{"id":3376,"date":"2013-09-30T00:00:23","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T04:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3376"},"modified":"2013-09-30T13:51:21","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T17:51:21","slug":"the-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/the-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brotherhood of the Traveling Rants: That Weird Penis Guy Made a Great Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rants\"

\nThe Brotherhood of the Traveling Rants<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b>Directed by Steve Durand, Bryan Gaynor, Gavin McInnes
\n68 min.<\/p>\n

Most of the people reading this probably have no idea who Gavin McInnes is. My first introduction to him was through his weird penis. I\u2019m a big fan of Terry Richardson\u2019s photography, and many years ago I saw a couple photos by him of some guy with pointy facial hair and a very pointy foreskin*. These photos forever stuck with me, and it wasn\u2019t until about a year ago that I saw this mystery man again, on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld<\/a>. Turns out the pointy foreskin man is a smart and funny writer and comedian who has a lot of great outside-of-the-box opinions on stuff. And now, with this movie, I’ve been surprised by him once again\u2014the man has some serious acting and filmmaking chops.<\/p>\n

The Brotherhood of the Traveling Rants<\/a> is one of those sorta-documentaries containing some real scenes and some fake scenes. This kind of gimmick is usually annoying and unsettling, because you never really have a sure foothold, and you spend the duration of the film trying to deduce what\u2019s real and what\u2019s fake rather than just following the actual story. This film gets<\/i> that, though. The switch-offs between real and fake here are so goddamn tongue-in-cheek and good spirited that by the end, the whole damn thing approaches transcendence, satisfying both your funny bone and your heartstrings in ways you will never have thought possible from what is essentially a standup comedy film.
\n
\nA similar-ish feat was tried a bunch of years ago with The Comedians of Comedy<\/a>, which is definitely very good, but doesn\u2019t really tell a story. Sure, we get glimpses \u2018behind the curtain\u2019 here and there, but they\u2019re slapdash, and the real meat of the film is clearly just Oswalt and Galifianakis and Bamford and Posehn\u2019s standup. With Gavin\u2019s film however, the focus is primarily on the relationship between him and his longtime best friend Steve Durand, who he is on a standup road trip with. The tour performances interspersed throughout are certainly as funny as anything in The Comedians of Comedy, but they exist to reinforce a larger story\u2014no easy feat, and surprisingly, this is accomplished quite deftly.<\/p>\n

What this means is that even if you don\u2019t enjoy Gavin\u2019s particular brand of dirty and potentially offensive humor, it\u2019s still possible to enjoy this movie, because it\u2019s not about that. It\u2019s about how humor is used\u2014<\/i>specifically, between best friends. It\u2019s about the power of humor to unite two people, but also, its shortcomings at such. In that way, it\u2019s similar to Rick Alverson\u2019s brilliant film The Comedy<\/a>, although significantly less stylized, which is fine, because it doesn\u2019t need to be. In fact, it\u2019s better off for it. The rawness makes the whole thing feel impromptu; its messages seemingly stumbled upon, even though they\u2019re there by design. It\u2019s great slight of hand.<\/p>\n

To mention yet another movie in yet another paragraph, several scenes in The Brotherhood of the Traveling Rants recall The Trip<\/a>, Michael Winterbottom\u2019s very good \u2018the actors are playing themselves but they aren’t playing themselves but they are kinda\u2019 movie from a few years back. So if you appreciated that one, you\u2019ll probably appreciate this one (although that one was fully a fiction film, and this is a sorta-doc). The only problem is, if you\u2019re a fan of The Trip, you\u2019re never gonna fucking hear about Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants. Hell, even if you\u2019ve got your finger firmly on the pulse of independent film, you\u2019re probably not gonna hear about it. Which is a damn shame.<\/p>\n

I guess the intended audience for this film is people who like Gavin McInnes and want to see what he\u2019s up to, which, although he\u2019s popular in certain circles, can\u2019t be that many people. Thus, this will likely end up being a film most people never hear about. This is a damn shame, because it’s a great example of clever, gung ho, low-budget independent film, and I could see it having appeal far beyond its built-in fan base. Ideally, people should be discovering him through<\/i> this film, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

Currently this is on Video on Demand, which is a great feat, but it\u2019s unlikely people who don\u2019t already know\/like him will take a $4.99 chance on it. Hell, people reading this right now who trust my taste, and love all the movies I mentioned in this review, probably won\u2019t even take the monetary plunge on this thing. Which means Netflix is the ideal home for it, and I\u2019m sure that\u2019s where it\u2019ll end up eventually.<\/p>\n

On the off chance one or two of you are<\/em>\u00a0mulling the idea of giving this a blind shot on VOD, here\u2019s a last ditch attempt to get you to go ahead and do that: the end credits are possibly my favorite end credits ever. I say this because one, it\u2019s true, and two, it drives people crazy to hear shit like this. They want to see what you\u2019re talking about immediately, and they can\u2019t, and it eats them up inside. Then, for weeks, they hypothesize about what could possibly make the end credits so great, and decide to just rent the goddamn movie and see what\u2019s up. This process is like The Ring<\/a>, except after seven days, \u00a0instead of dying, you just watch a really good movie that you\u2019re totally gonna enjoy.<\/p>\n

4 out of 5 Codys.<\/i><\/p>\n

*Update:<\/strong> Since posting this,\u00a0Gavin has reached out to me and clarified that his penis isn’t in fact pointy<\/a>! He was stepping on his foreskin in the photo, which is what made it appear\u00a0pointy. I hadn’t actually looked at the photo in quite some time, and remembered it wrong. He’s right.<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tQZVPSw3oGU<\/p>\n

Order it now at Amazon.com!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"rants\"
\n

\nThe Brotherhood of the Traveling Rants<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b>Directed by Steve Durand, Bryan Gaynor, Gavin McInnes
\n68 min.<\/p>\n

Most of the people reading this probably have no idea who Gavin McInnes is. My first introduction to him was through his weird penis. I\u2019m a big fan of Terry Richardson\u2019s photography, and many years ago I saw a couple photos by him of some guy with pointy facial hair and a very pointy foreskin. These photos forever stuck with me, and it wasn\u2019t until about a year ago that I saw this mystery man again, on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld<\/a>. Turns out the pointy foreskin man is a smart and funny writer and comedian who has a lot of great outside-of-the-box opinions on stuff. And now, with this movie, I’ve been surprised by him once again\u2014the man has some serious acting and filmmaking chops.<\/p>\n

The Brotherhood of the Traveling Rants<\/a> is one of those sorta-documentaries containing some real scenes and some fake scenes. This kind of gimmick is usually annoying and unsettling, because you never really have a sure foothold, and you spend the duration of the film trying to deduce what\u2019s real and what\u2019s fake rather than just following the actual story. This film gets<\/i> that, though. The switch-offs between real and fake here are so goddamn tongue-in-cheek and good spirited that by the end, the whole damn thing approaches transcendence, satisfying both your funny bone and your heartstrings in ways you will never have thought possible from what is essentially a standup comedy film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[2820,2806,2807,2809,2813,32,2819,2811,2812,2821,2826,2822,2816,2817,2825,104,185,2814,2815,2805,2808,2810,2818,2824,2827,772,2823],"class_list":["post-3376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysreviews","tag-brian-posehn","tag-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants","tag-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants-review","tag-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants-trailer","tag-bryan-gaynor","tag-cody-clarke","tag-comedians-of-comedy","tag-gavin-mcinnes","tag-gavin-mcinnes-movie","tag-maria-bamford","tag-michael-winterbottom","tag-patton-oswalt","tag-red-eye","tag-red-eye-with-greg-gutfeld","tag-rick-alverson","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-steve-durand","tag-terry-richardson","tag-the-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants","tag-the-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants-review","tag-the-brotherhood-of-the-traveling-rants-trailer","tag-the-comedians-of-comedy","tag-the-comedy","tag-the-ring","tag-the-trip","tag-zach-galifianakis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3376"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3400,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3376\/revisions\/3400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}