Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 30th at 5:30pm for Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story at the Brattle Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion. This is an exclusive engagement at the Brattle, so you may wish to pre-order tickets or show up early.
“The best mock documentaries – This is SPINAL TAP, BOB ROBERTS, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN – work because they fall just short of mockery. They have real affection for their subjects, and can recreate those subjects’ hilariously skewed version of the world insofar as they fully inhabit that world. Mock-docs that don’t do this are either mean, obvious, or both.
Thankfully, BLACKBALLED writer-director Brant Sersen loves paintballers, and his movie has the winking empathy that marks all great mock-docs. A hilarious cast, complete with (Boston’s own) Rob Corddry of “The Daily Show” and much of the cast from the famed “Upright Citizens Brigade,” put together a group of memorable characters and one-liners that are sure to become tomorrow’s dorm-room jokes.
Corddry is Bobby Dukes, the uncontested Michael Jordan of paintball for many years…until the day he committed the unthinkable during a paintball match: he “wiped.”We get this back-story in a clever opening sequence, then meet Bobby ten years after his betrayal of the sport. Now, he’s decided that it is time to return to the paintball field, face the demons of his past, and assemble a motley crew of paintballers to compete in the Hudson Valley Paintball Classic. Game on! – notes from the Independent Film Festival of Boston 2005.
Alongside Corddry, the cast is rounded out by many familiar comedic faces including: Ed Helms (The Daily Show), Paul Scheer (VH1’s Best Week Ever), Rob Riggle (Saturday Night Live), Rob Huebel (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and local comic legend DJ Hazzard.”