609 – The Skydivers with Short:
Why Study The Industrial Arts?
éééé
Things I liked in the movie:
Coffee.
The slap fight.
Harry’s death.
Coleman Francis’s love of shooting people from aircraft.
Impressions
Short
If you like amateur actors reading lines in a listless monotone, if you like to hear long lists of tools and jobs read very slowly, and if you like young men to be white and part their hair like they really mean it – this short is for you. If not, you’ll probably like it anyway because Mike and the Bots do a very nice job of slamming it. The riffs are fast and furious and pretty funny. Most of the time they say what you were thinking only in a much funnier way.
Movie
It’s a Coleman Francis movie. Coleman got a producer of some sort, apparently, because this is a Cardoza-Francis production. He’s replicating! As in all Coleman Francis movies, we have these common elements: 1) Bored people listlessly milling about and mumbling their lines, 2) airplanes, 3) people with no authority or evidence shooting other people. It’s about as bad as his others, Red Zone Cuba and Beast of Yucca Flats, so there’s a three-way tie. The riffing is really good in this one. I can’t say I would put this in my top ten, but it was definitely a good episode with plenty of laughs.
Synopsis
Short
A student that seems suspiciously enamored of everything tool-related talks to his friend about shop class. During this conversation, he talks about another conversation with his shop teacher, who simply reads his cue cards back to the student. The conversation mostly consists of really long lists spoken one word at a time with long pauses (e.g, I really really really looooooooove the table saw [5 second pause] and the chisel [5 second pause] and ooooh, the wrench!) The shop teacher has studied his cold-war propaganda because he is focused on producing scores of laborers to help our country grow. The conversation drags itself along to PE. There, the coach starts a shop class cult complete with underwear-clad boys with hairy legs. He goes on and on about all the things shop class taught him to do, but he doesn’t have time to do them. The boys walk out arm in arm after his speech.
Movie
The first quarter of the movie is a list credits long enough to fill a book, during which a wild party is going on at what appears to be some sort of industrial area. As far as I can tell, the rest of the movie only has about 7 or 8 people in it, so the credits seem to be more or less just a list of the people in the party.
Once the credits are over, the movie takes a turn for the worse. A couple, Harry and Beth, stand around giving each other meaningful looks and showing off their various unruly locks of hair. There’s no sound track most of the time, so there’s not much for the viewer to do in the long, pregnant pauses between shots of people’s foreheads. We learn much to our apathy that Harry is having an affair, which is surprising because he ain’t too purty. Then again, she aint, too.
In a dramatic twist, Benji’s master mails a letter. Harry reads the letter while having dinner in an unlit closet with his wife. He barely manages to stay awake through the letter even though he’s drinking coffee. I only mention the coffee because that’s the most action in the movie so far, and because the desire for coffee drives the second half of the movie. After he reads the letter, they sigh a few times and we are meant to understand that the marriage is over. Or is it? And do we care?
Harry’s friend Joe Moss arrives to be their new mechanic. He wants coffee, but it takes a while to get it. Joe and Beth hit it off and Joe kisses her. She says she loves Harry, but that doesn’t make sense, so maybe it was a typo in the script. An eager newbie, Pete, talks Harry into taking him up to 2200 feet. He doesn’t open his chute and hits the ground. The FAA man closes them down.
Harry feels guilty about his affair, and breaks up with Suzy. They have a slap fight. She gets really angry and hooks up with Frankie, a mechanic who also has it in for Harry. Suzy sleeps with a octogenarian pharmacist for some acid and manipulates Frankie into sabotaging Harry’s chute just before a big jump.
The big dance from the opening credits takes place. Afterwards, they have a big night jump. Suzy picks up Frankie and takes him to the airfield while everyone else is distracted by the dance and they put the acid on the chute. They execute the jump. Harry splats. Someone turns Suzy and Frankie in. Joe chases them all around town. Coleman Francis has a cameo as the guy who shoots at them from a plane. The police just gun them down without so much as a warrant, unarmed, and without reading them their rights.
There’s a final scene where Joe and Beth basically bore each other goodbye. Beth leaves the airfield with an emotion akin to weary indifference. The end.
Host Segments
Prologue: Tom is a planetarium projector. He sings the 2001 theme as he turns the SOL into a planetarium. He’s all serious about it, but Crow is the class clown and keeps asking questions that end with “Uranus.” Tom runs away crying. After commercial break, Tom is complaining about it and Mike says those jokes aren’t funny. Crow cracks another one and Mike blows pop out of his nose. Frank comes on the screen and calls Mike “Nelstone” because he’s so high. He keeps this up for a while until Clayton interrupts and demands to know what he’s doing. Turns out he doesn’t know. Clayton challenges the SOL crew to a swing choir off. The music that follows is eye-wateringly . . . ouch. Clayton scores the performances and has Frank tabulate the scores. The Mads win!
Segment two: Mike is the shop teacher and the ‘Bots are students. Crow exits stage left and starts up a saw. Mike reminds him to observe all the safety precautions and he says, “Safety schmafety.” Unfortunately, that attitude results in Crow sawing himself in half, which he passes off as just a scratch. Crow’s halves fight over whose fault it is. Mike summarizes by saying, “Industrial Arts! Because the future belongs to the skilled.”
Segment three: Crow is in a double-jock-lock. He did it to himself.
Segment four: Crow has polished his hot rod. He’s all pleased with himself. Tom Servo has an airplane and flies over and blows it up. Crow has lost some body parts.
Final: Tom and Crow are hanging by their parachute straps in the SOL bridge. Mike arrives and reads a letter. The ‘Bots won’t accept any help, so Joel sings some more swing choir. Clayton is playing dodgeball with Frank.
Stinger: Pete saying shiftily, “I don’t know, I feel free up there in that high blue sky.”
Short
Movie: You know, it’s fun to have an idea. (Pause)
Mike: There, wasn’t that fun?
Coach: Well, Bill, I took some industrial arts courses when I was in school . . .
Tom: Look at me now.
The coach is droning on about how industrial arts helped him be able to know he was buying a good house. He says he was about to tell (long slow list again . . .)
Coach: . . .whether adequate electrical wiring had been installed . . .
He opens a hopelessly tiny breaker box.
Crow: OK, we can use
the toaster . . . or the lamp.
Movie
Crow: Kevin Casey as Beth (that’s not a joke, that’s the real credit!)
A piper cub is rolling down the runway at about 20 MPH and we hear sounds of the engine cutting out.
Servo: More terrifying than Airport ’77!
Harry to Beth: What happened?
Mike as Beth: I saw my hair in the mirror and I panicked.
Crow: Someone with attention deficit disorder edited this film.
As a diver prepares to jump out of the plane:
Tom: I’m sorry, we overbooked the flight. You’ll get your free ticket when you hit the ground. So long.
A woman gets in a car wearing very dark sunglasses.
Mike as woman: I’m blind. I probably shouldn’t be driving.
Harry spots a guy messing with one of the planes in the dark. He tries to subdue him. A long fight scene ensues.
Crow: Now the Hari Krishnas just come right out to the runway!
Mike: Wilbur, Orville, come on!
After getting his butt kicked, Franky limps toward his too-cool-for-him motorcycle.
Mike: I was born to be wild. My mom said I was.
Mike: Did the actors do their own skydiving?
Crow: No, the skydivers did their own acting.
Mike: Seems like they forgot to have things happen in this movie.
We ride along as a man drives for a while.
Tom: Ah, and the left turn is successfully executed.
Beth: Would you like some coffee?
Joe: Coffee? I like coffee.
Mike: And thus we peer into the complex inner workings of this character.
The characters talk about whether or not to get coffee a few times.
Mike: Coffee’s a major plot point.
Beth’s hair is just huge!
Mike: I predict in a climactic finale, she jumps without a chute and then her hair opens up.
Pete splats on the ground. Beth screams.
Mike: Oh get a spatula and a garbage bag.
Tom: They thought of scattering his remains from an airplane, but it seemed a little insensitive.
Mike as Harry: Way to kill the customers, honey.
Harry opens his hood.
Mike: Due to my education in industrial arts, I knew my wife was having an affair.
Crow as Coleman Francis: It’s one of those cars, right? I’ll just start shootin’.
The police are shooting at Suzy and Frankie. Their unarmed.
Tom: We saw you folks in the vicinity so we’re killing you!
Tom: Look, a republican fantasy.