Nirvana. The band. With Kurt Cobain. Those dudes. So there’s that.