You may not know Gregg Turkington, and that's a shame. Those who do, however, have adored his combination of stand-up comedy and performance art as Neil Hamburger, or his contributions to the early days of Adult Swim and collaborations with Tim and Eric. Branded a member of the poorly named 'alternative comedy' scene in the early 2000s and beyond, Turkington has an undoubtedly iconoclastic style and has been involved in some of the funniest, oddest programming of the past two decades.
The proverbial hoi polloi likely know Turkington as the Baskin-Robbins guy in Ant-Man, and he is set to appear again in the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Film critics may know him from his starring role in the brilliant Rick Alverson film from 2015, Entertainment, Alverson's earlier masterpiece, The Comedy, or opposite Jeremy Allen White and Anaita Wali Zada in the new film Fremont, which earned perfect reviews from this year's Sundance.
His fans, though, likely love him most as the character Gregg Turkington in the elaborate universe of On Cinema at the Cinema, his multimedia collaboration with Tim Heidecker (who plays a character named Tim Heidecker). Fresh from the wintry cold of Sundance, Turkington spoke with MovieWeb about the surprising longevity of On Cinema, the meta result of turning himself into a character, his involvement in Ant-Man, and the vapid film critics that his series mocks so well.
Watching On Cinema at the Cinema Grow
On Cinema at the Cinema began in 2011 as a podcast, a simple parody of movie review shows and podcasts themselves. He and Heidecker would record short episodes while filming The Comedy; from there, it became a web series on Thing X and then Adult Swim's website. The series, which began as two people reviewing movies (and giving "five bags of popcorn" to basically everything with the most superficial of reviews), has digressed so many times that it's become a veritable epic, unrecognizable from its beginnings.
In recent years, On Cinema has created its very own streaming platform where, for a small subscription, its audience can watch every episode, along with the many deviations the show takes, and can also feverishly discuss the show. After the web series, the universe of On Cinema branched out to a hilarious action series titled Decker, in which the characters from On Cinema make their cheap, awful version of a spy story. It's like a James Bond movie, if it was broken up into 11-minute segments, made for a few hundred dollars, and cast with incompetent actors and awful green screen technology, and it's wonderful.
On Cinema has also resulted in a film (Mister America, which follows Heidecker's character as he runs for office), a masterful, five-hour Court TV-style legal drama (The Trial), yearly live telecasts (their multi-hour Oscar specials), a variety of music from the show's fictional band Dekkar, in-character Twitter engagement with the fans, and several spin-off series (Rock House, Xposed, etc.).
The Evolution of On Cinema Is Not By Intelligent Design
As such, there are dozens of hours worth of On Cinema. For something this long-running, complicated, and unique, it may be surprising to learn that Turkington and Heidecker have mostly been winging it and just trusting their instincts. "There was no grand scheme originally with this," said Turkington. "I'm kind of amazed how many episodes and how much content we create [...] There are so many dimensions to it, and I think the way it plays out through different formats is interesting. If I wasn't involved with it, I'd certainly be a fan of it."
"The fact that it goes from a podcast to a web series to a spin-off action series, and then you've got these movies and the specials, and all the internet stuff, the Twitter content, and squabbles going on, it's definitely unique that something can play out like this over this many formats, and in this many styles," said Turkington. On Cinema is thus a natural entity, a super-organism of sorts, a sentient comedy act fueled by a handful of geniuses. It may have been created at one point, but at this point, it's unleashed. Turkington added:
I think The Trial, when we did that, that was kind of the pinnacle of the whole thing, in terms of like, "Whoa. Look where this has gone, from this absurd podcast parody that we were just doing in a car in between takes on The Comedy to like a full-blown fake trial in a Los Angeles County courthouse." I like stuff that's surprising, I like the moments where we're all looking at each other like, "Can you believe this is actually happening right now?"
On Cinema Is Scripted, but Not Really
Looking back on a dozen years of On Cinema, it really is difficult to comprehend how much it has evolved and how multifaceted its universe has become. At its simplest, it's a testament to the creative potential of friendship. "I try to work with people where there's a comfort level, and then everything kind of flows naturally," said Turkington. "It's fun to work with people that are fun to work with, where there's not a lot of stress, where everything just kind of happens." He elaborated:
With something like On Cinema, we could have sat around for six months plotting this out in front of the computer, and I don't think it would have turned out as well as how it just organically has mutated over the years. We get together and have conversations and discuss where we think things should go and where characters should go, things like that. But in the end, a lot of it just happens in the moment. Writing the script for a whole season, if it's two pages total for the whole season, that's a long script for us.
Gregg Turkington: Character or Person?
When they started it as a short podcast parody in a car, they used their own names, never knowing how big this would become. "I think when we did the first On Cinema podcast, we were just using our real names. In retrospect, it might have been wise to have character names, because now you do get this speculation as to how similar these guys are to us."
"It really was just screwing around, using our names as those names," Turkington continued, "and then before you know it, it's pretty locked in. I think anytime you're doing characters where there's a lot of improvisation and stuff, there's definitely going to be elements of your personality that come out in an exaggerated way [...] But it was never intended to be any sort of commentary on our actual lives.
The meta weirdness of playing characters named after themselves, and engaging in Twitter conversations and actual interviews in-character, creates a small bit of weird incongruity with the rest of their careers. It gets even weirder when fans consider that Heidecker's cameo in Fantastic Four and Turkington's in Ant-Man could essentially be extensions of their fictional characters from the On Cinema universe.
Disney
"It definitely works well that it's going on because it gives Tim and I something to argue about," explained Turkington, whose On Cinema character subtly competes with Tim over the cameos in different superhero franchises. "But I wouldn't say that when we're filming the scenes, I'm approaching it as Greg from On Cinema would." In fact, Turkington is so embedded in On Cinema's meta-universe that his remarkable talents outside it could confuse fans. He explained:
This film that I did that came out at Sundance, Fremont, there's no way that that has anything to do with Gregg from On Cinema. That's the problem with us using our real names. If you do something else, say somebody watches Fremont, they'd be like, 'Well, this is interesting. What else is this guy into?' And they find that Gregg Turkington Twitter and think, 'What the hell is this? He's an imbecile!' I've kept my Twitter completely free of anything other than On Cinema. I have no real personality [online], there's no Twitter outlet for that [...] Twitter seems to be going down the drain anyway, so maybe we can restart.
Turkington on the Inanity of Film Critics
There's a mild but nonetheless lurking suspicion in Turkington's mind that film critics may seek revenge after watching him lampoon the worst of film criticism and fanboys with On Cinema. "I wonder sometimes if people hate us. If I was a film critic and saw that, I might be agitated by it," said Turkington.
Like the rest of On Cinema, Heidecker and Turkington aren't consciously planning ways to critique the 'film industrial complex.' Unlike a lot of On Cinema, though, the mockery of movie reviewers comes from a fairly real place. Turkington and Heidecker aren't Access Hollywood celebrities. They don't really dig bubbly 'journalists' with idiotic 'questions' and fake small talk, the kind who want to play Carpool Karaoke or sing with you, the kind who ask what your favorite food is or how your new baby is doing. Turkington's On Cinema character is a much-needed middle finger toward the vapid, empty 'entertainment journalists' and 'critics' who have no opinions outside their whitened smiles.
"I was just at Sundance promoting Fremont, and you do a lot of these short interviews," began Turkington. "Some of them are so annoying, and just so useless. The people are just unqualified to be talking about anything because they have no point of view. Their whole point is that they want to be in front of the cameras, and film criticism seems to be the easiest way to indulge their narcissism. So you sort of lose all hope. But then you do a few interviews with somebody who's got interesting questions, and really gets the point of something. Actually, when they're asking you questions, it's making you think about what you've done in a way that maybe you haven't before, and that's kind of exciting."
"I think that the problem with film criticism is the same problem we have with music criticism and everything else," added Turkington, mostly referring to the explosion of opinions birthed by the internet and social media. He continued:
What I thought was a great movement, that DIY punk sort of thing that basically allowed outsiders to legitimately express themselves without having to get it filtered through some sort of industry. Unfortunately, the flip side of that is people who really have no business doing anything, because they've got no point of view, no skills, nothing. They just want to be in front of a camera, or they just want attention, and that's their motivation — not to create arguments, not to shine a light on art, it's just to shine a light on themselves. And so those people have clogged up the works.
'I Would Be Happy if I Never Did Another Interview Again'
"It's funny, you think, 'What is the skill of being an interviewer?' But it's a real skill, and what the interviewer says really determines what they're getting back. When somebody talks to you and all they've done is read the Wikipedia page, and they're asking these useless broad questions, you just kind of clam up, or you start being a smartass, or, like a lot of people (like Bob Dylan or whoever), you start making things up out of sheer boredom and disgust. I mean, honestly, I usually feel horrible after I've done an interview, because it feels like it's a betrayal of the art that you've done, to have these inane conversations about it." Turkington continued:
Honestly, I would be happy if I never did another interview again. The relationship people should have, they should have it with the work, and not be so concerned with people explaining it, because I don't think people explain their art as well as they do the art itself. And then sometimes I talk to someone who has good questions, and it's actually enjoyable, and then I think maybe I'm being a prick, because it's not so bad. But a lot of the time it is. That's why I stopped doing podcasts. I was feeling awful.
"I guess it's like, 'Who appointed you guys?'" asked Turkington rhetorically. "There's a lot of it, but there is some very good writing about film that I certainly like reading. I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I think that there are a lot of clowns."
On Cinema recently finished its celebrated 13th season, and all episodes can be watched on the HEI Network. Fremont recently finished a wonderful run at Sundance and is currently finding distributors. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be in theaters on Feb. 17th.