Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) - A movie about They Might Be Giants
by AJ Schnack
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DVD details
Actor: Adam Bernstein, Gina Arnold, John Flansburgh, John Linnell, Michael AzerradDirector: AJ Schnack
Brand: Music Video Dist
Cinematographer: Yon Thomas
Editor: Alisa Lipsitt
Editor: Jason Kool
Producer: John McGinnis
Producer: Shirley Moyers
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-11-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Plexifilm
DVD Reviews of Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) - A movie about They Might Be Giants
DVD Review: They Might Be Trying to Pass This Off as a Documentary
Summary: 2 Stars
Ostensibly, Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns is a documentary about the legendary rock duo They Might Be Giants. In reality, it looks, sounds, plods along, and altogether feels more like a PBS special about They Might Be Giants. The kind of program you watch on a Sunday evening that simply repeats all of the details that you read regularly and repeatedly in every magazine article about the subject you've ever read.
I expected this documentary to tell the story of the They Might Be Giants. Instead, it is mostly made up of interviewees speaking about their own opinions regarding the band. It starts out fine enough, John Linnell and John Flansburgh appear on camera, trying to remember how they met each other, in grade school probably, and tell a funny story about Linnell being in the hospital as a boy, getting letters written by classmates as a class assignment from other children he had never talked to, Flansburgh included among them. They talk about moving to New York in 1981, trying to figure out how to perform their songs, what some early shows were like, and have plenty to say about Dial-A-Song. And that is just about it as far as the story of They Might Be Giants. The rest of Gigantic mostly features a number of interviewees who talk about the band in broad, general terms, none of them going into much detail except in a few instances. It is wholly disappointing.
Except for the early scenes about their first arriving in New York, there is almost no sense of history to the band. None of their work after the initial live shows is put into context, and there is no meaningful discussion of their cultural impact. In Gigantic, the story of their rise to stardom is essentially boiled down to a lucky break when People reviewed their 1985 demo tape, another lucky break when Adam Bernstein asked to make a video of their song Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head, and then the next thing you know MTV, Flood, The Tonight Show, a backing band, they leave Elektra, and then Long Tall Weekend. What is the problem with this narrative?
The context of these achievements and the story behind them. They're missing.
There is only a single passing text mention of Linnell's involvement with the Mundanes. Not a single word is spoken about the Tiny Toon Adventures collaboration. Barely a minute is afforded to Don't Let's Start's popularity on the college rock charts, and nothing is said of Ana Ng and that song's success. Bill Kraus is featured but he says nothing about the process of creating the self-titled debut album or Lincoln. In fact, only Flood and Long Tall Weekend are mentioned at all by name. Flansburgh briefly mentions "our debut album," in some street footage a girl is seen holding the John Henry liner notes, and Flansburgh holds a copy of Mink Car. As far as Gigantic is concerned, Lincoln, Apollo 18, and Factory Showroom don't exist. Have you ever seen a documentary about a band where only two of the band's albums are actually directly mentioned, the rest being ignored or glossed over?
No one mentions the band's frustation with Elektra regarding Apollo 18; the documentary basically attributes their fallout with Elektra to new management and a dispute about a show in Tokyo. No one mentions that John Henry was their best reviewed album, and their highest charting album on the Billboard charts, or the effect of changing labels and production techniques on their music. Flansburgh, who has repeatedly said that Factory Showroom is the album he's most proud of, doesn't say a word about it here.
The movie skirts around the less pleasant issues and hardly touches the everyday lives of the Johns. Any discussion of their songwriting technique or their lives on tour are shallow. There is no mention of Flansburgh's crumbled relationship with his brother. There is no mention of the band's anger over the Factory Showroom demo leak. No mention of the mastering blunder for Apollo 18 in Europe. The Johns slyly imply that commissioned work is the reason they released no albums in the five years between Factory Showroom and Mink Car, any rumors that they feared overexposure by Restless Records's releasing a number of compilation albums notwithstanding.
There is some nice footage. I liked Michael McKean's reading of End of the Tour, and there's some stage show footage that is neat to see. On the whole, I will repeat, it does not feel like a serious documentary so much as it does a TV special. There is a serious lack of depth when it comes to the music of They Might Be Giants, the creation of ablums, life on tour, life outside the band, and what just plain drives them. I wonder how much of that is the director's inexperience, the overall lighthearted tone of Gigantic, or maybe the Johns' predilections for witticisms as opposed to just giving a simple straight answer. Someday, I'd like to see a real documentary about They Might Be Giants
Description of Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) - A movie about They Might Be Giants
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