I’ve always been a fan of character actor Stephen Tobolowsky, probably best known as irritating insurance salesman Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, though his career also includes memorable performances in Single White Female, Around the Fire, Bossa Nova, Radioland Murders, Black Dog and, most recently, Memento.  I’d always kind of suspected that Tobolowsky is more of a genuinely brilliant weirdo than his brief supporting roles had let on (he also co-wrote True Stories with David Byrne), and the unearthing of his little-seen directorial debut (and, to date, finale) Two Idiots in Hollywood justifies my suspicions.

    Based on a “long-running Broadway play” (according to the box), Jim McGrath and character vet Jeff Doucette play the title idiots Murphy and Taylor, a couple of unhappy-go-lucky guys living in Dayton, Ohio.  After failing to impress their dates with Taylor’s impersonations of Ed Sullivan and the Wolf Man, the pair debate moving out to L.A. by sticking their heads through a wall and engaging in a musical number.

    There’s a quick explanation by “director” “T. Barry Armstrong” (actually Thomas Callaway) about the nature of low-budget filmmaking and how he really wants to make a 3-D movie about a robot from space. Then back to the duo, now in Hollywood at an apartment that looks suspiciously like the one they had in Dayton.  Taylor ties up his landlord in a bondage chair used for back therapy, and Murphy quickly gets a meeting with a television executive after promising him exciting new ideas.

    Taylor goes to a wax museum in order to do his impressions for the dummies and gets “picked up” by a sweaty M.C. Gainey (“Hey, you want a cupcake?”) who turns out to be a cop and arrests him for killing his landlord.  Meanwhile, Murphy pitches “The Pac-Man Comedy/Drama Hour” as a live-action series starring William Shatner and an executive gives a detailed character analysis of each of the ghosts (“Pokey, the slow terror of a wasted past...“) while showing stock footage.

    More wackiness ensues, including a two-headed judge, an Elvis-haired Kurtwood Smith with bunny ears, a threatening oven mitt, the ghost of Abe Lincoln, a wall of fish and a retrospective of all the ineffectual pauses earlier in the film.  Tobolowsky himself shows up as an attorney.  Much like Return of the Killer Tomatoes or Tapeheads, Two Idiots in Hollywood just throws gags, silly pop culture and inexplicable plot points around so randomly that even if you think it’s just the dumbest thing in the world, you can’t turn away because you know it’s just going to get nuttier.

    Two Idiots doesn’t always work, of course (ROTKT and Tapeheads weren’t 100% genius either).  McGrath and Doucette don’t really have the charm or charisma of, say, John Cusack and Tim Robbins, some bits of dialogue that would have worked great on stage just seem awkward on film, and bad impressions are painful to watch even if they’re supposed to be bad.  Still, it’s hard to resist a movie in which a guy playing Pac-Man runs around a room chomping invisible pellets with a straight face.  The sheer “what the hell” attitude of the film manages to make this much more than a satire of getting ahead in Hollywood (a la My Life’s in Turnaround) and places it firmly in cult film territory.

    If only it had a following.  The film was made in, it seems, 1987, and, as far as I can determine, wasn't released to video until 1991, where it was almost enitrely ignored.  Sigh.

    Stephen Tobolowsky.  What a stud.
 

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