By John Christopher Noonan
Entertainment is a film that subverts the norm of comedians throwing their comic creations up onto the big screen with a road trip into purgatory. We spoke to its star and co-writer, Gregg Turkington, about deconstructing people’s expectations.
Darwin-born, US-raised comedian Gregg Turkington has numerous feathers in his cap, from working on underground ‘zines during the height of the punk scene in the ‘80s, performing voice work on Adventure Time and starring in critic-lampooning web series, On Cinema at the Cinema. He even bagged a small acting role in last year’s Ant-Man. To many, though, he’ll always be Neil Hamburger: the greasy fringed, phlegmy, tuxedoed lounge comedian whose jokes are badly timed and often extremely crude. If you were a mosher back in the ‘90s, you may recognise Neil from when he opened numerous shows for local act Frenzal Rhomb, and was booed nearly every time. Nonetheless, look for the footage on YouTube and you’ll see, even as bottles fly at him, Gregg has the crowd in the palm of his hand.
“To me it’s interesting to get reactions out of people simply through words,” Turkington says, reflecting on those shows. “For people to judge it on the fact that there’s a tuxedo? I mean, the whole punk rock scene is supposed to be about thinking for yourself.”
Antiauthoritarian even to punks, Turkington has been performing as Hamburger since his first album back in 1993. Now over 20 years later, Neil has gone the way of more mainstream comic creations with his own movie which even Turkington is the first to admit ‘is not for everyone.’ Even for devotees of Hamburger’s abrasive style, the final result may be surprising.
“I think a lot of long term fans were expecting the movie to be a comedy and some people were even expecting it to be a Borat-style prank movie,” Turkington explains. “And we knew what we wanted all along was a drama. If anyone has paid attention to the Neil Hamburger character through the years, there’s a grim subtext there.”
Entertainment sees Turkington play The Comedian, a lonely man on a comedy tour of the Mojave, performing unsuccessful gigs night after night, and spending his down time frequenting tourist traps and trying to reach out to an unresponsive daughter. Whilst the character shares similarities with his onstage Hamburger persona, he is essentially a fictional version of a fictional character. Co-writing with the film’s director Rik Alverson (The Comedy) and Tim Heidecker (Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!), Turkington found that they had to take Hamburger apart and rebuild him from the ground up, deciding what worked and what didn’t.
“It was the subject of a lot of debate – not nasty debate, certainly good-natured. I was very reluctant to let certain things go that were a big part of the character,” Turkington admits. “This might seem ridiculous after you’ve seen the movie, but originally I was like, ‘you can’t show [Neil] without his glasses on! That’s too much. That’s not Neil Hamburger.’ And Rick was like ‘Well, if we don’t do that then the movie is just ridiculous.’”
This kind of collaboration continued through the three-week production which saw them turn their 40-page screenplay ‘with very little dialogue’ into a dark character study; showing a man performing for very little reward before beginning to implode. It’s a bleak performance from Turkington; it certainly doesn’t do anything to bolster the belief that touring is a wild and crazy time. So whilst we are reluctant to ask the age old question of ‘are you anything like the character you portray?’, we do wonder aloud how bad touring can be.
“[The movie] is definitely a fictionalised version of things, but I have certainly had plenty of lonely moments when touring. There’s days of quiet and moments of despair that we all experience,” he says before changing tact. “I think one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about this movie is when a woman came up to me who was a professional psychologist and she said ‘This is the best depiction of clinical depression I’ve ever seen on film’, which I thought was a great compliment.”
As compliments go, it might not be the cheeriest but it does go some way to understanding the tone of the film, which at times is incredibly confronting; switching from moments of extreme lows to aggressive highs that may put off the average punter. Turkington calls it a ‘meditative film for meditative people’, but is it the kind of film he would watch himself? Does he feel cinema should be confronting?
“I think there’s a lot of people who don’t want that and they are well catered to,” he laughs. “But there’s some people who do want movies that are confronting and there’s not enough movies for them. So I think we have a movie for them and I hope they find out about it and go see it. And the people who would rather see the new Star Wars or whatever, this probably isn’t for you. So don’t worry; you’ve got plenty of things down the pipeline for you. (Laughs) Let us have our miserable little movie.”
Entertainment is available on DVD and digital now.
