This claymation short reminded me of a silly impersonation I sometimes do of a nebbish, hedging Woody Allen reciting the incongruously hostile lyrics of LImp Bizkit: "I don't really know why, but I just want to justify, you know, maybe ripping someone's head off, I dunno..." I usually leave it at that.
This short is the same joke, with really nothing else on top of it, stretched out for over four minutes. It's very much a product of its time. I'm not sure if the filmmakers were criticizing Ed Koch, honoring him, or just being silly in imitating him (I get the sense it's the first option?), but whatever they were attempting, what they produced certainly doesn't transcend the political moment of 1983.
Have you ever watched an old Johnny Carson or Dave Letterman monologue--or something along those lines--from a late night talk show twenty or thirty years old? And they're riffing on the headlines from that morning, the current water cooler buzz from that very particular moment? Like, they're talking about Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and gout and the Ayatollah Khomeini and you more or less get what the point is but the context is completely missing and you're not sure exactly what the key word in the punchline is?
Well, that's what this is. How this won an Oscar, I have no idea.
This short is the same joke, with really nothing else on top of it, stretched out for over four minutes. It's very much a product of its time. I'm not sure if the filmmakers were criticizing Ed Koch, honoring him, or just being silly in imitating him (I get the sense it's the first option?), but whatever they were attempting, what they produced certainly doesn't transcend the political moment of 1983.
Have you ever watched an old Johnny Carson or Dave Letterman monologue--or something along those lines--from a late night talk show twenty or thirty years old? And they're riffing on the headlines from that morning, the current water cooler buzz from that very particular moment? Like, they're talking about Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and gout and the Ayatollah Khomeini and you more or less get what the point is but the context is completely missing and you're not sure exactly what the key word in the punchline is?
Well, that's what this is. How this won an Oscar, I have no idea.