My Year of Flops (46 page)

1:08:50
—More adorable banter from Enola to Mariner: “How many people have you killed? Ten? Twenty?”

1:09:00
—Have I mentioned Mariner's ponytail? 'Cause he's got a fucking ponytail. Oh, and he just threw Enola overboard in a fit of anger.

1:16:49
—A key difference between the theatrical and director's cut of
Waterworld
: more screen time for Jack Black as the Smoker pilot. Those letters and calls to Universal begging them to restore his role to its original majesty finally paid off.

1:18:30
—Mariner greedily devours a tomato while the sunburned, half-mad Enola and Helen look on with naked desperation.

1:22:40
—Just when you think Mariner can't get any more lovable, he offers to trade half an hour with Helen to a clearly insane, possibly violent drifter in exchange for a piece of paper but kicks him off the boat before he can seal the deal. The Age of Chivalry is not dead.

1:42:10
—I wondered, before I began this experiment, if Stockholm syndrome would kick in and I'd begin sympathizing with my cinematic tormentor. Otherwise, 177 minutes is an awful long time to spend with a movie you don't like. Nope. It's still fucking terrible, just longer.

1:45:00
—If this were a normal movie, it would be over by now. Hell, it'd be over 15 minutes ago.

1:46:09
—“There's nothing human about you! They should have killed you the day you were born!” Helen screams at Mariner, acting as an audience surrogate.

1:46:30
—In a weird bit of flop meta-textual motherfuckery, in
Cable Guy
's climax, the title character screams, “Dry Land is not a myth! I've seen it!” before saying he can't see what all the fuss is about: He's seen
Waterworld
nine times and thinks it rules. It's worth noting that that line never appears in
Waterworld.
Like “Play it again, Sam,” it's apocryphal. Mariner says Dry Land is a myth, and Helen says, “I've seen it,” but that's as close as the film gets.

1:50:21
—It takes nearly two punishing hours, but there's finally a lovely, lyrical sequence: man-fish Mariner leading Helen on a magical journey under the sea to the abandoned ruins of a long-lost civilization. It also explains where Mariner gets all that magnificent dirt; he's a
fish, so of course he can treat the ocean's bottom like an all-you-can-scoop dirt buffet.

1:53:17
—Here come the Smokers, and the ugliness returns. In their first scene together, Deacon (who was so voracious in chewing scenery that he apparently devoured Earth's entire landmass) calls Mariner “sperm of the devil” instead of “spawn of the devil.” Mistake? Tweaking of a cliché? Who the hell cares?

2:01:56
—Mariner and Helen reach the stage in every relationship where the woman asks the man why he didn't accept her earlier offer of sexual favors in exchange for passage on his vessel. This leads to a clammy, awkward kiss. I haven't seen sexual chemistry this explosive since Justin Guarini wooed Kelly Clarkson in
From Justin To Kelly
with text messages like, “Kelly, I O U A BRGR. U GAME? JUSTIN.” Tripplehorn must be glad she wasn't typecast as a fish-fucker after
Waterworld
. That nearly ruined Deanna Durbin
and
Troy McClure's careers.

2:03:48
—Mariner has grown less emotionally and physically abusive over the last 20 minutes. This, friends, is what screenwriters call a “redemptive arc.”

2:04:12
—“I am what I am. I may not be human, but I don't quit, never have,” Mariner boasts, proving that humans do not have a monopoly on being 2 legit 2 quit. Or ripping off Popeye.

2:05:46
—Crazy Old Gregor returns in a homemade hot-air balloon not unlike the one Austin Pendleton and Jackie Gleason use to escape prison in
Skidoo.
It's funny how flops tend to echo one another, as if they're all one misbegotten organism with a collective consciousness.

2:05:49
—Gregor tells Mariner that it's “mighty human” of him to save Helen from certain death. As an action adventure,
Waterworld
is grim and endless, but as an elaborate allegory for racism and the challenges faced by the multiracial, it's also fucking terrible.

2:13:41
—The Smokers, having absconded with Enola, propose cutting the tattoo off her back, stretching it, and mounting it. Enola doesn't seem pleased with this idea. Deacon talks to a picture of his hero, “Saint Joe,” disgraced
Exxon Valdez
captain Joseph Hazelwood.
Hazelwood got a bad rap: Who hasn't gotten drunk and crashed an oil tanker? It's a rite of passage in many small towns.

2:20:00
—Enola brags of Mariner, “He even kills little girls,” to which her Smoker tormentor replies, “Haven't we all?”

2:20:59
—Deacon waxes poetic, enthusing, “If there's a river, we'll dam it. If there's a tree, we'll ram it. Because I'm talking progress here! I'm talking development. We shall
suck
and
savor
the sweet
flavor
of Dry Land!” Unlike Joyce Kilmer, Hopper shall never see / a poem as shitty as a tree.

2:21:08
—Now a Smoker is threatening to put out a lit cigarette in Enola's eye after she sasses him once too often.

2:25:26
—Deacon, upon Mariner showing up on his turf, the rusty remains of the
Exxon Valdez
: “Well, I'll be damned. It's the Gentleman Guppie. He's like a toilet that won't flush.” Great bad dialogue, or just bad? I spent many a happy hour at the Gentleman Guppie back in college. Good times.

2:25:53
—Deacon calls Mariner a “total slime-o.” Really, that's the best you can do?

2:26:43
—Mariner says he's come for Enola because “she's my friend.” My response is the same as Deacon's, a witheringly sarcastic, “Golly gee, a single tear rolls down my cheek!”

2:27:37
—The
Exxon Valdez
blows up good.

2:28:00
—It's safe to assume the words “Gee, Dennis, you might want to rein it in a little” were never uttered on the
Waterworld
set.

2:28:05
—When Enola tauntingly asks, “Was this your big vision?” as the
Valdez
burns, she could be addressing director Kevin Reynolds and Costner as easily as Hopper.

2:30:30
—The hero is finally behaving heroically, racing around the oil tanker killing baddies and trying to save Enola. How deliciously out of character.

2:32:02
—To give the sperm of the devil its due, the climax to
Waterworld
qualifies as moderately rousing.

2:32:50
—More stuff blowing up good. It's a recurring visual motif.

2:33:15
—After the
Exxon Valdez
goes down, Deacon emerges from the
wreckage to fire a single shot at Gregor's hot-air balloon that causes Enola to tumble gracelessly out of the dirigible and into the water below. I am beginning to question the film's commitment to verisimilitude.

2:34:08
—Mariner bungee-jumps into the water to retrieve Enola, then soars back into the hot-air balloon just in time to escape the fiery aftermath of three Smoker Jet Skis colliding as, yet again, shit blows up good.
Waterworld
is again starting to strain credibility.

2:37:03
—It's taken 157 minutes, but they finally reach Dry Land! It's not just a myth! I've now seen it with my own eyes!

2:38:29
—Dry Land is even more of a green paradise than I could ever have imagined! Enola finds a music box, plays it, and dreamily announces, “I'm home,” thereby satisfying the film's government-mandated quota of treacle.

2:40:25
—Dry Land has horsies! Majestic, majestic horsies. But does it have kittens? And rainbows? And lollipops?

2:44:37
—Alas, Mariner must return to the sea whence he came. It's all very
Shane
; I half expect Enola to call out to him as he leaves, “Surly Pee-Drinking Man-Fish! Come back!”

2:47:31
—Helen dusts off a plaque commemorating Edmund Hillary's trek up Mount Everest.
That
'
s
your big reveal?

2:57:00
—It's over! It's finally over! The long national nightmare of me watching/writing up the nearly three-hour-long director's cut of
Waterworld
is over! I feel liberated. And exhausted. And hungry. And relieved that soon I will never have to watch, think, or write about
Waterworld
ever again.

I would like to thank my agent, Daniel Greenberg, and editor, Brant Rumble, for making this book happen, and my colleagues and friends Keith Phipps, Scott Tobias, and Tasha Robinson for their invaluable input, editing, and all-around awesomeness. Danny Hellman, thank you for your amazing illustrations. I have been blessed with an amazing team over at Scribner, including Anna deVries, Christina Mamangakis, Kate Bittman, and Amber Husbands, and the greatest group of co-workers anyone could ever want here at
The A.V. Club
: Stephen Thompson, who took a chance on me as a green college kid; Donna Bowman; Josh Modell; Kyle Ryan; Amelie Gillette; Noel Murray; Sam Adams; Sean O'Neal; Steve Hyden; Steve Heisler; Genevieve Koski; Claire Zulkey; Emily Withrow; Jesse Woghan; Leonard Pierce; Andy Battaglia; and Todd VanDerwerff. I'd also like to thank all
The Onion
comedy writers past and present, especially the folks I knew back from my Madison days: Rob Siegel, Todd Hanson, Carol Kolb, Chris Karwowski, Maria Schneider, Joe Garden, Mike Loew, Jim Anchower, Jean Teasdale, and Ben Karlin. Also, Steve Hannah and all the bookstores who were kind enough to host me during my
Big Rewind
tour.

Other people who have improved my life immeasurably through their presence: my beloved Danya and the Maloons, Mary Lou Coyle, Lori Rush, Dr. Eisenberg, Dr. Bloom, Aaron Perna, Steve Delahoyde, Michelle Welch, Monika Verma, Chuck Klosterman, Jennifer Cohn, everyone I interviewed here, Josh Kendall, Squirt, Maggie May, Sweetie Pie, Bandit, Paul DeGrassi, Matthew Lurie, Amy Allen Schleicher, my dad, Anna, Shari Lisa, Louis, Judy, Benjamin, Seth, Ephrem, Mary and Beth Rabin, everyone who purchased
The Big Rewind,
the Sackses, the Gerbers, Stephanie Kuenn, Allison Tobias, Isabelle Tobias, Bob, Mark Bazer, Joseph Gibson, ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER, Roger Ebert, Mike Sacks, Cameron Crowe, everyone at
Movie Club with John Ridley
and
Switch,
Edgar Wright and Patton Oswalt for supporting the column and generally being great.

Thank you, world, for allowing me to do what I love for a living. I will forever be grateful.