Imagine a world where acquiring the land necessary to build a pyramid was your primary goal.
Imagine still that pyramid being built solely out of 16,000-plus VHS copies of the film Jerry Maguire.
This is the headspace Commodore Gilgamesh finds himself in. And he’s devoted the last 10 years of his life to that purpose.
Gilgamesh is a co-founder of a U.S.-based video mashup collective — more on that later — called Everything is Terrible (EIT). The group lands at the Rickshaw on Feb. 13 to debut its latest full-length film offering, The Great Satan.
Gilgamesh, who’s Earth-born name is Nicholas Maier, spoke to the Courier from his home in Los Angeles and asked to be referred to as Gilgamesh when speaking about official EIT business.
That point alone offers a glimpse into the banal, insane, hilarious and profusely strange world view that makes up his group.
“We’re 10 years in and we still can’t explain it and I think that’s the beauty of it — you can’t really pin us down. If we were a rock band, you would know immediately what we are,” he says. “So we can constantly re-invent ourselves and constantly do different things. Even our fans are like, ‘Wait, it’s a live show, it’s a movie, what is happening?’”
The easy explanation for EIT goes something like this. A bunch of film students and like-minded college kids who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s rallied around their love of the innate weirdness from that time period: infomercials, televangelists, bad hair, stupid dance moves and the like.
Their technical abilities to edit, re-purpose and re-contextualize is what bring us to today: clips varying in length between two to five minutes mashed up alongside droning music, happy music or sad music that would fit nicely in the collection of Timothy Leary or Hunter S. Thompson.
If that sounds too difficult to explain, that’s because it is. Easy is not a calling card in Gilgamesh’s world and that’s part of the point.
“So much of our media world is just mediocre,” Gilgamesh says. “It’s just shooting for off-white centre to hit as many people as possible. I think we strive to make something that is either below that or above that and we don’t care as long it’s not in the range of mediocre.”
There are some recurring characters and themes happening in the thousands of EIT videos floating in the ether. Gilgamesh won’t say what the point of the whole exercise is and nor should he have to. But there are undercurrents of social commentary, humour, absurdity, celebration and nihilism found in the thousands of videos he’s helped produce.
Televangelists and the Satanic Panic during the 1980s are often targets. But then there’s a character like Duane, who appears on a kids’ dance show in what appear to be the early-’90s. A 38-second clip of Duane shaking his tail feather has garnered more than two million views on YouTube.
All in, EIT’s YouTube views are in the tens of millions.
How has this happened?
“It’s about finding something that is not special and deeming it special,” Gilgamesh explains. “That could be a like a bajillion dollar movie that falls between the cracks and they do something that we find remarkable enough to pull it back. Or it’s a thing that didn’t cost any more, didn’t get any attention and we boost it up either because we love it or we love and hate it.”
Taking the show on the road and on stage entails puppets, props, three actors and a screening of the 75-minute film, which is comprised of more than 2,000 clips. It took two years for Gilgamesh and a team of about 12 others to create it. The title, The Great Satan, plays off the ideals spawned during the satanic panic of 30 years ago and goes further.
“I think the idea of good and evil is really absurd to us and it’s even more heightened in our current environment,” Gilgamesh says. “You go on the internet and all you hear is ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, this is black, this is white and that’s life.’ I think the idea of an evil being is a great catalyst to look at all this crazy greyness that actually exists in the world.”
Speaking of crazy, back to the notion of a pyramid made of Jerry Maguire VHS tapes, affectionately referred to as “Jerrys.” Gilgamesh and his co-conspirators are looking to purchase land in northern Arizona to make the pyramid a reality before the end of this year.
Donors from across the world have helped bring his dream to fruition, and a leaderboard on the EIT website tracks donations. Someone named Alex McNeely sits atop that count with close to 1,400 donations.
“The easiest answer is this: [Jerry Maguire] was the easiest tape to find the most of because it was everywhere. We couldn’t stop finding it. But it fits so perfectly. We don’t watch the movie, but the crimson colour, the look on the dude’s face… It represents a lot to us. I hope we don’t hurt friend [film director] Mr. Crowe’s feelings, but it represents mediocrity to us.”
The Great Satan screens at the Rickshaw at 8 p.m. on Feb. 13. Online tickets via Ticketfly go for $12.
If you’re up to the challenge, more information is online at watch.everythingisterrible.com.
@JohnKurucz
