Merrick never agrees with the judges...
Sheldrake sent in a report from Thursday’s Howard Stern International Film Festival.
The film that took Third Place…EATING FRUIT SALAD…was made by an Austin guy named Matt Street! Yet more proof that total coolness (or freakish bizarreness – take your pick) comes from Austin!
Personally, I would have chosen Ettamay Henry’s MATING CALL as the top film; it had a crispness and a Zucker-esque quality about it that I really liked. Alas, this wasn’t to be.
Here's Sheldrake...
HOWARD STERN FILM FESTIVAL 2006
April 27th, 2006
Sheldrake here, reporting live from the Hudson Theater on W. 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan. I’m taking the evening off from the Tribeca Film Festival downtown to give you a report on Howard Stern’s first film festival ever. Howard announced the Festival about four months ago and asked for submissions of 3-5 minute short films from his fans. The only condition for the contest: the film somehow had to be about Howard or something related to Howard, such as his show or his staff or his fans. The fans responded with over 2000 submissions, and tonight we’ll view the 9 finalists in the contest, as well as some of the films by Howard’s staff.
Coming down 44th Street, walking over to the theater, you can see the crowds two blocks away. Howard Stern, whatever you think of his comedy, is perhaps the most masterful showman in New York.. There are spotlights machines, security guards, cops, press agents, strippers, one clown, and many people in black tie and formal dress (I’m not one of them). The size of the crowd, and the noise they’re generating, is astonishing, even for Manhattan. A limo pulls up, and five or six yellow-jacketed figures pour out: the News Team from Howard TV, someone tells me. The security guards stand sharp against the railings holding back the surging masses that Love Howard.
There’s a long line of ticket holders waiting to get into the thing to, but I get to scoot past it, which is fine with me. Crowds this size and with this kind of energy—manic, fannish—freak me out. The PR folks hand me my press pass and I head into the theater. On the left is the long red carpet line—Howard and Robin Quivers, Artie Lange, Richard Belzer, Richard Roeper, Todd Phillips et. al.— thronged by reporters. I make my way towards the seats and find they’ve set aside two of the best for Sheldrake and his date, right behind Todd Phillips, aisle seats three rows back in the orchestra section. As it turned out, we were sitting between Gary the Retard and Fred the Sound Guy. I had to be told who these guys were, but if you were a Howard fan (and my date was) you’d have been pinching yourself to see if you were awake.
Howard’s a controversial figure, famous for his battles with the FCC and the size of the fines levied against his station because of his show, and, finally, for recently taking the leap into satellite radio. I don’t listen to his show much, although when I do I enjoy it as a sort of guilty pleasure. He’s perhaps the most naturally funny personality I have ever heard speak. With that smooth leering voice of his, he’s like Groucho Marx on Quaaludes. He is, of course, unburdened by the need to stay within the boundaries of popular good taste, which may or may not be your cup of tea. Fart and potty jokes and the Lesbian Dating Game are the royal road for Howard, and the movies tonight didn’t disappoint.
Before the show, Sal the Stockbroker, Richard Christy and the Reverend Bob Levy came out and warmed up the crowd, throwing devil dogs into the audience. Then a stripper came out, her only clothing a patriotic red white and blue paint job and two pieces of black tape over her D-Cup breasts (“SUPER” and “SONIC” in white letters), placed a devil dog in her butt cheeks and bent over, then one of the tuxedoed men onstage—I think it was the Reverend Bob—got on his knees and sucked the devil dog out from her butt crack (Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d form.) The crowd went wild.
Next up, a guy named Red Peters came out and gently sang insults like “Suck my Dick” to the wafting notes of a cocktail hour bossa nova instrumental number. “Red Peter, Red Peters,” I muttered. “I’ve seen you recently, and heard your music. Where…where…?” Then it dawned on me: he was on the soundtrack for the great documentary FUCK (review on its way) that I’d seen at the GENART FILM FESTIVAL a couple of weeks ago, and he’d been sitting behind me in the audience there.
Next, Howard came out to great applause, said a few funny things and then introduced the judges for the main competition: Roeper, Belzer, Phillips, and Howard and Robin themselves. They were seeing the movies for the first time, same as the audience, and their ratings would determine the winners of the competition. There were three prizes. First place: $30,000. Second Place: $11,000. Third Place: $4,500. All awards were in cash and prizes.
Then we saw the nine films, one right after the other without a break (except when BLOOD ON THE TISSUE was accidentally started again four or five times in a row after it is initial showing). There was one farting film which made me laugh, THE MATING CALL, by ETTAMAY HENRY, though it came in second to last in the competition. It was a sort of depiction of a gay human rutting season with farts as the mating call. BLOOD ON THE TISSUE is about a man jacking off to radio porn, getting killed by a masked slasher-killer and jizzing AFTER his head is lopped off. Whee! Talk about cheating that bastard Death! There was a strange, sweet little film called TITO STERN: LEFT BEHIND about the puppet that started Howard on his career, Howard dumping him for success and their reunion in old age. Then a truly strange, Pulp Fiction inspired setting in which Howard’s tag line and characters are spoken and acted out in a weird, chain-hangin’, dark S&M room, TRAPPED IN THE ATTIC.
Then there were the prize winners:
THIRD PRIZE for a movie I didn’t care for at all, EATING FRUIT SALAD. A smirky twenty-something corresponds with JD from the show via chat rooms, pretending he’s a girl. He sets up a webcam date with the guy, then shows him his nuts, at which point JD signs off. It really happened, and JD was put on display for all the world to see as a chat room perv, but why this piece of shit won a prize is beyond me.
SECOND PRIZE for STERN REVENGE. Apparently at some time in the past, Howard said he was going to skull fuck some guy’s dead skeletal father, then fuck him, the son, in the ass, payback for some wrong done to Howard. Or something like that. Anyway. This film delivers that moment of delicious graveyward revenge to us (girlfriend whispers into my ear, “Oh, Howard is really into revenge. He’ll like this!”) What saves the movie’s simple plot is that the production values are very high and it’s really rather frightening to watch. Well done! to LEE VEHE, the director.
FIRST PRIZE went to a perfect little gem of a movie, RADIO PLAY, about Howard, Fred and Robin meeting via shortwave radio as children, and the first tentative moments of their relationship shaping themselves in front of you. The movie works by focusing on the warm relationships between the Howard staff and leaves the doodie jokes behind. It’s a fine little film, and the only one that caused Roeper to exclaim, “you, sir, are ALREADY a filmmaker.” Well done! to the actors and the director, SCOTT MASTERSON.
After you spend an evening with Howard Stern, it’s no mystery why the man is such a phenomenon. He gets out of the way, lets people be themselves and then, basically, restricts himself to making snide remarks about them—which doesn’t for a minute disguise the fact that he genuinely likes them—and that he likes people in general, and especially the ones who live in Howardland, a dysfunctional Tod Browning freak show where bad taste doesn’t exist, deformity and desperation doesn’t endanger your fame and where the fringe people can go and find acceptance and a job. Where would Gary the Retard be, if not working for Howard Stern? Howard hires the handicapped, of all kinds, and makes them, and himself, rich, by quietly managing the circus and shrewdly commenting on it.
ALSO, we saw the world premier of the trailer for ARTIE LANGE’S new movie, BEER LEAGUE, directed by SNL writer FRANK SEBASTIANO. The movie’s about softball, drinking beer in excess, being gross, and being Artie Lange. Coming soon all over a theater near you.
Mr. Sheldrake
NY NY
April 2006
