"Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!"

March 23, 2015 6:35 AM

We got it all on UHF: An oral history of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s cult classic. By Sean O'Neal (SLAVClub)
posted by valkane (41 comments total)

🐟🎣🐠🎏🐡🐬🍣
🐠🎏🐡🐬🍣🐟🎣
🐡🐬🍣🐟🎣🐠🎏
🍣🐟🎣🐠🎏🐡🐬
posted by oulipian at 6:43 AM on March 23, 2015 [9 favorites]

There was a similar oral history on The Dissolve a few months back. It covers a lot of the same stories which made me keep thinking I had read this before. But the AV Club version interviews more people and goes into more depth.
posted by Gary at 6:54 AM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

Never got to see any of it when it was filming, but there's so much here if you grew up in Tulsa. The Channel 8 building was where my dad worked. The mall where most of it was filmed was converted to office space and I worked there for two years (and I got to use the still-connected hotel's gym for free). Spatula City became a discoteca I'd see daily on my commute...
posted by suckerpunch at 6:57 AM on March 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

Oh man. The city of Tulsa should host UHF tours. I'd totally be in.

They could make literally hundreds of dollars.
posted by duffell at 7:02 AM on March 23, 2015 [16 favorites]

A.V. Club: You guys had done several music videos by then, but what made you think you were ready to make the jump to movies?

Yankovic: Well, that’s a big part of my life—doing things that I’m not prepared to do. [Laughs.] Doing things that I don’t know how to do, and keep doing them until I get good at them. I always try to put myself out of my comfort zone and out of my depth, and hopefully somewhere along the line I’ll catch up.

QFT
posted by ryanshepard at 7:03 AM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

It's funny that it became a cult classic, because expressing an enthusiasm for Weird Al when he was actually doing his videos and this movie got you a lot of blank, pitying or contemptuous stares. Especially if you were a girl. It's a lot easier being a fan now that nerd culture is an Ok Thing, because back then, you were just considered a pathetic freak for liking something so weird. "He's so ugly!" people would say. My Weird Al tapes were stored in a shoebox while my more "normal" music was left out in view.

This movie and It Came From Hollywood and MST3K were also my guilty pleasures.

On the upside, I married someone who loved him too, we have tickets to his concert in August. I am interested to see the age range of his current fan-base.
posted by emjaybee at 7:08 AM on March 23, 2015 [19 favorites]

Well, that’s a big part of my life—doing things that I’m not prepared to do. [Laughs.] Doing things that I don’t know how to do, and keep doing them until I get good at them.

I guess that explains why he only made the one movie.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:12 AM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

Joel Miller, you just found the marble in the oatmeal. You're a lucky, lucky, lucky little boy. You know why? You get to drink . . . from the fire hose!
posted by crLLC at 7:25 AM on March 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

They aired UHF at the Alamo Drafthouse recently and I got to see it in a theater for the first time ever! SO WORTH IT.
posted by asperity at 7:37 AM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I clearly remember when this hit the small town my grandparents lived in, and where my family was staying for a few months. I begged my mother to let me go set it, because !WEIRD AL!, but she was adamantly against it. Not that she didn't mind me listening to the music, but it was only in town for about a week and I think she just didn't want to go with.

For the time, I thought I brought some pretty good tween logic to bear, too: "Mom, this movie is never going to get a video release! There are only like 10 people in town who will see it, and once it's out of theatres it will never go back!" 'Course, back then, with video stores and small towns and all that, it wasn't all that implausible.

I think it was about 10 years until I finally saw it. Worth the wait, though. I laughed myself stupid.
posted by barnacles at 7:49 AM on March 23, 2015

Is it me, or does the article make Michael Richards sound like kind of a tool?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:58 AM on March 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Forgot to add that I have a network-attached storage system at home (because of course I do) that I use to store tons of movies and TV shows. It's got a built-in media server, which handily lets me stream all kinds of video to our TV in absurd amounts.

Its name on the network? FIREHOSE.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:01 AM on March 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

This movie - I think I only saw it once, but laughed like crazy. My wife has never seen it, but over years of being around me will mutter things about "Spatula City - We sell spatulas and that's all".

There is a viral quality here that is quite amazing.
posted by nubs at 8:03 AM on March 23, 2015

And nothing says "I love you" like the gift of a spatula.
posted by eriko at 8:12 AM on March 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

Bob Hungerford (“Sy Greenblum, owner of Spatula City”): I was living in Dallas at the time, and my agent got me the audition… I don’t know. Somebody said, “Okay, let’s use him,” I guess. The people were all very cordial and complimentary afterward. I didn’t think I had done anything in terms of being an actor, but they were satisfied for some reason. It wasn’t like I had to remember a Shakespearean monologue.

This bit had me laughing uncontrollably, mostly because it's the only thing from Hungerford in the interviews and it's still much longer than his actual line in the movie.
posted by asperity at 8:19 AM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

The image of that woman at the Plots R Us salad bar still makes me laugh.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:22 AM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is it me, or does the article make Michael Richards sound like kind of a tool?

He did seem to have some weird grudge against Kevin McCarthy.
posted by Gary at 8:24 AM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I guess that explains why he only made the one movie.

Instead, he found his niche in music videos, IIRC. Doesn't he do some directing for mainstream artists now?

I had Seinfeld overload before I saw Richards in UHF, and was like wow, totally awesome!
posted by Melismata at 8:58 AM on March 23, 2015

emjaybee, expect many children, at least if Tulsa is representative of the other tour stops. I saw him at the Brady Theater there a couple of years ago, and I swear at least half the audience was under 10 years old.

I should go put Spatula City in OpenStreetMap...
posted by wierdo at 9:00 AM on March 23, 2015

One of my summer jobs was in my town's movie theater; I was there when this was out. I think I saw it as one of my "woo I get free movie tickets" bonuses. I don't really remember; but I do remember that at the time, the theater had rigged up some TVs, and had a tape that spliced together all the trailers for its currently-screening films in a continuous loop, that played all day.

So I don't really remember the movie as clearly as I remember standing around on the matinee shifts, bored out of my fucking mind, and perking up slightly every fifteen minutes each the surreal phrase "WHEEL! OF! FISH!" leaked out into the air, and I'd smile a bit, grateful for that periodic little dose of dada.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:01 AM on March 23, 2015

My favourite is Philo.

Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906 – 1971) was an American inventor best known for inventing the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system. Farnsworth had worked out the principles in 1921, at age 14, and demonstrated the first working version in 1927.

Farnsworth did not teach kids how to make plutonium from common household items, but he did invent a nuclear fusion device in the 1930s (still used today as a source of neutrons). Also a process to sterilize milk using radio waves, a fog-penetrating beam for ships and airplanes . . . contributed to the development of radar, infra-red night vision, the electron microscope, the baby incubator, the gastroscope, and the astronomical telescope. At his death, Farnsworth held 300 patents.

And he is of course a distant ancestor of Professor Hubert J. "Good news, everyone!" Farnsworth.

As far as anyone knows, he never said "Well, it appears that my work on this planet is finished, so I must now return to my home planet of Zarquon."
 
posted by Herodios at 9:08 AM on March 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

Good read - thanks. FWIW -- I don't think Richards came off as a tool, necessarily -- perhaps a bit high-brow, but that might just be because the characters we so closely associate with him are definitely not "high-brow." As for the movie -- a couple of low spots, but overall, it's literally LOL funny. So many hilarious bits.
posted by davidmsc at 9:13 AM on March 23, 2015

It crosses the streams, but I've long hoped that Spatula City was across the street from Al Harrington's Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man Emporium and Warehouse.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:17 AM on March 23, 2015

I should also point out that in 1989 -- pre-WWW, even pre-MST -- "My interrossitor is almost complete" was a very obscure reference.

Come to think of it, so was "Badgers?!" except for the influence of Blazing Saddles.

Ebert got it -- but he didn't like it.

Somewhere there is an audience for "UHF," I have no doubt . . . But this is the dreariest comedy in many a month, a depressing slog through recycled comic formulas.

As movie ideas go, this isn't a bad one. [But] Yankovic should have decided if he wanted to string together a series of TV parodies or make a movie about the rescue of a fly-by-night TV station. He has decided to do both . . .

[S]ometimes Stanley seems to be on the station in the movie, and at other times he seems to be hosting pirate television from the moon.

[N]one of the characters seems to be newly created for this movie; they're all plug-ins from other films, stock stereotypes who never surprise us.

Yankovic doesn't have the edge and confidence he needs to carry a movie like this, and his physical presence is undermined by bad posture and an indistinct speaking voice. He needs to practice throwing back his shoulders and strutting; he creates a dispirited vacuum at the center of many scenes.

The result is a very unfunny movie. It's routine, predictable, and dumb - real dumb.

-- Roger Ebert July 21, 1989

posted by Herodios at 9:52 AM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

It makes me inexplicably sad to see that Weird Al still feels kind of sad and regretful about what he feels went wrong about UHF. Many great movies are box-office flops (Princess Bride, anyone?) and I hope he doesn't feel too badly about this one not meeting financial or critical expectations. I don't know why I feel the need to give Weird Al a pep talk (he's certainly more popular now than he's ever been), but that's my reaction.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:54 AM on March 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am a huge fan of WHEEL OF FISH. It is hard not to say, "Oh, a red snapper! Very tasty!" when looking at the sushi menu. But besides that bit of excellence, UHF contains one of my favorite jokes in all of cinema.

Two dudes are at a bus stop with a Rubik's cube. One of them, who is blind, twists the cube and hands it to the other guy.
"Is this it?"
"No."
He takes it back, twists it again.
"Is this it?"
"No.'
CUT AWAY

I don't know why I find that short scene so funny, but it gets me every time I think of it.

Also "Drink from the firehose" is a huge reference in onboarding someone into a new role, but I wonder how many people are familiar with the origin?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:59 AM on March 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

Also "Drink from the firehose" is a huge reference in onboarding someone into a new role, but I wonder how many people are familiar with the origin?

I can assure you that the concept "to drink from a firehose" does not originate with this movie.
 
posted by Herodios at 10:02 AM on March 23, 2015

I can assure you that the concept "to drink from a firehose" does not originate with this movie.


You sure about that? It's the earliest reference I could find.
posted by Cosine at 10:12 AM on March 23, 2015

Former MIT President Jerome Wiesner (1915-1994) apparently once said that "getting an education at MIT is like getting a drink from a firehose," but the Internets don't seem to know when he said it.

I'd like to believe that Wiesner, who was president of MIT from 1971 to 1980, was a UHF fan.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:22 AM on March 23, 2015

The Green, always an authority on such things, says that the "drink from a fire hose" quote appeared as early as 1963, in reference to Princeton.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:25 AM on March 23, 2015

Crispin [Glover] was excited about the movie, but he said, “I want to play Crazy Ernie, the used car salesman.” And we thought, “Well, we’d love for you to be in the movie, but that character is, you know, not exactly right for you. You’re not really the character type. You’re not really the look for it. I don’t think that’s going to work. Are you sure you don’t want to play Philo?” And he was like, “No, Crazy Ernie or nothing.” “Okay, sorry.”

WHAT
WHAT WHAT WHAT
posted by duffell at 10:26 AM on March 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm willing to believe that Crispin Glover has had that conversation with basically every director in Hollywood over the last thirty years.
posted by Etrigan at 10:27 AM on March 23, 2015 [11 favorites]

Come to think of it, so was "Badgers?!" except for the influence of Blazing Saddles.

Which was from Humphrey Bogart's classic "Treasure of the Sierra Madre". /lawn
posted by Melismata at 10:35 AM on March 23, 2015

Here, in The Fiske Guide to colleges (1989) we have
"Getting an education at MIT is like getting a drink from a firehose."

Here, in Research Briefings, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (1985) we have, "In essence it has proved almost impossible for the researcher to "drink from the firehose" of satellite data streams."

And here, in AFIPS Proceedings, Volume 36 National Computer Conference and Exposition (1970), Google can't show you the text, but can give you the page number on which the phrase "drink from a firehose" appears.
posted by Herodios at 10:38 AM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh god, the whole wheel of fish scene is great. The aforementioned "Ohhhh Red Snapper! Very tasty!", but also:

Kuni: "Alright Weaver, do you want the Snapper, or whats in the box that Hiro-san is bringing down in the box!"
Weaver: "Ill take the box! The box!"
Kuni: "Let's see whats in the box!"
(Hiro lifts the box, nothing is there)
Kuni: "Absolutely nothing! STUPID! You're so stupid!"
posted by lkc at 11:31 AM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

Come to think of it, so was "Badgers?!" except for the influence of Blazing Saddles.

Which was from Humphrey Bogart's classic "Treasure of the Sierra Madre". /lawn

Yes, of course. Herodios was citing Blazing Saddles as making the quote less obscure, not originating it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:35 AM on March 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Boy did I ever love this movie when I saw it in 1989. Boy did I ever hate it when I saw it in 2014.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:33 PM on March 23, 2015

If you do not love UHF before 25, you have no heart. If you do not love it after 25, you have no head.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:00 PM on March 23, 2015 [12 favorites]

SUPPLIES
posted by Pallas Athena at 4:46 PM on March 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

The real Treasure of the Sierra Madre is friendship.
posted by ckape at 5:15 PM on March 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

There was a two-screen second-run theater in the town where I grew up. By the time I was in middle school, it was pretty clear that the days of small suburban theaters was coming to an end, and the lack of repair and bargain-basement shows suggested that the writing was on the wall for this cinema as well. But one day we drove past the aging marquee and were shocked to see "U H F" lit up in those plastic bubble letters. The movie had just opened at the megaplexes out at the mall, but what was it doing here, in our little town? My dorky friends and I all went to see it as soon as humanly possible and loved the heck out of it. We were selling spatulas and drinking from firehoses and tasting red snapper for months if not years afterwards. I can't promise that the theater closed immediately after UHF's run, but I know it was the last movie I ever saw there, and I'd wager that the theater didn't make it a month after it showed UHF. It really fits with the theme and ethos of the movie that it has a real nostalgic feel for me, for reasons unrelated to the movie itself. Thanks for the post.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:52 AM on March 24, 2015 [1 favorite]