Hollywood Said No!

July 15, 2013
This collection extends the publishing concept of "cleaning out the closet" to the extreme. The target readership for this book would seem to be small but specific: comedy cultists and Mr. Show completists. The series ran for four years on HBO during the mid-1990s, and both of the co-authors have earned higher-profile TV credits in the 15 years since (Cross with Arrested Development and Odenkirk with Breaking Bad). If there was ever a time when Mr. Show might have spawned some movies, the market for those has long since dissipated. The former dates from 1998 and offers broad political satire on the corporate co-opting of the presidency and the development of the ultimate gated community: a new planet restricted to the rich people who have plundered the Earth. One bit features Abraham Lincoln as a gangsta rapper: "Damn it's me G. A.B.E. to the L.I.N.C. Doin' a drive-by on slizzavery." The latter (which opens the book, though it was written in 2003) is a series of sketches loosely connected by the concept of two comedians trying to get their movie made. The funniest one concerns "Noodlefest," a Woodstock for jam bands, which features only one band playing one interminable song and reaches a state of medical emergency by boring its attendees to death. "This marries our hatred of jam bands with our detestation of sleazy Hollywood producers," the authors explain in a postscript annotation that further pads the volume. In the case of these scripts, Hollywood was right.

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November 1, 2013

For three years in the mid-1990s, HBO ran the irreverent and darkly twisted comedy sketch series Mr. Show with Bob and David. Odenkirk and Cross juxtaposed live comedic sketches with pretaped vignettes that featured a diverse and talented cast including Jack Black, Sarah Silverman, Jay Johnston, and the sublime Posehn. Now, Mr. Show fanboys and fangirls who have heretofore subsisted on a steady diet of YouTube and Mr. Show: The Complete Collection DVDs can gorge themselves on this compilation of full-length scripts ("Bob and David Make a Movie" and "Hooray for America") and a pastiche of random sketch pieces ("Fagit & Morello," "Nineteen Fifty-Bleven," and "Famous Pussies"). Sadly, the overall conceit is flat, the material lame, and the jokes? Well, sorry, Mr. Show geeks, but they pretty much suck. All of which is to say that Mr. Show sans Jack, Sarah, or Jay is a no-show. VERDICT Verily, a disappointment given the anticipation of Odenkirk and Cross's return. It isn't a stretch to see why Hollywood said no; hard-core Mr. Show fans notwithstanding, you should, too.--Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2013
Odenkirk and Cross, who created and starred in the HBO sketch-comedy series Mr. Show, offer up the scripts to their two unproduced features as well as several sketches. The first of the scripts, Bob and David Make a Movie, finds Odenkirk and Cross on a quixotic journey throughout Hollywood to get their movie green-lit. They brave fast-talking doctors, Korean movie bootleggers, and sleazy producers in their quest to fulfill the requirements laid out for them by the woman who holds the power to make their cinematic aspirations a reality. Before skewering Hollywood, Odenkirk and Cross penned Hooray for America, which finds David as an improbable candidate for president, backed by a sinister chemical company, while Bob, after being humiliated on national television, ends up working as the diabolical company's mascot. Since Mr. Show, Cross and Odenkirk have gone on to play iconic characters in Arrested Development and Breaking Bad, respectively, and their fans will no doubt enjoy seeing them reunited on the page in these zany comedic endeavors.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)