I Finally Watched Tusk

Introduction
Clerks
Mallrats
Chasing Amy
Dogma
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Jersey Girl
Clerks II
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Cop Out
Red State

I’ll freely admit I’m of two minds about this 2014 movie by Kevin Smith. One the one hand, it’s a grotesque film with a truly horrendous outcome that leaves little in the way of hope. On the other, it’s truly a Kevin Smith film.

A Return to the Smith of Old

I don’t know much of the backstory of what happened to Smith the film director after completing Red State. In his book, Tough Shit, Smith comments that he didn’t want to make Kevin Smith films anymore. Understandable considering the genre he helped to define–man children dealing with life–was, as of 2011, a full-blown sub-genre. A shame because he’s so good at it.

Which makes the opening of Tusk a much appreciated to the sensibility of what put Smith on the map. It’s indie, it’s two actors–Justin Long  and Haley Joel Osment–talking and riffing and verbalizing Kevin Smith dialogue. After four movies of non-Smith-like characters reciting his words, it was a breath of fresh air.

That quickly turns sour.

Despite all the hallmarks of a Smith film–clever dialogue, characters who are podcasters, his daughter and Johnny Depp’s daughter as a pair of clerks, a jingle from the Hollywood Babble On podcast, Ralph Garman actually speaking–Tusk gets seriously weird.

The Premise

Podcaster Wallace Bryton (Long) flies to Canada to interview “The Kill Bill Kid,” a kid who posted a YouTube video of himself swinging a Japanese sword but inadvertently slices off his leg. Wallace intends to interview the kid, but discovers the young man killed himself to escape the constant bullying. Stuck without a story, Wallace sees a flyer on a barroom bathroom wall. He’s intrigued as the author just wants to share his life’s story.

Wallace heads out to Howard Howe’s house…at night…because of course. He meets Howe, a wheelchair-bound older man played spectacularly by Michael Parks. Howe drugs Wallace and when the young man wakes up, he discovers his left leg has been amputated.

If only that were the worst thing to befall him. No, it gets worse. Far, far worse, especially when Howe reveals he’s not at all confined  to the wheelchair.

The Power of Stories

Parks could read the phone book and I’d buy a copy and listen. His voice and nuance in seducing Wallace via stories is wonderful. Heck, I even noted Smith’s own writing style to be quite good in these scenes, especially the swimming story that gets a younger Howe to the deserted island with a walrus. There’s one line that specifically sticks with me:

“it’s [the bottle Wallace is marveling at] just a bottle, but if you combine it with a story, it becomes a powerful talisman, a doorway to another time and place, and, perhaps, a drawbridge to history.”

One can’t help but be impressed by lines such as these that came from the mind that brought all those dick jokes early in Smith’s career.

The Acting

Parks is wonderful, but so is Long. I mean, come on. He has to sell  the horror of the situation in which he finds himself. There’s that moment you wait for from the moment you learn the premise–the reveal of Wallace in the walrus suit, made of human skin–that is friggin’ shocking. Sure, your mind tells you that it’s just a prop while another part of your mind starts to marvel at how well the grotesque thing looks, but it’s Long’s non-verbal bellows of revulsion that slice through you. At first, I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be his own skin, but I finally figured out Howe had prior victims. Shudder.

It’s flat-out disturbing, even during this month of Halloween to see this. Howe is so utterly insane that he’s gone all the way around to calmness. Heck, he’s even calm when he shows up in a walrus suit of his own! Didn’t see that coming. That Wallace-as-walrus kills Howe-as-walrus probably should have been something I predicted, but I didn’t. I kept thinking that Wallace was merely drugged and that he wasn’t permanently altered. I was wrong.

Excellent prop and costume, however.

The Film’s Style

The Kevin Smith-ness of this film is over every frame. Unlike his last three, you can instantly pick up on the director’s vision and style. It’s what made the film watchable for me despite the story. Let’s put it this way: had it not been a Smith film, there’s no way I’d have seen this film.

But I fully appreciated how Smith structured his movie in the Quentin Tarantino style of non-linear storytelling. After Wallace is kidnapped, the scenes jump back to him and his girlfriend, Ally (Genesis Rodriguez), just talking about relationships and life and love. Little nuggets of backstory is revealed in these flashbacks, none quite as important as the last one. In that last flashback, Ally comments that crying is what separates humans from animals. Naturally, in the last scene, you see Wallace, still in his walrus suit, still nonverbal, crying. Why? Because he’s forced to live this existence because Johnny Depp’s character couldn’t pull the trigger of his rifle and put Wallace out of his misery.

The Famous Guest Stars

In his podcasts of the time, I remember Smith talking about getting Depp on board. His daughter, Lily-Rose, was already cast alongside Smith’s daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, as the girl clerks in the convenience store. Depp plays a private investigator (?) who knows about Howe and helps lead Ally and Wallace’s podcast partner, Teddy (Osment) to Howe’s house.

Depp is, well, Depp: entirely wrapped up in the character despite the movie surrounding him. He was pretty fun to watch, to be honest. There was one flashback in which Depp acted opposite Parks, and that was a fine scene.

The two young ladies didn’t get a lot of screen time in this film, but they made the most of it. And I know the penultimate Smith movie to date, Yoga Hosiers, is next for me.

The Verdict

In my notes, the last thing I wrote was “Well, that was interesting, but at least it felt like a Kevin Smith film.”  You have to hand it to Smith for doing this. Granted, had I voted back in 2013 for either #WalrusYes or #WalrusNo, I would have voted no. Did this movie really need to be made? Not really. What started as a discussion on a podcast emerged as the movie Tusk. What I appreciate is the indie spirit behind it all. “Why not?” is a mantra in which I believe, so in Smith’s mind, why not make a movie about a man who transforms another man into a walrus. The execution of the entire project is spot on and can serve as an example to what indie film making (or any indie creative endeavor) can achieve.

But is Tusk a good film? Thankfully, we have Red State to occupy My Least Favorite Kevin Smith Film spot. I can’t imagine it’ll ever be displaced. But do I like Tusk over Dogma? Probably not. There are portions of Tusk I enjoy, but the grotesque element is…well, it isn’t too much, it’s just something I care not to see. It’s a shrug. I’ll watch Dogma over this any day, but I likely won’t be watching either ever again.

Still, Tusk has some genuinely good moments. Parks is great, the daughters Smith and Depp are fun, and it was great seeing Osment again. The structure of the film is well done, and the dialogue and writing is really good. Smith knows his way around writing. I can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever write a novel. I’d certainly read it.

And with Kevin Smith “back,” I’m looking forward to Yoga Hosiers.