Todd Downing | The Underminer / 2005

the perfect image of a friend i never want

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mike Albo (screenplay, based on his novel), Todd Downing (director) The Underminer / 2005 [6 minutes]

 

We all know such a being, or least we imagine we know such an individual, someone who claims to be our best friend but has a remarkable ability to praise our every action through a subtle, undermining attack. “You’re so healthy, if you’d only lose weight.” “I admire your ability to drink so much.” The kind of compliment that slaps you in the face.

      In this dark comic short, Mike Albo plays both the self-infatuated, endlessly dismissive attacker and the victim of Todd Downing’s film The Underminer, a title which might work better if he were changed to “Darts into the Heart”—suggesting a kind of Cupid who has the wonderful ability to put an arrow into every little prick and pain you’ve ever suffered. But there I am doing precisely what the central figure Albo does throughout, complimenting someone or something while stabbing it in the core.

     I shall resist describing Albo’s rather loudmouthed onslaught as an abrasive method of acting and ascribe it instead to the necessary tone to his wonderfully obnoxious satire. Sorry. There I go again, compulsively praising what I find so difficult to fully enjoy.

     I mean, it’s not Albo’s fault that he doesn’t give his poor other persona an opportunity to say a word, interrupting even his attempt to describe the new puppy he’s acquired. I mean, really what’s a silly pet mean when you’ve got so much more important news to convey, such as how your friend’s former lover is so much better off now that he’s found a new lover, lost all that weight, and lives in a beautiful new condo? Sorry that you haven’t yet found the opportunity to fix up your dump, although I know just how hard to do a fixer upper in an apartment building where most people don’t even pay the rent.

     Not that it’s Albo’s fault that he simply not control his glossalaliac (I don’t even think there’s even such an adjective, although it perfectly fits him) fowl mouth, and demands people talk to him even while he’s on the phone. He’s one of those multi-tasking individuals who can hear every word he doesn’t want to while dishing another person at the very same instant, tongue out and ear plugged.

     Too bad that not all people are as passive as Albo’s other self in this little movie, who in real life would have turned heel at the very moment he began his loving harangue or even punched him out.

      But that’s the joy of having just such a friend who makes us feel so much like shit every time we encounter him that we’ve been forced to block his calls, lock the doors when we hear him tread upon the stairs, and refuse to watch another moment of his forbidding acting skills as presented in this short 6-minute silly camp monologue.

      I loved the woman at the end in the cerulean dress and coral beads, but my god did you see her "Bride of Frankenstein" hair?

 

Los Angeles, November 6, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).