On Friday night, IndieWire After Dark honoring fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any era in film history.
First, the BASIC: strange species selection, and why we are studying its special place now. Then, the WILL BE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult movie worth recommending?
The Feeding: Adult swimming at least gave me my backup
I am spending A lot time passed on my laptop. In fact, in the indie film world, my posting problem is so common that it’s sometimes affectionately referred to as “programmer shooting.”
That’s the catchy term for the shape your spine gradually assumes when your every waking moment revolves around randomly screening links and unanswered emails. In fact, long before I was old enough to inflict such a serious workplace injury on myself, I developed a different ulterior motive – equally rooted in my love of finding weird media.
As an underage Adult Swim fan, I spent much of my 2000s childhood sneaking downstairsto watch Cartoon Network’s late-night block of programming hours after I was put to bed. To avoid waking my parents and older sister, I kept the volume low and got as close to the TV set as possible.
I fell down on the carpet with my back arched like “The Little Mermaid,” I was enthralled by what I was watching and physically unable to relax for fear of being caught. Instead, assuming a type of weight position that produced the s-curve that still affects my structural integrity today, I felt every second of my most formative adult swimming memories.
Naturally, being a sick person, I really enjoyed it: finding joy and even identity in picking up pieces of evidence that I didn’t “believe” to see. The discomfort was part of the fun and, in its own way, worth the risk.
Earlier this month, my colleague Christian Zilko gave me that feeling back with his oral history of the cult stage. For Adult Swim’s 25th anniversary, IndieWire unearthed the screaming and brutal sensation that turned a ballsy experiment into one of TV’s most influential brands and, for people like me, a meaningful ritual. It’s a great read and one of the rare times Hollywood actors feel really cool. But the lineup’s iconic “Infomercials” deserve a special After Dark quest.
Started in 2009, when I was then a teenager and allowed to indulge after midnight, the premise of “Infomercials” was extremely simple. At 4 a.m., network viewers accustomed to seeing long commercials for so-called miracle products and questionable self-help programs on TV were greeted with “paid” Adult Swim shows that sounded real but weren’t.
Innovative filmmakers, such as Alan Resnick and Casper Kelly, used the show’s bait-and-switch premise as an excuse to explore their art-house intentions and get good, very strange broadcasted.
You may be familiar with “Too Many Cooks,” which begins as an innocent sitcom opening but keeps adding credits, characters, and eventually a murderer. But here’s also “Unedited Footage of a Bear,” which sees a pharmaceutical ad descend into a nightmare. And my personal favorite is “This House Has People In It”, which turns security footage into a suburban horror mystery.
Despite my newfound teenage freedom in the early 2010s, I still remember watching those weird episodes the same way I did as a child – lying down on the carpet, close enough to the TV to hear every insensitive word. Thank God most of the short “Informercials” only run about 10 to 12 minutes.
There is actually a surprising reason for that length. Adult Swim’s “Infomercials” were designed to fit only a quarter-hour television slot with room left for commercials. In context, that’s just enough time to figure out what you are think you look and then regret coming in.
Some “Infomercials” are funnier than others, and many show little interest in being funny at all. What they do share, however, is the uncanny ability to make TV sets feel unstable. So, in honor of Adult Swim turning 25, I suggest you end Cartoon Network’s month-long celebration with an “Infomercials” marathon, sure to be both nostalgic and confusing!
Watch a few you’ve never heard of (on YouTube or the official Adult Swim site), and resist the urge to read the descriptions first. If you can take your back, get close to the screen too. i will do the same. Maybe. – Alison Foreman
The Bite: That the children will never get back in the pool
I’ve spent a lot of September thinking about Adult Swim. It’s the 25th anniversary of an entertainment brand that means more to me than almost any other and, since Ali was gracious enough to plug it, I wrote a few articles trying to find out what it means to the people who made it.
There’s a lot to discuss – the unique shows, the talent he’s lined up, the fans he’s cultivated – but for me it all boils down to one simple question: what Yes Adult Swimming? And there is no better way to answer it than to watch some Infomercials.
Adult Swim isn’t just a block of programming, even if it was a great one that eventually crossed over to the fact that children’s programming was designed to complement it. It’s not exactly a tight-knit group of people, even if many of them continue to collaborate closely after 25 years of cartooning in Atlanta together.
It’s not just a style of comedy, even though terms like “adult swimming comedy” are universally recognized pieces of our pop culture vocabulary, even when used to describe shows produced by other companies. And it feels like a cop out to say it’s adult swimming vibeeven though that feels like the fairest answer I could give.
More than anything, adult swimming is a celebration of the element of surprise. It shocked viewers who kept the Cartoon Network on too late and were brought to maturity by the “Family Guy” reruns they saw at too young an age. Older animation fans who never thought they’d see Shaggy and Scooby on trial for marijuana possession or Space Ghost hosting his own talk show were surprised. And it shocked many of us who spent countless hours watching cable in the middle of the night, not sure what the next weird thing would be.
That’s the beauty of Infomercials, and that’s why Adult Swim was the perfect platform for geniuses like Alan Resnick and Casper Kelly. Watching a cheesy sitcom unfold turns into a bloody field day for a time-traveling serial killer or unedited footage of a bear turn into a pharmaceutical nightmare is a perfect example of that unapologetic promise to keep us on our toes.
For such a small block of programming, Adult Swim was influential in creating the shared language we’ve come to know as “internet humor.” Surrealism, pastiches of existing media, and a willingness to put dark spins on pieces of nostalgia are instantly recognizable to anyone online, even if you’ve never watched “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” in late night. This is also why I wonder if Adult Swim has inadvertently helped to create a future in which he will have little part to play.
So much brilliance was his advantage over the viewer, being able to show you anything he wanted while you sat in captivity. I’m not sure it’s possible to recreate that feeling in this age of unlimited content. Maybe that’s not even a bad thing – maybe we need a little less surprise while we catch our breath – but it really is a reason to take a night to celebrate the incredible artistic achievement that the first season of adult swimming represents. And whatever the next round looks like, I’ll be watching. – Christian Zilko
Read more installments of After Dark, IndieWire’s midnight film club: