CONFESSIONS OF A CINEPLEX HECKLER: Celluloid Tirades and Escapades
Joe Queenan
Hyperion
Humor
ISBN: 0786884649

I've decided that I want to be Joe Queenan when I grow up.

Now, if you are familiar with Mr. Queenan's writings at all, an equation probably pops into your head every time you see or hear his name. That equation would be Queenan = Smartass. And it would be correct. But so would Queenan = Genius. He is a genius in the same sense that Gallagher, the comedian, is a genius. Both gentlemen pluck disparate elements of the universe out of the ether and harvest the essence of immutable, but heretofore unknown, laws from it and lay such pearls before us. And are uproariously funny while doing it.

Queenan's collection of articles and columns, CONFESSIONS OF A CINEPLEX HECKLER, does this in paragraph after paragraph, page after page. I was hooked from the moment I read the introduction, concerning Queenan's founding of The Antonio Banderas Research Society. I don't care how you read it, though, whether you start at the beginning like a doobee and read straight through to the end, or pick an article on the basis of the title and skip around, or throw the book down the stairs and start reading on whatever page the book falls open. He is hilarious. That is, he is laugh out loud, wake-the-house-up, scare the cat, bend over double and lose your donuts hilarious. He is also, in addition to being funny, always right, even when you disagree with him.

Let's take, for example, the dissertation entitled "The Remains of the Dazed." We all know what movie he is talking about here, don't we. Several years ago I was dragged kicking and screaming to this movie by a lady I was dating who had the voice of Madonna, the body of Monroe and the temperament of an eight-year-old Diana Ross. I sat through the whole thing, which was so long that it had an intermission on Wednesday. At the close of it I turned to my companion, my lover du jour, and asked, "Just for grins, could you tell me what happened?" She of course, could not.

Well, Queenan explains it all here. The Remains of the Daz --- I mean, Days, was the creation of a twosome named Ishmail Merchant and James Ivory, and they have other movies out there. One day Queenan's editors at Movieline gave him an assignment that caused him to blanch: watch the complete works of Merchant and Ivory. He almost made it, and his account of how he almost made it is not only hysterical but also has the ring of truth.

Queenan is also a stickler for realism in films. Such realism has caused him to attempt to duplicate such events as the candle wax foreplay scene in Body of Evidence (note to Mr. Queenan: this actually works better, though admittedly not much better, if someone else is controlling the wax); the hanging-on-to-the-liferaft segment of Titanic; and the call-for-help-through-the-vents-from-the-hospital-basement trick in Conspiracy Theory. Naturally, none of this stuff can be done, and we all know it. I, for one, am grateful that he did not attempt to replicate the occupied-baby-carriage-down-the-train-station-stairs scene in The Untouchables.

Queenan, however, uses these events, and his attempts at recreating them, as a vehicle to further skewer everything, and everyone, in sight. His humor is also quite direct; his tongue is never in cheek, because it is so sharp that he would have flesh hanging from his jowls. And speaking of flesh hanging from jowls, how could we forget the...well, the unforgettable essay entitled "Eat It Raw," which begins as a review of such animals-out-for-trouble movies as Godzilla, Jaws and Cujo but quickly devolves --- or evolves --- into a dissertation concerning the following final examination question: if you were to be eaten alive, which member of the animal kingdom would you want to do the duty?

There is so much more in CONFESSIONS OF A CINEPLEX HECKLER... "Blarney Stoned," about ridiculous Irish movies; "Lend Me Your Ears," which probes the trend in films of displaying body mutilation; "And Then There Were Nuns," concerning the portrayal of nuns in films; and --- well, so much more. Even the index is hilarious. I guarantee you --- if CONFESSIONS OF A CINEPLEX HECKLER is your first Queenan book, it will not be your last.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.