A movie like Cannibal! The Musical is amateurish but not everyone gets it the right the first time. With the exception of Orson Welles, Harper Lee and the Coen Brothers, many filmmakers, writers and actors have to find their groove through trial and error.
Reportedly after seeing a rough cut of Boxcar Bertha, John Cassavetes said bluntly to Martin Scorsese: “Marty, you’ve just spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It’s a good picture, but you’re better than the people who make this kind of movie.”
You can see a lot of what would become the groundbreaking phenomenon that was South Park in Trey Parker’s first movie Cannibal! The Musical. While it may not seem that way now as SP has kinda folded in on itself as a lawsuit over a streaming rights deal in 2019 between Warner Bros. and South Park Studios has been more complicated by Paramount Global claiming Comedy Central, which they own, should have rights. And for the last 10 years, the show has basically changed its tone and style just like The Simpsons.
But when the series premiered in 1997, it became a juggernaut for Comedy Central and merchandise exploded on a Star Wars style scale at the end of the 1990s. But only a few years earlier, Parker along future SP co-creator Matt Stone would make the movie under the title Alferd Parker: The Musical while they were students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Parker and Stone were able to raise about $125,000 to which they began production during the 1993 winter year with other students and faculty/staff.
A popular urban legend that Parker flunked out of college making the movie is incorrect. However, Ian Hardin, who produced, edited and co-starred in the movie as the real-life Shannon Wilson Bell, said they all failed their film class. Filming in the Rocky Mountains on weekends and during Spring Break produced problems with crew members getting into fights (some of which almost were physical); the cast members getting cold shock from filming in extreme temperatures; and an incident where they were filming at the Gunnison River, they actually got swept away by the raging waters as shown in the movie. Parker credited as Juan Schwartz who plays Parker, suffered a hairline hip fracture when he was thrown from a horse. (The name is a play on an alias “John Schwartz” Packer made while hiding out in Wyoming.)
The story of Packer and the failed party of prospectors who went into the San Juan Mountains during the winter of 1874 has been well known in Colorado. It had also inspired the fictional The Legend of Alferd Packer in 1980. However, very little is known about what really happened as when the bodies of the prospectors were found, it couldn’t be determined how or what manner they had died because their bodies had been ravaged by scavengers and the elements.
Originally when Packer arrived in Saguache, Colo., claiming to have survived almost two months in the wilderness with little food or resources. Yet he didn’t seem to be appeared malnourished and he had told everyone the prospectors in the party had abandoned him. What is known is by reports that Packer had been discovered by a party of about 20 people heading from Salt Lake City to Breckenridge, Colo. when they ran into Packer near Provo, Utah in mid-Fall 1873. Packer had reportedly falsified his knowledge of the area as well as his experience as a wilderness guide
The party took refuge while low on food at an Ute tribe camp of Chief Ouray on Jan. 21, 1874. Ouray allowed the prospectors to stay with his tribe as the harsh winter would make it hard for them to travel further east toward Breckenridge where gold was reported to have been discovered. However, the prospectors decided in February of that year to go east. However, they split in two parties with Packer leading five of them. It’s been reported that several of the prospectors didn’t want Packer to go with him and even threatened to kill him if he did.
Parker manages to assemble a story that is mostly based on fact. Some people might think it’s funny to see him making dollhouses while in his jail cell but that’s what the real Packer did. Also, an elderly woman did throw a tomato at Packer’s head while he was sitting in court. The courtroom scenes were filmed in the actual court where Packer was tried and convicted for murder in Lake City, Colo. Parker’s own father, Randall Parker, plays the judge who passed a sentence that he was to be sentenced to death by hanging until he is “dead, dead, dead.”
Mostly, Parker and the rest of the cast and crew shoot for a cross between the comedies of Mel Brooks and Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker and and the musicals of Rodger and Hammerstein. The title card at the beginning references Oklahoma! And the opening credits are done in the same style as their movies. The songs, very catchy, show how Parker would go on to make great musicals like South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut and his Tony-winning The Book of Mormon.
The only problem is how cheap and inexperienced it looks. But I think that’s part of the movie’s charm. There’s no way to make a story about a man suspecting of killing five people entertaining, unless it’s done as a black comedy pretending to be a light-hearted musical with anachronistic references to modern things as well as Japanese immigrants pretending to be Native Americans. Japanese foreign exchange students at UCB were used.
In real life, Packer wasn’t a very good person. That’s what Parker plays him with a goofy gullibility. He’s constantly inept and unsure of what to do or where they’re going. He’s mostly suckered into being a tour guide by prospector Israel Swan (Jon Hegel) who constantly has a positive outlook on everything. Bell, who claims he wants to be a Mormon pastor in Colorado territory also more or less convinces Packer to be the guide.
The teenage George “California” Noon (Dian Bachar) decides to go against his father’s wishes while the father of James Humphrey (Stone) forces him to go to stake the claim. Both fathers are played by Stan Brakhage, the late experimental filmmaker, and Dan Yannacito, a professor at UCB. Yet, their performances are not the best. It seems like a lot of the scenes were shot with only one take. You can actually see Parker looking off camera at one point saying, “Cut!”
But a movie like this, you’re not really supposed to take seriously even though it follows the same reported events and contains real-life characters including Polly Pry (Toddy Walters) a journalist who worked for the Denver Post and began to focus her reporting on Packer’s trial and the events. During a scene where Walters is singing on a staircase, a young man who appears to be a modern college student walks down next to her and looks around confused.
You take a movie like The Great Showman which sugar-coated the horrors and exploitation of P.T. Barnum or even The Sound of Music that made the Nazi occupation into a song and dance movie. There might not be any good way to make a musical about a serious topic without being seen as foolish. Maybe that’s what Parker is shooting for. Anyone familiar with South Park knows they have used humor to satirize current events.
The movie has some of trademarks that have become seen in South Park as well as Parker’s movies as aliens hidden in the background and references to Charles Dickens. Parker even casts Aubrey Stafferd who was known as an Alferd Packer look-a-like as a harbinger of death who does a Crazy Ralph-style “You’re all doomed!” cameo.
Parker does mess around with the facts. The prospectors keep running into aggressive trappers led by French Cabazon (Robert Muratore) whose associates Preston Nutter (Andrew Kemler) and O.D. Loutzenheiser (Edward Henwood), obviously sing off-key during a certain musical performance. In real life, Carbazon, Nutter and Loutzenheiser were miners and prospectors, not trappers who were questionable toward Packer from the start.
This might be because Parker wanted to change things up because “based on true story” movies always do that. I think it’s funny that Loutzenheiser wears a coonskin hat with googly eyes on them. You can’t go into a movie like this taking it seriously. Even though it was independently produced, it was released by Troma Entertainment and it seems to exhibit the same type of absurdist humor, non-sensical plots and graphic violence and gore that is common in their movies. Lloyd Kaufman, with Troma, was the one who convinced Parker to rename it Cannibal! The Musical which is a more appropriate title considering the style of the movie.
If you want to true story, read a biography. This a movie that is fun and it shows how Parker and Stone are such big names now.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 