thesubstream's Five Favourite Freak-Outs

Sometimes a Dude Just Wants To Get Some Opinions Out Real Loud

Submitted by mike, 11/17/09 3:43 PM

So this year at film festivals around the world Werner Herzog announced his triumphant return to fiction filmmaking after years of largely favouring documentary work with two films: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. The first, due for limited release this Friday the 20th of November, is a conceptually weird non-sequel to non-remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 classic Bad Lieutenant. We'll have our (very positive) review up later this week but suffice it to say for now that for fans of Herzog's work with the late great Klaus Kinski (the two collaborated on five films), it seems as if in Nic Cage the director has found someone that shares at least a sliver, a chunk of Kinski's legendary loopy fire.

So to celebrate their in-retrospect inevitable pairing, and in celebration of the late Kinski, we've been passing around thesubstream studio clips of our all time favourite freak-outs. Let us know what we've missed. The top five:

Number One: Kinski is unhappy with jungle catering

The man, the legend Klaus Kinski in a clip recorded on the set of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, from the director's 1999 doc about their relationship, My Best Friend. Later in that film Herzog relates how the natives he had hired as actors offered to murder Kinski, for free, as a favour. No one could yell like that man.

Number Two: A dude hates a videogame

Some pairings, like Kinski and Herzog in the jungle heat, result in vesuvian catharsis, artistic explosions like Fitzcarraldo. Some, like this wet, milky English dude and playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Two in a dank basement for 17 hours, result in a different kind of art.

Number Three: Leave Britney Alone

Obvious, sure. This dude Chris Crocker has turned his crazy crying defense of Britney Spears into a cottage industry and has been parodied to the moon and back. But the thing about this kind of raw emotion, this naked human vulnerability, this stripping bare of the chaotic, troubled soul of a man is that it will literally never stop being funny, ever.

Number Four: It could be worse, kid... you could be a Leafs fan

A clip I'm half convinced is an art installation. The favoured San Jose Sharks lost their first-round playoff series to the Ducks, and this super-fan broadcast his heart-breaking reaction to the folks watching his "channel" on Justin.tv. His maudlin, hammy crying is at first disappointingly mundane, but the piece transforms itself in its latter half, in a chapter called "Red Ceiling Fan w/ Disappointed, Confused Dad".

Number Five: The wrong David

An essay on the group dynamics of grief: post-the loss of their favourite candidate on "American Idol", this troupe of tween scream queens is a portrait of the multivaried faces of grief: rage, shock, acting out, desolation, denial, being embarrassed about the t-shirt you're wearing, getting laughed at by your friend's dad, sorrow. Poignant, a documentary on pathos.

Special Mention for Achievement in Fake Freaking Out: The remote-up-the-butt dude

He had me until he tried to sodomize himself with a remote control, which says scary things about the plausibility of mmorpg-induced mania in teens I guess. Bravo, WoW butt dude, bravo.