Funny pages magazine movie#

indie - Safdie collaborator Ronald Bronstein’s cult film Frownland seems like another influence - and yet Kline’s raw brand of humor sets him apart from others. These sentiments are funneled through a story that has the loose feel of many a U.S. At its heart, Funny Pages is less about the young cartoonist’s evolution - when we meet Robert, his talents already seem fully formed - than about his search for someone to guide him through life. Robert is clearly spoiled, but he’s also in desperate need of a figurehead. You wonder why Robert, who seems so resourceful and shrewd, would put up with any of this, and the answer comes when he returns back home and we see how distant he is from his own mom (Maria Dizzia) and dad (Josh Pais), as well as from a childhood friend, Miles (Miles Emanuel), who wants to draw comics as well. Kline milks their relationship for more crude laughs, especially in a scene where Wallace convinces his protégé to visit the pharmacy where he committed assault. Wallace is the kind of guy who’d make you cross over to the opposite sidewalk if he were approaching, and yet because he once worked for the coveted Image Comics - fans will know this as the breakout label founded by stars like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and Rob Liefield - Robert tries to make him his next mentor, begging for private drawing lessons and putting up with his sheer insanity. Robert’s talents land him a job working for a public defender (Marcia Debonis), where he crosses paths with Wallace (Matthew Maher), a completely off-kilter, former colorist (or color separator, to be exact) who’s been accused of attacking a pharmacist.

Funny pages magazine movie#

Like Crumb or Clowes, Kline has a keen eye for such characters and details, and his movie is filled with moments that are distinctive in their crudeness - moments that Robert depicts in his own cartoons, giving the whole thing a rather meta feel: Funny Pages is, in essence, an underground comic book film about an underground comic book artist who lives life on the margins, then captures it vividly in pencil and ink. If you do, then there’s much more to relish as Robert decides to quit school and strike out on his own, moving into a crammed, boiling hot basement in Trenton, where his landlord, Barry (Michael Townsend Wright), sits all day sweating inside an apartment that has never received direct sunlight. If you don’t laugh while watching these opening scenes, then the morose humor of Funny Pages probably isn’t for you. Katano tries to catch up with him afterwards to apologize and offer him a ride home, he’s killed in a car accident.

The incident creeps Robert out a little, and when Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis), his high school art teacher and mentor, in a long sequence where the latter winds up posing as a nude model to prove a point about life drawing. The humor here is more pitch-black than the Sattouf film, featuring an array of oddballs, freaks and geeks whom Robert crosses during his agonizing quest to become a successful comic book artist.

This low-budget, very indie effort should find some love on the Croisette as well, and hopefully won’t be Kline’s last attempt at the helm. There’s very much a late ’90s or early aughts pre-digital vibe to Funny Pages, which was shot on 16mm by Safdie regular Sean Price Williams (credited with cinematography along with Hunter Zimny), and which recalls other graphic novel-inspired or adapted films like Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb and Art School Confidential, as well as the Paul Giamatti starrer American Splendor.Įven more so, the antics of its 17-year-old antihero, Robert (Daniel Zolghadri, Eighth Grade), who quits his comfy suburban lodgings to try and make it as a starving cartoonist in the bowels of Trenton, N.J., are reminiscent of French bande dessinée artist and occasional director Riad Sattouf’s hilariously dark Les beaux gosses, which was a hit in Cannes back in 2009. Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors’ Fortnight)Ĭast: Daniel Zolghadri, Matthew Maher, Miles Emanuel, Marcia Debonis, Michael Townsend Wright