High Strung | |
---|---|
Directed by | Roger Nygard |
Written by | Steve Oedekerk Robert Kuhn |
Produced by | Rubin M. Mendoza Roger Nygard |
Starring |
|
Cinematography | Alan Oltman |
Edited by | Tom Siiter |
Music by | Vladimir Horunzhy |
Production company | Film Brigade |
Distributed by | Rocket Pictures |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 93 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $400,000 [1] |
High Strung is a 1992 American independent comedy film directed by Roger Nygard. It stars Steve Oedekerk (who also wrote the script with Robert Kuhn) as Thane Furrows, an uptight children's author who rarely leaves his house, eats only cereal, and is irritated by everything around him. It also stars Thomas F. Wilson, Fred Willard, Denise Crosby, Jani Lane, and Jim Carrey, and also contains a short cameo appearance by a young Kirsten Dunst.
Despite the lack of a release on DVD, High Strung has developed and maintained a strong cult fan base.
The film centers around Thane Furrows, who spends the day messing around his apartment in an unknown location in Texas and complaining about a number of random subjects like (among other things) flies, popsicles, junk mail, his boss' wife, his upstairs neighbor, smoking, salesmen, and philosophizes on a number of things such as the morality of eating humans and the sensibility of keeping pets.
Furrows has a number of strange philosophies: he wishes his children's books to be instructive for the good of society, such as How to Start the Family Car (in case "someone chokes on a chicken bone" and "there are no adults around"), and Bye Bye Grandma which he wants to help accustom children to death. He refuses to keep pets because he feels they would "turn on you" in a food shortage, choosing instead to keep a cardboard cutout of a dog named Pete.
A number of minor annoyances also perturb him throughout the day: a fly lands on his cereal at breakfast, which he inadvertently eats; an insurance salesman named Ray comes to the door, to which Furrows responds by feigning interest and, shortly after promising to take out a number of policies, slams the door in Ray's face with the words "I'd rather be dead"; an automated survey about carpet cleaning calls him repeatedly; his boss' wife comes by to pick up a book he was writing, and he (eventually) tells her off. After the fly incident, Furrows suffers from a number of scares. When closing his eyes, he repeatedly sees a menacing face. He receives numerous messages from phone and mail about "eight o'clock".
Furrows' only friend appears to be a man named Al, who comes by in the afternoon for a visit. They eat cereal and Al tries to dissuade Thane of his cynicism. While Thane attacks the optimism of people like Al, he seems comforted by Al's sympathy over the visit of Melanie, the boss' wife. Later that night, Furrows loses an arm wrestling match to the noisy neighbour upstairs, thereby giving him the right to play metal as loud as he wants whenever he wants, only for Thane to cut his power to maintain peace. After a day of "messing around", Furrows receives a knock at the door at the dreaded "eight o'clock" and is greeted by a limo driver. When he steps into the limo, the driver (Jim Carrey) turns around and reveals himself to be Death.
Death tells Furrows that he has met his quota of saying "I wish I were dead" and must die, and Furrows complains about the stupidity of the rule until Death, unable to scare Furrows into line, puts him back into his body. Furrows awakes with frightened Al standing over him, trying to wake him. The story ends with the two going out to a restaurant, though Furrows' insistence that they serve him cereal, showing he's willing to try some new things but not all.
After the credits, a short epilogue involves Death stopping the limo in a dark space and looking at the heavens. He claims that he just couldn't stand Thane and had to return him to life. He adds that he isn't ever coming back for Thane, implying that Thane may have just accidentally become immortal.
High Strung was funded by former orchestra conductor Vladimir Horunzhy and rock guitarist Sergei Zholobetsky, both whom had fled to the United States from Russia in 1979 after they refused to join the Communist Party. Horunzhy persuaded Zholobetsky to invest his entire life savings to produce the film. High Strung was made on a budget of $400,000. [1]
Jim Carrey agreed to a small role in the film due to his friendship with Steve Oedekerk. [2] His cameo is uncredited per the terms of contract, which reportedly forbids using Carrey's name in the film’s title, closing credits or the credit block on advertising posters. Carrey's management team asked the film producers to not use his name or likeness in association with the promotion of the film. Regardless, Carrey was featured prominently in the film's marketing. [1]
High Strung was screened at several film festivals including the San Jose Film Festival, the Palm Springs Film Festival, the 16th Cleveland International Film Festival, [3] the 22nd USA Festival, Houston International Film Festival, the Rivertown Film Festival/Minneapolis, New Hampshire Film Festival, the Florida Film Festival, and the Philadelphia Film Festival, and the Berkshire Film Festival. [4] Despite positive reviews and winning awards, the producers failed to secure theatrical or home-video distribution. According to Roger Nygard, "I learned the film industry is like selling shoes-they all want brand names, and we didn’t have a brand name. Steve Oedekerk is quite well known as a stand-up comic, but that didn't matter to exhibitors. They wanted film names." [1]
The success of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) launched Carrey's film career and renewed interest in High Strung among several independent distributors. The film producers sold the distribution rights to Rocket Pictures which released the film on VHS in 1994. [1]
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress. She made her acting debut in the anthology film New York Stories (1989) and has since starred in several film and television productions. She has received several awards including nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and four Golden Globe Awards.
Trekkies is a 1997 documentary film directed by Roger Nygard about the devoted fans of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. It is the first film released by Paramount Vantage, then known as Paramount Classics, and is presented by Denise Crosby, best known for her portrayal of Security Chief Tasha Yar on the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
James Eugene Carrey is a Canadian and American actor and comedian known for his energetic slapstick performances. After spending the 1980s honing his stand-up comedy act and portraying mostly supporting roles in films, Carrey gained wide recognition in 1990 when he was cast in the American sketch comedy television series In Living Color (1990–1994). He broke out as a film star after starring in a string of box office hits with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber, which he followed up with Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and Batman Forever. The success of these five films led to Carrey being the first actor to receive a $20 million salary for performing in films, beginning with The Cable Guy (1996).
Man on the Moon is a 1999 biographical comedy drama film about the late American entertainer Andy Kaufman, starring Jim Carrey as Kaufman. The film was directed by Miloš Forman and also features Danny DeVito, Courtney Love and Paul Giamatti.
The Truman Show is a 1998 American psychological comedy drama film written and co-produced by Andrew Niccol, and directed by Peter Weir. The film depicts the story of Truman Burbank, a man who is unaware that he is living his entire life on a colossal soundstage, and that it is being filmed and broadcast as a reality television show which has a huge international following. All of his friends, family and members of his community are paid actors of whose job it is to sustain the illusion and keep Truman unaware about the false world he inhabits.
Bruce Almighty is a 2003 American fantasy comedy film directed by Tom Shadyac and written by Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe and Steve Oedekerk. The film stars Jim Carrey as Bruce Nolan, a down-on-his-luck television reporter who complains to God that he is not doing his job correctly and is offered the chance to try being God himself for one week. It co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Philip Baker Hall, and Tony Bennett. The film is Shadyac and Carrey's third collaboration, after Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) and Liar Liar (1997).
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is a 1994 American comedy film starring Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura, an animal detective who is tasked with finding the abducted dolphin mascot of the Miami Dolphins football team. The film was directed by Tom Shadyac, who wrote the screenplay with Jack Bernstein and Carrey. The film co-stars Courteney Cox, Tone Loc, Sean Young, and then–Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino and features a cameo appearance from death metal band Cannibal Corpse.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a 2004 American science fiction romantic drama film directed by Michel Gondry, based on Charlie Kaufman's screenplay developed from a story by Gondry, Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth. Starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, with supporting roles from Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Tom Wilkinson, it follows two individuals who undergo a memory erasure procedure to forget each other after the dissolution of their romantic relationship. The title of the film is a quotation from the 1717 poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope. It uses elements of psychological drama, science fiction and a nonlinear narrative to explore the nature of memory and love.
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls is a 1995 American detective comedy film and the sequel to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), and the second installment of the Ace Ventura franchise. Jim Carrey reprises his role as the title character Ace Ventura, a detective who specializes in retrieval of tame and captive animals, and has been summoned to Africa to locate a missing bat. Ian McNeice, Simon Callow, and Sophie Okonedo co-star. Tommy Davidson, who co-starred with Carrey on the show In Living Color, makes a cameo appearance in the film.
Liar Liar is a 1997 American fantasy comedy film directed by Tom Shadyac and written by Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur. It stars Jim Carrey as a lawyer who built his entire career on lying but finds himself cursed to speak only the truth for a single day, during which he struggles to maintain his career and to reconcile with his ex-wife and son whom he alienated with his pathological lying.
The Cable Guy is a 1996 American satirical black comedy thriller film directed by Ben Stiller, written by Lou Holtz Jr., starring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick. It was released in the United States on June 14, 1996. The film's opening credits also list Leslie Mann, George Segal, Diane Baker and Jack Black.
Me, Myself & Irene is a 2000 American slapstick black comedy film directed by the Farrelly brothers, and starring Jim Carrey and Renée Zellweger. Chris Cooper, Robert Forster, Richard Jenkins, Daniel Greene, Anthony Anderson, Jerod Mixon and Mongo Brownlee co-star. The film is about a Rhode Island state trooper named Charlie who, after years of continuously suppressing his rage and feelings, suffers a psychotic breakdown that results in a second personality, Hank. This was Carrey's first role in a 20th Century Fox film, along with being the Farrelly brothers' second film with Carrey since Dumb and Dumber (1994). Filming was done from May 11 to July 29, 1999 in various locations in Rhode Island and Vermont. It was a box office success but received mixed critic reviews.
Steven Brent Oedekerk is an American filmmaker, actor, and stand-up comedian. He is best known for his collaborations with actor and comedian Jim Carrey and director Tom Shadyac, his series of "Thumbmation" shorts and his film Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002), along with his films Santa vs. the Snowman 3D, Barnyard, and The Nutty Professor remake. His film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was nominated for an Academy Award.
The Mask is a 1994 American superhero comedy film directed by Chuck Russell and produced by Bob Engelman from a screenplay by Mike Werb and a story by Michael Fallon and Mark Verheiden. It is the first film in the Mask franchise, based on the comic book series of the same name by Mike Richardson, published by Dark Horse Comics. It stars Jim Carrey in the title role along with Peter Riegert, Peter Greene, Amy Yasbeck, Richard Jeni, and Cameron Diaz in her film debut. Carrey plays Stanley Ipkiss, an ordinary man who finds a magical wooden mask that transforms him into the titular green-faced troublemaker who can cartoonishly alter himself and his surroundings at will. Filming began on August 30, 1993, and concluded in October 1993.
Elizabethtown is a 2005 American romantic tragicomedy film written and directed by Cameron Crowe and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Its story follows a young shoe designer, Drew Baylor, who is fired from his job after costing his company an industry record of nearly one billion dollars. On the verge of suicide, Drew receives a call from his sister telling him that their father has died while visiting their former hometown of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Deciding to postpone his suicide and bring their father's body back to Oregon, he then becomes involved in an unexpected romance with Claire Colburn, whom he meets near the start of his journey. Elizabethtown stars Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Alec Baldwin, and Susan Sarandon.
"Grief Counseling" is the fourth episode of the third season of the American comedy television series The Office and the show's 32nd overall. The episode was written by co-executive producer Jennifer Celotta and directed by Roger Nygard, making it Nygard's only series credit. It first aired on NBC in the United States on October 12, 2006.
Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet Detective is a 2009 American made-for-television adventure comedy film standalone sequel to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, without involvement from either lead actor Jim Carrey or writer Steve Oedekerk. The third installment in the Ace Ventura franchise, it began production in Orlando, Florida on September 17, 2007, and was directed by David Mickey Evans and written by Jeff Sank, Jason Heimberg, and Justin Heimberg.
Yes Man is a 2008 romantic comedy film directed by Peyton Reed, written by Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul, and Andrew Mogel and starring Jim Carrey and co-starring Zooey Deschanel. The film is based loosely on the 2005 memoir of the same name by the British humorist Danny Wallace, who also makes a cameo appearance in the film.
Vladimir Anatoliiovych Horunzhy is a film producer and composer, a well-known jazz musician. Graduated from a Special music school at Kyiv Music Conservatory. His first composition was written at the age of 12. In the '70s led the Pop-Symphony Orchestra of Radio and Television of Ukraine. From 1977 to 1981 lived and worked in Hungary. Moved to the U.S. in 1981. The first project, which he participated in as a composer there, was the famous daytime soap opera “Santa Barbara”.
Roger Nygard is an American director, editor, producer, and author. As a director he has worked on Tales of the Unknown (1990), High Strung (1991), Back to Back (1996), Trekkies (1997), and Suckers (2001). He also directed For Whom The Belt Tolls and What Would Jason Do?, episodes of The Bernie Mac Show, and Grief Counseling, an episode from the American television comedy series The Office.