Post by StevePulaski on Mar 25, 2017 0:00:07 GMT -5
The Corndog Man (1999)
Directed by: Andrew Shea
Directed by: Andrew Shea
Noble Willingham.
Rating: ★★★½
"Why don't you kiss a good man's ass?" - Ace Barker
The Corndog Man opens by conservatively introducing us to our main character. Ace Barker is his name and he's played by Noble Willingham, a veteran actor famous for working alongside Chuck Norris on Walker, Texas Ranger. Ace is an elderly boat salesman in a sleepy town in South Carolina. He works around the clock to make commission on numerous twenty-footers getting suntans on his lot, and all seems well and under control until the phone-rings one day. The person on the line (voiced by Jim Holmes) is distinctively younger and raspy, initially disguising himself as a harmless caller interested in one of Ace's boats. Ace implores him to come down to his shop to take a look but that response doesn't seem to satisfy him.
As a matter of fact, no response seems to satisfy him, as the caller, who is later known as Penrod, continues to phone and pester Ace day-after-day. At times he pretends he's interested in buying a boat. At others, he's instigating Ace, simply calling to let him know that he's always watching him regardless of what he's doing. Ace responds in the only way he knows how to - in a vulgar, cantankerous manner, intolerant of anyone who dares even slightly to challenge his authority or make his already long days longer. Ace reveals himself to Penrod, and the audience, as bitterly racist, specifically when Penrod brings up an African-American boy from Ace's younger years, who Ace initially claims not to remember until he eventually contradicts himself. Penrod sends him a photo of the man and repeatedly hounds him about what he did to the poor kid.
Even at a concise 83 minutes, The Corndog Man takes a while to get going. You might run the risk of going insane from hearing the telephone ring over fifty times within the first half of the film and that's no exaggeration. Perhaps conventional movie wisdom and spoonfeeding will also have you groaning about how orderly writer/director Andrew Shea is when it comes to revealing details about Ace and his own personal life. Our image and understanding of him as a character builds over the course of the film through small, revealing moments and not an information-dump by way of narration or a frantically paced narrative in the beginning.
I also cannot stress how vulgar Willingham's character is in the film. He uses the same assortment of insults. Everything from a ten-letter word that starts with a "c" to calling Penrod an "Ethiopian" on multiple occasions is iterated with little rhyme or reason other than momentary anger. Part of what makes Ace such an arresting presence is how easily aggravated he can be, with even the slightest inaccuracy or detail given by Penrod sending him into a racially charged frenzy.
Andrew Shea directs the film in a way that favors extreme closeups and general closeups on his surroundings, particularly the facial features of Ace as his brow lowers in anger or as his mouth curls as he's engaged in conversation. We mostly see him in his office and get the impression that, despite his age and experience, he's small in comparison to his younger, sprier coworkers, who go on to mock him when Penrod's phone-calls begin to overtake his entire life. Shea's directing shows how little The Corndog Man needs to succeed in a visual sense; all we need are the verbal indications of conversation taking place and the ability to clearly see the anger wash over Ace's face in order to get the picture, figuratively and literally.
The Corndog Man is clearly a no-budget picture, but that allows it to get by on what little it has in a production sense to succeed more in what it has to offer conceptually. This is such a loose, formless concept taken to great heights by way of slowburn development in which we progressively work to find out more information about a character for which we initially feel sorry and the viewer is rewarded with patience. We see Ace's anger mostly dissolve into sheer exhaustion by the end of the film, gradually knowing more about his personal life as we sit through what sometimes feels like an endurance test. Through it all, Shea makes a picture that's taut, terrifying, and wickedly entertaining, with a strong performance by Willingham that goes beyond excessive expletives to something that closely resembles impulsive human reactions.
On a final note, I know you're still scratching your head at the title, which I'll simply say has to do with a corndog stand that comes into play early in the film and remains a recurring element. Like the piece of bacon taped to the bathroom wall in Harmony Korine's Gummo, I'm not sure if it has a specific significance, but I felt it was an appropriate inclusion, if that makes any sense.
Starring: Noble Willingham and Jim Holmes. Directed by: Andrew Shea.