Eric Appel has never appreciated comedy for comedy's sake. Having cut his teeth with the Upright Citizens Brigade before getting his start making short-form video content for Funny or Die, the director knows that the sillier, stranger, and wilder the joke, the more internal logic needs to be in play.
It was during his time at Funny or Die that Appel created a parody trailer for a music biopic about the most unlikely of subjects: "Weird Al" Yankovic. The video went viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of views, and Appel and Yankovic stayed in touch over the years. "I mean, it's incredible to become friends with a childhood hero of mine," Appel says.
That friendship eventually led the pair to expand on their initial collaboration with Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a full-length parody music biopic about the musical parodist and Appel's feature debut. The movie premiered during this year's Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Midnight Madness Award.
Below, Appel shares with A.frame five films that continue to inspire him as a writer and director — especially in creating fully realized worlds, no matter how unusual they might be.
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis | Written by: Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale
It's such a perfect story. The storytelling in that movie, everything pays off in such huge ways. From a writing perspective, it's the perfect screenplay. It's untouchable. Everything that is set up early in that movie has the most amazing payoffs, and it's such a great concept and such a compelling idea. The performances are fantastic. As a director, Robert Zemeckis' blocking in that movie is unparalleled. There's something about the camera blocking that just always really stuck with me. It's sort of the high watermark that I'm always striving for.
Directed by: Steven Spielberg | Written by: David Koepp
Jurassic Park is the best. I was 12 when that came out, and I saw it in the theater. Just a huge blockbuster, with the T-Rex sequence and some of the greatest crowd-pleasing sequences I've ever seen in a movie. I was like, "I can't believe this..."
Directed and written by: Joel and Ethan Coen
The Big Lebowski and Boogie Nights came out when I was in 11th grade, when I was really discovering I could see R-rated movies. Those were so eye-opening for me.
Directed and written by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Directed by: Tim Burton | Written by: Phil Hartman, Paul Reubens and Michael Varhol
The tone of that movie is so unique and weird. So much of the comedy is because of this bizarre tone that we've created, of playing things really straight and serious — as absurd as they get — and this world that Pee-wee inhabits and the way he's treated by the world around him like it's normal. It's almost like The Muppets movie. It's like, "Oh, this is a world where the Muppets exist and it's normal. It's normal in this world." As ridiculous and heightened as it gets, it's grounded in its own bizarre reality. And that's what I love so much about it.
