- In the Basement
Tomorrow at 7:30 PM, radio and TV personality Adam Carolla will be at the PortagePatio Theater to introduce a screening of Road Hard, a new comedy that he stars in, cowrote, and codirected. The movie’s a subtle prank in the vein of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation—it looks like a straightforward piece of autobiographical fiction, but it contains much more fiction than autobiography. The central joke is that Carolla’s autobiographical stand-in, like Kaufman’s in Adaptation, is nowhere as successful or socially competent as he is. Call it a nightmare-fulfillment fantasy, the work of a celebrity envisioning how much worse his life could be. Is Road Hard an expression of Carolla’s genuine anxieties, an appeal for sympathy, or neither? If you enjoy Carolla’s straight-talking, chauvinistic comic persona and are willing to tolerate a fair amount of kvetching, you’ll probably find this an interesting head game.
Overlapping with tomorrow’s screening of Road Hard is the Chicago premiere of In the Basement, the latest provocation from Austrian director Ulrich Seidl. (It plays at 6:45 PM as part of the Siskel Center’s European Union Film Festival, with a repeat screening on Wednesday at 6 PM.) Seidl has been blurring fact and fiction for some time, and like Carolla, he’s inspired many charges of insensitivity. In both his narrative-driven films and his observational documentaries, Seidl presents nonprofessional performers doing objectionable things in meticulously designed (and strikingly beautiful) shots. The director always works in full agreement with his subjects, yet the films are so often cringe-inducing that I understand why some viewers would rather think of him as an exploiter. Why would people willingly present themselves as repugnant? Too bad Carolla will be on the other side of town after Basement lets out tomorrow—I’m sure he’d lead an enlightening Q&A.
