I give this campaign ad five bags of popcorn.
July 20, 2018 8:55 AM   Subscribe

Tim Heidecker is running for District Attorney of San Bernardino County. Heidecker, formerly of the Tim & Eric duo, was driven into politics after being put on trial for the murder of twenty teenagers at his Electric Sun Music Festival, headlined by Heidecker's own hit electronica project DKR. After the unjust murder verdict put an end to his experiments in cutting-edge virtual reality TV programming, Heidecker found himself driven to seek the sort of justice his action-hero icon Jack Decker famously sought against terrorists and Count Dracula. (Decker's newest season seems to be motivated by Tim's murder trial, too, and by the shadowy foreign conspiracy that Tim claims was truly responsible for all those deaths.

Confused, you say? Welcome to one of the deepest rabbitholes in modern television.

On Cinema began as a podcast in 2011, before taking to video a year later. It's more-or-less a soap opera, with a slow-boiling plot that's extended across ten (short) seasons, five (long) live Oscar specials, and a number of other mediums. The show now takes place across a variety of channels, including the show, the trial, and the spin-off series Decker, which is poised to enter its seventh season. At the heart of the show is the ongoing struggle between host Heidecker and near-permanent "guest" Gregg Turkington, one of whom craves fame, respect, and power, and the other of whom simply loves movies, in his strange, distorted way.

The On Cinema Universe extends to Twitter, where Gregg and occasionally Tim perform in character, and into comments sections on YouTube and Reddit, where fans label themselves "Greggheads" and "Timheads" and continue the facade. It even extends into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Ant-Man director Peyton Reed casting Gregg in the original film, and now Tim as "Whale Boat Captain Daniel Gooobler" (three o's intentional) in the sequel—a character Tim intends to spin out into Marvel's newest superhero, WhaleMan.

Are you looking to get into the plot of On Cinema quickly? Here's a helpful 10-minute summary of the first eight seasons, Decker metadrama not included. If you need help watching the show in full, one fan maintains a playlist that incorporates On Cinema, Decker, Oscar specials, and updates from bands Dekkar and DKR in chronological order. (This is important, because certain seasons of On Cinema and Decker interlace, with events in each show affecting subsequent episodes of the other.)
posted by rorgy (23 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
Confused, you say?

I think I am still confused? Or perhaps just old.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:37 AM on July 20, 2018 [15 favorites]


Tim Heidecker has been my go-to write-in candidate for years.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 9:40 AM on July 20, 2018


So it's basically an ARG without the game part.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


You left out Tim Heidecker's (in character?) appearance on episode 37 of RedLetterMedia's Half in the Bag, which I managed to know of without having any idea what any of this is about or means because that is the nature of the game.

I ... think?
posted by seraphine at 9:52 AM on July 20, 2018


I think I am still confused? Or perhaps just old.

It's an ongoing drama told, not about people, but through the things those people make.

Things like, "Guy makes a shitty action film whose plot is, a CIA agent discovers a conspiracy that just so happens to involve the DA who prosecuted the showrunner, IRL, for murder." The plot of the show—conspiracy theory nonsense—exists separately from the plot in which a man murdered somebody and is now desperately trying to convince people of his innocence, by making a TV show propagandizing his message.

On Cinema as a whole is really just a story about two self-important men who are convinced they matter, and about the narcissistic, terrible things they make in order to further their self-obsessed agendas. But it's told in a clever, convoluted, and sublimely funny way. It's Breaking Bad by way of Bertolt Brecht.

tl;dr tobascodagama got it right
posted by rorgy at 9:56 AM on July 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


I kind of wish Tim Heidecker would actually run for district attorney tbh
posted by Automocar at 10:06 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Agreed, especially given the current state of the San Bernardino County DA's office.
posted by flipmodemedian at 10:10 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I watched this week’s episode of Soap! and I remain confused.
posted by dr_dank at 10:17 AM on July 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


For a moment I thought this was the new USpol thread.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 10:19 AM on July 20, 2018 [7 favorites]


Heidecker's own hit electronica project DKR

What about Heidecker's other hit electronica project, Tim Hecker?
posted by grobstein at 10:22 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Recently, the prospect of a House of Leaves tv show came up. I think this kind of media points the way to its best possible form*.

Of course the term postmodernism gets stretched and abused like a blouse in a taffy pull, so you have to lionize proper examples of it working. The way both House of Leaves and this Heidecker saga draw attention to their media, draw attention to the way it is consumed by the audience, and then uses that hyper-real space to explore themes through a compelling story: well, shit. When it's not just window-dressing, postmodernism really is a beautiful and challenging school of artistic expression.

*I mean potentially best, outside of the excellent book.
posted by es_de_bah at 10:40 AM on July 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


[fake]
posted by glonous keming at 11:09 AM on July 20, 2018


No this is just Homestuck and I'm not falling for it.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:12 AM on July 20, 2018 [9 favorites]


A campaign ad that's just Celery Man with the tagline, "I'm Tim Heidecker and I approve this message."
posted by duffell at 1:00 PM on July 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


I just watched the first five minutes of the trial. This is... this is amazing.

I was a big Tim and Eric fan but I kind of lost touch with Heidecker's work. I'm going to have to catch up now. It's going to be painfully boring and awkward, but also hilarious.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:11 PM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I mean, it has become so clear that he's not just fucking around. This is serious, serious work. There is so much effort going into this. Teeny Weeny Ghini indeed.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:15 PM on July 20, 2018


Oh shit that is Neil Hamburger. I thought I fucking recognized him; weird that I didn't know his real name.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:30 PM on July 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


On the side...a good friend of mine convinced me to watch 'the comedian' with him. It's glorious and soul crushing and not fun to watch, and I'd like to spoil the joke:
.
.

Heidecker's lead in the Comedian doesn't say or do anything un-sarcastically throughout the run. Virtually every word and action is a joke. That is, his intentions can only be read by their incongruousness to the tragedies playing out around him, and the lengths he's willing to go to in order to top them literally. It's fucking awful to watch. This may seem like faint praise: it's the closest thing to 'The Room' that's ever been made on purpose. And just doing that on purpose is a mountain to climb.
posted by es_de_bah at 2:58 PM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Greghead here. I have to say that Mr. Heidecker should run and should win so that we can finally get the movie reviews we have needed for so long without the unnecessary complications and conflicts that Mr. Heidecker seems to get involved in!
posted by Golem XIV at 4:30 PM on July 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


What about Heidecker's other hit electronica project, Tim Hecker?

You laugh, but I just spent 5 minutes looking this up because my mind was blown that the guy that made those records was the Adult Swim comedy guy. (I don't really know anything about Tim Heidecker)
posted by bongo_x at 2:11 AM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


I have trouble understanding Tim & Eric at the best of times, aside from their more accessible bits like “The Universe” and “Paul Rudd’s Computer.” Is “Lovecraftian humor” a thing? Because that’s how I would describe their schtick.
posted by killdevil at 12:15 PM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


I was just talking about On Cinema to someone. The thing that I love about it — and I say this as someone who was fooled by it until last year — is that if you watch any individual episode of 'On Cinema,' it's just this terrible review show and you go "oh, okay, I get the joke," and if you're like me, don't really watch too many more.

But when you realize that, no, you do not get the joke, and go back from the beginning and work your way through, it's phenomenal
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 9:07 PM on July 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


But when you realize that, no, you do not get the joke, and go back from the beginning and work your way through, it's phenomenal
This was exactly my experience. I watched a single episode, from season 7 or so, a couple years back, went "What sort of boring hipster would be entertained by this shit?", and bumped Tim down a couple slots in my mind. The murder trial put it back on my radar; I told myself I'd watch a couple of episodes from the latest season, just to see what was going on, got curious about the set-up for that season and jumped back another season, then surrendered and watched from the very beginning, sans Oscar specials (which are great but about triple the length of the series as a whole).
I have trouble understanding Tim & Eric at the best of times, aside from their more accessible bits like “The Universe” and “Paul Rudd’s Computer.” Is “Lovecraftian humor” a thing? Because that’s how I would describe their schtick.
In an interview I loved of theirs, they specified that one of the major components of their creative approach is that every sketch they create has to be a recognizable "thing", like "paid programming" or "public-access TV" or "90s kids ad" or "schlocky Hollywood blockbuster". They seem really invested in the artifice and greed of various mediums: the ways in which people get distorted through those lenses, usually for avaricious-but-clueless reasons. There's a fair bit of love and empathy for all those weird mediums, mixed with an odd amount of righteous anger at the ways in which they promote cruelty and shittiness.

(Their thing that made me realize they were really fucking smart, and not just wacky fun, was "The Jim and Derrick Show", which is more-or-less an MTV reimagining of their TV show, exactly as excruciating and trashy as MTV was back in the day. It couldn't possibly have been created by people who didn't simultaneously hate and love MTV with every fiber of their being.)

A major part of their artifice is to come off as clueless idiots, and usually hyperactive ones too, but their craft is impressively considered, and when they talk about their work out-of-character their intelligence seriously shines through. I don't think anything legitimately hyper and wacky could burrow under people's skin the way Tim and Eric do: the disconcerting thing about them is how smart they are, and how dumb they feign being.

Anyway, On Cinema is pretty non-hyper. If anything, it's the opposite: excruciatingly slow plot development paired with the most self-important navelgazing you'll ever see. But that's podcasting as a medium, really, or YouTube celebritydom in general. I can't watch the real thing, but the satire of it is stone-cold brilliant.
posted by rorgy at 9:39 AM on July 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


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