Streaming Shuffle
An all-time great comedic premise, plus some weird, lovable jerks.
A few minutes into Let’s Start a Cult, I wound up sending a text: “Imagine being deliberately left out of your cult’s mass suicide. That’s probably my biggest fear.”
I kind of meant it, too. Cults are weird, to put it mildly—one of the best running gags here is how nonsensical invented, entirely inorganic mythologies can sound—but social groups are universal. It hurts to suspect, let alone find out, that you’re the unfriend, tolerated but not really welcome … even when the cozy get-together everyone has without you involves “transcending” via a goblet of poison.
Actually, that’s especially bad. Cults are famous for not wanting people to leave; it’s one of their defining attributes! This is like the ultimate safety school rejection of friendship.
But in Ben Kitnick’s funny, raucous indie comedy, that’s the situation that Chip Harper (Stavros Halkias) finds himself in. And to add insult to injury, it’s easy to see why. William Davenport (Wes Haney, projecting a veneer of serenity over a bottomless amount of ego and calculation) likes to play-act being an indulgent patriarch, bolstering his wide-eyed and naïvely loyal followers with compliments and strategically deployed responsibilities. Chip—immature, id-driven, goofy, greedy, and also naïvely loyal—spoils the vibe. William has a script for how all this should go, but Chip is too anarchic to get on the same page even when he wants to. So William sends him off-screen, so to speak, and carries out the plan without him.
Chip is devastated. He makes a brief attempt to rebuild a life with his birth family, but he’s soon getting on their nerves, too. It all comes to a swift end when he discovers that William is still alive. Chip tracks him down and makes a proposal: they form another family, this time as co-leaders, and all transcend together. They get it right this time.
The movie now has to pull off the semi-difficult task of convincing you that Chip, who has aggravated nearly every single person he’s come into contact with so far, can stumble his way into honest, loving connection. And you know what? It may cheat a little, but it pretty much works. Halkias knows that whatever else Chip is, he’s genuine. So is his devotion. You can see how he wouldn’t do well with William’s hand-picked followers, who—as we eventually find out—had already coalesced as a group before he was brought onboard, but it becomes believable that he’d do better with misfits of his own. Especially misfits hitting rock bottom: when you’re at your lowest, Chip’s gregarious willingness to like you despite it all is definitely appealing. He’s like a teddy bear with some very suspicious stains.
And what a crowd of misfits he gathers. Katy Fullan, Daniel Simonsen, and Eric Rahill all turn in great comedic performances, and Rahill’s Tyler—an earnest Army-reject who perfectly balances his deep strangeness with an obvious conviction of his own normalcy—almost walks away with the whole movie. He can make me laugh just by the thoughtful intensity of him trying to recount Pinocchio, which he can only remember as “the movie about the wooden child.” They’re delightful, off-putting oddballs, funny and needy and intense.
It’s easy to care about them, and seeing Chip care about them makes it easier to care about him, too. Having people to be impulsive and immature for gives him more purpose. It also drives home how different he is from William, who, for all his superficial niceness and very real intelligence, is essentially a user coasting to fame and power via other people’s lives. One of the best tiny moments of power-tripping meanness he gets is when he greets a sulky Chip with, “Ah, Chip, you decided to join us,” when William himself had only gotten up a minute before.
Inevitably, the movie pushes the Chip-William conflict to a head—it even has a low-key great dramatic line in the process: “Actually, I want to get this on camera”—and uses that to force the budding cult to make a decision about who and what they want. It’s not really spoiling anything to say that it turns out they’d rather have someone to walk alongside than someone to follow.
Let’s Start a Cult is a ton of fun, with a great cast of comedic actors willing to give messy, ego-free performances. It excels at finding the most perfectly weird way to say something, whether that’s a news broadcast inquiring about Chip’s “mysterious obese hand” or Chip describing Simonsen’s Jim Smith as “a foreign man of some kind.” It has—as our own Captain Nath has pointed out—a penchant for a Billy Madison-like silly sadism, where dire punishments are meted out to anyone who dares to even mildly inconvenience our hero, and it’s brutally matter-of-fact enough about it to make that funny too.
It could probably stand to go a few degrees darker than it does, especially at the end: there’s a sense of potential unease just under the surface in some of the last few scenes that makes me wonder if another ending was floated at some point. But what we have is undeniably likable and beautifully committed to being funny above all else.1 If the idea of a kind of slobs vs. snobs literal-cult comedy intrigues you, and you want it exuberant and tasteless and surprisingly heartfelt, this is the movie for you.
Let’s Start a Cult is streaming on Hulu.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Green Room
As ever, this movie rules. Great atmosphere; fantastic, unobtrusive switch from laid-back characterization (all the early hangout vibes) to effective, action-based characterization. Amazing Patrick Stewart performance—he should really do more villains, because few things are as terrifying as someone with Stewart’s fierce, calm intelligence trying to murder you. It’s a movie full of strong sequences, but my favorite might be the glorious, rapid-fire escalation that happens when Pat opens the green room door to give the phone to Darcy, with all that tension suddenly exploding like a chain of fireworks: Amber spotting the red laces outside and instantly understanding (“They’re killing us”), Reece breaking Big Justin’s arm, and Pat getting his arm brutally hacked up by machetes. The way his hand flops off his wrist afterwards is such an incredible, visceral touch.
Whenever I rewatch this—or rewatch anything Anton Yelchin did—I feel gutted all over again that we lost him so young. What an incredible talent.
Same here, he’s amazing in this movie, and so’s Imogen Poots’ sheer sense of rage and vengeance. She’s been living in an entirely different world than this guy.
Hacks, Season Three, Episode Seven, “The Deborah Vance Christmas Spectacular”
Kind of a weak episode – Jimmy and Kayla dealing with Christopher Lloyd being full Christopher Lloyd well into his eighties is the best part, because watching Jimmy work is never not fun. Outside that, it’s never actually bad but the story is repeating a few beats – we already know Deborah puts her professional instincts ahead of social skills and family connections, and we’ve already seen an old connection who turns out to be considerably less bitter than Deborah expects, and we’ve already seen she’s capable of being perfectly mature in resolving an old conflict, so this isn’t really anything new. But weak Hacks still has a lot of good lines.
We Beat the Dream Team – In 1992, as part of the run-up to the debut of a team of NBA stars at the Olympics instead of college stars, the college stars who probably would have gone to the games were recruited to serve as a practice team for the pros. This “select team” managed in a scrimmage to beat the best players on Earth. This fairly standard but entertaining documentary looks back at the moment, not a secret but rarely talked about. All the surviving members of the select team are interviewed, as are several Dream Teamers (including Michael Jordan) and some of the coaches. The footage of the scrimmage is fun, as is the look back to that moment, when everyone’s style was more freewheeling, and when eleven incredibly talented and incredibly arrogant players went to the Olympics and represented the best and the worst of America. (I have never liked the dream team approach, and I am looking forward to the day when a Wemby-led French team beats a cocksure American team for the gold.)
Kojak, “Unwanted Partners” – A childhood friend of Bobby Crocker is mixed up in a protection racket. This is the first time in nearly two seasons that we learn anything about the private life of Kojak’s right hand man. I cannot imagine going two episodes now without such information. Fairly standard episode. Guests include Brad Dexter, the least remembered of the Magnificent Seven.
Frasier, “The Candidate” – After Martin does an ad for a law and order Congressional candidate, Frasier endorses his more liberal opposition, only for the candidate to tell Frasier he was abducted by aliens six years earlier! You would think after his bad experiences with city council races on Cheers, Frasier would know better. Frasier also puts his foot in his mouth on the air, again. Two episodes in a row. How does he keep this job for eleven years? Average level of humor, and a bit hard to watch liberal Frasier and not remember that Kelsey Grammer is on the other side.
In Dog Years – Short that talks to owners of very elderly dogs, interviewing them on camera, but focused on the dogs sitting on their laps or lolling on the floor at their feet. A pint-sized Gates of Heaven with a handful of nice details (my favorite is a little aggressive dog in a muzzle being petted by a bandaged hand). Thanks to Dave for pointing this one out.
Glad you liked it! And a good reminder to hit up more Romavy before the end of the month.
Josh Johnson live streamed his stand-up about the Halftime Show and it was great, he’s basically been killing it this whole tour.
FRIDAY
The Double Life of Véronique (La Double Vie de Véronique)
First time. Saw The Double Life of Veronique today. Remarkable and tender, with a fine sense of how mysterious and ineffable living life feels like. Irene Jacob gives two incredible performances, commanding the screen despite playing characters full of uncertainties. Would lie if I said it all made sense (they the Three Colours movies do, sort of) but it’s a great sensual experience nonetheless. Reminds me a lot of Cléo from 5 to 7 in retrospect.
Past Lives
First time. A lovely, bittersweet movie about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The question of how we can never fully know the ones we love is very well illustrated here, and infuses a melancholy, powerful final scene where it isn’t fully answered. Lots of echoes of Linklater’s Before Trilogy, even if it doesn’t reach its highs.
SATURDAY
Primal
Season 1, Episode 4. “Rage of the Ape Men”. First time.
Spear and Fang lounge around a lake and getting an extended, discreet, joyful kind of peace that this world largely hasn’t afforded them so far. It’s quite beautiful, bracing and life-affirming in its way and goes for long enough that you think they might have gotten a good break finally.
Well, see the episode title. This is not that show.
Eventually they get captured by ape men who bring them to a ceremonial fighting ground, were a mutant ape takes pleasure to beat the t-rex Fang senseless before Spear breaks free and uses the ape men’s own venom juice to go into hulk mode and beat them all into a pulp. It is total carnage, awesome to watch and yet not a total victory, since Fang is still badly hurt, with Spear alone in a hostile land at the cliffhanger ending.
Season 1, Episode 5. “Scent of Prey”. First time.
Spear nurses Fang back to health while fending off vultures, wild dogs and beetles, having to engineer a way to move Fang out of danger and barricade the two in a cave. It’s a straightforward story, moving out of one frying pan to another, surviving long enough to live another day in a world where everything can and probably will kill you.
Scavengers Reign
Season 1, Episode 1. “The Signal”. First time.
It’s a straightforward story, moving out of one frying pan to another, surviving long enough to live another day in a world where everything can and probably will kill you. I didn’t intend to go from one show in a fantastical far past where its main characters are struggling to survive to another in a fantastical far future where its main characters are struggling to survive, it just happened that way. The parallels are evident but these is a quite different show, focusing on different bands of human survivors of an exploratory starship in a distant planet try to figure out their new environment and perhaps find a way out. One is a couple who are trying to find a battery for their radio device, getting into a cave to do so and nearly dying due to gruesome body horror infection. Another is a lone woman struggling with the local fauna and her own mercurial assistant robot, who nearly get each other killed while their resources dwindle. Finally, there’s another guy roaming around with his mind shot, hallucinating of people back home. And around them is a richly animated world, with its own alien ways and wild creatures. The first group does get the radio to work, bringing their derelict ship, with plenty of hibernating crew and presumable much more tech and resources, down into the planet, joining together all the threads and surely more trouble for the rest of the season. Very good start for the show.
FUCK YEAH PRIMAL! The hulk mode scene is astonishing, “carnage” really is the only word. And you’re coming up on another incredible one.
Also didn’t intend to watch back to back movies so focused on reflecting on the outsized impact of mundane circumstance on our lives, it just happened that way. Two very different approaches, the former being subtle and mysterious (fitting, given its protagonists are musical people first), while Past Lives makes it explicit text (fitting, given the story is really pushed forward by its writer protagonist at every turn).
The 39 Steps– Leonard Leff’s mini-doc on the Criterion channel confirmed something that I’ve suspected about this 1935 Hitchcock effort, his first in a string of “innocent man on the run” films. This was developed with American distribution in mind, and hence the integration of screwball romantic comedy elements in what is otherwise part of a series of films Hitchcock made about middle class brits confronting the instability of a global order that will eventually thrust them into another global conflict. Hitchcock doesn’t fully develop the archetypal contrast between Robert Donat and Madelene Carrol, missing the class conscious (and often journalistic) dynamic in which the 1930s flick thrived. In compensation, the film moves at a sprightly pace with more character centered set pieces, both comedic and suspenseful, and the ending, which in some respects mirrors the central sequence in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, adds a certain unexpected gravitas to the lead’s union.
Perfect final shot too. My sister and I owned a beaten-up 80’s videocasette of this and have fond memories of it. Hitchcock’s wit and venomous intelligence about relationships at play when one character any other movie would forget about reveals herself.
The 39 Steps– Leonard Leff’s mini-doc on the Criterion channel confirmed something that I’ve suspected about this 1935 Hitchcock effort, his first in a string of “innocent man on the run” films. This was developed with American distribution in mind, and hence the integration of screwball romantic comedy elements in what is otherwise part of a series of films Hitchcock made about middle class brits confronting the instability of a global order that will eventually thrust them into another global conflict. Hitchcock doesn’t fully develop the archetypal contrast between Robert Donat and Madelene Carrol, missing the class conscious (and often journalistic) dynamic in which the 1930s flick thrived. In compensation, the film moves at a sprightly pace with more character centered set pieces, both comedic and suspenseful, and the ending, which in some respects mirrors the central sequence in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, adds a certain unexpected gravitas to the lead’s union. It is also the film in which each sequence reinforces the notion of inherent unrealiability of social norms in dealing with deceit running rampant in the flow of everyday life.
I see I’m not the only one having issues with the comments service today.
In The Land Of Saints And Sinners — Liam Neeson! Murderous skills! Roadmap! But the road here runs out of 1975 Belfast and into quiet Donegal, where some IRA members on the run led by Kerry Condon run afoul of Neeson’s semi-retired hit man. Steeped in vengeance but low-key and smartly so, Neeson has the gravitas to really be tired of what he’s made of his life and Condon had the stubborn ruthlessness to not let him walk away easy. Solid crime, not a world-beater but a slice of a bad life.
Hooray! What a fun film. And you nailed so much of what makes it fun. Eric Rahill in particular absolutely crushes it as Tyler, just the kind of dim bulb who’s totally unaware he is one, with his killer line deliveries making the character far more funny than it might have been on paper. (Not that some of the lines aren’t great. “They said I have something called celery bones. They’re shaped like a U instead of round.”)
What’s interesting about the plotting to me – aside from having a very clean three-act structure – is how much more time is spent on the “Start” part than the “Cult” part. The conflict between William and Chip simmers the whole time – you suspect William starts to think prison might be preferable to hanging out with this guy – but most of the film is given to finding the new recruits and looking for a place they can settle down. (And even when they find that, it really gets to the heart of Chip and William’s characters, and the difference between them, in a nutshell. William’s self-centeredness squanders what he was given; Chip was given nothing and creates something from nothing just by being himself.)
This movie also has maybe the funniest and most undignified (certainly on the latter point) sex scene since MacGruber. (There’s also a bit of foreshadowing I only caught on my second watch, with… well, let’s just say the wrestling poster in Chip’s bedroom.)
The Billy Madison “dire punishments” are really funny at the end in particular – the final line is hilarious – but part of what I love about the ending is how the dumb, absurd details seem like they were derived from Chip’s own fantasy ending. (There’s one detail that cracks me up and harkens back to something similar in perhaps Repo Man or Shoot ‘Em Up.) As far as other antecedents – Chip’s explanation to his family of where he’d gone is very Napoleon Dynamite, and the central persona here in Stavvy’s character harkens to a different kind of but no less pointed observation of a particular American masculinity – the works of Jody Hill and Danny McBride. The Vulture review gets to it well:
Some nice gets in minor roles – Ethan Suplee plays Chip’s brother, and that’s CM Punk as the guy with the RV. (Speaking of minor roles, Joe Pera crushes it in his one scene.)
I don’t think I overlooked anything I wanted to bring up, other than what was in my original review, which I’ll now post.
Let’s Start a Cult
The new film from the mind of Stavros Halkias, a comedian you probably have heard me mention many times but I’m still not sure any of you actually know. Halkias co-wrote this with director Ben Kitnick and co-star Wes Haney.
Starting in August 2000 with camcorder footage of the cult recording their last testimony before their mass suicide, Haney plays the cult leader William; Stavvy is Chip, a boorish, immature, loudmouth loser who everyone else in the cult gets so sick of they decide to conduct their mass suicide without him. A dismayed, alone Chip returns home to his parents and brother, who are not fuckups, and tries to work at their gravel company. Then a few months later he sees a news report where the authorities have found the now-abandoned cult house… and William’s body isn’t there. Chip tracks him down and convinces/blackmails him into starting a new cult, and from there they start getting recruits: Tyler, a dimwitted Army reject; Diane, a woman angry at the judge who took away custody of her son, and “Jim Smith,” an apparently Eastern European hitchhiker. And on we go from there.
Look, it’s definitely a dumb funny movie, and the shagginess is evident. There are a few things that could have been developed better with a little more time, like the bonding among the new cult, and a few places where it feels like Stav is rushing his lines to get them out. But Stav also has the comic persona and voice of this confident idiot loser character nailed down, and the supporting cast is great and all get some incredibly funny, specific lines as well. (I cracked up nearly every time Tyler spoke, and Jim Smith gets an insane monologue toward the end of the film that’s brilliant. There’s also a very funny one-scene performance from two house painters, playing total idiots completely in sync like Mark McKinney might have done with Bruce McCulloch or Scott Thompson on The Kids in the Hall.) There’s a very funny sex scene, naturally– with setup and fallout that’s possibly even funnier.
The influences are evident: There’s a touch of Napoleon Dynamite, in that Chip’s excuse to his family as to where he was for five years is at “I spent it with my uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines” levels of delusional and unbelievable. (Also, the fact that the loser does get a happy ending.) Adam Sandler’s loud idiots are another touchstone, perhaps most specifically Billy Madison in its deliberate stupidity and protagonist manchild who mildly rises to the occasion. The ending where-are-they-now montage is quite funny, both in its Billy Madison-esque disproportionate retribution for Chip’s enemies, and that it seems like the ending Chip would have written for himself and his friends.
The work of Danny McBride / Jody Hill / Sometimes David Gordon Green is most notable, and why I’ve been thinking about The Foot Fist Way as a comparison point to this film. They’re both first films and reflect that in certain aspects that will be tightened up with experience and refinement, but there’s also a comic voice and persona that the lead/writer already has nailed: Much like McBride’s blustery southern wannabe alpha male voice is already in place in that film, Stav really has his Baltimore confident idiot loser character down pat, including the specific word choices and ways of behaving. (And, to be honest, I think I found this funnier than The Foot Fist Way— Hill/McBride were better at some of the technical aspects of filmmaking, but this is just funnier overall and lands more often– so if I’m right, this bodes for a promising trajectory for Halkias’ future work.)
It is funny and a good time, and while I might not go so far as to call it sweet, there is something sweet in Chip: He’s a loser who keeps making bad decisions because he’s pretty stupid, but at his core he’s a lonely soul looking for meaning and belonging, and it’s his gifts for recognizing other lonely souls and seeing the best in them that ultimately brings this group together. And that’s the real lesson of the film: The heart of a cult isn’t in the mass suicide, it’s in the found family.
I loved noticing the wrestling poster on the rewatch. And that’s an especially great point about William squandering his aunt’s love vs. Chip getting Dorota’s through sincere enthusiasm.
Throwing in one more great Tyler delivery: “And I still like you, but not as much.”
Honestly, the point about Dorota and the house didn’t even occur to me until I was reading your review this morning. But it does make for the perfect contrast between the two: William is intelligent and superficially nice, but he’s a self-centered sociopath; Chip is a loud, immature idiot prone to obnoxiousness and ridiculously unbelievable bluster and boasting, but he’s genuine and sincere in his appreciation for these people and his desire to forge connections with them.
That is one of the funniest Tyler lines, coming at the perfect time. I also love the exchange after they convince William to let Diane on board:
CHIP (to William): Dude, I saw what you were doing back there, but I’m actually awesome at maps. The thing you got to do is follow the roads.
TYLER: That’s a good trick.
CHIP: I know.
I need to catch this, although Hulu is worse than any murderous cult. In the meantime, standard rec for the indie comedy Salesmen, in which Halkias … starts a cult. Very successfully! He’s not the main story at first but becomes more important, and he’s great throughout, very sincere and personalable in his lunacy
Yes you do.
I like that this means I can do a double-feature consisting entirely of movies where Stavros Halkias starts cults.
Ahahah, also, perfect header image choice.