MAESTRO: WaySide Story

** out of ****

We find ourselves in that time of year where films in which studios have no faith are dumped on the American public. The reason is simple: they keep all the good stuff for December. If you want your film nominated for the Academy Awards, it must have a premiere before the end-of-the-year cutoff; therefore, the crappy movies come out around about this time. Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial effort, was given a limited release to qualify for the Oscars before it landed on Netflix and, while I had my reservations that a biopic of Leonard Bernstein could prove film worthy, I held out hopes it could deliver something worthwhile.

Cooper’s first film, A Star is Born, perhaps the nine hundredth version of that moldy tale, served one purpose—as a vehicle to allow Lady Gaga’s acting talent to shine on the big screen. Cooper has done much the same thing with Maestro, taking a backseat to let Carey Mulligan lead in the role of Bernstein’s long-suffering wife Felicia, forgetting to make a biopic of Lenny at all.

With a title like Maestro, one assumes, walking in, that a Lenny biopic is what you will get and, if you are, you will be saddened. Bernstein, though, as I hinted at, would be a hard lead subject in a film. In real life, he was a bit of a cypher, a bit of an enigma, a bit of genius, and a bit reckless in his personal and working lives. While he composed some beautiful music, he never really gave us the music he could have, given his over-numerous engagements as a sought-out lecturer, teacher, and, of course, as the finest American conductor of classical music to have ever lived.

Given how he conducted his own life, his story can be seen as an errant mess or the result of a genius who stretched himself too thin. For these reasons, perhaps it is inevitable that the film focuses on Felicia’s personal life while only giving snapshots of Bernstein’s career. This movie is not Maestro. It is Felicia, another in a long line of stories of wives coming to the realization that their husbands happen to be gay or perpetual cheaters or both. That is not to say such a venture couldn’t be satisfying drama, but if you’re going to put your eggs in that basket, one best dive in and make something of it. Instead, Maestro is kind of a half-breed between a biopic and a slice-of-life, by-the-numbers marriage drama.

The film begins in the Bohemian art world of the early-to-mid 1950s New York—crummy lofts, people engaging in ways of life that went against the grain of the time, etc. We see Bernstein being called, last minute, to conduct the New York Philharmonic due to the principal conductor being sick. This moment gave Bernstein a name and gave him a long career. From there, we see him seemingly revoke his obvious bisexuality in favor of a married life with Felicia, only to spend much of his married life trying to be what he really was and neglecting that bond.

The film goes to great lengths to show Lenny’s love for Felicia—especially in its prologue and in the later scenes where he remains by her side as she dies of cancer. It is a true story, and interesting in some ways, but it is not unique and the film does nothing in terms of offering us what it could have—a biopic of the caliber of Taylor Hackford’s Ray, that has narrative drive, seamless portrayals, and a real exploration of its subject. I didn’t know Bernstein before, I don’t know him now, and it’s clear Cooper didn’t know him either. So, with Maestro, he took the easy way out.

If I were to pretend Maestro is a biopic of Bernstein, it would be a strange one, even if Felicia were not a character in it. We see Bernstein composing music for Jerome Robbins’ ballet Fancy Free (which would be adapted as the musical On the Town). We see Bernstein conducting a choir singing “Make Our Garden Grow” from Candide, perhaps the most beautiful finale for a musical ever written. We see Bernstein finish and attend the premiere of his MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, which was commissioned by Jackie Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center and represented the moment his compositions became too unwieldy and eclectic for anyone to control. We see him teaching conducting to young people.

It is as if Cooper has taken his cue from Miloš Forman’s Man on the Moon, another biopic that misses the mark by simply showing the “greatest hits” of Andy Kaufman’s career—lovingly reenacted by Jim Carrey, but to what end? Both these films suffer for that choice because, if we wanted to see Bernstein conducting Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection Symphony” at Ely Cathedral, we could do that very easily on Youtube. We would be getting the real thing and not a reenactment.

All these scenes of Bernstein’s career moments are perversely long, as are some ponderous shots of Bernstein’s monologuing while being interviewed by various reporters. I don’t blame cinematographer Matthew Libatique or editor Michelle Tesoro for these dreadful, plodding shots, but Cooper. Cooper’s acting talent so outshines his chops as a director that you wonder why he bothers getting behind the camera.

But you have to remember: actors are not stupid. They know the Academy is composed mostly of actors and actors-turned-directors (such as Robert Redford and Kevin Costner) tend to win Best Director (often on their first attempts) because another actor in the Academy will want to win it and be successful when they take up the directing reins. It’s a vicious cycle because often those films don’t hold up even five years after their release. In short, they win for the wrong reasons.

Cooper’s likeness and voice are so like Bernstein’s, you might think he’s using documentary footage. But I hesitate to say his Lenny never really comes to life. When Jaime Foxx (perhaps the most talented man in Hollywood) played Ray Charles, he was not impersonating or giving us a Saturday Night Live impression; he became the man in a respectful way that still showed warts and all. Cooper, through focusing on Felicia’s story (he co-wrote the film with Josh Singer) and taking the “greatest hits” route, undercuts his own performance. It is a brilliant likeness—a more-than-fine impression—but it’s not a fully-developed performance, something we expect from Cooper, even when he appears in stinkers.

Since the film is Mulligan’s, it would be perhaps best to review her performance. It is earnest and professional—she has the right transatlantic accent and grace—but it is not, on the whole, truly good. By devoting so much wasted time on Lenny’s activities, none of which reveal anything about the man we didn’t already know, Cooper lets Mulligan down. We keep coming back to her as she gets more and more depressed, only to watch her die in great pain and the film ends with what we might think of as Lenny’s memory of her, young and in full bloom in 1950s Manhattan. But it is ultimately a thankless part—no more or less good than something that could be shown on basic cable. It was a painful marriage for the actual woman, to be sure, but bitterness is its only flavor. What we have here are two people who never really knew each other.

So, what are we left with? Scenes of an unwieldy genius engaging with what was, perhaps, his only true love (music). Scenes of domestic disturbance and a wife waking up to realization upon realization. And, in between, scenes that move the plot nowhere. It is a great missed opportunity. Bernstein’s life was his music—and the film makes this clear except we get only brief cameos of people very important in his musical development.

The film is shot partly in black and white and partly in color. It is as if Cooper has distilled into one project all the elements that tend to make award-voters giddy. But, like American Hustle (another Cooper vehicle), it is a film only a critic could love—one that is so enraptured with award-winning fads that they forget to take a closer look to see what is there. What is there is not nothing—there are individual moments that are interesting—it is only what is not there that is heartbreaking. Was this a grand design? Was I meant to feel this way walking out of the movie, with all its ambiguity and silence? If so, I don’t appreciate it.

Steven Spielberg was one of the producers of the film. One gleans from this that he fell in love with Bernstein while directing his equally lopsided version of West Side Story and wished to share more of Bernstein with the world. If only he and Cooper had, there might have been something more than a domestic tragedy in the lives of the rich and famous.

If Maestro wins Oscars, and I doubt it will, it will be for the wrong reasons. It will be some vindication for a star’s effort, or a sympathy vote for Mulligan’s character, or simply for some of the technical virtuosity in its makeup design. A better title would have been Fragments and fragments of a life seldom make a great movie experience. In this case, it would be better to watch a lecture of Bernstein’s or listen to some of his music or, frankly, almost anything else. Which makes the film, in the end, dispensable. Bernstein didn’t deserve that. Cooper doesn’t. Mulligan doesn’t. One only hopes Cooper could try directing other actors in his next picture to see if he has anything more to offer than tired plots with some fancy photography.

Maestro

Directed by Bradley Cooper

Screenplay by Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer

Produced by Fred Berner, Bradley Cooper, Amy Durning, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Martin Scorcese, and Steven Spielberg

Music by Leonard Bernstein

Cinematography by Matthew Libatique

Editing by Michelle Tesoro

Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre

Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein

Sarah Silverstein as Shirley Bernstein

2023 in Perspective

Greetings, readers, writers, and supporters. It’s time once again to recap the year at the writer’s desk. In addition to my first full year of weekly blog posts, it has been a productive, if uneven 2023, full of personal changes. There were some bumps in the road—some highs, some lows. I suppose every year has them. When I looked back at my 2022 recap, I was surprised at the excitement I had looking forward to what this year would bring.

What did it bring? It was a year of exhaustion, anxiety—fast-paced and whirl-a-ma-gig while also bittersweet. Many of you read my piece on losing my friend Macey, our little furball who loved us a bunch for sixteen years. Falling on the heels of that was turning 40. I may have made light of it in my birthday post, but I couldn’t concentrate on as much as I would have liked this year because that number was lumbering toward me, and I couldn’t stop staring it in the face. It is true that day turned out to be just another day, but the worrying and the waiting was tiresome on the brain and affected the heart too.

While 40 is just a number, it’s a number that statistically means your time on Earth is more than half over. Talk about perspective—perspective that smacks you in the face until you think over choices you’ve made and, if you’re an introspective type (say, a writer?), those choices linger in the brain, keep you up at night. Don’t get me wrong—it often provides you with good copy, but it’s not always a pleasant thing.

A lot of my sturm and drang occurred when I saw my oldest nephew get married back in May. As happy as I was for him, it was quite the thing to be the rogue, single uncle watching his brother’s kid (half my age) marry before himself. I hid a lot of it at the time, but I did a lot of crying that weekend—not out of awe from the ceremony (which was beautiful), but out of self-pity, which isn’t a pleasant thing to admit, but I suppose if you’re a writer, you put it all out there, warts and all.

Following this was the adventure of acting for the first time in seventeen years for Birmingham Festival Theatre’s production of Waiting for Godot as part of their 50th anniversary season. When I initially auditioned, it was out of mild curiosity if I still had “it.” Then, throughout the rehearsals and performance, I had to bring “it,” but to say the process was debilitating would be an understatement. Playing Estragon, his physical ailments soon began to become my ailments, his depression started to become mine and, worst of all, his inability to remember anything seeped in as well as learning the lines (and working a full-time job and writing) was almost too much to take. The days began leaving for work at 7am and arriving back home somewhere around 10:30pm.

While I enjoyed playing with my costars Cliff Spencer and Ray Cole, and I enjoyed a healthy run with decent audiences, I feel like it robbed me of time. Time I could have spent with family, friends—writing, especially. I think it will always be an experience I look back on and simultaneously smile and wince at at the same time. It was a good thing, but it was too much to take on. Yes, I suppose I proved I could still act. But what doth it profit a man if you really don’t enjoy it? I love performing—but rehearsing (unless I’m the playwright)—I despise. Godot was no different. Perhaps if it had played when it was supposed to—January/February—I would have had more time to concentrate as I had a less-taxing job at the time. But a personal issue of the director left the theater scrambling to wedge the show in right when the 51stseason should have been beginning.

We should be proud of what we did—a Godot with some genuine laughs and a real crack at giving Beckett his due as one of the world’s great playwrights. He is one of only two authors whose work I’ve performed twice—I acted in a radio version of Words and Music while studying at Bennington College—and it is indeed always good to learn from the best.

As to the more positive aspects of the year, a lot of it I’ve already reported on the blog—seeing one of my favorite singer/songwriters, James Taylor, in concert was a great thrill, playing percussion once again for the band The Cash Domino Killers for their Halloween show at the Sugar Creek Supper Club was a blast as playing music always is. That event happened on the same week I took my only vacation of the year, and I spent it alone at home. They call it a staycation and I think it’s overrated. Hoping to do some more significant traveling this next year instead of just to and from work.

I was happy to support a friend from my time in Montgomery, T. S. Martin, who released a gorgeous volume of poetry entitled Innocence, Heartbreak, & Revelations: A Young Woman’s Odyssey. She has a future as a poet and, by day, she teaches music to kids. Proud of her accomplishments. She honored me by proofing one of my more touchy essays on the blog this year and I thank her for that. I was also happy to support my friend David Phillips with a very different kind of book—a log for those who enjoy barbecuing. What can I say? I like it all, the sacred and profane. And barbecue.

Having started in February of 2022, I kept up my practice of reading a play every day and this will be the first year I will have read 365 plays. It’s a good practice I shall continue next year. I recently read a post online that said, “When you’re feeling creative, write; when you’re not, read.” I am not one of those writers who makes sure he does however many pages a day. I wish I had that kind of time or discipline. Instead, I am like many writers whose works slosh around the brain—sometimes for many months—before they’re ready to emerge.

I used to be ashamed of this, but (again, at Bennington) I took a wonderful course from the novelist Rebecca T. Godwin (Keeper of the House) and she was the first writer to ever admit she didn’t write every day and I’ve felt justified ever since. I’m not one of those folks who spills out diarrhea of the mind on the page and wait until something happens. Each of my plays is the result of careful plotting in my head. I don’t begin until I know the ending and, while the process still involves discovering things, I think plays are better for it overall.

At any rate, some of the works I read this year were fascinating, some were close to being, and some missed the mark, but I don’t regret reading any of them as every play teaches you something. I once again this year got to dive deeper into the theatre texts of Austrian Nobel Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek, including her magnum opus for the stage, Sports Play, which was wonderfully translated into English by Penny Black for performance in the UK during the ’12 Olympics. Maybe a decade or so ago, I reached out to Ms. Black to congratulate her as I found her script more playable than the standard translations by Gitta Honegger. She was appreciative and we corresponded off and on during the mid-teens.

I included more opera and musical libretti this year, including Hair (the original Off-Broadway version, quite different from the show that emerged), the Who’s Tommy, John Adams’ brilliant Nixon in China, my favorite musical not written by Sondheim—Chess (two versions in fact), and I ate up the complete libretti of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungen like an elephant, one bite at a time. I even managed to track down a hardcover version of Lillian Hellman’s original libretto for Leonard Bernstein’s Candide—a rare book to be sure because the Hellman estate refused for her script to be used in future productions following its flop premiere on Broadway. That was probably for the best as Hellman is one of many playwrights not suited to the form of a musical libretto. Allegedly, she wanted to use Voltaire’s satire to send up HUAC, but most of that material was cut by Tyrone Guthrie by the time the show got to Broadway, leaving a lovely score and a dour, sometimes funny (more wry, I suppose), but not quite right book.

I suffered through the major works of Bertolt Brecht (I’m sorry, but it’s hard to think much of a man who admired Mao), read a whole slew of interesting plays from mid-century Europe, including David Guerdon’s fascinating version of the myth of the Minotaur The Laundry, Tankred Dorst’s elegant play The Curve, the late Mario Fratti’s brilliant The Cage, Ugo Betti’s Corruption in the Palace of Justice (Betti is the best playwright you’ve never heard of), and Alfonso Sastre’s Anna Kleiber—all of which were the kind of thrilling writing for the stage you don’t see much anymore, as evidenced by the contemporary plays I read this year. Many of them I liked, don’t get me wrong—Steve Yockey’s Bright. Apple. Crush. is quite simply the best ten-minute play I’ve ever read, save Lanford Wilson’s Eukiah. But, except for Lucas Hnath’s Dana H., most of the newer plays I read didn’t move me. Some were funny, but I don’t go to the theatre for snickers. Some were touching, but I don’t go to the theatre for sentiment. When I go to the theatre, I want to be moved—emotionally riven in one way or another. While I didn’t have much of that in reading plays this year, I did have that in seeing Opera Birmingham’s production of a short new opera, DWB, with the composer Susan Kander and librettist Roberta Gumbel in attendance, both of whom I met. They graciously gave of their time to an aspiring librettist.

There was also a lot of re-reading of plays this year. I own more than two thousand playscripts and many are anthologies, and many include the same plays over and over. I simply would bring in another box from the barn and I’d see I had gotten plays I’d already read. But part of this project is actually reading all the books I own, so I saw it as a plus as I got to reconsider many plays along the way. If you follow me on Instagram or X, you know I read and re-read a lot of Marsha Norman’s work and, as almost always with me, was fonder of the plays of hers you don’t know—like Circus Valentine (which flopped in a regional production, but deserves a pro production) and Traveler in the Dark, a play I don’t necessarily like, but admire. There are lot of plays I know are good that I don’t admire, so I guess that’s saying something.

This year, I also re-read the complete plays of Sarah Kane, the greatest British playwright who emerged in the years after Harold Pinter. Her works are dark and violent, but essential reading to anyone who wishes to explore the possibilities of the stage, which are wider and more sprawling than what can be accomplished in almost any other dramatic form.

The highlights of the year, for certain, were all concerned with the writing that emerged. I was honored to have one poem, “The Rain Dance,” awarded 2nd prize in Blue Institute’s Words on Water Writing Contest and another, “Toast to Renee,” published in the journal Literature Today. Two short plays, The Judas Kiss and Approaching the Summer Sun, were also published in the first two volumes of a new periodical called Mini Plays Review. Additionally, two full-length plays in one act, There Will Always Be a Fire and Jeroboam, were completed (the latter, a few weeks ago) and that always brings a smile to a writer’s face. They are both entered into contests, and I hope you’ll keep your fingers crossed.

As a sendoff to ’23, looking forward to a better ‘24, I will once again honor those artists who have passed on and whose lives touched mine in profound ways.

Actors

Charles Kimbrough was a versatile character actor, best known for Murphy Brown, but to me will always be known as the man who originated roles in Stephen Sondheim’s Company and Sunday in the Park with George.

Raquel Welch was a major sex symbol, yes, but also an adept performer, as evidenced in the director’s cut of James Ivory’s The Wild Party and Herbert Ross’ The Last of Sheila, a criminally underrated murder mystery from the 1970s.

Chaim Topol, for me, has a kind of immortality for starring as Tevye in the glorious film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, one of the great movie musicals.

Barbara Bryne is a name you may not know well, but every time one saw a performance of hers, it was unforgettable. Between a hilarious scene in Amadeus and remarkable performances in Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, brilliantly captured for television, she is perhaps one of many work-a-day actors who don’t get the recognition they deserve.

Treat Williams, like Richard Gere, was a character actor in a leading man’s body. Nevertheless, his warmth and professionalism elevated projects as diverse as Milos Forman’s adaptation of Hair to later roles in films like Hollywood Ending.

Glenda Jackson was a two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress, but it was her more idiosyncratic performances in small comedic films, like Robert Altman’s Health and Beyond Therapyalways left an impression if the films did not.

Alan Arkin, a fellow Benningtonian, made even small parts memorable, such as his role in Glengarry Glen Ross. Whether he was in meat or marshmallow fluff, his professionalism was evident and appreciated.

Many kids of my generation grew up with Paul Reubens as “Pee-Wee Herman,” a Peter Pan for the ‘80s who made a significant impact on pop culture. My talking Pee-Wee doll is somewhere up in the attic…

Michael Gambon was one of many exceptional actors from the U. K. Perhaps best known for his work in the Harry Potter franchise, he was a consummate actor, delivering some of the finest stage performances of his day in addition to smaller roles in films (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is my favorite).

Piper Laurie was indeed Carrie’s mom but was so much more. For me, her role as Catherine Martell in Twin Peaks made the original two-season series what it was, bringing a menacing audacity to the show’s many turns and twists.

Joss Ackland was a commanding presence on stage and screen, originating the role of Peron in Evita and always bringing gravitas to even minor films, like The Mighty Ducks.

Ryan O’Neal need not have made more than Paper Moon and Barry Lyndon to prove his worth. Beginning as a teenager girl’s idol in Peyton Place, he left behind a solid body of work that was often unappreciated. Another good-looking actor whose actual work was often unnoticed.

Singers

Gordon Lightfoot wrote “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “If You Could Read My Mind” and if you could do half as well, you’d be cooking with gas.

For many weeks after her death, the vocals of Astrud Gilberto’s recording of “The Girl from Ipanema” stayed in my head, soothing any pain by its gentle bossa nova.

Tony Bennett was the last of a dying breed—one of the great entertainers and interpreters of song who, thankfully, got a second career with one of our current great entertainers, Lady Gaga.

Jimmy Buffett wrote the soundtrack of all the vacations we take in our minds.

Directors

William Friedkin, best known for The Exorcist, made what was (for me) a major comeback with Killer Joe, a movie they’ll be calling a masterpiece fifty years from now. He was fearless and frank, took no B. S., and that must be hard in Hollywood.

Robert Brustein was a leading philosopher of the theatre in the 20th century with arguments you tried to dismantle, much to your dismay. He was directly or indirectly responsible for fostering some of the great American playwriting talent through his work.

Writers

Frank Galati might be unknown to you, but as the stage adaptor of John Steinbeck’s immortal The Grapes of Wrath, he managed to do onstage what John Ford could not even envision with his film version.

Donald Spoto was a popular biographer but managed to capture entire lives in his thick volumes, especially The Kindness of Strangers, a more complete biography of Tennessee Williams than was or has ever been attempted (including John Lahr’s Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh).

Sheldon Harnick was best known as the lyric writing partner of Jerry Bock, producing the Pulitzer Prize-winner Fiorello! and, of course, Fiddler in addition to The Rothschilds, a musical that never found its voice but has better material than most musicals running on Broadway at any given time combined.

Tom Jones, along with composer Harvey Schmidt, wrote many small-scale musicals, The Fantasticks being the most endearingly popular, being one of the longest running Off-Broadway shows of all time.

A. S. Byatt was a master of the novel and a champion of Romantic literature in a day and age where it was largely ignored. If Possession proves a daunting read, it is—and is worth all the more for it.

Broadcasters

Country Boy Eddie was a significant radio and television personality in my home state, responsible for giving Tammy Wynette her break and, therefore, giving the world a gift.

At the same time Johnny Carson ruled American talk shows, Michael Parkinson did much the same in the U. K. albeit with more witty, acerbic, and probing questions than the average host of a “chat show.”

Bob Barker reminded us to spay and neuter our pets. I hope we’re following the edict.

Producer

Norman Lear’s innovative take on translating British series to American audiences, which resulted in Sanford and Son, All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, and others revitalized the sitcom. These shows had extraordinary power, razor-sharp cultural criticism, and were also wildly funny.

I also include a list of dozens of playwright we lost from all over the world:

USA: Tina Howe, Nathan Louis Jackson, Tom Kempinski, Jerome Coopersmith, Robert Patrick, Lynda Myles

UK: Oliver Emanuel, Thomas Kilroy, John Byrne, Adam Brace, Fay Weldon

Canada: David Fennario, Hillar Litoja

Mexico: Luisa Josefina Hernandez

France: Richard Martin, Roger Louret

Germany: Helmert Woudenberg, Maria Peschek, Andreas K. W. Meyer

Austria: Erwin Reiss

Italy: Mario Fratti, Michela Murgia, Luca Di Fulvio

Spain: Antonio Gala

Greece: Maria Lampadaridou-Pothou

Switzerland: Peter Zeindler

Estonia: Rein Saluri

Slovakia: Tomas Janovic

Serbia: Zorica Jevremovic

Slovenia: Veno Taufer

Hungary: Geza Morcsanyi

Brazil: Narua Carmen Barbosa, Ze Celso

Jamaica: Evan Jones

Dominica: Alwin Bully

Israel: Edna Mazia, Pnina Gary

Turkey: Yilmaz Gruda

Kenya: Micere Githae Mugo

Ghana: Ama Ata Aidoo

Russia: Nina Sadur, Eduard Mizhit, Aleksey Slapovsky

India: Gieve Patel, Tripurani Sharm, Mohan Maharishi, Dhiruben Patel

Pakistan: Shoaib Hasmi

French Polynesia: John Mairai

New Zealand: Renee

Indonesia: Nano Riantarno

Taiwan: Loic Hsiao

Cameroon: John Nkemngong Nkengasong

Underrated Christmas Specials, pt. 4: TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW, GREAT JOB! CHRIMBUS SPECIAL

So, for the past three weeks, I’ve chosen heartwarming, fun Christmas fare. Offbeat perhaps, but traditional. Now. It’s time for the dam to break open and have a few holiday shenanigans.

The rest of my most favorite underrated Christmas specials come from the world of South Park—see my Top 10 and the madcap brilliance of “Woodland Critter Christmas”—so I couldn’t go there. I toyed with choosing the Muppets’ The Christmas Toy (the obvious inspiration for Toy Story), but I thought I’d do what I wanted. It’s my blog, after all.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cartoon Network’s nightly adult programming block Adult Swim, stay up sometime and enjoy the madness. In addition to syndicated reruns and original content, there is a fabric woven into the channel that makes it seem as if it’s on mind-bending substances. And even if you’re not, some of the material is refreshing, even groundbreaking.

Don’t get me wrong—most of their offerings have been mixed bags. But sometimes you get something legitimately funny (Mike Tyson’s Mysteries), something legitimately unsettling (Moral Orel), and sometimes you get content that is unsettling in an intriguing way but not good. But the real meat is the stuff that is meant to be bad to the point it’s hysterical. The comedic team Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are the Shakespeares of this type of Adult Swim humor.

While there was content from them before (Tom Goes to the Mayor) and multiple spin-offs since, their masterpiece is the series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, a series they’ve described as the nightmare version of television. All Adult Swim content is geared toward unfortunates who might be up at 4am and tune into something truly bizarre, like their (mostly) brilliant fake infomercials, such as Too Many Cooks and Unedited Footage of a Bear. 

Great Job! was pure madness—chock full of extras culled from Craigslist, bizarre graphics, hysterical music, cringe comedy, and gross-out stuff as well. The culmination of the series was the fifth season (Season Cinco, named after the megacorporation that is mentioned several times throughout the series) and the last episode of that season (the finale) came in the form of a holiday special: Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Chrimbus Special. 

Like some later episodes of Monty Python, it is one of the weirdest half hours of television ever. Ostensibly, the special is a prolonged advertisement for a DVD of the special, the special of which is all about selling the DVD. This means, I suppose, you never actually see the special in an odd way.

The special begins with a man dying in the hospital (played by one of the many outsider performers found on the internet) who tells a child about the Chrimbus Special DVD. From there, guest actors (like the lovingly bad “impressionist” James Quall and “puppeteer” David Liebe Hart) appear in various segments, wrapping up long-running segments from the series proper, including appearances from Dr. Steve Brule (John C. Reilly) and Tairy Greene (Zach Galifianakis).

The special is performed for a live studio audience who act in much the same mannerisms as the host. It’s one of the things that make Tim & Eric’s work for television lovable. They parody the audiences of infomercials and their fakery with audiences full of folks who accept the goings on as part of the universe. In their world, Quall is a superstar and Chrimbus is real.

Of course, Chrimbus is a riff on Christmas, a holiday mostly geared toward commercialism and getting presents rather than giving them. Tim and Eric, in false teeth, bouffant hair styles, and clothes shot out of a neon spray gun try to figure out what to get each other for Chrimbus and are assisted by a Star Wars-looking imp named Dee Vee, the DVD Monster who provides the last-minute salvation of the special by using his magical powers to manifest free copies of the Chrimbus DVD and give them to all the members of the audience, the process so arduous he almost dies in the process. We come back to the hospital room where the true commercialistic meaning of Chrimbus reveals itself as the girl, having found out the dying man is Dee Vee, demands he use the last of his living strength to magically provide her a copy of the special. The special that is about selling the DVD. Of the special.

Why do I like something that takes incredible pains to be bad? It’s hard to tell. But Christmas is also a time of outsiders drinking too much (probably to make staying with their families tolerable), living a little off-balance, and tearing ourselves to pieces trying to make everything “perfect.” Tim and Eric add to this holiday madness by sending up the aspects of the holiday that bother us all: greed, the expense, the anxiety.

And yet: it also ain’t that deep. Tim & Eric bring an off-kilter flair to the holidays. ‘Nuff said.

The entire special can be seen on Max, though the DVD is only available through Dee Vee’s magical powers. But he’s dead. So, you can’t see the DVD. Of the special. That is about selling the DVD of the special.