O.C. and Stiggs

There are certain filmmakers who seem to be actively trying to piss off their audience: Godard, David Lynch and certainly Robert Altman. They know the unspoken “rules” of cinema, a visual language we’ve all quietly agreed upon, but simply refuse to abide by them. Take O.C. and Stiggs (1987), Altman’s gleeful attempt to sabotage the National Lampoon franchise, a film that tested so poorly it was shelved for three years and scrubbed of any overt connection to the magazine. Is it a bad movie? Most definitely, by multiplex standards. But it’s also a deliberately hostile middle finger to studio executives who thought they could keep one of Hollywood’s most iconoclastic directors on a leash.

O.C. and Stiggs are a pair of high school pranksters whose attention is mostly focused on their neighbors, the Schwabs, an eccentric family embodying the worst aspects of conspicuous consumption and American entitlement. What begins as juvenile harassment of the community at large escalates into blackmail, vandalism, psychological warfare and good ‘ol fashioned home invasion with the boys exploiting the greed, paranoia and power struggles of the adult world.

That synopsis works well as a thematic reading of the film. Watching it play out in real time is another experience entirely. Altman treats the setup less like a traditional teen comedy and more like an excuse to unleash controlled chaos. All his usual techniques are in play: overlapping dialogue, grotesque caricatures, and anti-establishment antipathy. And the pranksters themselves are hardly heroes, coming off as spoiled anarchists who want set the world on fire just because they can.

What’s fascinating is watching Altman weaponize this anti-comedy for a mass audience. The film’s casual racism, homophobia and mean-spirited abuse of special-needs characters is a push-pull of provocation and indictment, daring us to decide if the film is in on the joke or not. And that cast!  Jane Curtin, Martin Mull, Jon Cryer, Paul Dooley and Ray Walston would all pop up in teen comedies throughout the decades, while a young Cynthia Nixon plays a thankless love interest. And casting Dennis Hopper as a dead-ringer for his wacked-out journalist character from Apocalypse Now – complete with music cues – is a real stroke of madness. Yet, it’s hard to look away, even if it’s just to challenge Altman’s exaggerated condemnation of America’s youth gone wild.

Radiance plays their wild card with this 3000-copy limited edition making its U.S. Blu-ray premiere. The 2-hour plus new documentary should seal the deal for Altman completists and anyone curious about his controlled burn of the Hollywood establishment. Just imagine if the Mike Nichols / Eddie Murphy version had won out!  A terrific booklet featuring critical writing and interviews with Altman is included as well.