"Funny Pages" -- Movie Review

This weekend at Lincoln Center, I attended the opening night of the comedy “Funny Pages”, written and directed by Owen Kline. 

Synopsis

When an aspiring comic book artist loses his mentor, will he be able to find a replacement in an unexpected way? 

Story

At the age of 17, Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) is considering dropping out of high school and not bothering going to college, despite his parents’ behest.  Instead, he wants to attend art school so that he may pursue his dream of becoming an underground comic book artist in the spirit of R. Crumb.  His mentor is a current high school teacher who is so encouraging he suggests Robert skip art school altogether and send his drawing samples to Mad Magazine.  Unfortunately, Robert loses his teacher in a tragic freak accident.  It is at this point that Robert begins to spiral; he gets in trouble with the police and becomes increasingly detached from his parents. 

Appearing before the judge, his court-assigned Public Defender is able to get Robert released without any fine or jail time.  Once freed, he decides to move out of his parents’ house in Princeton, New Jersey and rend space in a small house in the more precarious town of Trenton; in order to pay for it, he supplements his income from his job as a clerk at a comic book shop by working as an administrative aid to the Public Defender who represented him in court.  It is here that he meets Wallace (Matt Maher), an oddball who is another client of the Public Defender due to an unusual incident at a pharmacy.  Wallace, it turns out, used to work at a comic book publisher; Robert sees this as an opportunity to have someone with industry experience advise him.

Despite the fact that Robert showers Wallace with attention and admiration, Wallace reacts with the hostility and suspicion that befits his unbalanced personality which likely got him in his legal entanglements in the first place.   Relentless, Robert decides to bribe Wallace with food and money:  if he agrees to come over to his parents’ house for Christmas Day breakfast, Robert will pay Wallace a “consulting fee” to give him feedback and career direction.  When Robert and Wallace are interrupted with a surprise visit from Robert’s friend Miles (Miles Emanuel), things go awry and chaos ensues.  Once everything is over, what will happen to Robert’s career hopes?

Review

If you are looking for a movie where you can’t find yourself rooting for any of the characters because you find them obnoxious and repulsive, then “Funny Pages” is absolutely right up your alley.  Actually, that might not be entirely accurate; the only two people in this film that could be considered worthy of our attention are Robert’s beset parents (expertly portrayed with the proper sense of annoyance by Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais); understandably, these two have completely run out of patience with their ungrateful and self-absorbed adolescent son, even though they have clearly provided him with a rather privileged life. 

As far as technical aspects are concerned, the film was shot on super 16 millimeter film; at this screening, it was shown in a 35 millimeter print.  This, as it turns out was a good choice because it appropriately lacks a certain visual slickness that might come from shooting with digital cameras; as a result, you have a look and feel of a story that could just as easily have occurred in either the 1970’s or 1980’s.  From a screenplay perspective, aside from the choice of not giving his protagonist many redeeming features, it is also interesting that it seems as though every decision that Robert makes is a bad one – but this may not be due to his immaturity so much as the filmmaker’s desire to move the story along.   

Following the screening, there was an interview with director Owen Kline and the star of “Funny Pages”, Daniel Zolghadri.  Kline said that he loved underground comic books when he was in high school, which is partly where this story originates.  He mentioned that his Jungian therapist characterized him as a monomaniac – something which he believes is an accurate description.  Kline feels many of the characters in “Funny Pages” are similarly imbued with this same characteristic.  Zolghadri said that they shot different versions of the ending where his character of Robert had various emotional reactions to the events that had preceded.