Late Review: "Funny Pages" and the Armpit of Inspiration
10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
When I was eighteen, I had aspirations of becoming a turntablist—a DJ that mixed and scratched vinyl records. Feeling like I needed training and guidance, I found a local DJ’s Blogspot and reached out to him, asked him if he would be willing to give me some lessons. He agreed, and on one cold winter night, I went to meet him at his practice space in a rundown, industrial part of the city. The space itself, it was essentially a concrete bunker from which no sound could escape.
Unnerving setting aside, my DJ mentor turned out to be a stand-up guy, and our sessions together turned out to be highly fruitful. But I remember meeting him and first being led to that foreboding practice room, not having told my parents where I was, and thinking to myself, this is irresponsible and dangerous! This guy could be a creep who now has me trapped!
If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, it’s down a path of self-abasing nostalgia, similar to the one taken by actor-turned-director Owen Kline in his weirdo cinema debut, Funny Pages. Also: if you’re watching Funny Pages and you think to yourself, an 18-year-old wouldn’t put himself in that sort of situation—yes, he would. Funny Pages is a film with a central character I saw myself in almost immediately. Daniel Zolghadri’s Robert comes alarmingly close to a self-serious, selfish, and stubbornly art-minded me at that age, and his choices in the film even echo some of my own—swap DJing for cartooning (thought I tried my hand at cartooning as well).
Robert’s cartooning is his entire personality, and, after witnessing the tragic death of his beloved art teacher (and perverse cartoon mentor), he puts in motion a plan to make it his professional career. Paramount to his plan: spatially divorce himself from his begrudgingly accepting parents (Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais, wonderful), and find refuge from the frigid New Jersey winter in the finest, most squalid basement apartment an 18-year-old can afford. But his plan is soon complicated by a band of unsavouries, including his unexpected and perpetually sweaty roommates, and an ornery former comic colourist whom Robert latches on to in hopes of professional congress.
By extracting himself from his upper-middle-class privilege and plopping himself into an outsider existence, consorting with a peanut gallery of weirdos, Robert finds inspiration for his off-colour comics, but he also wedges himself further up his own ass. It’s not that he comes to feel himself above his pizza-faced cohorts—at least, not in the socio-economic sense—it’s that he comes to feel himself a more serious cartoonist, an artist beset on a more “serious” path. Zolghadri plays Robert with that perfect air of haughtiness, his character convinced that only his mission is noteworthy, even if it leads him down dead ends or over burned bridges. Ironically, Robert’s loyal friend Miles (Miles Emanuel) is met with more venom than encouragement when he too starts following by Robert’s example. Robert’s parents, meanwhile, receive disdain when they buy their errant son a Peter Bagge collection—Robert already has the original prints.
Kline, having pulled from his own experiences as a teen comic obsessive, perhaps means Funny Pages to be an exercise in identifying the insufferable nerd’s worst character traits. In rebuffing his best friend’s attempts to bond over comics, for example, Robert practically comes right out in saying that he is the only one who can be in pursuit of the craft. But because Kline’s story is personal, there is also an earnest attempt to craft a firm, believable basis upon which Robert’s narcissism can be fleshed out, even become relatable. Like all the best characters, Robert has a want in his life, and that want leads him to find within himself a sense of resolve. Robert has more unflinching confidence than the other nerds his age, but he is as honed in on his art as most teens in coming-of-age films are on relationships and sex. Robert would sooner draw dicks than listen to his own, but he is still intent on shoving these dicks in everyone’s faces. He thinks himself holier than thou because he is a determined artist, slumming it in order to bring humility and honesty to his craft, but he is still an 18-year-old boy, still impetuous and shortsighted.
In touching on all of these character descriptors, I realize how “not for everyone” Funny Pages will come across. Indeed, those who like movies because they tend to depict beautiful people are in for a jarring surprise when they encounter this film’s motley gaggle of oddballs, each of whom seems to be trying to outdo the other in just how unconventional they can appear. Matthew Maher, with his cleft lip and his bulging eyes, is certainly a prime example. He plays Wallace, the man Robert convinces himself is his token into the comic book industry, and he commands as a baffling cipher of a man struggling with a quick temper and a powerful distrust of most all humans. Anyone familiar with the films of the Safdies will also recognize some of their distinct-looking regulars, including Mitchell Wenig and Buddy Duress.
Both Josh and Benny Safdie have producer credits in the film, and Funny Pages is very much a film from their school of vérité-influenced, anxiety- and discomfort-driven storytelling. Frequent Safdie collaborator Sean Price Williams even lends his balletic handheld camerawork, which helps assure the fidgety, turbulent atmosphere Kline intends. And the 16mm film stock (which seems to be experiencing a resurgence these days) adds an extra layer of grit on top of the already unseemly characters and situations. Kline works with Williams to find the best way to shoot drawings on a page, and all of those drawings are provided by none other than Johnny Ryan, the king of putting the politically incorrect on paper. Watching Funny Pages is like overturning a rock and watching the bugs it concealed begin to writhe and squirm.
From Tijuana Bibles to dank, sweaty basement apartments full of decrepits, Funny Pages is the kind of film that probes its camera where most would go out of their way to avoid. It’s the kind of film with a weirdness so specific, you get the feeling that maybe Kline has adapted some of his own life experiences for the screen, because where else could these dirty, sorted ideas come from? Robert discovers that these ideas come from the dodgy crevices that we usually avoid. These crevices are where Robert cultivates his being and where draws the way he wants to draw, but these crevices are armpits, and, at the end of the day, an armpit is still an armpit.
Obviously, the specificity and the shamelessness of the film’s subject matter won’t connect with everyone. Fortunately (or unfortunately), it connected with me. And while 18-year-old me would have probably felt deeply perturbed being “called out” by a film like this, older me appreciates this ode to the born-to-fail teenager; to the artist who thinks his level of weird is charmingly creative, but is maybe just weird period. Kline understands his subject intimately, and in giving us such an unflinching portrait of this subject, he proves he is a director willing to go to the level of weird that will one day be recognized as charmingly creative. At the very least, he may be recognized as charmingly stupid—who follows a stranger into a soundproof room, anyway??