Movies I Liked That No One Else Did, #4
(Cabin Boy).
Although the movie is credited with single-handedly destroying the career of Chris Elliott, I actually kind of liked it.
Elliott is one of the most underrated comedians out there. He was a writer for David Letterman for eight years; and from time to time made appearances on Letterman's show as "The Guy Under The Stairs", who was, along with Larry Bud Melman, one of the recurring bit characters on Letterman's show back when it was on NBC.
He then went on to star in the bizarre TV sitcom "Get a Life", about a 30 year old paperboy who lives at home with his parents. His father was played by his actual real-world father, comedian Bob Elliott of Bob and Ray fame.
I laughed harder at certain episodes of "Get a Life" harder than I have laughed at anything. The scripts for the show, rather badly transcribed, can be found here.
Then came Cabin Boy.
The story is that of a spoiled rich kid, a "fancy lad", who, through a series of misadventures, ends up going to sea. The movie is famous for having David Letterman appear in a cameo role as The Old Salt, and uttering the signature line "You're one of them fancy lads, aren't you."
At sea, he meets a number of stereotypical characters, including Captain Greybar and Paps, aboard their ship, which is called "The Filthy Whore." He has a number of surreal adventures at sea. In a way, the film reminds me of Erik the Viking, in that the universe of the characters is vastly diffferent from ours.
But what is charming in Erik the Viking, and accepted without criticism, is used as a flail to mercilessly beat Cabin Boy, and with it, Chris Elliott's career, to death. On the rare occasion when I bring up the movie, people respond to me with actual malice.
Cabin Boy was originally supposed to have been directed, as the story I link to above mentions, by Tim Burton -- which would have meant that while it remained just as stupid as it actually turned out, it would have been made with a lot more money, and probably received critical acclaim.
AVC: I went to a screening of Cabin Boy recently, and it was pretty crowded. Everyone was really happy to see it.CE: Yeah, which is really cool for me and for Adam. It's still, I think, reviled in the general world of moviemaking. But in meetings, I'm coming across more and more people in the established Hollywood world that say it's one of their favorite movies. And you go, "Are you just saying that?" But [Cabin Boy] and Get A Life, people have really hooked onto.
AVC: People embrace how weird it is. It's pretty funny, too.
CE: Yeah, it's funny in sort of a nauseous way. It's like you're on Vicodin watching it. It's a strange kind of thing. You know, all the jokes are funny. Adam wrote a brilliant script. It's just sort of the pacing and execution that put it in this weird world compared to what's out there nowadays... or what was out there when it came out. But it is its own thing, and it looks like what it was: two guys that only half-knew what the hell they were doing.
AVC: Cabin Boy's actual look is really interesting.
CE: It was going to be Tim Burton directing it. He produced it and he was going to direct it, and so it was going to be a pretty—I don't know how many millions—but it was going to be a high-budget film, because there were all these special effects in it. But when he decided not to direct it, the budget dropped to basically nothing. But we never changed the script, so we still had all these special effects, and we had to figure out a way to do them. The special-effects people we got were great, but if you don't have enough money, what you come up with is something that looks like you decided to make it look cheap. But it really just was cheap.
I'm not advocating you go and buy it, though it is, of course, available for purchase through my Amazon store above. But if it shows up on cable, or if you have a Netflix budget you're working your way through, throw it on the list and give it a chance.
