Slapstick: Impossible!

With my third installment of slapstick short films, I've pretty much resigned myself to propose that a small filmmaker on a low budget and with some good home-grown talent can make a quality film that's truly hip, meaningful, and entertaining. Nowadays, even with their multi-million-dollar budgets, cheesy promotions, celebrity casts, and manipulative digital f/x, Hollywood just seems to be sinking further and further into a quagmire of soulless hype, sorry remakes, and overrated productions. And reality TV shows are just plain dumb. So, I'm gettin' back to basics -- vaudeville comedy, simple but creative film techniques, real characters and live action, and just good ol' fashion storytelling. And I gotta tell ya', throwing pies at a beautiful woman is pretty gosh darn basic!

Slapstick: Impossible! is a shameless take-off on the old Mission Impossible TV series, but also includes various elements from Batman, the Avengers, and the Prisoner. Like any true parody, this film stays faithful to the original source without "copying" it verbatim. Here you will see tongue-in-cheek humor, subjective camera perspectives, mindbending special effects, and a range of improbable twists that never let you forget you're watching a farce and a fantasy. And yet the characters have believable motives and fully-developed personalities. Loyalty and deception, bravery and cowardliness, wits and stupidity, success and failure, good and evil, all intermingle into the action -- a very messy action at that!

It starts with special agent Lucy Longlegs receiving her "impossible" mission to stop a Russian gypsy woman from corralling nuclear submarines and holding the world at ransom for an exorbitant sum of money. An ironic pie in the face of our beautiful blonde agent marks the beginning of a slapstick mission that sets her down a crazy, winding path of messy hijinks and madcap adventures. Madam Schlotcka, meanwhile, plots against Longlegs, harassing her with crystal-ball eavesdropping, a well-placed banana peel, a relentless bouncing ball, and a scheme to steal Longlegs' identity. However, Madam Schlotcka's hocus-pocus is not so reliable, as her secret arsenal of slapstick cream pies prove to be more than she can handle. In fact, these tantalizing, fluffy desserts seem to have a power all their own!

The character of Lucy Longlegs challenges the ditsy-blonde stereotype. Unfortunately, this film failes to disprove it due to lack of evidence. Quite the contrary, we see our shapely flaxen-haired heroine fumbling with equipment, knocking into doors, and often "missing the point" like Shaq O'Neal at a free-throw line. But she ultimately manages to push the right buttons, literally, and she knows a sham when she sees one. Plus, she's level-headed enough to not take her multi-pie assault too seriously. It's all in the struggle, and we're behind her all the way!

Madam Schlotcka -- she's mad, I tell you, mad!!! She makes objects appear from out of nowhere, she sees everything that goes on, she spreads rumors and lies, she envies other women, she connives, she manipulates, she wants all the money and power in the world! But hey, you gotta love her. If not for her, this whole caper never would'a happened. She dared to dream big -- and got a bevy of big cream pies in the face as the result of it.

Lena, a South African-born model and actress, played the leading dual roles of Ms. Longlegs and Madam Schlotcka. She immerses herself into the characters so deeply that one can hardly tell it's the same actress. Her Dutch-British accent for the former is completely authentic, and in the latter, she manages to capture a bit of Slavic soul. She understands classic slapstick comedy, while her pie-in-the-face reactions are ripe with flailing arms, subtle moans and blurbs, ironic afterthoughts, and sexy panache. She also has a very sexy walk. Maybe the closed-toed stilettos and tight dress had something to do with that. Ah heck, she just knows how to entertain, and she's an absolute delight to watch on film!

The shooting for Slapstick: Impossible! took about nine hours -- but that does not include the several hours it took me to shoot that cursedly uncooperative bouncing ball. Talk about your difficult actors! I'd much rather work with Lena! Our shoot together went relatively smoothly, without much complication with regards to wardrobe, camera set-ups, pie hit accuracy, and getting to and from our outdoor location. With the exception of the outdoor scene, the entire film was shot in an unbelievably small space -- I chuckle at the thought of it.

There were things in this little flick I attempted for the first time: tilted camera angles,
on-camera magic, an exterior action scene with a seemingly self-propelled object, and scenes containing dialogue exchange between two different characters played by the same actress. And lo' and behold, they actually worked! There were more editing cuts here than in my first two films. The main instrumental track is a sound-alike of the original MI theme, with its spy-at-work chord progression and sneaky tempo changes. The whole soundtrack contains a variety of musical themes, beds, cues, and accompaniments, at times eerily synchronized with the action -- I say that because I use "stock music" that seems almost tailor-made for my productions, the intense, dynamic action, the ironic humor, and the outrageous comedy vamps.

In the words of Lucy Longlegs, "This is one slapstick mission accomplished!"