Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

directed by Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone

Danielle Gutierrez

By my count, a total of two important things happened in 2016.

One. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping flopped at the box office, thereby driving one more nail into the coffin of big studio comedy.

Two. I made the cursed decision to join Twitter.

Every year, Twitter takes its annual opportunity to bully me and sends a little reminder that on May 18th, 2016, I crossed over, never to be perceived in my true human form again.

Only a week prior to becoming @dmariegutierrez forevermore, I was deep in college finals, probably alternating between sobbing sessions and 4 p.m. naps. I was 19 years old and severely depressed. For my brain and body’s sake, I knew college wasn’t where I belonged. So I withdrew from school and took a year off to pursue nothing. (I later found out that is exactly what liberal arts college is, multiplied by four.) I hoped that at some point the pieces would simply fall into place, and it’d be revealed to me exactly who I was and where I needed to be.

Then in the summer of that year, during my tenure as a bagel shop employee and comedy beat at my college paper, there was Popstar. I saw it at the since-closed California Theatre in Berkeley, California, coincidentally just blocks from where Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer first met as middle schoolers.

It was a glorious theater experience. We were blessed with new music from the songsmiths who brought us “Dick in a Box” and “Jizz in My Pants,” a TMZ parody featuring a screeching Chelsea Peretti, and a talking head interview in which Ringo Starr emphatically says the phrase “doink-de-doink.”

While I felt I’d just borne witness to an instant classic, I later found out the movie premiered to notoriously little fanfare. It made just over $9 million globally against a $20 million budget. Let me rephrase: Popstar made less money than a host of historic Hollywood bombs including 1987’s Ishtar, 1998’s Jack Frost, and 2001’s Osmosis Jones.

It was then that I found my purpose. I would seek #JusticeforPopstar.

*

It was easy to turn my attention to a dumb online passion because Popstar (and Twitter) entered my life at a time in which I had no purpose, no goals, yet a world of expectations in front of me. That college was a must, that I had to know what career path I was taking and what social causes I supported.

Now a capital-A adult who owes tens of thousands in student loans, works a fake desk job, and thinks deeply about the moral and social implications of paying for NYTimes Cooking, I am still asking those questions. But at least I can pretend I know why it all happened. And I can now look at Andy Samberg’s Conner4Real and see a guy going through a similar who-am-I dilemma. A Crisis of Brand, if you will.

As a member of the Style Boyz, Conner Friel didn’t have to brand himself on his own. He had his best buddies, Lawrence and Owen, to do that with—as Kid Conner, Kid Brain, and Kid Contact, they were the Style Boyz, no explanation required. After the band breaks up, it’s up to him to define himself. Running on charm and the fumes of his boy band affiliation, he launches into superstardom with his first solo album Thriller, Also.

It’s when he’s expected to do the next big thing that he finds himself adrift.

*

In December 2016, I wrote an opinion piece for my college paper titled “On ‘Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,’ the movie 2016 forgot.” I babbled about how disappointing it was to see our Lonely Island boys’ new project tank, despite how clearly genius it was.

Being perpetually unimpressed with myself, my knee-jerk reaction to reading it now is to wonder why in the hell I would use the phrase “hot shit” or lump myself in with an exclusive group I called “20-year-old wannabe intellectuals.” But at that point, I was having trouble leaving my twin XL bed in the morning, let alone formulating concrete thoughts and transferring them to paper. I was proud. I’d finally found something on which I had a distinct point of view, and transformed it into something tangible.

Then, the article started getting some (incredibly minor) attention online.

Jorma Taccone, one-third of the Lonely Island and co-director of Popstar, shared the piece on Twitter, blowing up my phone during a sweaty, unassuming bagel shop lunch break. The tweet has since been deleted, but thanks to the screenshot gods and my pal-slash-former-editor Kyle, I recently recovered the tweet.

The post prompted likes from comedy names including Seth Rogen and Mike Birbiglia. It was a bright spot in a long stretch of horrible. It was my Thriller, Also.

*

The “Justice for Popstar campaign,” and the claim that I’d initiated it, became my entire brand on Twitter, inevitably seeping into my real-life personality. I shared my little article whenever it seemed fit. I tweeted when my favorite celebrities publicly supported the movie. I even set a Google Alert on “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”—mainly as a bit for me and my six friends, but also to be ready to comment on news and listicles if they turned up.

I also embraced being the local comedy scholar who got Twitter attention from one (1) comedy person one (1) time. Friends came to me for opinions on comedy world goings-on because it was “on-brand” for me—what did I think about Lorne Michaels’ latest hires, the latest specials cropping up on Netflix, the state of political satire?

I had to give the people what they wanted, right? If I was special and useful and memorable for nothing else, at least I could be a good go-to for all things laughable.

*

In promotion of his canonically awful sophomore album, Connquest, Conner4Real makes really dumb, really bad brand choices. He accepts a kitchen appliance sponsorship, stuffs his best friend into a light-up DJ helmet, and releases offensive songs about gay rights and Osama Bin Laden. He sells out because he thinks weird new technology, EDM, and current events are in and any glimmer of his past self—a Style Boy—is out.

Seeking approval from anyone who can offer it, he tracks his downward spiral online in front of his fans on Twitter and the rest. His 20 million “Connfidants.” It’s an easier approach than facing his personal crisis head-on. He posts videos about how sad he is, and how distrusting he’s become of his friends. He very nearly posts a photo of his dick just to prove he has one. It’s content the people—the fans, the ladies—want! Don’t they?

In Conner’s defense, there’s a clarity of self online that doesn’t come so easily outside of it. There is a popular meme that depicts the “four selves''—LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Tinder. On LinkedIn, you’re a buttoned-up schmuck. Facebook, a lover of family, friends, and your hometown. Instagram, a seasoned enjoyer of life. Tinder, someone instantly worth wanting.

Like Conner, I’ve found solace in playing to a crowd.

It’s been easy to funnel my personality into a digital box. Label it “twenty-something who has crushes on the wrong men and the right opinions about baseball and capitalism,” curate its contents. It’s much harder to exist in the three-dimensional world. We’re messy. Relationships are messy. Social interactions are messy. Boxes are very good at containing the mess.

I recently took a solo trip to a cottage in the woods to think, meditate, and write. I was going to find myself amongst the groundhogs and leafless trees. But more often than I’d hoped, I was staring at my phone, toggling between apps, waiting for myself to become apparent. All I found that trip was a bunch of mice in the walls.

*

In the six years since I “started” it, the #JusticeforPopstar campaign has paid off. Famous actors routinely shout the film out on podcasts about underrated cinematic works. Singalongs complete with props and themed cocktails are popping up at hip dine-in movie theaters. Many a thinkpiece went out last year for the movie’s five-year anniversary. I foolishly wrote none of them.

Like Popstar’s reputation, I find myself becoming a bit more crystallized.

I realize there’d be value in unsticking myself from Twitter, unplugging and finding purpose solely amongst the walking, talking people. It takes a lot of energy and blue light eye strain to curate Columbo montages and Muppet jokes and Steve Martin banjo videos. But it’d be a weird thing to throw away now. My Twitter personality isn’t my whole self, but a mere part of it. I guess I’m just composed of much more nonsense than I’d like to believe.

In Popstar, there’s an entire exchange between Conner, Owen, and Lawrence at Lawrence’s Colorado weed ranch that puts it into stupid perspective. Conner’s deciding whether to play the Poppy Awards, and whether to do it as Conner4Real or with the Style Boyz.

Lawrence: You don’t have to choose between us and your solo shit. It’s like with Wu-Tang Clan. It’s like you’re Method Man and he made a solo record but he’s still in the Wu-Tang Clan. He never stopped being in the Wu-Tang Clan. Or like, the GZA. He was in the Wu-Tang Clan, and then he made a solo record. He never stopped being in the Wu-Tang Clan.

Owen: Or you’re the RZA and you could do your solo shit, but you’re still in the Wu-Tang Clan.

Conner: So basically, we’re the Wu-Tang Clan.

Owen: Exactly. But better.

Conner: Yeah. Well…

I’m not Conner4Real, and I was never a Style Boy. I’m not trying to live up to a Justin Timberlake-style ascension to fame for fear of rejection at massive scale. In six years I have garnered less than 150 Twitter followers. I have less impact on the culture than a Twitter account dedicated to David Duchovny’s nipples. I know most of us are screaming into a void. I am learning to deal with it.

I suppose I can still be @dmariegutierrez and Danielle. Whoever that happens to be.

Danielle Gutierrez lives in Brooklyn, where she writes about sound for a music company and reviews horror films for Downright Creepy. She spends most days thinking very hard about performance studies and the genius of Charles Grodin. @dmariegutierrez