Beer League (2006) and Chain Reactions

There’s this thing in show business where success is as much about talent as it is about the people you know. I guess that could be said about any business, really. It just happens to be more apparent in show business. Apparent. Get it? Like a parent because nepotism can play a large role. Aw, come on. That was good.

I don’t want to spend this post getting into basic nepotism. We could all name people who have benefited from nepotism. Entertainment dynasties like the Coppolas, the Barrymores, or the Fondas. That’s another topic for another day with a familial twist. I want to discuss a different kind of “people you know” that leads to success in the business. I want to do a post on chain reactions.

What do I mean when I say chain reactions? Say you have one famous person. They discover someone or bring a friend onto a project. That second person blows up and turns into a star. Then that person introduces the world to yet another person who becomes a star. That would be a chain reaction. Person leads to person leads to person. They aren’t related, though, which is what keeps typical nepotism out of the equation. These chain reactions are what I want to discuss, thanks to this week’s movie.

Beer League was an edgy sports comedy about a beer league softball team. Artie (Artie Lange) was a deadbeat alcoholic chain-smoker whose antics put his team in the unfavourable situation of a possible forced disbanding. The only chance they had of keeping the team together was to finish higher than their rivals in the standings; rivals who were much better than them.

Artie Lange was the inspiration for this idea. He was part of a chain reaction when it came to finding success in show business. Before I get into that, though, a quick word from our sponsors. No, but really, I need to dive into Artie Lange’s background before I can fully get into the chain reaction. You see, the chain reaction wasn’t about him getting into the entertainment business. He was already there. It was about propelling him to a star level. It was about people recognizing him to the point where he could make a movie that is sometimes called Artie Lange’s Beer League.

Artie Lange wasn’t destined to be an entertainer. Sure, he went to school for broadcasting, but after his father broke his back, Artie simply tried to make ends meet. He became a taxi driver and a longshoreman. This was in the mid-to-late 80s. It wouldn’t be until 1992 that he had a stand-up career that stuck. He was part of the original cast of MadTV, but lasted less than two seasons because of an attempted suicide and a serious drug addiction. This  is where the chain reaction comes into play.

The first, big post-MadTV project that Artie Lange was involved in was a film called Dirty Work. He was specifically chosen for his role by Norm Macdonald, who had recently been fired from another sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live. Artie’s role in Dirty Work would parlay into networks wanting to work with him to write new shows. None of them worked out, but he did get a major role on The Norm Show, Macdonald’s sitcom. Artie Lange had been noticed before, but he wasn’t recognized in this way until Macdonald chose him for his movie.

The success that Artie found would elevate his career to new heights that would solidify him as a presence in show business. He became a major part of The Howard Stern Show in 2001, and would keep his role there until 2009. He wrote a few books that would dive into his life and all his personal demons. Drug addiction, alcoholism, gambling addiction. Each of the books found success. The most important to this post, however, was his movie, Beer League.

A large amount of Beer League was based on Artie Lange’s own life and personality. His character drank and did drugs, two things that have haunted Artie through his whole life. It was softball. Artie was a baseball player in his younger days. He cast comedians he was friends with at the time and some, like Jimmy Palumbo, who he is still friends with to this day. And, of course, it featured his brand of edgy humour that hasn’t aged particularly well for the modern day. He was a star, and this movie came out of his stardom.

You might be wondering how this is a full chain reaction. I’ve only written about Norm Macdonald putting Artie Lange into a movie and, subsequently, a sitcom. That’s one link. That’s not enough for a chain. This is where we get to go back a little ways. We’re going to go back to a few years before Dirty Work. We’re going to go back to the late 1980s again, when Norm Macdonald was coming up in the business and then get to that link.

Norm Macdonald, like Artie Lange, got his start in stand-up comedy. He was on the Canadian circuit, mostly in the Ottawa area, but gaining some notice in the Just for Laughs festival. You know, the biggest Canadian comedy festival. This led to a whole bunch of writing jobs for things like The Pat Sajak Show, The Dennis Miller Show (fitting, for where Norm would rocket to startdom), and Roseanne. He also made appearances on Star Search and Late Night with David Letterman.

All this work would lead to Lorne Michaels (the next link in the chain) casting him in the nineteenth season of Saturday Night Live. Some of his sketch work was loved by fans, particularly his Burt Reynolds impression, but it was when he was brought on as the host of Weekend Update that his star began to shine. His brand of humour took over the news segment. It was edgy, much like Artie Lange’s humour, but it felt more self-aware. Yeah, Norm could be edgy to be edgy, but he used the edginess to play with audience expectations. He toyed with people through his quips. That might be why he was able to adapt his comedy in later years, in a way that Artie couldn’t. Norm’s comedy was about the toying, not about the edge. They just went hand-in-hand.

One step up from Norm Macdonald was Lorne Michaels, the guy who created Saturday Night Live and has run the show for all but five years of its fifty-year existence. Yes, there’s a casting director and there are producers on the show. To say that Lorne Michaels doesn’t have a say in who gets cast in the show would be a lie. He had influence over Norm Macdonald being hired.

Where did Lorne Michaels come from? Surely, there was something before Saturday Night Live that got him the showrunner position. Right? Right? Right. This is a much smaller link, though. You might call it the rustiest link on the chain, because it was simply something that pushed Lorne Michaels to make a name for himself. The chain had to start somewhere. This was where it started.

Lorne Michaels grew up in Canada and went on to be a writer at CBC with his writing partner Hart Pomerantz. Their partnership would lead them to Hollywood where they would write for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, a big show at the time, and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, which was only a few episodes. This work then helped them go back home and create The Lorne and Hart Terrific Hour. That’s where they found some recognition. It was the stepping stone between Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and Saturday Night Live. It got Lorne the recognition he needed to become a rising star people would invest in. That Dick Ebersol would invest in. Lorne made his own stardom, but it was with a light link to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Not the people, but the show itself.

So, here’s the chain reaction. Okay? Dan Rowan and Dick Martin created Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Lorne Michaels wrote for that show, then went onto The Lorne and Hart Terrific Hour, which got him the Saturday Night Live gig. Lorne cast Norm Macdonald in Saturday Night Live. Norm would go on to host Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, which got him enough recognition to write his own movie, Dirty Work. He starred in Dirty Work and influenced the hiring of Artie Lange. Artie Lange was catapulted to stardom from that, as well as being cast in The Norm Show. He then went on to be a part of The Howard Stern Show for nearly a decade, and wrote his own movie, Beer League. Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In eventually led to Beer League.

This is not to say that the Lorne Michaels to Artie Lange chain is the only chain reaction to exist in entertainment. There have been many over the years. Lorne Michaels has a few on his own. Lorne Michaels to Adam Sandler to any of the Sandler stable (Allen Covert, Jonathan Loughran, Peter Dante). Lorne Michaels to Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo and Bob Odenkirk who would work on The Ben Stiller Show together. Bob Odenkirk would go onto Mr. Show, which brought Scott Aukerman and Paul F. Tompkins into the public eye, two guys who would go on to be important players in the stand-up and improv comedy worlds, and mainstays of the comedy podcast world. Lorne Michaels has been a large link in many chains.

Outside of the Lorne Michaels trees, the one I always think about is the one that started with Dr. Dre. After he broke from NWA, he went on to discover a few popular rappers. One was Snoop Dogg, but it’s another one that helped make an interesting chain. Dr. Dre brought Eminem into the industry. Eminem would, a few years later, bring 50 Cent into the industry. 50 Cent brought along his friends, and G-Unit bandmates, Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo. That’s three links, four levels deep. I always like that one.

Chain reactions are fun to look at. One person discovers someone who then brings a friend along for the ride and they all become successful. Maybe the chains go even longer than that. Knowing people, discovering people, that’s how entertainment works. It’s a business all about networking to get ahead. These chains showed that.

I’ve always been fascinated by connections through entertainment. It might not always be in this way. I remember in the early days of IMDb, I would mindlessly click an actor, click something they did, click another actor, and keep going and going to see where I could get. In high school, people would give me two actors and tell me to connect them Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon style. At the end of these posts, I note what other Sunday “Bad” Movies the actors have been in, or the directors have directed. I’m always focused on the connections. Of course chain reactions will entertain me.

If we factor nepotism into the mix, the connections get exponentially more. Sports, movies, music… Everywhere you look, there’s a child doing much of the same that their parent did. They’re following in the footsteps of what they knew growing up. That’s something to cover in a later post.

For now, let me leave you with this. What would life be without connections?

Now for those notes I was talking about:

• Beer League was the third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Ralph Macchio. His other two appearances were in Up the Academy and Holiday Spin.
• The other actor making their third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Beer League was Steve Nuke, who was also in 54 and Don Peyote.
• Tim Lajcik was in both Tracers and Beer League.
• Jerry Minor might be someone you recognized in Beer League and in Son of the Mask.
• Michael Deeg returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Beer League. His previous appearance was in Sgt. Kabuki N.Y.P.D.
• Artie Lange made sure his friend Jimmy Palumbo was in Beer League. Jimmy Palumbo was also in Sex and the City 2.
• Finally, Joe Lo Truglio made a quick Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. He was in Hot Frosty, which I covered late last year, and now he’s here in Beer League.
• Have you seen Beer League? What did you think of it? What do you think of chain reactions in entertainment? Are there any that you like? Share your thoughts in the comments or you can contact me on Bluesky or Threads.
• You can use the comments to suggest movies for me to watch for future posts. This was recommended to me in the comments. If the comments aren’t your thing, Bluesky or Threads might work better.
• Now for a look at what’s coming up. The next post will be about Guns, the Andy Sidaris movie from 1990, the fifth movie in the Triple B series. After that, I’ve got a post about some more Amityville movies. What’s after that? I’m not entirely sure. I’ve got a few ideas. We’ll see when I get there. At least I have the two posts lined up. They should come one right after the other, but it’ll probably be a couple weeks before they go up. I’ll see you then.

Mouseboat Massacre (2025) and a Passing Glance at Public Domain

The public domain has become a much more important concept over the past few years. If you don’t know what public domain means, let me give you a quick summary that doesn’t get into nearly enough detail to fully understand it. That’s because I don’t fully understand it. But I’ll try to make it make some sense.

When people create art, they can copyright it. That way, other people can’t use that idea for their own profit. It gives that person, or group of people, ownership of that idea for the time that the copyright is legal. But something can only be under copyright for a certain amount of time, so that copyright isn’t legal forever. After the time of the copyright, the art goes into the public domain. Anyone can use it. The public domain is a catch-all term for any intellectual property that is no longer, or has never been, under copyright by someone.

Certain properties have been in the public domain for years. That’s why there have been so many adaptations of stuff like The Three Musketeers, Tarzan, or Sherlock Holmes. I’ve covered adaptations of each of them for this blog. Since the original novels within these multimedia franchises have entered the public domain, people have been freely able to use them how they wish. Well, sort of. Many later adaptations are not in the public domain. The movies I’ve covered, for example. People cannot freely use elements that originated in movies or books that still fall under copyright. Winnie-the-Pooh is public domain, but Disney’s movie is not. People can freely use the character of Winnie-the-Pooh, but they can’t use his red shirt, since that originated in the Disney movie.

Speaking of Winnie-the-Pooh, that’s kind of where I want to steer this whole topic. Every year brings more properties into the public domain. As time rolls on, so does the limit for what is under copyright. This year, anything from 1929 hit public domain. Anything earlier had already entered. Each year we go forward, so does public domain. This means that more popular works and characters become available for public use.

Winnie-the-Pooh made his way into the public domain in 2023. People were quick to capitalize on his availability. Not even a month after Winnie-the-Pooh went public, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey was released to theaters. It was a slasher movie where the best friend bear killed a whole lot of people. There has since been a sequel, and a movie universe has been set up.

That has nothing on 2024, however. Last year was the year where Steamboat Willie dropped the copyright. That original version of Mickey Mouse could be used by anyone. And use him, they did. Sure, it wasn’t until a year later that the white gloves made it into the public domain, but that didn’t stop a whole slew of Mickey Mouse horror movies from coming out. The Mouse Trap was a Canadian slasher about a Mickey-masked killer at an amusement park. Screamboat came from the people behind the Terrifier movies. Mouse of Horrors, Mickey’s Slayhouse, and The Dark Doman: MvW Mickey-vs-Winnie were also made or are in the process of being made.

And then there was Mouseboat Massacre, which I found while scrolling through Prime Video. It was made by the studio that put out Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey but is, for some reason, not part of the Poohniverse. Mimi (Lauren Leopard) was a drug addict tricked into an intervention by her family. They isolated themselves at a family getaway home and locked her in the house to get the drugs out of her system. She wasn’t allowed to use the internet. Instead, she was given an old VHS and a VCR to play it. The tape showed a video that was a demented, violent version of Steamboat Willie. It conjured a real, killer Mickey Mouse (Jay Robertson) who picked apart the family, one by one.

I’m not going to lie. Mouseboat Massacre was a bad movie. It was a low-rent slasher that didn’t do much to make itself any more than forgettable in the horror department. None of the kills stood out. Some of them were barely even shown. A lot of it was simple slashes with a knife. I thought the movie would be a little more creative in that regard. Alas, this is what we were given.

Where I think it excelled, however, and this was the same way that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey excelled, was in the story. There were glimmers of good storytelling in Mouseboat Massacre. The whole drug addiction and intervention aspect added layers that I didn’t expect from a movie that was so clearly cashing in on the Mickey Mouse intellectual property. Mimi’s family knew she was an addict. That was why the intervention happened in the first place. When she knew that her family was in danger, nobody would believe her. Anyone she warned would think she was hallucinating or making things up because of withdrawals. When she escaped from her bedroom, her family thought she was making a run for it to get drugs. In reality, she was trying to save people from the killer Mickey.

This led to a nice scene between Mimi and her father, where he talked about how he went through the same addiction issues at her age. It was a touching moment that brought the addiction storyline to a nice close as the family learned to understand each other. Before he was mutilated by Mickey, that is. Everything in a slasher must lead to a final girl. That is the way.

The other thing that really elevated the story was the way that they used Steamboat Willie. That animated short was turned into a VHS horror short in the vein of the VHS from The Ring. The imagery might not have been the spookiest or the most striking, but it got the point across. It showed some effort was put into making a movie to capitalize on the public domain, and that’s really all that was necessary. Show a little bit more than pure, basic capitalism.

As for the rest of Mouseboat Massacre, it was a very simple slasher that you could easily tell was from the studio that made Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. It shared many of the same elements. Obviously, a newly public domain character was the killer. There was a group of people going to a remote-ish house for a trip away from home. One of the women was sexualizing herself online for views. Some of the actors crossed over, too.

Mouseboat Massacre was only one of the movies to come out in the wake of Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse hitting the public domain. I don’t know how any of the others stack up to this one, as I haven’t seen them. I will be seeing some of them in the future, for sure. Only time will tell if they put in even the minimal amount of effort that the filmmakers put in on this one.

The movie business will get more interesting as time goes on and more things hit the public domain. Some filmmakers may decide to branch off from the abundance of horror movies capitalizing on the availability of popular characters. It has seemingly all been low budget slasher movies made with the characters so far. What if someone wanted to make Pooh: PI, or A Mickey Musical? They’ve done some interesting things with Shakespeare’s works. There are untapped creative avenues that still need to be explored with these properties.

There is a time limit for how long any intellectual property can be under copyright. If everything from 1929 is now in the public domain, that means it lasts 96 years. Eventually, we’ll end up with characters like Batman, Spider-Man, Willy Wonka, and James Bond in the public domain. There will still be filmmakers who do the bare minimum and put out another slasher movie with another public domain character. But, eventually, there will be really creative people who take the characters in directions we never would have expected.

When will those creative people come? That’s the real question here. And we’re waiting for an answer.

Now for a few notes:

• I mentioned that I’ve covered The Three Musketeers, Tarzan, and Sherlock Holmes for this blog. Here are the movies. 3 Musketeers, Tarzan the Ape Man, and Holmes and Watson.
• There weren’t any actor or director connections to other Sunday “Bad” Movies. That’s kind of surprising, this far into the blog.
• Have you seen Mouseboat Massacre? Have you seen any of the Mickey Mouse slashers? Have you seen any of the slashers based on public domain characters? Share your thoughts in the comments, or find me on Bluesky or Threads.
• If there’s a movie you think I should check out for a future Sunday “Bad” Movies post, let me know. You know where to find me. Comments. Bluesky. Threads.
• Okay, it’s time for another rundown of what’s coming up. This is post 557. Post 558 will be Beer League. Post 559 will be Guns. Then I’ll get to post 560. That will be all the Amityville movies from 2017. After that, who knows? I have a few ideas, but there might be something that just pops up and I can’t help but post about it. Like this post. Anyway, Beer League is next. See you then.