"Car Wash" in a record store. "The Gong Show" meets "Empire Records." The fever dream of a cocaine-riddled comedy writer. The Seventies in concentrated form. "Record City" is all of these things and many more.
It's certainly no one-man play here, as the cast features every character actor and comedian in Hollywood that wasn't doing anything that week, along with other assorted Seventies pop culture flotsam like Rick Dees, Kinky Friedman, and that guy from that show, you know the one. (I guess The Real Don Steele wasn't available?)
Record City is an assault on good taste and humor, all captured on 2 inch videotape and transferred to film for editing. (Exact reverse of how it's done these days.) I guess the only people missing from this parade of spandex and glitter were Mason Reese, Scatman Crothers and Sigmund The Sea Monster. (Kids, Google or ask your grandparents about that...or for that matter what a record store is...)
When not marveling at the paper thin plot, stretched to the breaking point by the inclusion of way too many characters, hell, way too many protagonists, you'll be gobsmacked at the by-this-time cringe-worthy jokes featuring the (not) wonderful worlds of casual racism, sexism, homophobia (that's pure gold for the writer, apparently, since he keeps coming back to that gag as well as being-hit-in-the-nuts humor) and misogyny. If the jokes aren't headache inducing enough, your eyes will have to adjust to not only Seventies street fashions, but Seventies Vegas-style stage costumes as well. And, oh yeah, the pseudo-Nazi outfit worn by Jeff Altman, who has about three lines, playing second fiddle to freaking Rick Dees and his mock Wolfman Jack as a gorilla shtick.
Record City captures a moment in time long gone, and one which will never return. Thank God. Approach with caution, and then only from the perspective of an anthropologist visiting some long-thought vanished ancient culture whose ways have become lost to the modern world.
SPOILER ALERT!
Isaac Your Bartender wins the talent contest.
It's certainly no one-man play here, as the cast features every character actor and comedian in Hollywood that wasn't doing anything that week, along with other assorted Seventies pop culture flotsam like Rick Dees, Kinky Friedman, and that guy from that show, you know the one. (I guess The Real Don Steele wasn't available?)
Record City is an assault on good taste and humor, all captured on 2 inch videotape and transferred to film for editing. (Exact reverse of how it's done these days.) I guess the only people missing from this parade of spandex and glitter were Mason Reese, Scatman Crothers and Sigmund The Sea Monster. (Kids, Google or ask your grandparents about that...or for that matter what a record store is...)
When not marveling at the paper thin plot, stretched to the breaking point by the inclusion of way too many characters, hell, way too many protagonists, you'll be gobsmacked at the by-this-time cringe-worthy jokes featuring the (not) wonderful worlds of casual racism, sexism, homophobia (that's pure gold for the writer, apparently, since he keeps coming back to that gag as well as being-hit-in-the-nuts humor) and misogyny. If the jokes aren't headache inducing enough, your eyes will have to adjust to not only Seventies street fashions, but Seventies Vegas-style stage costumes as well. And, oh yeah, the pseudo-Nazi outfit worn by Jeff Altman, who has about three lines, playing second fiddle to freaking Rick Dees and his mock Wolfman Jack as a gorilla shtick.
Record City captures a moment in time long gone, and one which will never return. Thank God. Approach with caution, and then only from the perspective of an anthropologist visiting some long-thought vanished ancient culture whose ways have become lost to the modern world.
SPOILER ALERT!
Isaac Your Bartender wins the talent contest.