Why Danny McBride IS Comedy (while you're not even a witty pun)

The new season of EASTBOUND AND DOWN launches this Sunday, February 19^th @ 10 on HBO. Kyle’s already talked a little about its brilliance and then gave us a rundown of other phenomenal sports shows. So I’m gonna talk about the overweight, mullet-wearing, accent-wielding hick with a heart of gold and a soul of spit, the star of EASTBOUND AND DOWN, Danny McBride.

First you gotta flash back to his college years, back when he, David Gordon Green, Jody Hill and Ben Best would get hammered in their shitty apartments and rental houses in the ol’ backwoods of North Carolina (actually Winston-Salem, where they all went to UNC School of the Arts)  and ramble about how cool it’ll be if, like, they can someday make movies and stuff. One of the jokes they always had was how funny it’d be to have a show about some, like failed athlete who becomes a gym teacher at a high school but still acts like the fuck up he was. Another idea was inspired by Jody Hill’s experience taking Tae Kwon Do, all the crazies and fringe-whackos that make up that world of pseudo ninja-ism.

Think of all the times you and your boys got twisted and waxed philosophical about the future. "Bro, someday we're all gonna, like, run shit and we'll take our yachts down to the Caribbean over Spring Break and be, like, the shit!" or "Yo, let's start our own _________ company. Seriously, you're gonna be a lawyer, you can do the legal; you're an econ major, CFO; you're communications, you can be our PR marketing dude; I'll pull that shit together, do the hustle, we'll kill it" or the totally-wacked-out-bullshit "what if there was a movie, like, about a couple college kids who like stumble on a duffel bag of blow and money and, like party in Vegas, dude let's write that and we'll play the parts ourselves." For most of us, that fell to the wayside. We all went our separate ways; or maybe we gave up on our dreams when college ended; maybe our dreams changed; or maybe you're some of the lucky few who still have a chance at making your idle talk happen. If there's anything you can take from this story, it's that a man's ambition is amplified when it becomes the shared ambition of a group of friends and, hell, if you're not willing to settle for anything but the best you'll find someday that all your bullshit talk is actually coming true. Just like Danny McBride and his homies from round-the-way.

David Gordon Green made it first but always created roles in his movies for McBride, hands down one of the funniest-looking men in entertainment (I mean seriously, that curly fro, the gut, the eyes filled with disgust, shame, and hubris at the same time, I mean Jesus man!), starting with his breakout indie darling ALL THE REAL GIRLS. Jody and Danny tooled around writing scripts, working shiity Hollywood PA jobs and saved up enough money to make THE FOOT FIST WAY (the literal translation of “Tae Kwon Do”) for about 25 grand. They were such broke kids that Ben Best, who played Chuck “The Truck” in that seminal movie, had to leave a few days to PA on the set of TALLADEGA NIGHTS, an irony that came full circle when Ferrell ended up being their first Hollywood champion.

THE FOOT FIST WAY made it into a few film festivals and was quickly discovered by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, becoming the movie that Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill were quoting and re-watching in clouds of blue smoke while the rest of us were quoting and re-watching SUPERBAD.

This was, of course, followed by more movies which led to more exposure and higher profile until McBride and his crew of miscreants eventually founded their own company, Rough House. And so that quest from drunk and blazed NC party film geeks to legit Hollywood players is complete. Hell, Danny McBride even has a running shoe endorsement in which he plays the very character he created. Fuck, and he didn't even have to play professional sorts. Or get in shape.

I could ramble on about why they’re the future of comedy (they don’t pull punches; their scripts are funny as hell and once they get the balls to shoot what they write, they’ll blow the doors off the Hollywood squares who currently claim to be making “comedy”) and how their innovations on EASTBOUND AND DOWN give the world of television, currently drowning in the confusion and indecision of shrinking ad sales and changing cultural tastes, could be what the networks need to shake things up (they spent a month writing last season’s pilot and about a week or so writing the rest – they write them all back to back so they can change things in ep 1 to fit a good storyline that can appear in ep 5; they shoot every episode at the same time, cutting down budgets and wasted time; and by shooting 6 half hour episodes, it's more like a 3 hour movie than a 10 hour season, perfect for our short attention spans and reducing those annoying filler episodes that come around season 3) and, hell, I could ramble for hours about how people who don’t like Danny McBride are just not funny. 

Instead, I’ll give you the fat bastard’s top 5 flicks to watch to get your ass ready for what is sure to be another hilarious fucking season of EASTBOUND AND DOWN. Let you see it for yourself, mutha fuckahhhh:

5. DUE DATE – He has one scene. One scene and he blows comedy “it” boy Zach Galifianakis and Oscar-winning ex-junkie Robert Downey Jr. out of the fucking water. Armed with a wheelchair and a crazy-eyed-soldier stare, his cameo might be the only funny part of this weak PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES remake.

4. ALL THE REAL GIRLS – This is a somewhat subdued McBride but it’s also his first flick, directed by buddy David Gordon Green. He perfectly plays the big douchey friend all of us have. And peppers it with such pitch perfect lines as (when talking to the girl dating his friend) "So, are you in love? When you're through being in love, why don't you come over to my house? I got a waterbed." Oh yeah, and his character is named BUST-ASS.

3. TROPIC THUNDER – Yes, everybody in this flick was pretty damn good. And yes, it was funny as shit to see tom Cruise as a sweaty studio head. But McBride’s bomb-blowing-tire-lightin’-jerkin’-off-to-nitroglycerin explosives expert is funny in literally every scene in which he appears. Watch it. Seriously, every scene, he kills it harder than Seal Team 6.

2. PINEAPPLE EXPRESS – Also directed by his boy Gordon Green. He’s weak, two-faced, and a drug dealer. And yet we can’t get mad at him, even after he betrays his friends. And his redemption just makes the whole thing that much better. Far better than Franco, I first caught McBride’s screen-stealing performance before I knew who he was but left thinking most of the end scene in which he’s falling asleep for blood loss at the diner and he calls out “I’m like the kid who falls asleep first at the sleepover.”

1. THE FOOT FIST WAY – Before Kenny Power, there was Mr. Fred Simmons. And once you watch this movie, you'll never be able to look at comedy the same way. This movie was produced for next to nothing and as such, it wasn't hindered by the studio process, the jury of peers designed to take off the rough edges and offensive moments that might lower possible gross receipts. As such, this flick delivers the thing that comedy today is severely lacking: namely, big hairy balls.

Look at THE HANGOVER. Funny, yes. Did it push the envelope? Not really. One article went so far as to call it simply a list of the upper middle class white man's fears: blackout weddings to a stripper, being drugged, little ninjas, huge black men, being arrested, being faced with a random baby, a cheating succubus, and tigers. BRIDESMAIDS pushed some boundaries, admittedly, but in a different direction and while I applaud the forward steps it made for women's comedies (and comedies in general), it does nothing for the fact that we haven't really had a funny man-based movie since our 4 heroes took over Las Vegas. FOOT FIST WAY busts open all the taboos, the hallmark of true, cutting edge irreverent comedy: making fun of fat people, cuckoldry, a grown loser picking on a little kid, a young bully knocking an older tae kwan do student's face off; AIDS. It premiered in 2006 and still I haven't seen anything as funny, offensive, or fantastically-quotably hilarious as this dirty romp about failure, adultery, and tae kwon do.

McBride and his boys tried doing this a few years later with YOUR HIGHNESS. Yet when it went from the script stage (the script was fucking nut-busting funny, for example a scene in which McBride turns the castle into a derelict gambling hall, racing on the back of a minotaur and such) to the sound stage, the production process took every good, irreverent and offensive joke and replaced it with stoner humor since, I mean c'mon, that's funny now, right kids?


No. Stoner humor isn't funny. And neither is the drivel most people are pushing out into the marketplace and calling comedy. I read a script a few months ago in which a girl gets raped by a dolphin. This script is actually set up at a studio. I read it and it seems to be a clueless attempt to be funny but let's get something clear: INTERSPECIES RAPE IS NOT FUNNY.

THE FOOT FIST WAY, now that's comedy. And if you haven't seen it yet, well, you should just be ashamed. Because these guys are the only bastards with the spirit, the patriotism, the, dare I say it, BALLS to push the envelope. Like Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor and George Carlin and Andy Kauffman before them, like Dice back in his heyday, they're in your face, they're taking risks, and they're doing comedy the way it should be.

So here's what you gotta do.

1. Buy THE FOOT FIST WAY. Today. Right fucking now.
2. Watch EASTBOUND AND DOWN this Sunday @ 10 on HBO
3. Laugh your fucking head off and protest your local movie studio for not making more funny-ass shit like this and tell them that,when they DO suck it up and espouse this brand of humor, they need to step back and just let the bastards work their magic. Because Danny McBride is, for lack of a better term, magical.

You can thank me later.

- Ryan