A Night of Weekend at Bernie's

It costs $260 to buy the rights to publicly screen Weekend At Bernie’s. I know this because Thursday night the Whitney Museum held a screening of said classic, hosted by artist Cory Arcangel. A “new media artist” (read: artist), Arcangel is currently having his first museum retrospective at the Whitney. While he had never seen the film before Thursday night, he frequently cites it as a key influence in his work.

Arcangel (his real last name), explained that he tries to make “elevator pitch” art work. “A bowling video game that can only bowl gutter balls.” “A Super Mario game where everything but the clouds is erased.” He said he considers Weekend at Bernie’s to be the high point in elevator pitch/high concept movies, and he’s right. It’s not hard to imagine the studio meeting that sprouted to movie.

Cory Arcangel, Genealogies, 2009

He spoke before the film about how he had never done this type of thing before. He talked about how ideas differ from your expectation once they’re actualized. Sometimes he’ll think a work of art is going to be great, make it, and not like it. Other times he’ll dislike an idea but love its real world application. Obviously this applies to way more than just art. I wanted to see how screening Weekend at Bernie’s at The Whitney would compare to his idea of screening Weekend at Bernie’s at The Whitney, hoping that he’d think both the idea and its actualization were good.

Everyone laughed during the screening, which made me feel relieved; I had been nervous that art people wouldn’t be into it. Bernie’s is actually surprisingly good. Often comedy has a short shelf life (e.g. old episodes of SNL). Jokes become tired, and something that was edgy becomes limp. Weirdly, Bernie’s is probably more shocking now than is was in 1989. This is mostly because of the things that happen to Bernie’s corpse. For example:
-He’s dragged by a speed boat for several minutes, and in this time he (loudly) hits several metal buoys
-He swept out to shore by high tide, only to wash up next to the character played by the guy who isn’t Andrew McCarthy as he makes out with his intern
-He’s fucked

Afterwards Cory answered some questions. If the screening was a good idea that was also good in execution, answering questions was only a good idea. Q&A sessions are always awkward; people asking questions freeze up; artists don’t understand poorly worded questions; people try to seem smart; etc. I’m sure several videos exist in which I’m in the crowd during Q&A’s, running my hand over my face because that’s what I do when I feel weird.

There was one really good question though: One guy said that, while he feels that the premise for the movie would be totally impossible today, there was a small chance (like .01%) that it was possible in 1989. Cory agreed, because if someone had no online presence in 2011 for a whole weekend, people would notice. I think that’s true, but I also think it was possible for other reasons. 1989 was just a weird time; people were probably less suspicious and worried. The fact that someone kept his sunglasses on and didn’t change clothes or talk for a few days probably just meant he was tired from partying. No need to stress out. Also I like to think of the end of the 80s as a sort of fuzzy blur, and so maybe the distinctions between things like “alive” and “dead” were less clear.

Anyway, the night was really cool, and more museums should consider showing things people actually like, as opposed to things like The Triumph of the Will. It was sort of disarming how many in the audience hadn’t seen the film, because it’s really great. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it. It’s on Netflix, and it will get you in the mood for the Fourth of July. You should also go see Cory’s show, called Pro Tools, as soon as you get a chance.

See more of Cory Arcangel at Motherboard.