Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1939 Scalp Troublestarring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck directed by Bob Clampett . This short seldom airs any more on television due to heavy Native American stereotyping.
Friz Freleng remade this short five years later as the color Merrie Melodie Slightly Daffy and reused some of the animation and gags.
This past week was a very tense week for everyone in the world. The staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour staff desperately needed a laugh. We found a clip from Nick Offerman's 2014 comedy special, American Ham. And we thought we'd like to watch it with you -
It's amazing how pertinent his comedy still is
We’ve selected another entry from the excellent reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider. Today’s film is the 1989 comedy-drama The Unbelievable Truth, directed by Hal Hartley (in his directorial debut) and starring Adrienne Shelly, Robert Burke, Christopher Cooke, Julia McNeal, Gary Sauer, Mark Bailey, David Healy, Katherine Mayfield, Edie Falco, and Matt Malloy.
The Unbelievable Truth is a comedy of errors surrounding a beautiful, college-bound girl disturbingly preoccupied with the threat of nuclear destruction. Nevertheless, she falls in love with a handsome ex-con who is rumored to have murdered, many years before, the father of his high school sweetheart. The film was made on a shoestring budget and shot in just 11 days. It was a modest financial success and was critically well received. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and also screened at Cannes.
Hal Hartley’s early films were important in creating a cinematic identity for Long Island during a time when indie film on the East Coast was largely centered around New York City, thanks to figures like Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch (to whom Hartley was frequently compared early in his career). Long Island has long been considered the unofficial sixth borough of New York City, and Hartley plays on that connection. The number of independent films produced and given theatrical distribution from 1990 to the end of the century was extraordinary; Hartley stands as one of the few meaningfully independent filmmakers of his era.
Please find a comfortable chair, dim the lights, and join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour as we watch this thought-provoking comedy: The Unbelievable Truth.
This film marked the feature debut of Adrienne Shelly, who played the teenager Audry, though she was 22 at the time.
Demand Euphoria!
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