One of those characters was an alter-ego named “Ernie” where Mize would play himself but also this character and banter back and forth throughout the night. Those shows during his high school years propelled Mize into forming characters of his own while a personality on FM 98 by molding his humor from comedians he enjoyed through the years, including Mississippi’s own Jerry Clower.įrom there, Mize got a job doing an overnight DJ’ing gig at a Memphis station, which provided a unique outlet to work on an assortment of ideas and characters. So, Mize, Kellum and Jim Martin began emulating Dees and creating their own personas for the morning show, which aired weekly across classroom speakers at Lafayette. “I was really taken by (Dees’) morning show and his fast-paced presentation, with his off-the-cuff, spontaneous humor that I thought that would be exactly what I want to do,” Mize said. And even worse, a mess that I can’t get out of my head.Dees’ wacky on-air personality and his cult-hit creation “Disco Duck” lit a fire for Mize. Meatballs (the song) is a great example of something that probably sounded okay at the time it was written but has aged like an apple in a hot car. And they keep shooting the New Guy’s face in close up with warm lighting and shiny eyes. Anyway… There’s also one laughably bad subplot involving the New Guy who’s bummed out because he can’t play soccer and his parents are divorced or something. But the film is so sentimentalized and the script is so poorly written that the film comes across as little more than a string of hastily drawn sketches. It includes some trademark 70’s National Lampoon characters: the dweeb, the fat guy, the new guy, and the rivals. Bill Murray stars and has a couple funny scenes. It tells the story of a summer camp and its’ various counselors and campers. Meatballs takes place at an overnight summer camp and the rest of the soundtrack is composed of camp style sing-alongs but Meatballs (the song) sounds like warm up music at a roller-disco. Then at about the 2:45 mark (yes, the song is inexplicably longer than three minutes) we get a weird breakdown with Rick Dees pseudo-sexually uttering phrases like “Lay a little of that team spirit on me”, and “Get in it and win it”. The song is also tonally off from the rest of the film. In fact, the chorus/hook of the song is just a repetition of the word “meatballs” sung by a heavy baritone followed by a female harmony. The lyrics are particularly odd because never in the film do any characters eat meatballs, nor is anyone referred to as a meatball. Including: You don’t want to be a meatball, with meatsauce on your face. Regardless of its unique pedigree, Meatballs (the song) is a cringe inducing mash up of uninspired disco instrumentals and bizarre meatball related lyrics. The song is performed by Rick Dees a radio DJ who voiced a character on The Flintstones cartoon named Rock Dees and had one other “hit” with Disco Duck. The same guy who composed the themes for classics such as The Magnificent Seven, True Grit and To Kill a Mocking Bird. I assume not a lot of people know about this particular gem as evidenced by its slim 767 listens on its single youtube posting, twenty of those by me in order to write this post. The song was written by Oscar-winning composer Elmer Bernstein. And some things are just asking for it, for instance, this week’s selection, the title song from the 1979 Ivan Reitman comedy Meatballs. Quite frankly, because writing negative opinions is much easier than writing positive ones. Now, I know that because there’s already so much vitriol on the internet you’re probably asking “Why do I feel the need to pile on?”. If I notice something and it makes me audibly groan, or put my palm to my forehead, then it’s going on the list.
These can be individual scenes, performances, jokes, songs, sweaters, whatever. It’s called Mistakes Were Made and it’ll function as a record of the worst things films have to offer. So I’m adding a new feature to the Grain&Noise blog.
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