Accompanied by Gabby PM ("Egg") and the patrons of the Red Vic Movie House, I saw two Kings in November on Haight Street. One, King of Kong, was mos def my pick for Best Documentary I Saw in a Theater this Year. And the Egg and I even won a poster. Oooooooooo.
But despite my love of all things choclo and my name in Quechua meaning 'corn,' the Disappointing Documentary of the Year "Award" is hereby handed to the film King of Corn for being both somehow weirdly non-political and just downright mediocre for all 100+ minutes. The highlight turned out to be the pre-game entertainment, which consisted of the following:
Down the aisles strolled a lovely damsel squishing a concertina accompanied by a tweed-vested fella strumming through a folk guitar. They parked next to the Red Vic's movie screen to teach us the chorus of an important sing-along song: Everybody Grab a Hoe (Get a Hoe? Have a Hoe? Take a Hoe? Whatever, I blocked out the lyrics, but you get the point). Yep, I and 60ish other people sang 'Imperative Verb a Hoe' with gusto and confused facial expressions for at least the following five minutes. They led us lurching into singing alongside a frightening ‘70s farming-americana video, complete with a bouncing ball icon above each word to focus our warbling.
As if that weren’t torture enough, halfway through the song appeared in the theatre a human-sized ear of corn with green tights who came to shimmy around in front of us. What? You point out you are from San Francisco and therefore not easily spooked? Fine, fine, I feel ya. Because most disturbing of all, the dancing corn cob carried in and then ate a bowl of Red Vic popcorn. Now, I know that Red Vic popcorn is all Brewster's Yeasty hippy and all, but you will allow that things have taken a marked turn for the worse when a rather tall Corn Cob can eat the popped, dried remains of its own kind in public, right?
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