Ask Not If You Can Break on Through

Imagine a world where two of the most influential cultural icons of the 1960s - a man of peace and vision and a rock and roll poet who frequently had visions join forces to conquer the turbulent times into which they had been thrust (said in the ubiquitous Don LaFontaine voice).

Now that you have that image in your mind, would you pay to see this movie on the big screen? Forget about it, you don't have to, because you can watch it here for free.

Break on Through with JFK is one of the funnier fake movie trailers available on the Internet. It's not satisfied with spoofing just one film. This fake trailer offers two movie parodies for the price of one (in this case, that would still be free), which is a great deal considering how much I paid to see both of the feature films this trailer mocks at the movie theater when they were originally released.

Break on Through with JFK spoofs the extravagant, cinematic exaggerations of two larger than life cultural icons, John F. Kennedy, and Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors as depicted in all of their glory in JFK, and The Doors, two early 1990s films by controversial director Oliver Stone.

This satirical trailer, was written by and stars comedian Dana Gould, who takes creative liberty, much like Oliver Stone in the original films and has fun exploiting the overblown myth of both JFK and Morrison and the larger than life status both of these men were given in real life and in their depiction through the hyperbolic lens of Oliver Stone.

As the narrator of the fake movie trailer explains, Break on Through with JFK is for everyone who didn't have the time to sit through both JFK and The Doors movies. In this new version, Jim Morison and JFK become one, resulting in a hilarious incarnation of John F. Kennedy, breaking away from the presidential podium and transforming into rock and roller Jim Morrison. Comedy Gould (pun intended) ensues as a shirt and tie wearing JFK morphs into the Jim Morrison persona, keeping the Massachusetts accent of course. What isn't funny about a former world leader ranting Morrison's drug induced poetry and song lyrics in a thick Massachusetts drawl while simultaneously partying like a rock star with his rock and roll fans and groupies and handling the nation's business to the audio backdrop of LA Woman played with ferocity?

The greater value of Break on Through to JFK, beyond the humor, is how it employs the juxtaposition of two polar opposite cultural icons of the 1960s and the chaotic cinematic editing style (used very effectively by Stone in the original JFK film) and invites the viewer to reassess the whole idea of how we over inflate the importance of our cultural icons to cartoon hero status. More importantly, this fake movie trailer serves as a reality check to both the critics and the supporters of the original JFK and Doors films, and suggests that maybe each side took these films a little too seriously when they were first released. Treat yourself to a free reality check if you belonged to either of these camps in the early '90s or if you just like to laugh. As the trailer says, "It's not just the truth. It's better." Is everybody in?

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1iaQSGT3Wo

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101761/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors_(film)