Okay. Who's the wise guy.

It's got to be one of my friends playing a practical joke on me. Who is it? I know a lot of short filmmakers. Someone's pulling my leg. Someone sent me an 8 minute short called "The Interview" that is so hideously bad, so heinous and so fratboy stupid that it has to be a joke. I mean, c'mon. Who is it? Fess up!

The film "claims" to be made by someone named Ramzi Abed. Is that a made-up name or what. I'm pretty good with anagrams but this one has me stymied. Does that work out to Ze Bar Maid? Braid Maze? Brad Zaime? Amaze Bird? A Bird Maze? Who could have done this?

It's obvious "The Interview" is supposed to be a joke from the beginning. It's shot on lackluster, tacky home video. And the 8 minute film opens with a 2 minute credit sequence. That's right, 25% of this film is the credits. Yes, they are at least a little creative. But nothing new, really. The film has a supposed artist as a main character (if you could call these nonentities characters) who is apparently a really, really bad artist. It's a female character, by the way, not that it matters. The camera pans around a room where paintings, records, books and other junk are strewn, occassionally landing upon hand written title cards that are supposed to be creepy, I guess. It seems to go on forever while typical drab music plays.

When the film finally does begin, the acting is horrid and the sound design is non-existent. This is bad, home video quality, backyard stuff.

Eventually, the plot unspools: A guy takes this female artist (his wife? girlfriend? lover? - Who knows - Who cares) to some sort of appointment. They leave their young child at home. You get the impression the guy isn't the kid's father because he is an absolute creep in that "Mommy's boyfriend" kinda way. When they get to town, the female goes in a building while the male waits in the car. Finally, far too long later, he decides to go in after her.

The next 60 seconds of the film reveal that we have indeed been watching a short by some sort of Tarantino-tit-sucking fratboy wannabee. First, there is the obligatory and STUPID moment where the "main character" sees a homeless person on the street. Why? Because, as they teach in bad film school 101, a homeless person isn't really a homeless person at all but impending doom personified! It's so creepy in that I'm- 16-and-I-am-not-gay-but-I-would-suck-off-QT-in-a-second kinda way.

When the character finally disengages from his typical, cinematic fratboy moment with the actor/producer dressed up (and badly at that) as a homeless person, he goes into the door where the girl entered earlier. He sees some creepy paintings on the wall. Then he sees his woman, tied-up and dead with a red-rubber-ball-gag in her mouth. (That'll be so cool dude, like the gimp in "Pulp Fiction," dude - awesome, dude). He is shocked. Well, not really shocked. You know, it's "acting."

Then, I swear to God, the guy looks up and there is another guy in a rabbit suit in the room. Okay - it's kinda creepy and surreal. Actually, it's a guy with a rabbit's head from a rabbit costume on but not the suit. He's wearing regular clothes. Creepy and cool, yes. But then...

Then the rabbit-headed-guy stabs that "main character guy."

And then?

Cut to black. The end.

That's it. I swear to God. That is the movie. It is so horribly bad that it makes you bust out laughing. I have seen some incomprehensible crap in my day but "The Interview" is way up close to the top of the heap. It's amazing that such cinematic atrocity can be achieved in 8 short minutes.

If I ever meet this Ramzi Abed, whoever the hell he or she is, I won't know whether to laugh in his face, kick him in the nads or buy him a beer.

It's got to be one of my friends pulling a practical joke.

Please God. It just has to be.

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