You’ve heard of ACAB, now meet ACAD — all cops are disabled!
A screwball comedy that imagines a world in which equality legislation requires the LAPD to hire disabled cops, Special Unit attempts to set a record for the most flagrant use of the r-word in a film. Despite its attempt to offend, perhaps the greatest sin of this film is not the potty language but the reality that it is just not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. Sar and Jeff are joined this month by guest victim and award-winning poet, Liv Mammone, to try and unpack this tangled mess of disability, policing, and political (in)correctness!
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Grading the Film
As always, this film is reviewed with scores recorded in four main categories, with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst. Like the game of golf, the lower the score the better.
How accurate is the representation?
Liv – 4.7 / 5
sar – 2.5 / 5
Jeff – 3.5 / 5
Total – 10.7 / 15
How difficult was it to watch the movie?
Liv – 4 / 5
sar – 5 / 5
Jeff – 5 / 5
Total – 14 / 15
How often were things unintentionally funny?
Liv – .5 / 5
sar – 2.5 / 5
Jeff – 1 / 5
Total – 4 / 15
How far back has it put disabled people?
Liv – 3.5 / 5
sar – 2 / 5
Jeff – 4 / 5
Total – 9.5 / 15
The Verdict
Crimes Have Been Committed
Transcript – Part 1
Jeff:
Hi friends, Jeff here. This month’s film and by extension, the next two episodes come with a big content warning ahead. You will hear on several occasions a harmful word colloquially referred to as the R word that has been used to invalidate disabled people for a very long time. There’s also an above average number of swear words in these episodes. Kind of related kind of not. While we have tried to avoid using the R word when possible, there are moments in this podcast where it couldn’t be avoided, and for that we are sorry. If you are not in a space right now to hear this type of content, this film and next two episodes might not be for you. That’s okay. Don’t worry. You’re not missing anything by taking a little break. Before we go on, we also felt that it was important to note that contrary to what folks may argue, the R word is absolutely connected to histories of medical labeling that have been used to invalidate the personhood of disabled people.
And it is these histories that animate its use to this present day. You cannot refer to someone or something as an R word without evoking this connection and perpetuated the belief that people with cognitive disabilities are less than saying, I didn’t mean it that way. Doesn’t change this what you mean pales in comparison to what it means to others and maybe even more importantly, what it presents as natural or uncontested willfully. Continuing to use this word makes you at best, complicit and ableism and at worst, a failure of a human being. Our languages are filled with millions of colorful ways to disrespect people. So maybe let’s commit to using words that don’t rely on de-legitimizing metaphors of our brothers and sisters, just to make a joke. Be nice to each other, even if this podcast is really not about nice things.
[The trailer for Special Unit plays to open the episode]
Jeff:
You are listening to Invalid Culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks. The following content is rated I for invalid.
[Mvll Crimes song, “Arguing With Strangers” plays]:
I’m argue wing with strangers on the internet, not going out today because I’m feeling too upset, argue wing with strangers on the internet and I’m winning.
Jeff:
Welcome back to another thrilling edition of Invalid Culture. As always, I am your host, Jeff Preston, and I’m joined by co-host. Sarah, how are you doing?
sar:
Straight out of the hells of avernus because it’s 44 with the humid X today. How are you, Jeff?
Jeff:
You know it. I’m feeling just as hot as this movie is. It’s fitting that we are living in a literal hellscape and we had to watch this movie.
sar:
It’s true. It’s also straight out of avernus.
Jeff:
We are not the only ones of course who had to watch the movie. We are joined as always by a very special guest, a very fitting special guest. Actually, given the movie that we’re talking about this week or this month, we thought we should get a poet on to the show because only a poet could actually unpack this. I think so we are joined today by Liv Mammone. She is an editor and poet from Long Island. Her poetry has appeared with Button Poetry, the Poetry Foundation, medical Journal of Australia and many other places. In 2017, she competed for the Union Square Slam as the first disabled woman to be on a New York National Poetry Slam team. That’s pretty amazing. Liv was also a finalist in the Capturing Fire National Poetry Slam 2017 Brooklyn Poets Fellow Ze Glossier fellow. She’s also currently editor at Game Over Books and in 2022, lib had one of the most red poems at splitting this rock’s poetry database to worry her first collection, which will be about 18,000 times better than the movie that we watched is coming out in 2025. Liv, welcome to the pod.
Liv:
Hi. I am so delighted to be here, and yes, even with all my imposter syndrome, I can genuinely say the book will be at least 18 to 20,000 times better than the movie that we just watched. No amount of imposter syndrome can take this away from me.
sar:
Liv, do you ever get physically exhausted by the amount of awards per year you win? Do you ever just go home covered in Taylor Swift style Grammys and you’re like, I literally cannot carry them all?
Liv:
That’s very sweet of you. Yeah, no. Actually, that bio is actually the crst thing about me. I sent Jeff the bio because we’re not as close as some of Jeff’s other friends who have appeared on this podcast. So I emailed Jeff and I was like, do you want a bio? And I always feel so cringey sending the bio to people. It does actually sound like I have a career as opposed to just sitting at home in my house telling people when they get commas wrong in their sentences and telling them when they’ve been ableist, which is kind of my job. The book basically is just stuff that able-bodied people have said to me in publics, kind of what I do for a living is just look at people and be like, you’re never going to believe what happened to me today. I was actually really nervous to come here because I was like, oh, they’ve had Lawrence Carter Long on this podcast who I actually think is a brilliant man, and I’m like, oh, they’ve had some really smart people on this pod. I’m not a film person. I don’t know how to talk about movies really. And then I watched this movie and I was like, I’m good.
sar:
Don’t worry Liv. They also have me on this podcast, so it evens out, right?
Liv:
No, you’re so smart. No, I’m not going to do what I did to you off mic and shower you with compliments, but you are so, so insightful and I am so excited to get to talk to you about this terrible movie.
Jeff:
Well, Liv, I’ll tell you, the good news is you are not the only person who’s not a film person. Christopher Titus is also not a film person, and they are the ones who created our film. This month we watched the baffling film Special Unit. Now for those of you who have not watched Special Unit from the Box, this is the description of this movie due to the Fairness and Disabilities Act, the Van Nuys PD is forced to hire four handicapped undercover detectives and their training officer happens to be the worst cop in Los Angeles. Now, Sarah, would you say that’s an accurate description of what happens this film
sar:
Compared to the other descriptions of other films you’ve made me watch? This one’s actually phenomenally accurate.
Jeff:
I actually agree this. I’ve never seen a more accurate description. That’s exactly what happens in this movie.
Liv:
Yeah, summed up. Summed up very well, very succinct. Yeah. Again, not to jump too far ahead, this movie could have been 40 minutes long. It’s an hour and 40 minutes long, and just with that summary, it’s like this movie could have been 45 minutes and we wouldn’t have lost anything.
Jeff:
Oh, easily. I think when we started watching this movie before we watched it, I said to Sarah, oh yeah, I think that’s an 88 minute, 90 minute in and out. Wham bam. No, it is not friends. It is almost two hours that you will never get back.
Liv:
So freaking long.
sar:
Couple movies have been longer actually.
Liv:
Yes, The Hill was very long. I checked the runtime on that one too and I was like, man, that’s long. It’s not. It’s too much. That’s more than I would invest.
Jeff:
It’s far too much.
sar:
Not all of y’all are Martin Scorsese
Liv:
Really truly. Even Martin Scorsese sometimes is not Martin Scorsese. There’s no need for those movies to be that long.
Jeff:
Absolutely, absolutely. Now it’s fitting me via, the tagline for this movie was Surrender Before They Hurt themselves, which I think gives us a bit of a sense of what type of movie we’re getting ourselves into. This movie has been described as a screwball comedy. It feels very much like Family Guy, kind of edgy. We’re going to say offensive words and it’s going to be funny. I think that was kind of what they were trying to go for, but the movie has also, bafflingly won several awards. It won the best actor, David Filioni won best actor in a feature film at the Chicago Comedy Film Festival Second City. What are you doing?
Liv:
I feel bad for, I don’t want to cut down one of my own because that actor is disabled and I don’t want to Good for him, but also, oh my God, why? What? Really not even Debbie Carrington. Okay,
Jeff:
Sure. Nope. It also won the best comedy feature at the Los Angeles Film Awards and it won the jury prize Best Direction award at the Hope Film Awards. Now, the website for that award has not updated since 2017, which means that in my opinion, Christopher Titus is the undisputed uncontested champion of the Hope Film Awards now of seven years running. As far as I know,
Liv:
Viewers, you can’t see how far my jaw is actually away from the top of my face listening to the fact that this won awards. Wow, guys,
Jeff:
It won multiple awards. The film itself is dedicated to James Troesh. They are a quadriplegic actor writer. They passed away in 2011 and thus we’re not required to be in or watch this film, an early version of the script. This is…okay, are you guys sitting down? Everyone needs to be sitting down. If you are listening to this and you’re in a car–pullover. An early version of this script was designed as a pilot for TV and it was directed by Brian Cranston.
Liv:
What? Oh my God. Yeah. I want that so badly. I want to see it. I want to see what Brian Cranston did to this. I have so many questions.
Jeff:
So by my account, Brian Cranston now owes the disabled community for two pieces of crap that he has been involved in.
Liv:
I was going to say, wasn’t there. The other one as well that I haven’t watched that the in
Jeff:
Intouchables, yea
Liv:
That version of the French film that he made. Yeah. He still owes us for that one as well.
Jeff:
Yeah, Brian owes us for that. He owes us for this. We’ll give him Breaking Bad, but he’s still behind. So Brian, if you’re listening, you owe us.
Liv:
You owe us. Sorry dude.
Jeff:
Yeah. So who is actually responsible for this movie? Brian Cranston was not directly responsible for this movie. It is predominantly the responsibility of a writer director, comedian Christopher Titus, who’s been kind of all over the B movie circuit. Most notably Christopher Titus was in the class cult classic Tiller Clowns from Outer Space. He also appeared in one episode of 21 Jump Street. He also appeared in an episode of Colombo and an episode of the Twilight Zone reboot. He also has written and starred in his own television series titled Titus, which was nominated for a daytime Emmy, did not win and won the 2003 Excellence in Production Design award for the Art Directors Guild. It should also be noted though before we move forward that this is not the first time that Tida has got involved in disability, in fact, and one of his very popular standup specials.
Liv:
Oh, good. I’m so glad we get to talk about this. I’m so glad we get to talk about this.
Jeff:
We’re going to talk about “Voice in my head”. Titus goes on a bit of a rant about the R word stating that he does not believe the R word is actually associated with disabled people. For instance, he thinks that disabled people like Oscar Pistorius are advanced. I do not know if this joke was made before or after Oscar Pistorius murdered his wife. Rather, he defines “retarded” as quote, “it means you were born a certain way, you were born a certain level, but you didn’t live up to that. You were behind where you should have been and goes on to say that if you have everything working perfectly, you have all your facilities about you, you end up addicted to crystal meth and living under a bridge, you are effing retarded.”
Liv:
So a definition that no other person uses. Great, good. So he’s invented his own definition for why he’s allowed to say this word. No other person who’s ever used this word has used it in this context. Okay. Alright. Titus. Alright. Right.
sar:
I don’t want to attribute it solely to him because he’s using a manifestation of that word that was around quite a bit when I was growing up. So late nineties, early two thousands. That’s pretty much what it meant. He’s right about that, but we were all wrong. Right now, I think one of the filling words for that now might be just working class, all the stereotypes associated with people who live their entire lives below the poverty line, which would include me, but I also feel like the original definition included me. So Christopher Titus just made a career out of being a slightly less funny and worse looking. Joel McHale with terrible disability writer.
Liv:
Thank you so much. I was actually going to say he’s trying so hard to be Joel McHale in this movie. It is wild to me. I now having watched community, I actually, the reason that I picked this film is because I am a tightest fan girl. Really. His standups were really, really important to me when I was 1920 in college and when I saw that he made this film, I love him and I love Billy Cardell, so I didn’t have a lot of hope, but I was like, okay, how cancelable are these two guys going to be at the end of this hour and 40 minutes? How offended am I going to walk away? Really, really feeling bad about my affinity for Christopher Titus’s work at the end of this 40 minutes, and that’s why I really wanted to watch this. I went in kind of with this very graceful, I don’t think this is going to be made with bad intent because I know this is kind of titus’s thing.
He has a lot of jokes in his standup about his disabled friends, comedians of his who are disabled, who have done things that he thinks are really, really funny. I was like, okay, I don’t think this is made with bad intention. Let’s see how badly they missed the mark. It’s not like I went in saying it was going to be a good movie. I just was like, alright, let’s just see how bad the misfire is because I don’t actually think that Titus is trying to make fun of me. I genuinely don’t believe that. I genuinely do not believe that he is trying to, it’s not like watching Family Guy where I’m like, I genuinely think that people who make the show hate disabled people and are trying to make
Disabled people. What I do think at the end of this movie, not to jump too far ahead, is the Titus is deeply confused about his feelings about disabled people and really just wants to be able to say the ar slur with impunity and has made an entire hour and 40 minute movie about why he should get to do that and that’s what this movie is. I really think that that’s just what the whole point of this was, that he just really wants to get to say the ar slur you guys just really a lot. So
Jeff:
It’s okay. It’s a funny word apparently.
Liv:
It’s a funny word.
Jeff:
Yeah. So I bring this quote up because we’re going to circle back to this exact conversation in a moment. Before we do though, who else was in this film? Well, that’s right. Sports fans. We have for the first time ever on invalid culture, we have a back-to-back appearance, a repeat offender on our podcast, and that is Debbie Lee Carrington who plays Sophie. You may remember her as Kitty Kats in tiptoes, but more likely you will recognize her from pretty much every pop culture thing of the eighties and nineties, including appearances on Harry, the Hendersons Seinfeld, Baywatch in the Color, the Drew Carey Show, married with Children was also in movies. This is True Life Returned of the Jedi, Batman Returns and Men in Black, but more than that, most of you probably remember her as Thumbalina in Total Recall.
sar:
I was going to say, how did you do that list without total recall? Come on!
Jeff:
Yeah.
Liv:
I want to talk to Debbie Harrington so bad after watching this movie. I have so many questions I want to sit down on. You have a discussion. I really, I want to have a discussion so bad. It’s like, oh my God.
Jeff:
Debbie has had a genuinely incredible career and in no way deserves to be tortured by movies like Tiptoes a special unit. So Debbie, get help. Please, please. So our fan favorite in Chicago apparently for whatever that is worth is David Figlioni who plays the artistic savant Alvin. As far as I can tell, David does not identify as disabled. I looked everywhere. I don’t see any description of this. Figlinoi has made a lot of appearances in television. He was on an episode of Brooklyn nine nine. He was in an episode of Mom. He was also in Penny Dreadful. He also apparently has been in over 100 national television commercials, which is amazing, but even more amazing Canadian connection. He did a three year international tour as a circus clown for Cirque de Soleil.
Liv:
Oh my God, yes. I want it so much. I need to see it.
Jeff:
It makes a lot of sense actually. When you think about the character, there was definitely some clowning going on with the Alvin character.
Liv:
I suppose the one thing I will say is that he’s having a great time this actor, regardless of what I have to say about the performance, which is we’ll get to it. I have a lot to say about it. He’s having a ball and you can tell, and I really hope that everybody on this movie had a good time. This goes back to what I was saying about I don’t think this movie is made with ill intent. I really genuinely feel that this movie thinks it’s funny and thinks it’s trying to say something different and interesting, and I really hope that everybody on the movie had a good time because I did not have a good time watching it, and it’s only saving Grace is if the people making it had a good time because we obviously didn’t, so I hope
Jeff:
So. It was a bad time. It was a bad time.
Liv:
It was a bad time.
Jeff:
Yeah. Our stuttering cop with Cerebral Palsy, Morgin, it is played by Michael Aronin. Now, Michael Aronin is an actually disabled dude who does a combination of motivational speaking and comedy from his speaker’s Bureau website. It says Michael speaks about what it is growing up with the disabled in an able-bodied world and of the importance of Believe it in ourselves of building and maintaining a support system and of the crucial role humor and attitude can play in our lives. Michael will tell you his only disability is losing his hair at an early age.
Liv:
Okay, that’s funny.
Jeff:
That paragraph comes two paragraphs after a paragraph, which says that his disability is cerebral palsy. So I think she actually has two disabilities, cerebral palsy and losing his hair
Liv:
Yeah, I get very cynical about stuff like this. I get very cynical about the only disability is a bad attitude. It’s like, nah. Especially as I’m getting older and I’m getting sicker, I’m kind of like, ah, I don’t know. Dude, I have some questions.
Jeff:
Yeah. Oh, for sure. Our foursomes rounded out with conspiracy seat theorist, wheelchair user, Mac, who was played by Tobias Forest is also actually disabled, uses a wheelchair in real life, whatever that means, and has probably most famously appeared in an episode of How To Get Away With Murder in 2014. He also, however, wrote and appears in a fairly successful 14 minute indie film called Dead End Drive, which is a zombie movie. You could watch it on YouTube that picked up a bunch of festival awards in 2020 and 2021. So presumably scorned by not winning any awards for his turn in this movie, he went and did it himself and won way more awards with that end drive. So you could check that out.
As you can probably imagine, there was not a lot of critical response to this film. There are no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes that you could access. So I had to go a little deeper in. I did, however, find two fairly detailed reviews of this film, one which was quite positive and one that hated it, and that’s the one that I want to talk about. So Flinthart wrote on a website called Mutant Reviewers Movies, which is a great name for our website. Flint Hart was not a fan of the film, basically wrote a dissertation about this movie. It is the longest review I’ve ever seen. It is extremely angry from the review. Flinthart says, quote, bottom line, the movie is one long string of R word jokes and what kind of solace, sociopathic idiot figured you could mount a premise like that for comedy while still somehow respecting the people whose disabilities underpin every single joke that made it to the screen.
Liv:
Ding, ding, ding. Yeah, this is definitely what I walked away from this movie with, but better stated.
Jeff:
Well, unfortunately, not everyone walked away with that opinion because if you scroll to the bottom of this review, you will discover that Christopher Titus has jumped into the comment section and replied to the review.
Liv:
He’s a reply guy. Oh, delightful.
Jeff:
Okay, so here’s Christopher Titus’s review to the review quote. This is a quote folks, I did not say this. There are some swearing, so plug your ears quote you piece of shit you think these actors didn’t read and approve the script. They did that. They didn’t know what it was. My friends are disabled. They get fucked over by Hollywood on the Daily. I made a promise to Michael Arman that I will get this made disabled people with power, not the normal sage of the wheelchair or cripple that needs to be protected. So fuck you and your review. I have parents who have thanked me for the vision and inspiration their disabled children have been given because of my $3,000 film. You’re a shit reviewer with the insight of a blind air light pilot fuck off. Sincerely, Christopher Titus.
sar:
That’s an incredible review
Liv:
It’s a rich text
sar:
I want to agree with it, but I also kind of disagree. How do I want to say this? I have a nuanced opinion on this and I’m trying to say it non offensively. I think that Christopher Titus’s goal here was an in-crowd film by disabled people for disabled people that wanted to do kind of the quid pro quo thing of making up what he felt the in-crowd would be and do and act like. And it’s possible that between him and his friends, this really is his day-to-Day and his day-to-Day and disability culture is just late eighties, early nineties. Constant slander and unenlightened opinions and really derivative thinking about Crip culture and I accept that and I think he is kind of trying to defend that Crip culture isn’t any one thing by saying, fuck you, you piece of shit. But if you read between the lines of that to hear super generously, I think I can create or co-create what Crip culture looks like.
For me. It’s an overly generous review of what Christopher Titus is trying to do, but I don’t think the movie is entirely guilty of just being full on parody. I think there are elements of it that you can pull out of it where there’s a little more nuance and that can explain things like why most of this cast is disabled and why Brian Cranston wanted to direct, but what we came out with in the end is hard to defend and that makes this opinion really difficult to say out loud. You hear what I mean here?
Liv:
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Sarah, because this is what I mean when I said I have a little bit of grace for Titus going into this movie. I wanted to do this movie because I actually really like Titus and really respect him and actually was thinking of getting a tattoo of something that he said in his most recent standup. This is our relationship is serious. We have a relationship. Christopher Titus and I do actually believe that this is how he talks to his disabled friends and his friends have given him the go ahead about this. I think that that is genuinely true, and as somebody who I am not the most politically correct person, I have a very, very dark sense of humor if I know you and love you. My non-disabled friends have made jokes about me that have made me cry laughing that if you ever said them in public, people would beat my friends in the street.
Really just genuinely terrible. My whole barometer is it’s only offensive if it doesn’t make me laugh and this movie Sin is, it did not make me laugh for a whole hour and 45 minutes. So I don’t actually even have as much difficulty with the premise as it is just profoundly unfunny. This would be fine for me if any of it was funny and if the jokes weren’t all making fun of the protagonist of this movie, which is really where I think Titus is a little bit confused. You can’t make a movie. He doesn’t know whether he wants to uplift these characters or call them idiots for an hour and 45 minutes, and that’s where it all kind of gets a little bit muddled, which is why I kind of don’t, I believe that he believes what he is saying. I really do. I also want to draw out specifically disabled parents telling Titus that this…
Jeff:
We can talk about…
Liv:
Thank you? Yes, draw some attention to that a little bit because that really for me is a very important distinction. Parents of disabled children or adults rather versus actual disabled people giving Titus the go ahead on this movie that was made for three grand. So I really want to draw attention to that.
Jeff:
So I have two things for, so I fully agree with you with eyes. To me this feels like Christopher Titus is a blunt instrument trying to perform surgery. This is a thing that needed a bit of delicacy and a bit of, I don’t want to say wit, that’s not the right word, but Titus feels like a bit of a bull in China shop. It feels like you’re just going to run in and smash stuff up. Okay,
sar:
But wait, maybe that’s part of the point. If you continue to do the good faith reading, maybe the fact that we think that Crip culture has to be done delicately is part of the point he’s making.
Liv:
Yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. Very, very possible. So I fully agree with them. Disabled people are regularly screwed over by Hollywood. They say when people are regularly presented as these sages or Indian protection or whatever. He’s totally right about that. I don’t know that this movie did anything to combat that. Well, no, and I would love to know what parents are showing this movie that they’re, oh
sar:
My God, yeah, that audience is zero. Who would do that? He’s on about an audience for this movie that doesn’t exist
Liv:
Generously that perhaps happened to him once maybe, and that’s what he’s going on
Jeff:
Christopher Titus, if you are listening to this, please connect us with the parents of these disabled children. We would really like to talk to them. That would be fascinating to learn, but folks, it actually just gets better. A review of this film was also posted on Reddit on r slash bad movies, and once again, Christopher Titus jumps into the comment section with a defense of his film. Love Titus says, this is on Reddit. We did this movie because I have so many friends that are disabled and they only get bullshit rules. They’re wise, sage, disabled guys or someone able bodied has to help them and save them. This movie, I made them the heroes. We hired 16 disabled actors. The movie is funny with a message about just treating disabled people like you want to be treated, and yes, they do stop a school shooting to you who are offended yet not disabled. Fuck all the way off. Sincerely, Christopher Titus. I will say I’m enamored with the reality that this man signs off his internet comments with sincerely Christopher Titus
sar:
It’s giving email signature. “Sincerely”. When people sign their name and then underneath they know it’s going to attach their email signature, but they attach it anyway
Liv:
Or it says, sent from my iPhone. When you get an email from a really old person and it says, sent from my iPhone at the bottom of every single one because they don’t know how to change it, this is such a delightful encapsulation of what Titus is doing with his time. I really, oh God bless. I just really, I love knowing this so much and the fact that this doesn’t really make me feel any worse about him. I love that. For me, I’m kind of like, oh, the level of empathy that I feel towards this man, like, oh buddy, I really, oh, I want to have a conversation with him so bad. I really want to be able to sit down with him and be like, I understand. I get it. You didn’t hit the mark here, my guy, you just didn’t do it.
Jeff:
Yeah. So I included this because I thought that it was important context to get us into Christopher Titus’s frame of mind, and I think it maybe does help us to unpack the movie a little bit later, but I also wanted to do it because I have never seen a producer of a film from a movie that we’ve covered kind of defend their film publicly in the comment sections, and so shout out, that was great.
sar:
Well, it actually made me more willing to defend the movie here because I showed up today ready to just rip this film apart and now I’m trying to give it this kind of pseudo blaxploitation like reading where he’s trying to do this at least somewhat intentionally, and I think it is making a really interesting point about casting and role setting and type casting and this and that and the other thing, but it’s also making a kind of derivative point about how humor translates, even when you take it for granted that there are different in groups for humor and there are different Crip cultures and there are different ways that people want to tackle both of those things, and the Venn diagram of this intersection is oceans apart, and I think that’s where you can start debating was his intention that people hate disabled people more after this? No, but I can see why you got that.
Liv:
That is unfortunately what will occur perhaps if you watch this film. I don’t know. This gives me a really interesting insight into a question that I came away from the film with, which is who is this movie for Christopher Tit
sar:
16 Disabled Friends? That’s where this movie was for
Liv:
That’s it exactly, it’s him and the people who were in this movie. That’s who this movie was for because I walked away from this being like, I don’t know what, who was the audience for this? I don’t understand.
sar:
It very clearly defined an in-crowd, and if you weren’t in that in-crowd, by Titus’s definition, he not only wanted you to feel alienated by this film, he wanted you to feel actively disrespected by it and it worked, but it didn’t do what he thought he was going to do as a result of that.
Jeff:
Yeah, I don’t know that this was exactly the gotcha that he intended for it to be.
Liv:
It did not offend me as much as I thought it was going to is the most generous thing I can say because there is a long bit in one of Titus’s earlier standups that I actually used to find very funny, and then I got radicalized where he refers to kind of the voice in his head that tells him inferior things about himself as his inner ARS slur, and he does the voice and kind of does a proto Trumpian very clearly cerebral palsy, inspired hand gesture, and it’s supposed to be this kind of thing about that’s the voice in your head that tells you things about yourself that are untrue. That’s your kind of negative is your inner because that person is an idiot and doesn’t know you as well as you know, and therefore that’s kind of the payoff of the joke. I also think that there’s something interesting here to say about genre, and this is a point that a friend of mine made. I’m taking this from a friend of mine, a journalist named Esme Mazzio, who wrote an article about how a lot of the comedy of our youth in the eighties and nineties is just making fun of disabled adults without actually knowing that that’s what they’re doing. If you watch Elf or Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore, a lot of that.
sar:
I think Happy Gilmore was very aware of what it was doing.
Liv:
Do You think he was aware of it? Okay.
Jeff:
Dumb and Dumber.
sar:
I think that was the entire joke of Happy Gilmore.
Liv:
Okay, great. So if you watch The Waterboy or any of those types of films or even some of the early Jim Carrey stuff, I feel has a little bit of this flavor to it as well. And I remember being that age and watching those films and being 10 or 12 and thinking, I didn’t have a sense of humor because I just didn’t find any of this very funny, and I was just kind of like, oh, okay, sure. They’re doing a weird voice, all right, for a whole couple of hours. And then it was only when my friend made this point in her article about Elf that I was like, oh, maybe that’s why I didn’t think I was funny for 20 years because this is uncomfortable for me and I just didn’t realize that it was me and people like me who are being made fun of. So I think if you look at it in that RA of film, I think Titus is really going for, what if we said the quiet part loud? What if we actually did absolutely what we actually were doing the whole time, but we didn’t admit we were doing and we actually hired some of the people that we’re making fun of to make fun of themselves.
sar:
Yeah, you’re thinking like a marriage of American Pie meets The Ringer and he just did both badly.
Liv:
Yeah. Yes.
Jeff:
Now I also agree with Christopher Titus, the reviewers in this world don’t know anything. The real reviews we find from random people on the internet who post things on websites like Amazon and IMDB. Now this movie I had a really hard time finding because yeah, no one writes about this movie. I don’t think many people have seen it until this until now. People are going to see it. So I do have two though that I want to read to you because they tickled me and I really need your help are saying this. Okay, so our first comes from IMDB. Both of ’em actually come from IMDB. Our first is from User Greenheart. They gave the film a seven out of 10 and the review is titled The Specials A lady Mayor Jilted by her ex-fiancee that seemed to work with a group of cadets who are part of a disability scheme in order to get reelected.
I really don’t know what to feel about this. I would love to have a view for the disabled community. The four Disabled cadets are excellent, very funny, and yet there is so much cheap shot humor, although you would expect that everything will turn out okay. Calling people with disabilities retards constantly is just not cool. The idea was great. The acting in casting was spot on. The script was the only thing that I found close to retarded. I’m using scenes at a gun range, at a martial arts class. The scene where school kids parade to safety when a shooter enters their school is just plain heroine. So much potential. I really did enjoy it. I just felt unnecessarily uncomfortable at times.
sar:
As I think about this, and especially taking some of Liv’s commentary into context, it feels like what the pitch might’ve been to whoever the fuck produced this was. I want to do American Pie, but I reduct it for Crip culture because a lot of what people are complaining about is what people in the nineties were complaining about with American Pie, where you’re being outwardly offensive and most people won’t find it funny, but the niche will kind of thing. The American Pie Band Camp film basically invented that for when I was a teenager, and then he saw things like I keep thinking of The Ringer just because the concept is similar. The Ringer was about Catherine Hegel, I think it was trying to train Johnny Knoxville to be in the Special Olympics, and it has a lot of similar overlap jokes to what was predictable in this film.
The Ringer was terrible, but at the time when The Ringer came out, I found that film funny, and I think if I watched it again, there would still be parts I would laugh at, but I’m having trouble rectifying how you go for the kind of American pie larger than life being intentionally offensive, being for a niche and foreign in-crowd and still doing so much wrong by that in-crowd in ways that I don’t even think the ringer achieved. I think because the writing, but B, the intention of the ringer was to kind of try to say, you see how shitty we’re being and the intention doesn’t feel the same here. It feels more like, fuck all the abs able bodied out there, and also we can go fuck ourselves too.
Jeff:
Yeah. I think one of the reasons I love this review and by love is, I mean this not in the way that love works as a word on the opposite of love is this notion of in back-to-back sentences. The person is like, it’s not cool to use the R word and then is like, but I also thought that the script was R word, and I think that that’s exactly what this movie is doing too, where it’s like it’s saying, haha, I’m saying this bad word, but I shouldn’t be saying it and it’s a bad thing and you shouldn’t do this. But then I’m also going to lean into these other things very naturally and very subtly, which I’m not even thinking about because I’m not actually a part of this broader community. I don’t see that I’m doing weird things that are weird.
sar:
To be simplistic, it feels like when your mom tells you that the difference between when a joke is funny and when it isn’t is if everyone else is laughing and this film feels like it’s laughing at Crips instead of with Crips. And a lot of the other examples we’ve been naming of films in similar veins feels more like a width. So when the Crips have stopped laughing, maybe that’s what’s generating all this discomfort because it’s no longer funny,
Liv:
Which is so interesting because how often do you see a movie where a third of the cast is disabled?
sar:
Yeah, they all find it funny. I can’t explain that.
Liv:
I’d be like, hell yeah, Titus, hire your friends. Oh my God. Well, no, I’ll save that joke for when we do the plot. But there was this one particular joke that I actually really thought was very funny, and it’s the one joke in the whole movie that I thought was funny and it’s uttered by a disabled person, and I was like, oh my God. In another context, this would feel really empowering, and I think Titus really wants it to, but I don’t know. He just went so far off track and I don’t know how any of his actors didn’t clock this. I have so many questions about the cast of this movie, and I don’t doubt that they approved it. I don’t doubt that he didn’t say anything in the script that his cast was uncomfortable saying. I just have questions about the dynamic there. And yeah, I have so many questions about how those jokes landed for the people who had to say those jokes. I don’t know, because there isn’t even a lot of the disabled characters making fun of themselves, which I wouldn’t really mind. I make fun of myself all the time. My humor is very self-deprecating. The character of Garrett Fowler spends most of his time making fun of the disabled characters in this film, which I think is its major problem
Jeff:
And spends the majority of the time talking. The disabled characters actually have very few lines in the film except for Alvin. Very few. It’s predominantly Alvin has a few lines, but a lot of ’em are defeated lines too though, right? It’s like how many times are we going to get the hustler poop choke? Literally a billion times times
Liv:
The martial arts scene happens twice. They do literally the same joke. This is what my point, it happens three times. Three times, yeah. This goes to my point about the movie being padded. The movie I felt was at least 15 minutes too long, and that was a big part of it. We do get that joke three times. And also the fact that the actor playing Alvin is a non-disabled actor and gets much more screen time than any of the other actors who are actually disabled. I have thoughts about the math on that, but okay.
Jeff:
Now unfortunately, all of us, we are silly people and we don’t understand art. Like JA zero 13 does on IMDB, Ja zero rated this 10 out of 10 titled, I’m not making this up, I needed this movie.
sar:
You know what? He’s part of that cra. I am not surprised by that.
Liv:
Fascinated to hear this take. Yeah, really can’t wait to hear this.
Jeff:
Definitely not leaving any spoilers behind because I’d rather have people watch this for themselves. I just have to say that since we’re not going to see any Al Bundy down humor anymore, our humor like this movie provides on encounter the fact that our delicate, thin-skinned little snowflake culture that we’ve cultivated will no longer allow us to have a laugh. I’m considered disabled. I feel that every once in a while we have to enjoy a little bit of dark humor or even humor that is completely inappropriate. This whole movie is completely inappropriate, but it’s intended to be. We just need to be able to laugh at ourselves more. If we can’t learn to do that, then we’re already more disabled than we think.
Liv:
I hate that. I agree with that on its face. I actually agree with that, but I also feel like gallows humor only works if you’re the one that’s standing on the gallows and Titus is not standing on the gallies. So I think this movie would be very different for me. Number one, if it was made, if the script was actually funny, which I don’t think it is, number two, if it was actually directed and written by a disabled comedian, if Josh Blue or someone got behind this, I would have infinitely more grace for this film because I don’t think that these characters are laughing at themselves. I think the actors are laughing at themselves, which good for them. If they are, I hope they are. I don’t think the characters are laughing at themselves. I think Garrett Fowler is laughing at the characters the entire, and what’s interesting is not only Garrett Fowler, the Christopher Titus character, but all of the non-disabled characters are laughing at these people. And so you kind of can’t tell the difference between the main character who is supposed to grow and change and learn that these people are effective at this job and the random other side characters who are making fun of them just because they’re ablest assholes. It’s like, I can’t tell the difference because you’re all saying the same things. I don’t.
Jeff:
Sarah, what do you make of the fact that we have now had another reference to Snowflake culture in the reviews of an IC movie?
sar:
It keeps coming back. It don’t stop coming and it don’t stop coming. I actually thought what was more interesting, and I think it’s the same conversation if you’re going to do the Republican Democrat wars, is that he references Al Bundy by name, which was the kind of married with children character who was this charlatan shitty husband, mid eighties absent father type figure. That was kind of a prototype for modern characters like Homer Simpson. And I think the relation beyond, oh, why can’t I be offensive anymore, is that it’s kind of the same thing I was trying to stumble through at the beginning of the podcast where I’m saying I really do get that in groups like people who find Al Bundy funny, which I did, especially as a teenager, have a right to exist. And then what you have to measure is who loses out as a result of those groups equal right to exist in this kind of myriad of kaleidoscopic cultures where you’re in inappropriateness is always coming at another group’s expense, but you can measure the kind of success of that by who’s laughing or how many groups are laughing.
So a super modern example of that would be someone like Bill Burr. Bill Burr takes tons of ingroup to task, but he does it in a way that for a modern postmodern audience is still funny. But I think he achieves the humor in that he’s just as willing to a take the brunt of the humor. He uses himself as his main subject, which I think is what Liv is getting at, but his inappropriateness doesn’t seem to have as high a cost to the other ingroup, and it makes it seem a little more bearable. Whereas people like Al Bundy, you go back and watch those episodes and it does seem like there’s a tangible cost there.
Jeff:
Yeah, I mean maybe it’s just like punch it up, punch it down thing. It’s a lot of things.
sar:
It’s the generation.
Jeff:
It’s a lot of things.
sar:
Your figures were coming of age in it, so I keep referencing American Pie, but people 10 years older than me might be referencing married with children.
Jeff:
Yeah. Now, the other thing I want to know, do you have any idea what they mean by Al Bundy’s down?
sar:
I think they mean offensive.
Jeff:
I have no idea. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yes. Like lowbrow. Yes. You think maybe. Okay. Yeah, that one I was like down Down syndrome humor or..? Yeah, I had no idea. I couldn’t piece that one together, but I’m glad that Jerzio found this film. They found the film that they needed.
Liv:
Thank you. This is a delightful thing for me as an artist, knowing that your piece of art will find the audience that needs it. I’m saying this completely without irony. I worry about what if what I’m putting out doesn’t matter and doesn’t make an impact, and no, your work will find the people that actually really need it. And this review, absolutely, 1000% proves that, which is such a lift up for me as an artist. I feel very inspired by that.
Jeff:
Yeah, find your Jerzio13. That’s all you need to do. Find your Jerzio13, everyone special unit. Is this a watch? Is it a pass?
Liv:
God, it’s a hard pass. It’s a thing that I want to expose my other friends who are big time tightest fans to, because I want to show my artist friends that we don’t have to hit the mark every single time. It doesn’t have to be good. You can still put work out into the world and have it not hit. But for regular people who I don’t think are going to really get the joke that is this movie, which is not to say that there are jokes in this movie. I don’t think that there are. But the joke of the film itself conceptually, no, it’s a hard pass. I wouldn’t subject anyone to this.
sar:
I mean, I totally agree that it was genuinely hard to watch, but I think hearing the reviews has made me a lot more thoughtful of the kind of questions it’s asking, and so far as what’s the difference between this and why we canceled Jerry Seinfeld but didn’t cancel Bill Burr kind of thing. And the longer you kind of fight and twist around with that argument, the more your own kind of kaleidoscope emerges that there’s just so many individual circumstances that feed into the whole genre of humor and especially parody humor, that you’re just going to be so polarized to some elements that some people are going to be less polarized by and vice versa. So is there a way to actually come to a coherent conclusion on, was this for anyone or can I cancel this or not cancel that? I don’t know. I am thinking pretty hard about a film that I really didn’t enjoy
Jeff:
Right now. You as audience, if you have not watched this movie yet, and I can’t imagine why that would be, you still have time to watch it because we are going to wrap up our episode here today. We’re not going to dive too deep into the movie, but if you want to hear us do that, or if you would rather hear our opinions on the film and not have to subject yourself to it, you are just going to have to tune in again next week. So thank you. I’d thank you, Liv, for being here.
Liv:
Thank You. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Jeff:
Absolutely. And we will see you again next week when we dive deeply into Special Unit
[Mvll Crimes theme song transition]
Jeff:
And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Either way, please take a second. If you haven’t to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you’re using, tell a friend, and better yet, do you want to be a victim on the podcast, go onto our website, invalid culture.com, submit your name. We would love to terrorize you with a bad movie, have a bad movie of your own that you think that we should watch. Again, jump on our website, invalid culture.com, submit it, and we would love to watch the trash. Be sure to tune in again next week for part two where we will start to dig into the movie and find out whether or not it wins the coveted Jerry Lewis seal of approval
[Mvll Crimes theme song]:
With strangers on the internet. Everyone is wrong. I just haven’t told them yet.