It always starts the same way.
November 6, 2018 5:56 PM   Subscribe

Roy Orbison in Cling Film: the Movie. At last, a live-action adaptation of the classic and perplexing short story. Featured on MeFi many times in the past.
posted by CrunchyFrog (18 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is exactly what I needed today.

I still fondly remember the time I was in a bookstore in San Francisco and fund the Roy Orbison in Clingfilm novel on a shelf. It had no price, but I knew I had to have it at any price. Now and then I wrap my children in clingfilm and read it to them.
posted by robotmachine at 6:20 PM on November 6, 2018 [14 favorites]


I’ve often wondered if Chuck Tingle is just an Americanized Ulrich Haarbürste.
posted by stannate at 6:54 PM on November 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well, I guess it's that time again...
posted by loquacious at 7:27 PM on November 6, 2018


It’s no “hot girl crushing cars!”
posted by Sterros at 7:30 PM on November 6, 2018


OMG
posted by kenko at 7:55 PM on November 6, 2018


If you can find a copy—most easily done in the UK, I believe—Ulrich Haarbürste's Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm is very highly recommended. And not just by me; it was praised in the pages of the Review of Contemporary Fiction!
posted by kenko at 8:02 PM on November 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


That is a surprising amount of clingfilm.
posted by ckape at 8:59 PM on November 6, 2018 [3 favorites]


It has gotten better, but I have been rather discomfited lately by the lack of interest with independent filmmakers refusing to address the crucial issues and questions we all wonder about.
posted by Samizdata at 11:21 PM on November 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


I have to say this is disappointing for me. The charm of the stories was the way in which you read the voice of Ulrich Haarbürste as the archetypical matter-of-fact German young man who is fastidious about his clingfilm. It was dispassionate and repetitive and you kept reading just knowing that it was a send-up of the corner cases of highly specialised online fetish fiction, but it never gave you anything more than it said on the tin.

You got Roy Orbison, and you got a lot of clingfilm. You didn't need anything more. But it was always Ralf Hütter's voice in my head, which was what made it entertaining to me.

The lighting in this film is good, and the shots are well chosen, but the handheld work got murdered by the YouTube de-shake algorithm and the guy playing Ulli just can't stop grinning at himself. I'd be willing to forgive the accent if it weren't for those two things.

I can't believe I actually have strong opinions about this film.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:44 AM on November 7, 2018 [8 favorites]


This is basically my Watchmen.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:19 AM on November 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


I just want to say that the tags for this post are my everything. 10/10.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:11 AM on November 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


The combination of crisp B&W with audio that has been compressed to within an inch of its life is really amazing.
posted by egypturnash at 9:20 AM on November 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm with the rum-soaked space hobo; this is not the movie I had imagined. The smiling of the cling film wrapper is just too distracting. I don't think he's about to lose it at the hilariousness of his own joke, I think it's more the character is just really happy about wrapping Roy in cling film. I pictured it something more grimly determined and precise, the funniness of the stilted German prose. More Eraserhead, less Blue Velvet.

I remember a version done ~10 years ago as music. Sort of a jazzy backing track, like something from one of the more recent William S. Burroughs spoken word collaborations. And with a computer synthesized voice, but no not this one. Ring any bells?
posted by Nelson at 11:13 AM on November 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


This fills a need I didn't know I had.
posted by vibrotronica at 11:44 AM on November 7, 2018


I can't believe I actually have strong opinions about this film.

It clings to you, much in the manner and under different circumstances in which other film might cling to Roy Orbison.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:03 PM on November 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


But wait ... what do I see?
posted by Twang at 1:25 PM on November 7, 2018


Commence!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:36 PM on November 8, 2018


Capital.

I'd never heard of this, I went and bought the novel, its absolute genius.
posted by memebake at 12:16 PM on November 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


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