Was Ebert Right?: Orgazmo (1998)

Today, we take a look at the Trey Parker and Matt Stone porn satire, Orgzamo, and ask the question: Was Ebert Right?

Ebert begins the review by talking about the word "sophomoric." He says that he has used it in only 11 of his reviews (at the time, of course) while telling us he has to use the word again to describe ORGAZMO. 

Now I must use the word again. “Orgazmo,” a comedy by “South Park” co-creator Trey Parker, is the very soul of sophomorism. It is callow, gauche, obvious and awkward, and designed to appeal to those with similar qualities.

He then goes on to call the film "callow" (a young person who lacks experience, judgment, and maturity.), gauche (a young person who lacks experience, judgment, and maturity, obvious and awkard. I would and wouldn't call the film "callow." The film is a satire on the porn industry and does a damn good job of making fun of it while also paying homage to it. Sure, the acting in the porn scenes is crappy but that's the point. Porn doesn't contain world class acting. 

The guys from SOUTH PARK aren't necessarily inexperienced. At the time ORGAZMO was released, they already had a feature (CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL), a failed TV pilot (TIME WARPED), and wildly successful TV show (SOUTH PARK). These guys knew what they were doing. The film being "sophomoric" is the point. They aren't trying to make high art. They are making a film about a guy who creates a device that can be shot at people to make them have an orgasm. Also, calling something or someone "callow" and gauche" in the same sentence is redundant.

True to the film’s sophomorism, it is not a satire of Mormonism, but simply uses Mormons in the conviction that their seriousness will be funny to gapejaws in the audience–to whom all sincerity is threatening, and therefore funny. 

I don't know anyone who finds sincerity as threatening. Sincerity can be funny as it is in ORGAZMO. Calling people who like a film or find sincerity funny names is shallow of Ebert. No one should be called names for their taste in film.

Sophomorism uses a sledgehammer; wit uses a scalpel. Sophomorism cries out for your attention; wit assumes it has it. Sophomorism shocks by presenting sexuality; wit shocks by using it. A sophomoric film will think it is funny when hairy buttocks block the camera’s view. A witty film will ask, whose buttocks? Why now? What next? 

What Ebert didn't notice is that the only nudity in the film is male. There is not one nude female in the film and that is the point. The hairy buttocks that block the camera's view is funny because its satire, the very thing he says ORGAZMO doesn't have any of. Audiences think that, because the film is making fun of the porn industry, that there is going to be tons of female nudity and how do you think the SOUTH PARK guys are going to circumvent those expectations? By not only NOT including any female nudity whatsoever, but by throwing the male nudity in your face every chance they get. The male buttocks in blocking the camera's view is the point of the joke.

Early in the film, Elder Young (whose name would have been funnier if it had been Elder Younger) and another missionary are knocking on doors in Los Angeles, seeking converts. One door is opened by a sweet little old lady. The instant I saw her, I knew, with the same certainly that a Mormon missionary knows he will go to heaven, that the sweet little old lady would shout a stream of vile obscenities. She did.

This is something I don't think is all that funny. Presenting older people cursing can be funny but most of these films that do this use it as shock value, which they see as comedy. Shcok value can be funny. Seeing Jim fuck the pie in the AMERICAN PIE or see Lin Shaye topless in THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY is funny, but seeing someone your grandma’s age cursing someone out isn't. This gag, a religious person goes to someone's house to spread the word of the Lord, was used in FRIDAY, but it wasn't the person answering the door who does the cursing. It was the religious person doing the cursing. It wasn't funny there either.

That is sophomorism. What would wit have done? The missionaries would have knocked on the door, the sweet little old lady would have opened it, and wit would have known that the audience anticipated obscenities, so wit would have had the little old lady say, “I know that in the movies we sweet little old ladies are always getting a cheap laugh by using the f-word to missionaries, but that lacks imagination, don’t you think? That’s what my son, Quentin Tarantino, always says. Here, have some cookies.” 

This would have made the joke tens times worse. The thing I hate in comedies is when the satire is thrown in your face. It can work, like in WAYNE'S WORLD with the product placement scene, but most of the time, the filmmakers are just trying to make you see how smart they think they are. Saying things like "The movies tell me" or any variation on that phrase bothers me. Give me the satire in a clever way. Don't shove it down my throat.

Jeremy, for those not willing to admit they know who he is, has been in more porn films than anyone else. His popularity is easily explained: Every man alive believes that any woman would prefer him to Ron Jeremy.

 For a person who seems to hate exploitation films, despite the fact that he created one of the most infamous of all time (BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS), he seems to know a lot about Ron Jeremy. I doubt he just looked Jeremy up. He knew exactly who he was. Of course, he didn't know who Jeremy really was (turns out he is a rapist who will never see his day in court because he has dementia, a disease that robs good people of their dignity and bad people of jail).

Elder Young is given the role of Orgazmo, a porno superhero with a sidekick named Choda-Boy (Dian Bachar). They crash through cardboard walls to rescue damsels in distress (or damsels being ravished by Ron Jeremy, which amounts to the same thing). His weapon (Orgazmo’s) is an Orgazmorator, which immobilizes his enemies with multiple orgasms. In a movie with wit, people would be lining up to become Orgazmo’s enemies.

 This would have been a very funny joke. They could have included it in the montage where they test out the Orgamorator on various people, randomly. There are still jokes there though like when Matt Stone's character, who has the best lines in the entire film, gets shot and has no reaction. Makes me laugh every time.

I was by now so desperately longing for a reason to laugh that, yes, I did laugh at a scene where all of the characters leave the frame and fight offscreen, and debris is thrown onscreen from beyond the edges to indicate what a battle it is.

This is also a very funny scene.

“Orgazmo” was made before Trey Parker and Matt Stone became famous for the “South Park” cable cartoon program. (There is an even earlier film, “Cannibal: The Musical,” which is unseen by me and has an excellent chance of remaining so.) 

I have to wonder if he would have liked CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL. I, like many other people, find that film to be hilarious. The film has some catchy songs and tons of quotable lines. The film is incredibly low budget, which Ebert doesn't have a problem with, but was released by Troma, which Ebert kind of does. I think when Ebert is talking negatively about ORGAZMO, he is really talking about Troma, a company that can't even define the book in which the definition of "subtle" can be found. This isn't an insult to Troma, either. They would be the first to agree. I would hope Ebert would find CANNIBAL! funny but I have a feeling he would not.

“South Park” is elegant, in its way: A self-contained animated universe that functions as a laboratory to conduct experiments in affronting the values of viewers, who, if they held them, would not be watching. I like “South Park.” It has wit. I guess “Orgazmo” was a stage the boys had to go through. They’re juniors now.

I will agree that SOUTH PARK is much funny than ORGAZMO. I do think the satire is more spot on but that doesn't mean that ORGAZMO isn't funny. It just means SOUTH PARK is funnier. As for the film being "a stage the boys had to go through" is a knock but not necessarily. For them, every project informed the one that came after it. They learned from any mistakes they made while using what worked and making it better. Sure, it was a stage, but not a bad one.

So, Was Ebert Right?

No, but I can see his point. Satire doesn't work for everyone. Some people just don't get it or its told in a way that people don't pick up on it. There are people who don't think AIRPLANE! is a good film while thinking the Madea films are the peak of comedy. Different things are funny to different people. My wife HATES KUNG POW: ENTER THE FIST, but loves comedians like Dave Chappelle (a man who I used to think was funny until he started making fun of poor people while bragging about how rich he is). For me, KUNG POW is damn near perfect but to her its dogshit. To each their own.

I don't think that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have made a bad film here. It's not the funniest film out there but it is well worth a watch. The porn stuff is easy enough to laugh at because we all know how bad porn can be even if you've never seen any. The Mormon stuff could have been funnier but I don't think they wanted to go that way. Maybe they were testing the waters for their musical THE BOOK OF MORMON? I do think the Mormon stuff in that is so much better than it is here.

While many of the jokes don't work, there are a ton that do. I mentioned it before, but Matt Stone'e character is the funniest thing about the film. He plays Dave the Lighting Guy who always starts out a sentence with "I don't want to sound queer or nothing, but" and then says something that wouldn't be mistaken for "queer" like "I think Depeche Mode is a sweet band!" or "but I think unicorns are kick ass!" There are others too like the guy named Sancho keeps saying "I am Sancho" after being interrupted during a meeting.

ORGAZMO is a funny film that more people need to see. The film does carry an NC-17 rating so that limits how the film is found but it is out there and it is worth taking the time to watch it.