From College Improv Team to Comedy Canon: Long Live the State Film Review
Still from Long Live the State. Photo courtesy of the Calgary Underground Film Festival.
When you enrol in a university, you are with your cohort of whatever program you are in, or whichever extra curricular clubs you join, for typically around four years. Sometimes these people stick with you, but oftentimes you never see them again once university is over. At most, you might wish them a happy birthday when their name appears on Facebook, but that’s about it. On the other hand, what if you and ten other people joined a university improv team/sketch team, did shows around town, and got so committed to it that you would later get your own sketch show on MTV, and in general make things with these people for the next thirty plus years of your life? This is the story of The State, the eleven person sketch group formed at NYU, who shaped and influenced the alt-comedy scene for Gen-X, millennials and Gen Z, which is displayed in director Matthew Pernicaro’s wonderful film Long Live The State.
You might not know The State by name, but you one hundred percent have experienced their work in some form if you have watched a comedy movie or TV show in the last thirty five years. Are you a fan of Superbad or Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Then you have certainly seen Joe Lo Truglio’s golden-retriever wit. Are you a fan of Christopher Nolan’s films, like Memento and The Dark Knight Rises? Then you have seen Tom Lennon, who played a doctor in both. How about the films Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models and Wanderlust? Then you are a fan of writer/director David Wain, one of the greatest voices in comedy filmmaking of the 21st century. Were you happy when Jessica Chastain won the Best Actress Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, or when Amanda Seyfried won the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series Emmy for playing Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout? Then you have director Michael Showalter to thank, who made both projects. I could go on (Tom Lennon and Ben Garant wrote the Night at the Museum franchise! Ken Marino was in Veronica Mars and Party Down! Keri Kenney stars in Tina Fey’s The Four Seasons for Netflix!) suffice to say, these eleven people who met for a NYU improv team’s tentacles run deep, and yet The State is what brings them all together.
I am a huge The State dork, so I had high hopes for Long Live The State which this film exceeded. Let’s begin with Matthew Pernicaro’s masterstroke: the only people interviewed in the film are the eleven members of The State. That’s it! I am sure a large part of that was because the group has eleven members and you want to attempt to give each member their proper due in under two hours, but I appreciate the focus being on the people who actually lived it, as one of my biggest documentary pet peeves is when the young artist who was influenced by the artist/band/comedian/whomever is in the film to chirp empty platitudes. It’s a waste of time, as if you are already watching a film on a subject, you don’t need Dave Grohl telling you that Rush changed music (to list one example). The focus is primarily on not just the great comedy these eleven people made together, but also the interpersonal dynamics, as you could imagine with eleven people trying to make creative decisions together. Long Live The State charts the highs and lows, not being afraid to get raw when members still have hard feelings, like when Michael Showalter transferred to Brown University for a time or when Michael Ian Black temporarily left the group to join a Ninja Turtles touring show.
The film gets into a lot of really interesting material, for example Kerri Kenney, the only female member of the group, discussing how it was to be in a group with ten other guys, which never really phased her only until other people like the press brought it up (Kenney states “Because I wasn’t treated any differently, I didn’t feel different”). Another interesting chapter in the film is about how The State weren’t just simply the writers and actors in their sketches, but they also were involved in all of the directing, editing and technical aspects as well, which was rare for the era. As much as we love The Kids in the Hall and Mr Show, they enlisted other people to direct and edit their sketch shows. The State’s DIY attitude later became very commonplace, especially as video equipment and editing software got more affordable and more prevalent, which influenced the likes of The Lonely Island and Tim and Eric. Another part where these younger groups connect with The State, which is covered in Long Live The State, is how they all got awful reviews to start with, with The State member Ben Garant remarking in the film: “oh we’re punk rock, people are supposed to hate us,” wearing it like a badge of honour. Roger Ebert wrote horrible reviews to David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer and Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie equally, but both later found their audiences. The kids who grew up on The State became the adult critics for publications in our modern era, which is similar to how another MTV property, Jackass, another show the press hated, later was presented by New York’s MoMa and would get great reviews for their later iterations, just like how David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp prequel series for Netflix got great reviews fifteen years after the first film bombed critically and at the box office.
Whether you are a die-hard fan who will sit up in your seat once the words “Porcupine Racetrack” are said, or if you have never heard of The State prior to this film, Long Live The State does a great job of explaining what made them so important, and why people are still lining up to see reunion shows over thirty years after the MTV sketch show ended. The interviews with the members are candid and revealing, the footage is stellar, and the soundtrack is a time warp back to ’90s college radio, featuring Pixies, Liz Phair, Manic Street Preachers and Shudder to Think.