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Written and directed by Pauly Shore; starring Pauly Shore and B-list celebrities. Released to DVD on January 25, 2005. A bit of history: during the late eighties, stand-up comedian Pauly Shore created an alter-ego, The Weasel, and spent the next eight years annoying the hell out of America. Watching Ben Affleck’s career spiral downward with each new high profile bomb in which he chooses to star (Surviving Christmas anyone?), I’ve often wondered if it is possible for a once bankable actor to fall completely from the good graces of Hollywood. Though Affleck seems to have somehow avoided this pitfall for now, Shore proved it could happen. With the resounding clunk of his 1996 film Bio-Dome, Shore’s big-screen presence withered and died. He has spent the last eight years away from the limelight of cinema, perfecting his stand-up act and doing occasional voice-over work. In 2003, that changed. Shore went back to work on the indie front and crafted a script for a pseudo-documentary (mockumentary) called Pauly Shore is Dead. Securing more C-list celebrity appearances than even the Tony Danza show can boast, Shore went on to direct and star in this film about what would happen if he decided to give in to his morbid fantasies and kill himself. Better to be dead than to be known as a living idiot, Shore reasons early on in the film. Unfortunately for Shore’s first major film comeback, Pauly Shore is Dead suffers from its extremely poor production values. At first, I found myself hesitant to even comment on this aspect of the film’s creation; it’s a low-budget comedy that really and truly looks like a low-budget comedy. Knowing that Kevin Smith’s early work wasn’t ever particularly influenced by its lower production values made it even harder to mention. However, Pauly Shore is Dead isn’t just another low-budget comedy about a group of lovable slackers: it is a movie about life in glamorous Hollywood that is filled with such larger-than-life Tinseltown faces as Charlie Sheen, Sean Penn and Ben Stiller. Digitally shot on the cheap with no first unit cinematographer even listed in the credits, Pauly Shore is Dead is that rare film about the wonders of the bright lights and red carpets in Hollywood that shows the audience nothing, instead letting them fill in all the blanks themselves. Despite its ingrained lighting and camera flaws though, Shore’s film has one enormous positive working for it: it’s quite amusing. Peppered with an enormity of in-jokes often delivered by the celebrities themselves (Tom Sizemore and Michael Madsen are forever being confused with one another), Shore has instilled a sharper wit into Pauly Shore is Dead than one could ever assume, especially given his previous film history. If nothing else, Shore gets credit for convincing tabloid headliners like Paris and Nicky Hilton, Heidi Fleiss, Kato Kalin, Tommy Lee and Todd Bridges to comically lampoon their public miscues on the big screen. The casting of Bridges as on-screen Shore’s cell-mate in the celebrity wing of the Los Angeles County jail was a positively inspired choice. As the end credits of Pauly Shore is Dead rolled–minus the cinematographer listing–I stood and stretched, refreshed and entertained, yet also instantly ready for the next item on my to do list for the day. A decidedly guilty pleasure, Pauly Shore is Dead will find a place on TNT and Comedy Central during weekend afternoons for years to come, right after Roadhouse. | |||||
