Chris Stangl on "Gigantic"
supersuckers�
included "Gigantic" as one of his top 10 films from the year 2002 in his
year-by-year rundown of the best movies of the 2000-aughts. Nice
name-drop of this group.
http://explodingkinetoscope.blogspot.com
9. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) (dir. A.J. Schnack)
Like a compacted Beatles Anthology for a band that is not The Beatles,
Gigantic charts the personal biography, career and artistic development
of gyro rock band They Might Be Giants. Though unabashedly fawning
toward its subject, A.J. Schnacks documentary exists as exhaustive
celebration of TMBG as cult object and as contravention, an argument for
the bands influence and importance. The senior body of music critics,
though largely comprised of nerds, are not the sort of nerd who
necessarily reveres TMBG, and have marginalized the bands place in
history. Without even deigning to mention that the band is frequently
understood as high-flown novelty act or niche pop for rabid cultists,
Gigantic reframes TMBG history, placing them at the epicenter of
post-punk, and positing them as elder statesmen of modern alternative
rock.
In the spirit of full disclosure, this writer holds the world record
for the second most posts to the newsgroup alt.music.tmbg, despite not
having frequented the forum for the better part of a decade. They Might
Be Giants is not only my favorite band but one of my favorite things in
the charted universe. Having lived inside TMBG Land for so long, I
cannot rightly say how the film plays as an introduction.
It ably sketches the larger contours of the bands career arc, from
creative collaboration in the adolescent friendship of Johns Linnell and
Flansburgh to early performance-art-tinged gigs in illegal NYC venues to
college radio success (such as it is) to their film scoring work of the
early 00s. A partially animated opening credits montage bustles through
a full kit of TMBG iconography accompanied by an exciting song montage
(they dont blend into medley, they blast, stop, blast, stop), previewing
and promising: this will be a concert movie, a rock band bio, a New York
story, a buddy comedy. The bands hyperactive aesthetic is reflected in
the films form, which cuts between several timelines; in the present,
TMBG works on and promotes the Mink Car album, and performs a Greek
chorus concert staged for the documentary, playing key songs that crop
up in the story of how they got from 1982 to ~2001. An unfortunate
side-effect of the cross-cutting and a dual organization by timeline and
anecdotal topic is that some of the chronology is jumbled the band
seems to make a triumphant Tonight Show appearance with songs from their
third record before their demo tape is discovered. Some crucial
milestones are glossed over which might have helped define what makes
the TMBG story special. The bands early sound is driven by Linnells
accordion and Flansburghs experimentalism, and their non-traditional
rock voices, and some explanation of what separates TMBGs music from
their peers would be useful. The bands output is voluminous, scattered
across nontraditional media and spans decades, but dates are scant, and
the only record specifically situated in time and space is Flood. The
frenzied sonic leapfrogging also gives an inaccurate portrait of the
bands musical development, mashing songs of every era into an
incandescent miasma.
Caveats aside, Gigantic has its work cut out for it, and somehow at the
heart of the coffee-addled ruckus is a creative partnership, a
friendship between two men. Linnell and Flansburghs personal lives
remain quiet enigmas; fleeting reference is made late in the game to
Flansburghs wife, and there is a precious, unexplained glimpse of candid
footage of Linnell eating bagels with his son, Henry. In
uncharacteristically relaxed joint interview, the duos interpersonal
dynamic is far more apparent than during talk show grillings. Linnell
drops his shrinking violet act to ramble thoughtfully, and it becomes
apparent that Flansburghs boisterousness less masks a blowhard than a
man concerned at all times with the public presentation of his lifes
work. Two key principles of TMBG: they are generous with their
creativity, and they consistently refuse anything that smacks of
laziness or to compromise their vision. This leads to projects like the
damnedest Dunkin Donunts commercials in the world, but extends to
matters of generic labeling, message and interpretation (Linnell,
hunched over a phone, tells an interviewer: There is nothing missing in
your understanding of Particle Man). Gigantic does not press deep into
the nonprofessional lives of its subject, but besides simply being
private people (typically so, not fanatically), this is part of the TMBG
project. The work is already an expression of the artists deepest
preoccupations, passions and fears (every TMBG song is about death,
their mascots are a parade of the reanimated dead, defeat, head injury,
madness and alcoholism bless every narrator, and there are no true love
songs), and should autobiographical incident leak into a lyric (Linnells
songs are haunted, for instance, by a bike accident he suffered long,
long ago), detailing such incident does not enrich the art but deplete
it. There is nothing missing in your understanding of They Might Be
Giants. The most valuable insights come when the men are separated and
remarkably candid (for these guys, anyway), and Flansburgh explains his
awe toward Linnells songcraft and musicianship, and Linnell expresses
jealousy over Flans untrained ear and enthusiastic avant-garde
form-busting. These guys need each other, and thats all we need to know.
There is much on display to drive the diehard fanatic absolutely up the
wall with joy. The central L&F interview is conducted on a site that
appears to be the exact location of the Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet
Head video. A songwriting session to unveil the demo sketch of Its So
Loud in Here proves detail-oriented and tense. Trips to the archives
provide flash-glimpses of internal PolyGram Records memos (! Get your
pause button ready!), long buried early publicity photos (Flans chomping
on simultaneous multiple cigars well before the cover of Mono Puffs It's
Fun to Steal). There is material in Gigantic that the most ardent tape
trader has never seen, including a snippet of the never-ever-ever
released video for Rabid Child. That five seconds is worth the price of
admission.
--
�"To put this in proper perspective, Ed Hardy is so hated by white people that
it cannot be worn ironically. This is no small feat. As it stands, the only
other entries in this category are Nazi Uniforms, Ku Klux Klan Robes, and
self-tanner." - stuffwhitepeoplelike.com