The
‘Real’ Wedding Video
By
Chuck Perroncel
HOUSTON
– Norm Korpi an Clint Cowen’s The Wedding
Video has to be
the funniest and most delight-filled film of the 2002
Houston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Screened at the newly refurbished Rice Cinema
to a packed house, the showing delayed to seat everyone
and still others were left outside. Are there really that many Real World (MTV) fans who remember Norm Korpi from the first (1992)
season of this like totally unreal show?
Well, Norm remembers.
He’s written (and co-directed with Clint
Cowen) a hilarious spoof of Real World TV called The Wedding Video. Produced
on less than a shoe string budget and acted by residual
Real World
and other friends who paid their own way to the various
locations, the wedding is set in a run down castle
in L.A., with pre wedding interviews with the ‘guest’
in Wisconsin, Michigan, Birmingham and NYC.
Partly scripted, much is left to the actors,
producing the Real Word effect. It
works beautifully.
Norm is marrying Sky, played by a legitimate
straight porn star named Brien: the gay actors wanted
$30,000). The
wedding coordinator is homophobic, and Norm’s
mom gives him a $10,000 write-off check and refuses
to attend the “wedding” or be interviewed
on tape. A
novice cameraman gets the job of taping.
Friends of Groom One and of Groom Two give
their fond and mostly not so fond memories of the
boys. They
invade the ‘castle’ and settle in to wrangling
vicious gossiping, and altogether funny mayhem.
Most of the wedding money goes up Norm and
Sky’s respective noses, so the banquet consists
of a Carne de Bologna Loaf and Quick-Company’s
Coming-Canapés.
A non-descript clergy man reads a saccharine
nuptial service, and guest think they see Sky making
hanky-panky in private with a female friend who hangs
all over him every time they are in public.
The
unseen videographer (played by Clint Cowen) graphically
demonstrates his fledgling status in the rushes. He demonstrates his mischeiviousness by
letting the camera run when guests want to speak privately. He demonstrates his good heart in the
finished product, which when delivered, is all warm
and smarmy, with all hints of petty fractiousness
hidden behind stock fades, cliched masks and divided
screen scenes and sweet gentle music.
As Norm said in the post screening Q&A,
the rough edges of real life are smoothed out to create
a Real Word
video. The
grooms are blissfully ignorant of the troubles we
have seen and receive the video as a true representation
of the Big Day.
It is truly funny stuff.
How would they know?
Norm was ‘Xing’ (stoned on eXstacy
the whole day).
The Wedding Video
is an indi film looking for a distributor.
It deserves a much larger audience larger than
the film festival crowd who will otherwise get to
see it. If
this review has peaked your interest sufficiently,
you can find out a lot more detail and gossip about
the film and the actors by logging onto www.rewindservices.com. You can also see that Norm has gained
a few pounds and a more “mature” look
since 1992, but that he is still cute a s button…
whatever that means.
Our
reviewer’s rating
A+
27-
The Texas Triangle – June 21, 2002
Back
to all news clippings 
