In September, 2005, a couple months after the release of Son of the Mask, director Mike Addis and I set out to shoot a documentary about hecklers. We toured the country for months, shooting shows, and interviewing comics. As we were on the road, Addis pointed out that, coincidentally, we were going through some of the towns in which some of the most spiteful critics of the movie were living. Being a masochist, I decided I wanted to interview those guys. They sort of fit in with the idea of the documentary, because, in one sense of the word, they WERE hecklers. Isn't that what a lot of critics are? They were not just critiquing the movie, they were critiquing my career, my life, my face. There are obviously good critics out there, but there are also a lot of guys that really are hecklers...just in a written medium. It seemed that comparing critics to hecklers would be a kind of interesting sociological experiment.
Heckling is nothing new--it existed in Shakespearean theater, Vaudeville, Milton Berle's act, The Muppet Show. It's been around forever. Stand-up comedians are trained to deal with hecklers. I've become pretty good at dealing with hecklers in a live environment and found it isn't that hard to shut up and/or humiliate those who attack me. But the heckling phenomenon has taken a new shape with the advent of the Internet. Twenty years ago, there were only a handful of critics writing for papers. Now there are literally thousands...blogging and writing on websites especially. Today, when that same comedian makes a movie, he's attacked on all sides for that work--on the Internet, in papers, on the radio and TV--and he has no recourse. What we found really amazing was the degree of resentment and anger toward those trying to make people laugh (especially if they were getting paid well for it). Sites like "Aint It Cool News," "Hollywood Bitchslap," "Rotten Tomatoes," "WaffleMovie.com" all just try to outsnark each other. They even have AWARDS for movies that are the most poorly received.
Nearly a year into our filming, we got really lucky. Barbra Streisand got heckled and told the heckler to "shut the fuck up." Vice-President Cheney was visiting an area hit by Katrina and an audience member heckled him, yelling "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney" (at least the heckler had enough respect to call him "Mister"). But the biggie that fell into our laps was the Michael Richard's meltdown. Here was a guy more experienced as a sketch comedy/sitcom actor than as a stand-up comic. He was not at all equipped to deal with voluntary or involuntary audience participation, and his run-in with a couple of hecklers is now YouTube history.
Another thing we wanted to make clear is the fact that this film was not going to be a pity party for comics. The problem is not so much that performers get their feelings hurt. No shit. The problem is that the anger, the vitriol, the petty jealousy and gossip trivialize lives on both sides. The moment you decide you want to be a heckler or let a heckler truly affect you is when you lose. But the same can be said of dealing with critics...you let them affect you and you lose again.
Part of putting yourself out there is accepting that your message may meet resistance. Nowadays, politicians are so heckler-phobic they fill the room with planted fans and friends just so no one even asks a negative question. It's called astroturfing, and it kind of defeats the purpose of live performance.
So we focused on the never-ending twisted symbiotic relationship between the heckler/critic and the performer. I don't try to make myself look misunderstood or better than the heckler or critic, I'm just trying to understand the nature of these relationships. So unlike Michael Moore (who we like quite a bit), we had no preconceived notions going in. We really did want to understand this world and build the resulting journey into a movie. And we didn't edit out the people who trash me (and they do trash me hard). I featured them almost more than anybody.
So without further adieu, here's the trailer for Heckler. I hope you like it.
Posted by Jamie Kennedy at 8:36 AM