DVD Review: ABEL RAISES CAIN

ABEL RAISES CAIN (Dirs. Jenny Abel & Jeff Hocket, 2005, Released on DVD in 2009)

“When SINA was in its heyday, my dad could walk into any television studio with a drawing of a horse wearing shorts tucked under his arm and they would put him right on the air.”

– Jenny Abel

Alan Abel may not be a household name but the stature of his many elaborate media pranks is sure to grow – thanks to this fine film. For well over 50 years Abel has employed many different personas, created wide ranging movements out of thin air, and duped countless news outlets as much in the name of fun as in making a provocative statement about what constitutes news.

This documentary, narrated by his daughter Jenny Abel (who wrote, edited and directed the project with her boyfriend Jeff Hockett), makes a compelling narrative out of the life of man who is not out to scam money from his hoaxes but instead wishes to overthrow the conventions of television and print journalism as wells as public perception. But that’s just a fancy way of putting it because simply what Abel has done and continues to is just damn funny.

Jenny Abel describes her father as someone who “decided long ago that he didn’t want to work rat-race hours in some large corporation” so he fell back on a career as a professional drummer. One day in the late 50’s on the way to a gig he got stuck in a traffic jam because a bull and a cow were having sex in the middle of the road. The disgusted looks on the faces of his fellow motorists inspired a wild satirical notion: a society to clothe all naked animals for the sake of decency (SINA: The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals).

This fictitious organization, devised as a parody of the moral extreme with such slogans as: “a nude horse is a rude horse”, caught fire and Abel hired an unemployed actor by the name of Buck Henry to be the spokesman. Henry, who went on to co-write THE GRADUATE and appear as a frequent host of Saturday Night Live in the 70’s, was a willing and hilarious accomplice (under the name G. Clifford Prout) as old archival footage attests.

Even though Time Magazine exposed SINA as a hoax in 1963, this was just the beginning for Abel and his wife Jeanne who spent decades putting their all into one crazy hare-brained yet strangely plausible scheme after another. For instance there was the 1964 presidential campaign to elect Jewish grandmother Yetta Bronstein (she didn’t exist), the faking of press conferences for Watergate informant Deep Throat and famous millionaire recluse Howard Hughes, and “Omar’s School for Beggars” – a panhandling program presided over by Abel (as Omar of course) wearing a black hood to keep people from recognizing him.

As a collection of fascinating footage and reminiscences, ABEL RAISES CAIN is as entertaining as it is informative and Jenny Abel’s personal approach in which she wants to make clear his motives and let us in on his private philosophies help make it one of the finest bio docs of the genre. “He was never trying to maliciously scam anyone” and “he was so convincing that it was hard to figure out exactly when he was ‘in’ character and when he wasn’t” she tells us and by the end of the film we can strongly feel her affection and awe of her father.

As times changed and the 80’s glut of tabloid talk shows clogged the airwaves, Abel’s manipulative methods were co opted by producers who hired actors to do the same shtick. These days Abel still keeps the shtick going with “Citizens Against Breast Feeding” even though the film depicts his wife and him losing their house and living in a neighbor’s basement apartment.

Political activist pranksters like The Yes Men have obviously learned a lot from Abel’s actions and as have other modern jokester journalists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert but there’s much more going on here than punchy yet pointed jabs at the media machine. The best biographical documentaries are as much about their subject as they are the times that sparked them on with definitive examples including CRUMB, SAINT MISBEHAVIN’: THE WAVY GRAVY MOVIE, and WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE. ABEL RAISES CAIN stands proudly and provocatively with them.

Post note: The DVD has a bunch of great bonus material including deleted scenes, raw footage of the Howard Hughes hoax, a family commentary, and, best of all, a 15 minute featurette elaborating on Abel’s 2006 “Powerball lottery” hoax.

More later…

GET SMART – Would You Believe…A Spy Movie Spoof Misfire?

GET SMART (Dir. Peter Segal, 2008)

It’s not a bad idea to resurrect the character of Maxwell Smart – the bumbling Agent 86 of CONTROL immortalized by the late Don Adams in the 60’s sitcom Get Smart – but it is remarkably uninspired to bring him back just to be the makeshift hero of yet another ginormous action movie formula. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry (who are credited as consultants here) Get Smart was a James Bond satire pitting the CIA stand-in CONTROL against the faux KGB – KOAS. In the 4 decades since the 007 series debuted many movies and TV shows have mocked the immortal spy and the aging original has even taken shots at itself. But the act of satirizing or spoofing isn’t really on display here because for all of its use of the original character names, the updating of ridiculous accessories like the shoe phone and the cones of silence this is a standard comic adventure film with no points to make about the genre and precious few laughs to get us through the generic expensive CGI-ladened chase and fight scenes.

Steve Carrell stated explicitly that he would not be doing an impression of Don Adams, which is commendable but after seeing how little new he brings to that character maybe he should have. Without Adams’ affectations classic lines like “Sorry about that Chief”, “missed it by that much”, and “would you believe…?” all fall flat. Carrell is basically just doing a slight variation on his Michael Scott from The Office so it’s hard to go along with him assuming this iconic role. Anne Hathaway, looking like she’s in a magazine shoot in every shot, as the lady sidekick and love interest does little to erase memories of Barbara Feldon. Alan Arkin as The Chief and Terrence Stamp as the villain Siegfried fare better but expose how little wit is in the script. The less said about Dwayne Johnson as Agent 23 the better and James Caan as The President in what amounts to a cameo just lounges around looking bored. The by-the-numbers plot is one of the most uninteresting I’ve seen in a long time with a climax lifted straight from the 1978 Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn caper FOUL PLAY and if you don’t guess who in CONTROL is really an evil double agent within the first 10 minutes then you were more successful at turning your brain off when entering the theater than I was.

GET SMART feels less like a genuine movie than a polished product with its multiple Subway Sandwich tie-ins, slick designer sequences, and the end credits pop song placement of Madonna and Justin Timberlake’s “4 Miuntes To Save The World”. There are some snickers here and there and it moves fast so I’m sure many (especially kids) will enjoy it as a big dumb disposable summer movie but I believe many more will be unimpressed. I like Steve Carrell and I’m happy to live in a world where an ex-Daily Show correspondent can become an A-list movie star but I hope he can pick less overtly commercial vehicles than this or last years tepid EVAN ALMIGHTY in the future. Quite a few critics have pointed out that there was already a big screen Maxwell Smart movie in 1980 which I remember seeing in the theater as a kid – THE NUDE BOMB. It was also over-the-top and contained many similar scenes to the current incarnation – like the sky-diving bit for one. It also had Don Adams reprising his iconic role (he played Smart again in 1989 for a TV movie then in 1995 for a short-lived show on Fox – neither of which I’ve seen) and while it was no comedy classic it was at least as good or as memorable than this. And since THE NUDE BOMB flopped and stands with a 14% rating on the Rottentomatometer that’s saying a lot.

More later…