My Wet Hot American Summer Night
And why David Wain belongs in the pantheon of comedy's greatest filmmakers
I imagine few people have ever experienced the thrill of communicating with their favorite working filmmaker, let alone being invited to participate in a milestone celebration of their first feature film, so I’ll do my best to describe the feeling that washed over me on a Tuesday morning in July when I read the following text from David Wain while sipping my second cup of coffee:
“Are you around August 8th? Any interest in being the MC for the Wet Hot American Summer anniversary outdoor cast panel/concert/screening?”
First, I got wet. Then, I got hot.
Then I realized, my mug had missed my mouth.
Was I “around”? Did I have “any interest”? I couldn’t have had more interest if I were JP Morgan Chase!
And that’s how I ended up at The Autry in Griffith Park this past Saturday night, welcoming 2500 fans to the official Wet Hot American Summer 25th Anniversary Reunion and moderating a pre-screening Q&A panel with David and three of the film’s stars — and Camp Firewood’s esteemed counselors — Marguerite Moreau (Katie), Joe Lo Truglio (Neil), and Elizabeth Banks (Lindsay).
Only a week earlier I had attended the LA premiere of Wain’s latest and greatest, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (out now on digital!), where I had to escort myself out of my own seat due to the disruptive fusillade of high-pitched howls and full-body convulsions that overcame me in the second act. The sheer onslaught of exquisitely inane dialogue and staggeringly escalated bits combined with a barrage of delightfully anarchic slapstick and wildly unexpected narrative shifts triggered a rare mental condition known in clinical circles as “The Giggle Fits,” short-circuiting my brain’s Default Mode Network responsible for maintaining social decorum and bodily composure.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been stricken with this hilarity-induced insanity, and twice it’s been at the Midas hands of King Wain.1 Gail Daughtry was pound-for-pound, gag-for-gag, the funniest flick I had seen since They Came Together, Wain’s 2014 masterful rom-com send-up that sent me into the same spasmodic paroxysms of hysteria when I first watched it with a date who… didn’t quite share my enthusiasm (and hence, didn’t get another date).
The two films could be seen as coastal companions, each expertly homing in on the finest formulaic details and tritest tropes of well-trodden genres and lovingly skewering them on the spit of The State: the collective of collegiate co-conspirators that would graduate from NYU to MTV in the early 90s, forming the bedrock of a lifelong collaboration devoted to perfecting the art of the off-kilter.
With They Came Together, Wain and co-writer/fellow Statesman Michael Showalter set their satirical sights on a particular strain of romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and New York City (see: You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally), wrapping it in a warped Woody Allen package (see: Melinda & Melinda).
With Gail, Wain and co-writer/fellow Statesman Ken Marino let loose on Los Angeles, commandeering the plot of The Wizard of Oz — arguably the ur-Hollywood film — to elevate Hollywood’s already absurd trappings to heights of silliness that only a hot-air balloon helmed by Jon Hamm could reach.
Crawling out from under Gail’s avalanche of gags and exiting the Chinese Man’s Theater2 onto Hollywood Boulevard — an especially Inception-like moment for us audience members, considering that moments earlier we’d been marveling at establishing shots of that very theater and boulevard on the big screen — a thesis occurred to me that I would gladly explore were I foolish enough to do something as pointless as enrolling in a graduate program for Film and Media Studies, but that I’d just as simply publish as a Substack piece: Wain/Marino/Showalter are to the 21st century what Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker were to the 20th — America’s leading purveyors of parody.
Because this ISN’T graduate school, all I’ll say is: Kentucky Fried Movie = The Ten, Airplane! = Wet Hot, Top Secret! = They Came Together, The Naked Gun = Gail Daughtry, and BASEketball = Role Models. Add Rob Corddry to the equation, and Police Squad! = Childrens Hospital & Medical Police.3
All of THAT is to say, David Wain is a national treasure, a superstar cinematic spoofster on par with Mel Brooks who deserves a star on the Walk of Fame and a namesake slice at Two Boots.
Mind you, this unbiased hot take hit me BEFORE I received David’s invitation to host his reunion screening. So it was all the more surreal for me to stand before thousands of fellow Wainiacs spread out on blankets — many cosplaying as Camp Firewood characters — to introduce the evening activities. Doing my best Alan Shemper impersonation over the thrum of a dozen food truck generators, it went a little something like this:
Hello Elder Millennials! Sexy Gen X’ys! When I say, “HOT,” you say, “WET!” When I say, “JOAN,” you say, “JETT!” When I say, “WET!” you say, “HOT!” When I say, “OK that’s enough,” you say, “STOP!”
Welcome to the OFFICIAL Wet Hot American Summer 25th Anniversary Reunion Screening here at The Autry Museum of the American West… one of Los Angeles’s finest vanity museums. Here’s a fun fact I learned this morning while browsing The Autry’s Wikipedia page: Did you know that The Autry is the leading repository of gay rodeo items? It’s true! Does anyone know the difference between a straight rodeo and a gay rodeo? At a straight rodeo, they say, “Ride that sucker!”
Did you also know that The Autry is visited by 150,000 people annually? 148,000 of them come for outdoor movie screenings. Half are here tonight! What a crowd!
Remember, this is the only OFFICIAL Wet Hot American Summer reunion screening, do not be fooled by whatever David Hyde Pierce has been advertising on his Facebook page.
Hard to believe it’s been 25 years since Wet Hot came out. You know what they say… Time flies like an arrow. And fruit likes like a banana.
You know, this movie came out so long ago that it was the Stone Age. No, but seriously, it wasn’t the Stone Age... it was the Ice Age! No, really, it was the Stone Age.
This movie came out so long ago, the theaters didn’t serve popcorn. They served pebbles. You’d get a box of tiny rocks! WITH A SIDE OF SCRAMBLED PTERODACTYL EGGS… AND RAPTOR BACON!
This movie came out so long ago that fucking Jesus Christ was my usher! There were two epidemics when this movie came out: SARS and Mad Cow Disease. Bubonic Mad Cow Disease!
But seriously, this movie holds a special place in so many hearts… hearts and farts… In this day and age of 6-second Vines and ever-changing MySpace Top 8’s, for a piece of content like Wet Hot American Summer to not only survive but continue to thrive after 25 years is a testament to how truly special it is.
Just to give you an idea of what this movie means to me personally, I’m missing Little Feat’s farewell show in Los Angeles to host tonight’s event. The band is hitting the stage right about now at the United Theatre, less than 9 miles from here. Anyone else here a Little Feat fan? I happen to love Little Feat… In fact when it comes to Little Feat, I’m a little freak. You could even say, I have a Little Feat fetish. I love this band so much I invested my life savings into starting up a Little Feat-themed fruit snack brand called “Fruit by the Feat.” I love Little Feat BY THE YARD!
I love this band so much — and this part’s true — that I drove down to San Diego last night to see them in concert, because I knew I’d be missing them in LA tonight, because I was going to be here instead. Because as much as I love Little Feat, I love this movie more!!!
I’m also missing my brother’s bachelor party, in Cartagena. I organized the whole thing, looks like they’re having a blast from the Instagram stories I’ve seen… But as much as I love cheap cocaine and Colombian strippers, I love this movie more!!!
Also, my uncle just went into hospice… and my son is in the NICU…
But as much as I love my family…
And then I gave away some prizes to the audience with WHAS trivia. Think you know the answers? Drop them in the comments!
What is the name of the behind-the-scenes documentary that captured the making of Wet Hot?
Which character’s plot line was derived from David Wain’s personal experience as a junior counselor at Camp Modin in 1986?
Which actor was so fresh out of acting school that he skipped his drama school’s commencement ceremony to film Wet Hot?
As a child in the 70s, what real-life celebrity attended Camp Towanda — the movie’s filming location in Honesdale, PA?
What is the brand name of the talking can of mixed vegetables voiced by H. Jon Benjamin?
WET HOT FANS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
DYSLEXICS OF THE WORLD, UNTIE!
Thank you David Wain for the decades of laughs — and the highlight of my summer.
The others: the NYC premiere of Zach Zucker’s Jack Off Broadway this past April, any time I’ve seen Dave Attell perform live, and the first time I watched Airplane! at my friend Scott Goldblatt’s house, at the far too formative age of 8 (specifically, when the shit literally hit the fan).
I know, it’s technically called The TCL Chinese Man’s Theater.
I refuse to include Ruthless People in my rubric, as it wasn’t written by ZAZ (and it shows), leaving no clean parallel for Wanderlust, which only further underscores the power of Wain & Co.’s prolificity.