#mighty wind

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind. My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be talking about number 16 on my list: Castle Rock Entertainment and Warner Bros’ 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind, directed by Christopher Guest, written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, and starring Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Catherine O’Hara, and a bunch of other fabulous comedians.

After the death of a folk music producer, his children organize a televised memorial concert featuring three of his most famous groups: The New Main Street Singers, the Folksmen, and Mitch and Mickey. The film documents their reunions, rehearsals, and the show, and then catches up with the performers six months later.

My parents saw this movie in theaters, and I remember hearing that my mom really liked it and my dad did not. We got it on VHS soon after it came out, but it took several years for us to actually watch it. I wasn’t familiar with Christopher Guest’s other similar work, and I thought this was going to be a boring biopic about a band I’d never heard of. I can’t remember what finally convinced me to give it a chance, but once I did, I thought it was hilarious and was immediately hooked. I watched it five times in 2007, twice in 2008, twice in 2011, three times in 2012, once in 2013, once in 2014, once in 2017, twice in 2018, twice in 2020, once in 2021, and twice in 2022.  

At some point we got it on DVD as well, and I watched it with commentary by Chris Guest and Eugene Levy, which is how I learned that most of the dialogue is improvised. Guest and Levy came up with the story and characters, and they gave all the actors their backstories and then just let them say whatever they wanted to the camera. And that method works SO. WELL. It has that “authentic but also aware that I’m talking to a camera” feel of a real documentary, while also being just incredibly funny. One of my favorite parts is when the Folksmen, played by Chris Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean, are talking about how one of their albums was released on an inferior label, and they mention things like how the cover was printed in fewer colors and so forth, and then Guest just casually says, “And they had no hole in the center of the record,” and the other two just add to it, like, “Oh yeah, it would teeter crazily on the spindle” “But they were good records” as if this is a completely normal conversation and not one of the most ridiculously silly things anyone could possibly say. I’m so sad that the DVD didn’t come with bloopers because I would love to see all the fun improvs that didn’t make it into the final cut, and to find out how often they cracked each other up. Although the fact that they could have an earnest conversation about a record that was a good product once you punched a hole in it yourself demonstrates that these actors don’t break easily.

The cast is so packed with brilliant comedic talent that the movie would be worth watching for the laughs alone, but there’s more to it than that. Since this is a mockumentary, it would be reasonable to expect the punchline to be that all the music groups are terrible, but they’re not. The singing is excellent, and most of the songs are actually very catchy and fun to listen to. I’m a huge fan of the soundtrack. The songs were mainly written by various cast members, and as far as I can tell everybody did their own singing. Mitch & Mickey’s hit, A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow, written by Michael McKean and his wife Annette O’Toole and performed by Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, was even nominated for an Oscar. For people making a movie mocking folk music, they sure put a lot of effort into creating fabulous folk music. In a way, A Mighty Wind is kind of similar to Enchanted, in that it’s making fun of something while also celebrating it. And that’s one of my favorite things about it. This movie demonstrates that it’s possible, and even wonderful, to love something both genuinely and ironically at the same time, which is how I feel about several of the movies I’ve talked about on this podcast. A Mighty Wind offers no apology for enjoying folk music, even while expressing that most of it is objectively not good. I read a review that saw this as a flaw, claiming this film lacked the bite of Guest’s other mockumentaries, but I think that’s a big part of why this is my favorite. I enjoy his other films, but they feel a bit more mean-spirited. The writers clearly loved the Mighty Wind characters, even the more obnoxious ones, and therefore made them more likable to the audience than, for example, most of the Best in Show characters. Not that characters always have to be likable, but I find likable characters more fun to revisit.

I also feel like A Mighty Wind has a slightly less raunchy sense of humor than the others. There definitely are sex jokes, but mostly innuendo and double entendres that you can ignore if you’re not into that. For example, Jane Lynch and John Michael Higgins play a married couple whose last name is spelled B-O-H-N-E-R, and you can probably guess how it’s pronounced, and she makes a couple quick references to how she used to be a porn star, so it would be easy to just make sex jokes the main focus of their characters. However, they also started a coven called WINC – witches in nature’s colors – in which they believe, and I quote: “Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.” And that, to me, is much funnier. Not that I don’t laugh at a good sex joke, I just feel like I get tired of them faster than most people seem to, so I appreciate that this movie has a good balance of many different types of comedy.

I also appreciate that it’s not very heavily focused on romance; this is a movie about putting on a concert, not people falling in love. There is one main storyline that does involve romance, but in an intriguing and atypical way. Mitch and Mickey were once a couple who apparently had a very messy breakup, and are now reuniting for the first time in decades to perform A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow, which in the past always involved them actually kissing. We see them rehearsing it once, and they just pause and look at each other awkwardly at the kiss part. Then at the concert, Mitch disappears a few minutes before they’re supposed to go on, and Mickey is furious until he returns with a rose for her. And of course then they kiss on stage during their song. In the six months later epilogue section, they each claim that the other took the kiss too seriously, which I feel like could be interpreted in multiple different ways, and I’m honestly not sure if we’re supposed to conclude that they still have feelings for each other or not. But it’s clear that they both felt pressured to kiss because the audience was expecting it, and that’s the part that fascinates me. Because fans do often tend to become overly invested in the love lives of the celebrities they’re following, and I like the way this movie portrays that from the perspective of those celebrities. Of course, in this case, the audience probably just wants them to kiss because they always did and not necessarily because they want them to get back together, but I feel like those two attitudes are still related. The movie doesn’t tell us who decided to make the kiss part of the song in the first place, but knowing how often producers like to exploit relationships between artists to make money, I doubt it was Mitch and Mickey’s idea. But everybody loved it, apparently. A folk music historian who is interviewed claims that the kiss was a great moment not only in the history of folk music, but in the history of humans. When the Folksmen recognize the song at the concert, they make a bet about whether the kiss is going to happen – also, unrelated, but I love that Michael McKean’s character says, “This is that really pretty one” about a song that he wrote in real life. And then later, Mickey says that her sister berated her for leading Mitch on, even though that’s not what she was trying to do at all. There seems to be a weirdly contradictory perception of the kiss – people think it’s both trivial and significant at the same time. It’s just a fun little performative part of the song, and yet it’s seen as indicative of the state of their relationship, even by people who know it’s not. And it feels particularly appropriate that Mitch and Mickey are played by Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, who have played opposite each other so many times that people kind of expect them to be together. I don’t know if anyone actually thinks they’re together in real life, but I imagine they can relate at least a little bit to having a bunch of people they don’t know expecting them to show romantic interest in each other. And I feel like this is a great example of how amatonormativity can harm everybody, regardless of whether they’re aromantic or not. Because everyone is expected to want and need a committed romantic partner, some people become overly invested in the slightest romantic gesture, so that even a kiss between two performers on stage is interpreted as a declaration of their undying love for each other. And I appreciate that they managed to stick that message into this very silly comedy, even as I’m aware that I’m probably reading way more into it than anyone intended.

The main reason I keep rewatching this movie is because most of the jokes are still funny even after you’ve heard them over and over. However, there are a few that feel a little offensive now. For example, Jennifer Coolidge is hilarious as a very clueless character, who talks about having one brain that she shares with Larry Miller, thinks that model trains are where they got the idea for the big trains, and doesn’t know how to hum. But it kind of seems like she’s putting on an accent that might be intended to make fun of a specific group of people. Although I can’t tell what accent she’s trying to do, so maybe she was just talking silly and it’s actually not offensive, I’m not sure. And then there’s the part at the very end, when Harry Shearer’s character comes out as a trans woman, and like…they kind of try to portray it semi-respectfully, but it still feels like the joke is meant to be: look, it’s a man with a deep voice wearing a dress, isn’t that so funny? And I don’t like that. Also there’s very little diversity: I think there’s only one black character, who only has one line, and everybody else is white, and most of the important characters are men. But compared to most comedies from the early 2000s, overall A Mighty Wind holds up surprisingly well. It’s another example of an “everybody was having way too much fun” movie that I love despite its flaws.

I got to see The Folksmen in concert in 2009, when Guest, McKean, and Shearer did their “Unwigged and Unplugged” tour. They also performed songs from This is Spinal Tap, which I think is probably what most people were there for, and it was fun to see them switch between playing rockstars and folk singers. Everybody in this movie is so incredibly talented, and I love that they’ve made a bunch of similar but different projects together to demonstrate their range. I don’t know why Mighty Wind gets talked about so much less than Spinal Tap and Best in Show because if you enjoy those two, I’m pretty sure you’ll also enjoy this one. And if you, like past me, have been avoiding this movie because folk music sounds like it would be boring, I can assure you that it is not.

Before I wrap up this episode, since this is a podcast about movies, I just want to take a moment to talk about the current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. The billionaire CEOs of production companies are trying to convince the public that writers and actors are unreasonable for wanting to get paid for their work, in order to distract us from the fact that the very existence of billionaires in a world where any people – let alone people working for them – are struggling to make ends meet is preposterously unreasonable. I know it will be hard to wait for TV shows to come back and new movies to come out, but there are so many things for us to watch in the meantime. As audience members, we should absolutely be rooting for the actors and writers here. Think of how much better their art will be if they’re paid enough that they don’t have to work a bunch of side jobs to survive! So if you know of any writers or actors who have Patreons or anything like that and you have a little money to spare, now would be an excellent time to start supporting them. I’m also putting a link to the Entertainment Community Fund in the show notes [and here], if you want to support the cause more generally. This podcast wouldn’t exist without screen writers or actors, and I strongly feel that all of them deserve to be fairly compensated for their art. Remember that this strike isn’t about the movie stars making $15 million per movie; this is about the 87% of SAG-AFTRA members who don’t make the $26,000 required to qualify for health insurance each year. And I would like to wish any of my listeners who happen to be in the WGA and/or SAG-AFTRA the best of luck during what I hope is a crucial turning point in the industry.