{"id":2229,"date":"2012-01-17T11:54:30","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T16:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=2229"},"modified":"2021-08-26T10:34:40","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T15:34:40","slug":"terri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/17\/terri\/","title":{"rendered":"Terri"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Azazel Jacobs\u2019s Momma’s Man<\/em>,<\/a> there\u2019s a scene toward the end where the mother of the protagonist, Mikey, gets him to sit on her lap and he looks like an overgrown baby, dwarfing her in size. The image serves as an apt metaphor. He\u2019s not a momma\u2019s boy, but a grown man \u2013 stuck in a state of arrested development. Jacobs\u2019s latest film, Terri<\/em>, which played at last year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival, features another social misfit, only this time, he\u2019s not a young adult regressing back to high school, but an actual overgrown teenager named Terri (Jacob Wysocki), who wears pajamas to school. Unlike Mikey in Momma\u2019s Man<\/em>, Terri hasn\u2019t been smothered to death by a doting mother. In fact, he doesn\u2019t have parents \u2013 he claims not to know where they are \u2013 but lives with his Uncle James (Creed Bratton), who suffers from early Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Although the arc of Jacobs\u2019s career appears to be heading toward becoming more commercial, beneath the surface of this coming-of-age story, from a script by Patrick deWitt, lies something far more bizarre than first appears.<\/p>\n

The film begins with a close-up shot of Terri slumped against bathroom tiles. There\u2019s a knock on the door. His head moves, as we hear Uncle James badgering him about cleaning the \u201ctub ring.\u201d After the opening title credit, we see the overweight Terri \u2013 a huge mound of flabby flesh \u2013 soaking in the bathtub. He responds, \u201cI can\u2019t clean it because I\u2019m still in here, okay?\u201d Terri\u2019s resigned and curt responses show a frustration with having to deal with an uncle who has trouble keeping the basics straight. For this teenager, roles are reversed \u2013 he\u2019s forced to be the caretaker when he\u2019s clearly struggling himself. At school, he\u2019s perpetually late and the other kids harass him by discussing sexual acts with girls, much to his annoyance. Terri tries to remain invisible, but his inappropriate attire brings him to the attention of the assistant school principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), who delights in keeping track of the weirdos at his school.<\/p>\n

Mr. Fitzgerald tells Terri he basically divides the kids into two groups \u2013 the good-hearted kids and the bad-hearted ones. When Terri asks which category he falls in, Fitzgerald suggests that he belongs in the good-hearted group, but then makes Terri come to see him every Monday morning. Mr. Fitzgerald is something else \u2013 an adult misfit in a position of authority. The most whacked-out student, Chad Markson (Bridger Zadina) \u2013 a pint-sized kid with the habit of pulling out his hair \u2013 is highly critical of Mr. Fitzgerald: \u201cHalf the time I think he wants to hit me; the other half, I\u2019m scared he\u2019s gonna kiss me or something.\u201d When Chad goes into greater detail, Terri freaks out and abruptly kicks him out of his house.<\/p>\n

Terri winds up befriending a female classmate, Heather Miles (Olivia Crocicchia), after she gets fingered by Dirty Zach in home economics class. When Mr. Fitzgerald is about to have her transferred to another school, Terri intervenes and the two teens strike up a friendship. When the ostracized Heather comes over to Terri\u2019s house, Chad, uninvited, reenters the picture. This leads to an extended scene where the three of them get high off whiskey and pills. The loosening of inhibitions leads to painful and humiliating revelations that suddenly push the film beyond genre into what feels like uncharted territory. \u201cIt was not storyboarded,\u201d Jacobs says of the scene in a Time Out Chicago<\/em> interview<\/a>. \u201cI was able to get the kids to move around and start working together. I was on uncomfortable ground.\u2026 There was only one right thing to do\u2014to [create] an atmosphere that showed realistically what these kids were willing to do.\u201d The scene is riveting precisely because we\u2019re never sure what might happen next, which is what makes adolescence such a fascinating phase in the process of growing up.<\/p>\n

In Terri<\/em>, all the characters manage to expose unflattering aspects of themselves. For all his goodness, Terri reveals a dark side when he becomes overzealous at catching mice in traps, causing Uncle James to tell him, \u201cI didn\u2019t even know you were capable of doing something so ugly.\u201d When Terri tells Mr. Fitzgerald about the incident, he responds, \u201cIt\u2019s blood lust, dude. It\u2019s a hard habit to stop once you get started in on it.\u201d Terri, however, later becomes angry when he realizes that he\u2019s been lumped in with the other \u201cmonsters\u201d at school, which causes Fitzgerald to tell him a personal story about growing up, which merely proves to be a part of his motivational shtick.<\/p>\n

Mr. Fitzgerald may, in fact, be the most confused person in the entire film. He is shown to be a liar, a guy who pretends to chew kids out for the benefit of his elderly, dying secretary. Fitzgerald is someone with his own marital problems. His interactions, fraternization, and unprofessional comments about the personal lives of his students and staff would most likely get him fired (if anyone happened to be paying attention). It\u2019s no surprise when graffiti appears on the side of the school building, announcing \u201cFitzgerald is a Zombie.\u201d At one point during a session with Terri, Fitzgerald puts his head in his hands on the desk and despairingly tells him: \u201cYou know sometimes I just think I should leave you kids on your own. The way these other kids treat you, maybe that\u2019s preparation for the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Fitzgerald later confesses to Terri, \u201cLife\u2019s a mess, dude. But we\u2019re all doing the best we can . . . \u00a0So if I hurt you or if I lie to you, all I can tell you is \u2018I\u2019m sorry.\u2019 And I will try to do better. Maybe I will do better, or maybe I\u2019ll do even worse. I don\u2019t know. I screw up all the time. Because that\u2019s what people do.\u201d Jacobs\u2019s tale of adolescence seems to suggest that, despite everything that happens, Terri does find some consolation. Mr. Fitzgerald may be a terrible role model on many levels, but Terri manages to learn from him, along with the other cast of misfits, including poor Chad.<\/p>\n

Terri<\/em> is not a tale of adolescent redemption. It resembles more honest films on the subject like Neal Jimenez and Tim Hunter\u2019s River\u2019s Edge<\/em><\/a> or Antonio Campos\u2019s Afterschool<\/em><\/a>. Jacobs admits that he was more of a hardcore punk rocker in high school, which meant being \u201ccowardly mean.\u201d He told an interviewer at SXSW<\/a>: \u201cSo, I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m not trying to make amends but it\u2019s something that you think about as you get older . . . how you could have been nicer person.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Azazel Jacobs\u2019s Momma’s Man, there\u2019s a scene toward the end where the mother of the protagonist, Mikey, gets him to sit on her lap and he looks like an overgrown baby, dwarfing her in size. The image serves asRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2229"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4352,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions\/4352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}