Tim Heidecker does not sound particularly surprised that his outrageous new comedy made the cut at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. “It’s totally independent, totally personal and it’s not going to appeal to everybody, so in that sense, our movie is a good fit,” Heidecker says.
[bug id=”sundance”] Still, Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie will mark its very distinct territory at the film festival this weekend when the camera zeroes in on a naked, drug-addled man, played by Heidecker’s partner in crime Eric Wareheim, who sits in a tub to begin a soul-purging ritual. He is then surrounded by a half-dozen boys who defecate into the tub until the comedian is shoulder-deep in feces.
Arguably the filthiest comedy of the decade so far, Billion Dollar Movie’s R-rated blend of arch parody and gross-out slapstick builds on a high/low formula that earned its Webby Award-winning creators an avid cult following thanks to their bizarre cable TV series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and other projects.
Will the high-profile premiere at Sundance translate into Hollywood success for the pair? Maybe yes, maybe no, but Billion Dollar Movie’s excesses are definitely a sign of the times. Today’s filmmakers increasingly go to extremes, deftly using gross-out gags and brutal black humor to make a splash in an entertainment market cluttered with cable channels, web video series and a constantly growing back catalog of Hollywood hits streaming from the cloud.
For their first feature-length effort, Heidecker and Wareheim — who wrote, directed and star in Billion Dollar Movie — recruited many of the same big guns they’ve lured into their gonzo comedy world in the past. The film casts Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis and John C. Reilly respectively as a deranged mall owner, a New Age guru and a raggedy recluse who’s been raised by wolves.
Chat With Tim and Eric
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim will chat with fans on reddit Jan. 27 at 9 p.m. Pacific. It’s an extension of the surreal, satirical comedic formula honed by Heidecker and Wareheim over the years.
“We love overly intellectual, kind of post-comedy metahumor, but we also like the classic gags: Guy in a G-string running around,” Wareheim told Wired.com in a phone interview. “There’s just a funny thing to it. Tim and I have used that combination in all of the bits that we’ve done.”
Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie also showcases the duo’s appetite for excess. (During filming, Billy Joel’s “I Go to Extremes” served as the duo’s informal anthem.)
“Hitting something over the head a little bit too much has been the Tim and Eric sensibility since we started out,” Wareheim said, and in Billion Dollar Movie, the pair has “reached the climax of poo jokes. We should win an award for the ultimate brown joke on this one. Yes, it is very gross but …”
“We have plenty of lines that we’ve drawn,” Heidecker chimes in, “but when it comes to the human body and poo and pee and sex and all that stuff, we don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”
Eric Wareheim, left, prepares to take part in a bathtub ritual run by a cult leader (Ray Wise).
Raised on Cheese
The Tim and Eric aesthetic, amplified by schlocky soundtrack music and ludicrously cheap special effects, dates back to Heidecker’s fondness for super-loud TV commercials advertising local furniture stores in his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Wareheim got hooked on cheesy production values in high school when he swapped videotapes of bad educational films with members of his high school AV club.
After meeting at Temple University in Pennsylvania, Heidecker and Wareheim spent a summer in Los Angeles as part of the school’s internship program. It was a disaster, Heidecker recalled.
“Tim and I both had the sense of, ‘Holy shit, this is going to take a lot of work to become directors,'” he said. “We got disillusioned and headed back east for a bunch of years before we developed our first cartoon and figured out a way to come back to L.A. as creators.”
After college, Wareheim paid the rent shooting videos of Pennsylvania weddings, bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. Heidecker worked in Manhattan as an office drone. In their spare time, they made a short film called Tom Goes to the Mayor. They mailed a DVD of it to Bob Odenkirk, co-creator of HBO’s off-kilter sketch-comedy series Mr. Show, who “responded very quickly,” recalled Heidecker. “Bob became our de facto agent and helped us get a leg in the door.”
Going Hollywood
Since moving to Los Angeles in 2004 to produce Tom Goes to the Mayor for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, the comedians have largely operated outside conventional show-biz constraints, according to Heidecker.
“People who believe in us say, ‘Here’s a check. Go off and do what you do. We trust that you’ll be responsible and make something you want to make,'” he said. “We’ve never had to deal with a big studio system or the pressure that must come with making a $100 million movie where you’ve got a bunch of dopes chiming in on how things should go.”
Early Tim and Eric convert John C. Reilly spread the word among Hollywood’s tight-knit comedy community. Paul Rudd, Saturday Night Live veteran Will Forte, Galifianakis and Funny or Die kingpin Ferrell performed at a fraction of their usual pay rate for Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!.
“These guys have fun working with us because they’re able to take characters to this really crazy level,” Heidecker said. “You just don’t go there in more traditional movie comedies.”
Online videos further expanded the Tim and Eric “brand.”
“A lot of people became exposed to us through sitting around at work being bored and clicking on a link,” Heidecker said. “And if you have Paul Rudd or somebody like that on the show, then it’s going to become special and get posted all over the place.”
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points about Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie follow.)
For Billion Dollar Movie, Heidecker and Wareheim constructed a rudimentary narrative: Two moronic producers make an unreleasable motion picture starring a Johnny Depp impersonator. When mobster investors want their money back, the guys flee town.
Lured by an infomercial promise of a billion-dollar payday, they take over the management of a decrepit shopping mall. There, Eric falls in love with a balloon shop owner. Tim adopts the son of a shop owner who sells recycled toilet paper. At the grand reopening, gangsters attack. Fake arteries spurt fake blood.
Billion Dollar Movie‘s cavalcade of dim-witted characters, severed limbs and bodily fluids unfold against an unsettling backdrop eerily in tune with 2012’s continuing recession. The homeless squatters and demoralized shop owners who struggle to survive at the deserted mall could have walked straight out of an Occupy Wall Street demonstration.
“Those elements are definitely there,” Heidecker said. “We’re glad the movie’s not just about the shit tub. It’s about something else entirely, too.”
Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie will be released on demand Jan. 27 and hit theaters March 2.
