Freddy Got Fingered (2001)

This movie exists at the exact intersection of Buster Keaton and Sam Raimi, a masterpiece of blood-and-goo splattered physical comedy that could have only been made by a great genius of public access-adjacent television who had found himself, perversely, in command of a vast fortune.

Tom Green ruled my fucking life in the late 90s and early 00s and doesn’t get enough credit for his role the vein of comedy that is in some ways coming to an end this weekend with the release of the final Jackass movie. Freddy Got Fingered was a movie my mom had to take me to see (they weren’t letting 13 year olds into the elephant dick movie by themselves) and I vividly remember her going “well, I guess every generation gets its Pink Flamingos” before leaving me alone in the theater so she could play House of the Dead.

I think that’s an accurate assessment, except that Green had far more resources than Waters, and was prescient enough to know, maybe, that this was his one shot. So it’s every bit that he’s got that you couldn’t do on MTV, everything in his arsenal that required movie magic and not just a handicam and a willingness to get punched, and it turns out that a lot of those bits are also about loving movies, from Modern Times to Apocalypse Now to Evil Dead 2 to Steamboat Bill Jr. 

It’s not for everyone, obviously — the titular bit is one of the reasons I’ve shied away from showing it to my partner — but it was, and is, for me. A crucial part of my film education and something I was delighted to drive all the way to Atlanta to see, on a 35mm archival print let loose from the literal Disney vault. We lived like kings.