When bad celebrities happen to good fans
Being the good little Stargate: Atlantis fans that we are (try as the show might to turn us away), trakkie and I watched David Hewlett's film A Dog's Breakfast. Or, what the Stargate cast and crew did to pass the time during hiatus.
It is written by, directed by, and starring David Hewlett. It also stars his sister (as his sister), his dog (as his dog) and his "best friend" Paul McGillion, with a cameo by Chris Judge. His girlfriend is co-producer. The entire crew is from Stargate, as is one of the producers. They even got the Director of Photography on the Stargates, Jim Menard, who says in a wistful voice in the special features (four featurettes, deleted scenes and a commentary for this dinky film) that he was looking forward to vacation when he got the call, but he's never been able to turn down a job. Hell, the equipment they used was from Stargate, including the hi-def digital cameras. They even used one of the Stargate sets.
All these people? They were being paid "by deferral," which means not at all. David roped all his friends and family into doing this for free.
And after all that, A Dog's Breakfast is a turd. It falls into that class of films that tries so hard to be a comedy that nothing in it is even remotely funny. It is excruciating to watch.
It's the most self-indulgent thing I have ever seen. Eighty-eight minutes long, and there's probably about five minutes of the film where Hewlett is not in the shot. So enamored is Hewlett of himself that entire sequences will pass where you have no idea what he's actually doing because the camera is looking at Hewlett's face, rather than giving an establishing shot of what he's looking at.
Because of his connections with Stargate, he, as I mentioned, was able to use very expensive hi-def cameras. He had a full crew, makeup, hair, even teamsters. Yet it is clear that he storyboarded the film when he still expected to shoot it with a camera one step up from a camcorder. I don't believe he has a cameraman. I saw the cameraman in the extras but I still don't believe it. Why? Because the camera does not move. Ever. About an hour in, the camera moved a little. It was so shocking that I woke trakkie up to point it out to her.
Not only does the camera not move, every scene plays in a one shot. These shots are self-conciously "clever"-shot at odd angles with weird framing. He loves foregrounding an object, like sneakers, and allowing the action to take place deep in the frame. Apparently, Hewlett doesn't like closeups cause he barely uses them, even in dialogue. One scene was shot with such a weird angle and such bad lighting it looked like David and Kate Hewlett were in a cupboard instead of a bedroom.
Since all these shots are one shots, they can't be edited for timing. This is a serious problem. Comedy is timing. The timing of the line delivery in this sucks balls. Scenes will play like this: "I'm going to the store." *pause* "Okay." *pause* "Be careful hanging those lights." *pause* "I will."
If the dialogue were witty the timing would kill it, but the dialogue is not witty. It is faux witty. It's like Hewlett wrote "insert witty banter" in the script and never got around to writing it. He attempts to cover up the utter lack of timing with the overuse of sound effects, but this just makes it more awful, somehow.
David Hewlett has never directed an episode of Stargate and now I feel sure he never will.
In the commentary for "McKay and Mrs. Miller," Martin Gero and Martin Wood talk about how David and Kate (playing Rodney McKay and his sister Jeannie) didn't want to hug at the end of the episode. They said they would never do that. The Martins said they had to and they were right-that moment is the glue of the episode. It's the heart. It shows the warmth of this outwardly prickly relationship. Now imagine that you don't have the two Martins correcting David Hewlett and you get this movie.
David and Kate are brother and sister, yet I have never seen two people play siblings less convincingly on screen. There is no affection at all between them, no aggravated tolerance, no indulgence. Just cold, cutting remarks. When Kate in the movie says David is a psycho, it is not with the unheard "but I love him anyway;" she's just saying he's a psycho.
Trakkie commented on how bizarre it was the David has his littlest sister costarring in a film with him and yet has her dressed in gaudy fetishized fifties housewife outfits. She's in pig tails (and at one point eighties prom night type curls) with garish makeup wearing high heels and tulle skirts on brightly colored, low-cut dresses. Clearly the lack of fashion taste is meant to be funny. (Polyester purple polkadot dress plus a furry orange coat? Lime green print top with a red stole?) But the outfits are so eroticized you can't help but wonder why Hewlett would dress his sister up in them. It's like he used her as his own personal barbie doll.
And speaking of ridiculous costuming choices, Paul McGillion must really like David Hewlett because there's no other justification for him cross-dressing. I have never seen a more hideous woman as Paul McGillion in drag (and this was apparently with prosthetics and five make-up artists). It's so horrific it's not even laughable.
There's an entire scene between Paul in drag and bare-ass naked David Hewlett. David claims when he was writing the script he didn't even think about the fact that he'd be the one doing the naked scenes. Bull. Shit. This entire script was written to flatter his vanity, and the excruciating nudity is no exception. In the extras he says something like, "There comes a point where you're lying naked on the ground in January in Vancouver with your privates in a mud puddle looking up at your best friend in drag and you think, what the fuck am I doing?"
David Hewlett, I could not have put it better myself.
(As an amusing aside, his girlfriend, who was co-producer, admits to making them do that scene in only one take because she was afraid for the health of David's goodies.)
In "The Hive," there's a scene where Rodney is dialing back to Atlantis that is shot all in a wide shot with David tiny in the frame. In the commentary, Martin Gero says they were forced to do this because David had overacted so badly that, by the time they reached the editing room and it was far too late to reshoot, the only way they could tone it down was by making him tiny in the frame and having David rerecord the dialogue.
A Dog's Breakfast had no one to pull David back and say he was overdoing it.
A lot of the fun of being a fan of David Hewlett on SGA comes from the fact that yes, he is an arrogant, egotistical man, but he is surrounded by people who are bursting his bubble. It's funny because his co-stars make fun of his ego and he doesn't notice. Hewlett alone, rolling around in his ego like a dog in poo is a highly unattractive thing. And suddenly all those jokes about David Hewlett being Rodney McKay and all his co-stars jokingly saying they can't really stand him-not so much jokes anymore.
It's like watching Hewlett wank off for an hour and a half. Yes, A Dog's Breakfast is David Hewlett's spooge. It's one of those cases where the art is so bad that you can't help but conclude that the artist has no soul-clearly they don't have anything artistic to say if this is what they came up with.
What makes A Dog's Breakfast so acutely embarrassing to watch is knowing that all of his coworkers witnessed David Hewlett's folly. I was constantly wincing in sympathy with his friends and family that had to participate in this thing. The only reason this got made was SGA, and the only people who watched it were SGA fans. Hell, in the extras, Hewlett admits that the fans did all the marketing themselves which is the only reason they got a distributor. Having now seen it, I'm embarrassed for all of us that our love of David Hewlett has convinced him that this is a work of genius. If I did not already have a strict celebrity non-interaction policy, this film would have made it impossible for me to ever talk to David Hewlett. Because I'd have to say that I'd seen it, to prove I am a True Fan ™. And then I'd have to say what I thought of it.
I have seen a lot David Hewlett films. I've seen Cube, Nothing, Ice Men, Century Hotel, The Boys of St. Vincent, Where the Heart Is and Treed Murray. I've watched Traders and every one of his appearances on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, ER and Without a Trace. I've seen The Life Before This, Joe's Wedding, Elevated and Autoerotica. Hell, I've even seen Scanners II, Black Death and Boa vs. Python. And trust me-this was the worst thing David Hewlett has ever been in. At least I could laugh at the others.
It is written by, directed by, and starring David Hewlett. It also stars his sister (as his sister), his dog (as his dog) and his "best friend" Paul McGillion, with a cameo by Chris Judge. His girlfriend is co-producer. The entire crew is from Stargate, as is one of the producers. They even got the Director of Photography on the Stargates, Jim Menard, who says in a wistful voice in the special features (four featurettes, deleted scenes and a commentary for this dinky film) that he was looking forward to vacation when he got the call, but he's never been able to turn down a job. Hell, the equipment they used was from Stargate, including the hi-def digital cameras. They even used one of the Stargate sets.
All these people? They were being paid "by deferral," which means not at all. David roped all his friends and family into doing this for free.
And after all that, A Dog's Breakfast is a turd. It falls into that class of films that tries so hard to be a comedy that nothing in it is even remotely funny. It is excruciating to watch.
It's the most self-indulgent thing I have ever seen. Eighty-eight minutes long, and there's probably about five minutes of the film where Hewlett is not in the shot. So enamored is Hewlett of himself that entire sequences will pass where you have no idea what he's actually doing because the camera is looking at Hewlett's face, rather than giving an establishing shot of what he's looking at.
Because of his connections with Stargate, he, as I mentioned, was able to use very expensive hi-def cameras. He had a full crew, makeup, hair, even teamsters. Yet it is clear that he storyboarded the film when he still expected to shoot it with a camera one step up from a camcorder. I don't believe he has a cameraman. I saw the cameraman in the extras but I still don't believe it. Why? Because the camera does not move. Ever. About an hour in, the camera moved a little. It was so shocking that I woke trakkie up to point it out to her.
Not only does the camera not move, every scene plays in a one shot. These shots are self-conciously "clever"-shot at odd angles with weird framing. He loves foregrounding an object, like sneakers, and allowing the action to take place deep in the frame. Apparently, Hewlett doesn't like closeups cause he barely uses them, even in dialogue. One scene was shot with such a weird angle and such bad lighting it looked like David and Kate Hewlett were in a cupboard instead of a bedroom.
Since all these shots are one shots, they can't be edited for timing. This is a serious problem. Comedy is timing. The timing of the line delivery in this sucks balls. Scenes will play like this: "I'm going to the store." *pause* "Okay." *pause* "Be careful hanging those lights." *pause* "I will."
If the dialogue were witty the timing would kill it, but the dialogue is not witty. It is faux witty. It's like Hewlett wrote "insert witty banter" in the script and never got around to writing it. He attempts to cover up the utter lack of timing with the overuse of sound effects, but this just makes it more awful, somehow.
David Hewlett has never directed an episode of Stargate and now I feel sure he never will.
In the commentary for "McKay and Mrs. Miller," Martin Gero and Martin Wood talk about how David and Kate (playing Rodney McKay and his sister Jeannie) didn't want to hug at the end of the episode. They said they would never do that. The Martins said they had to and they were right-that moment is the glue of the episode. It's the heart. It shows the warmth of this outwardly prickly relationship. Now imagine that you don't have the two Martins correcting David Hewlett and you get this movie.
David and Kate are brother and sister, yet I have never seen two people play siblings less convincingly on screen. There is no affection at all between them, no aggravated tolerance, no indulgence. Just cold, cutting remarks. When Kate in the movie says David is a psycho, it is not with the unheard "but I love him anyway;" she's just saying he's a psycho.
Trakkie commented on how bizarre it was the David has his littlest sister costarring in a film with him and yet has her dressed in gaudy fetishized fifties housewife outfits. She's in pig tails (and at one point eighties prom night type curls) with garish makeup wearing high heels and tulle skirts on brightly colored, low-cut dresses. Clearly the lack of fashion taste is meant to be funny. (Polyester purple polkadot dress plus a furry orange coat? Lime green print top with a red stole?) But the outfits are so eroticized you can't help but wonder why Hewlett would dress his sister up in them. It's like he used her as his own personal barbie doll.
And speaking of ridiculous costuming choices, Paul McGillion must really like David Hewlett because there's no other justification for him cross-dressing. I have never seen a more hideous woman as Paul McGillion in drag (and this was apparently with prosthetics and five make-up artists). It's so horrific it's not even laughable.
There's an entire scene between Paul in drag and bare-ass naked David Hewlett. David claims when he was writing the script he didn't even think about the fact that he'd be the one doing the naked scenes. Bull. Shit. This entire script was written to flatter his vanity, and the excruciating nudity is no exception. In the extras he says something like, "There comes a point where you're lying naked on the ground in January in Vancouver with your privates in a mud puddle looking up at your best friend in drag and you think, what the fuck am I doing?"
David Hewlett, I could not have put it better myself.
(As an amusing aside, his girlfriend, who was co-producer, admits to making them do that scene in only one take because she was afraid for the health of David's goodies.)
In "The Hive," there's a scene where Rodney is dialing back to Atlantis that is shot all in a wide shot with David tiny in the frame. In the commentary, Martin Gero says they were forced to do this because David had overacted so badly that, by the time they reached the editing room and it was far too late to reshoot, the only way they could tone it down was by making him tiny in the frame and having David rerecord the dialogue.
A Dog's Breakfast had no one to pull David back and say he was overdoing it.
A lot of the fun of being a fan of David Hewlett on SGA comes from the fact that yes, he is an arrogant, egotistical man, but he is surrounded by people who are bursting his bubble. It's funny because his co-stars make fun of his ego and he doesn't notice. Hewlett alone, rolling around in his ego like a dog in poo is a highly unattractive thing. And suddenly all those jokes about David Hewlett being Rodney McKay and all his co-stars jokingly saying they can't really stand him-not so much jokes anymore.
It's like watching Hewlett wank off for an hour and a half. Yes, A Dog's Breakfast is David Hewlett's spooge. It's one of those cases where the art is so bad that you can't help but conclude that the artist has no soul-clearly they don't have anything artistic to say if this is what they came up with.
What makes A Dog's Breakfast so acutely embarrassing to watch is knowing that all of his coworkers witnessed David Hewlett's folly. I was constantly wincing in sympathy with his friends and family that had to participate in this thing. The only reason this got made was SGA, and the only people who watched it were SGA fans. Hell, in the extras, Hewlett admits that the fans did all the marketing themselves which is the only reason they got a distributor. Having now seen it, I'm embarrassed for all of us that our love of David Hewlett has convinced him that this is a work of genius. If I did not already have a strict celebrity non-interaction policy, this film would have made it impossible for me to ever talk to David Hewlett. Because I'd have to say that I'd seen it, to prove I am a True Fan ™. And then I'd have to say what I thought of it.
I have seen a lot David Hewlett films. I've seen Cube, Nothing, Ice Men, Century Hotel, The Boys of St. Vincent, Where the Heart Is and Treed Murray. I've watched Traders and every one of his appearances on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, ER and Without a Trace. I've seen The Life Before This, Joe's Wedding, Elevated and Autoerotica. Hell, I've even seen Scanners II, Black Death and Boa vs. Python. And trust me-this was the worst thing David Hewlett has ever been in. At least I could laugh at the others.