The Documentary That David Cross Says Is Like a Real-Life ‘Mr. Show’ Sketch
David Cross is a man of discerning cinematic taste, as evidenced by the time he sacrificed a $150,000 bonus just to warn all of America not to see his newest movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.
On the latest episode of his podcast, Senses Working Overtime with David Cross, the Arrested Development star chatted with Nick Kroll, and a not insignificant portion of their conversation was about movies.
“I have been in some good movies. I’ve also been in some shit movies,” Cross confessed while somehow resisting the urge to dunk on Chipwrecked again. Although he did admit that most of the films he’s made are actually pretty good. Like how he played Allen Ginsberg in the Bob Dylan-inspired I’m Not There. And also Allen Ginsberg’s father in the Daniel Radcliffe movie Kill Your Darlings.
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“I figured you’d played the entire Ginsberg catalog,” Kroll joked. “If they ever make a Patti Smith movie, you’ll get to play Ginsberg in that as well.”
In addition to poring over their own respective filmographies, Cross did offer up a movie recommendation for Kroll: Class Action Park. The 2020 documentary, which was released on HBO Max (before the “HBO” was eventually misplaced) was all about Action Park, which, as we’ve mentioned before, was the notoriously dangerous New Jersey amusement park, which thrived in the ‘80s, back when child endangerment was common as smoking a pack of cigarettes in a fine restaurant.
After pointing out that one of the doc’s talking head interviewees is comedian Chris Gethard, who points out that “nobody should ever be the second person to die in a wave pool,” Cross continued to laud the film. “It’s amazing. It’s like a sketch. It’s like a Mr. Show sketch — particularly ‘The Devastator.’”
It’s true, the real-life story of Class Action Park is eerily similar to the “Devastator” sketch, all about the “soul shattering” new roller coaster at “Thrill World” that happens to cause heart failure, spinal injuries and drowning. But despite the multiple fatalities, people just keep going back.
“People are constantly being injured in really bad ways, really bad ways,” Cross explained. He specifically pointed to a section of the doc about the time the guy running the park built an “enclosed loopty-loop thing.” Presumably he’s talking about the “Cannonball Loop,” an enclosed tube water slide with a giant loop at the end.
According to one former Action Park employee, workers had to be bribed with hundred dollar bills to test it out, but “$100 did not buy enough booze to drown out that memory.”
The designer “never even thought to figure out the physics of zipping down this thing at X amount of speed, and what happens to the body,” Cross added.
He’s absolutely right: The whole thing seems about as safe and well-considered as the Devastator’s “Two whole minutes underwater!”
