A comedy bio-pic focusing on the rise from obscurity of America's most famous radio shock-jock.
I always say that comedy is the hardest thing to write - most comedy writers can perhaps get three minutes of use able material out of a working day for home media. You could halve that if you are talking about cinema or even TV film. For such reasons most American sitcoms are written by teams of writers.
(By the look and sound of some of them - writing alternative words!)
In my life I could perhaps name about ten people (not all are well known) that could be funny without prior warning of subject or topic. There are many others that appear to be funny on cue, but they are actually using pre-written scripts provide by others.
As the comedy writer and performer Bob Monkhouse once said "there are people that say funny things and the people that are just funny." However which is Stern? A bit of both? I would take the cop-out view and say neither!
There is something I don't like about the guy under today's microscope. A rude, ignorant and sleazy side that slips out now and then. When married he seemed to live his sex life through his guests. Maybe the man says much more about the great unwashed of America - his main audience - than we think?
Paradoxically, for someone in show-biz, I think he has an introvert and shy streak - the long hair and the dark glasses are things to hide behind. Rock disguises against looking middle-aged. On the box cover he appears half naked, holding his stomach in and lightly greased up. Looking for all the world like a clapped-out Chippendale!
Despite all presentations (in film and life) he is not really a team player. He is the king of this own castle who also wants to be the dirty rascal too!
He is too me-me-me to be any kind of give-and-take comedian - he is the custard pie thrower not a custard pie taker. Not there is any democracy in any comedy - the guy with the microphone always has the last laugh.
Despite all the hype and being new and different, he is merely a variation on the I-don't-care comedians that have gone before like Rodney Dangerfield and Don Rickles. Only they didn't use four letter words.
Stern gets fined by the US authorities for his programme, but this is part and parcel of his marketing appeal. Soon he will broadcast from space in order to say what he wants more readily. What will that be - the same-old with more obscenities?
This film is strangely limp-along at the beginning - showing Stern (playing himself in a silly wig) at college about to go out on small stations - one of which praises him for simply showing up on time! His private life (which has now included divorce) is shown as Mr Begging and Pleading - presumably to show that the radio thing is an act.
The film is clue-less as to how to show Stern as anything more than a passable comedian and open-mic wise-cracker surrounded by acolytes - most interesting of which is the black female producer Robin Ophelia Quivers (this isn't chance): who (uniquely) does a lot of tut-tuting/laughing on air to suggest there might be another - more PC - view on any given topic.
He may be a guerrilla DJ - but this is not guerrilla film making. This is the one film that would have benefited from digital video and a lot of camera wobble!
There is a kind of Howard's Greatest Hits section where famous moments from the radio show are re-created, including a bit of studio nudity (on radio?) and some of his better stunts, the most memorable being getting a woman to orgasm on a loud speaker cabinet. Naturally the woman is a perfect porno blonde - because this is a film not real life.
There is only so many ways you can say "I don't really care about Howard Stern." Outside of the US - where people can hear the show - I doubt most people know who he is. The few comments he makes about foreigners (including us Brits) he doesn't seem to care.
Despite the many faults with both the film and the life of Stern this is passable entertainment. Limp, but passable. Stern is no real actor and uses voice-over like a heckler in his own movie, presumably knowing another trade secret: getting the joke in first.
The soap opera of his private life is neither one thing or another and the scene in which he snubs people that once snubbed him is risible and predictable.
I have always said show-biz is the happy home to many a social misfit - this film is the proof.
I always say that comedy is the hardest thing to write - most comedy writers can perhaps get three minutes of use able material out of a working day for home media. You could halve that if you are talking about cinema or even TV film. For such reasons most American sitcoms are written by teams of writers.
(By the look and sound of some of them - writing alternative words!)
In my life I could perhaps name about ten people (not all are well known) that could be funny without prior warning of subject or topic. There are many others that appear to be funny on cue, but they are actually using pre-written scripts provide by others.
As the comedy writer and performer Bob Monkhouse once said "there are people that say funny things and the people that are just funny." However which is Stern? A bit of both? I would take the cop-out view and say neither!
There is something I don't like about the guy under today's microscope. A rude, ignorant and sleazy side that slips out now and then. When married he seemed to live his sex life through his guests. Maybe the man says much more about the great unwashed of America - his main audience - than we think?
Paradoxically, for someone in show-biz, I think he has an introvert and shy streak - the long hair and the dark glasses are things to hide behind. Rock disguises against looking middle-aged. On the box cover he appears half naked, holding his stomach in and lightly greased up. Looking for all the world like a clapped-out Chippendale!
Despite all presentations (in film and life) he is not really a team player. He is the king of this own castle who also wants to be the dirty rascal too!
He is too me-me-me to be any kind of give-and-take comedian - he is the custard pie thrower not a custard pie taker. Not there is any democracy in any comedy - the guy with the microphone always has the last laugh.
Despite all the hype and being new and different, he is merely a variation on the I-don't-care comedians that have gone before like Rodney Dangerfield and Don Rickles. Only they didn't use four letter words.
Stern gets fined by the US authorities for his programme, but this is part and parcel of his marketing appeal. Soon he will broadcast from space in order to say what he wants more readily. What will that be - the same-old with more obscenities?
This film is strangely limp-along at the beginning - showing Stern (playing himself in a silly wig) at college about to go out on small stations - one of which praises him for simply showing up on time! His private life (which has now included divorce) is shown as Mr Begging and Pleading - presumably to show that the radio thing is an act.
The film is clue-less as to how to show Stern as anything more than a passable comedian and open-mic wise-cracker surrounded by acolytes - most interesting of which is the black female producer Robin Ophelia Quivers (this isn't chance): who (uniquely) does a lot of tut-tuting/laughing on air to suggest there might be another - more PC - view on any given topic.
He may be a guerrilla DJ - but this is not guerrilla film making. This is the one film that would have benefited from digital video and a lot of camera wobble!
There is a kind of Howard's Greatest Hits section where famous moments from the radio show are re-created, including a bit of studio nudity (on radio?) and some of his better stunts, the most memorable being getting a woman to orgasm on a loud speaker cabinet. Naturally the woman is a perfect porno blonde - because this is a film not real life.
There is only so many ways you can say "I don't really care about Howard Stern." Outside of the US - where people can hear the show - I doubt most people know who he is. The few comments he makes about foreigners (including us Brits) he doesn't seem to care.
Despite the many faults with both the film and the life of Stern this is passable entertainment. Limp, but passable. Stern is no real actor and uses voice-over like a heckler in his own movie, presumably knowing another trade secret: getting the joke in first.
The soap opera of his private life is neither one thing or another and the scene in which he snubs people that once snubbed him is risible and predictable.
I have always said show-biz is the happy home to many a social misfit - this film is the proof.