It's been a stressful couple of weeks for me. I had school finals to deal with, my asshole allergies are raging, thus giving me a perpetual headache, and my car needs to go into the shop for a possible busted head gasket. These things aren't the end of the world. I can be a curmudgeon, but in order to keep my head from exploding in frustration, I remind myself that all bad things pass. My annoyance used to get the best of me, which is why I have been known to be a moody sonnavabitch in the past. Time goes on, and nothing is really worth being livid about.
Except Hooking Up. I usually only focus on certain films when I do an entry for You're Killing Me, Smalls. Typically, they're either the worst Hollywood has to offer, or they are representations of a bad trend in filmmaking. Hooking Up is a small-time "comedy" from 2009 that perhaps only a hundred people have seen; I might be Viewer #101. It never caught on, and it certainly didn't make any money. The director, Vincent Scordia, hasn't made a feature film since this loathsome debut. The "big stars" Scordia managed to rope into this mess are hardly anybody of note, so it isn't like the film dirtied the reputation of any good actors.
Regardless, Hooking Up has to be one of the most poisonous, vile, abject, noxious, sleazy, vicious, wicked, despicable, iniquitous, disgraceful, coarse, contemptible, sexist, and misanthropic pieces of horse shit I have ever seen in my entire life. This isn't hyperbole. Until the day I die, Hooking Up will forever be in the back of my brain, stinking up my skull with its fetid brand of casual misogyny disguised as cheerful comedy. You would have a better chance of convincing me Andrea Dworkin was a consultant on Porky's before you could make me believe that the filmmakers behind this picture weren't degenerates. If anyone reading this has a daughter, and the daughter brings home a guy named Vincent Scordia, run to Netflix and watch Hooking Up. You need to know what kind of slime has infiltrated your life.
What sort of sick sons-a-bitches find non-consensual sex to be funny? Who would invest in a film that actively supports pedophilia? What kind of man would gladly helm a movie that believes in the notion that any woman who enjoys sex is a dirty, filthy whore and deserves to be mocked? This is slut shaming with a $400,000 budget. No one except a mentally ill misogynist would end their "sex comedy" with a tear-stained forced threesome. That's how Scordia and screenwriter Jeff Siegel chose to close out the picture. In that doesn't make you puke in your soup, the man in the threesome is thirty-eight year old Corey fuckin' Feldman, who is playing an abusive, coked out twenty-five year old.
Ostensibly, Hooking Up is supposed to be a week in the life of six teenagers (three boys, three girls) as they navigate the heady storm of sex, hormones, and love. I offer this as the plot because there really isn't any distinct direction to the story. Siegel and Scordia were possibly too busy jerking off to fourteen year olds at the local pool, and simply didn't have time to do a second pass at the script. Think of all those sex terms you find on Urban Dictionary. Now, create the dumbest scenarios around those sex terms and you have Hooking Up. The boys are divided into the sexually confused one, the handsome one, and the cocksucker ripoff of American Pie's Stifler. Were these kids real people, we might be staring at the future mass shooters of America. They are all disgusting in various ways. The "wild " one will obviously be the grossest, though showing him grabbing the breast of a passed out young girl at a party probably wasn't the best thing to do five minutes into the film. That's assault, dipshit. Drunk or no, you don't get to go around and do whatever the fuck you want to women. There's a video on YouTube where a guy tries to interview porn actress Alexis Texas. When she turns around to show her butt to the camera, the interviewer tries to grab it. A few other porn women come over and stop him. Texas quits the interview and walks off. In the comments below the video, there was a mass army of dudes going, "shel'l fuck all those guyz in front of a camera but he can't touch her ass? FUK that BEEYOTCH! Youre a horror!" In the eyes of Scordia, women are supposed to let any dude do whatever he wants. Open those holes, ladies, 'cause Vincent Scordia needs somewhere to put his fingers.
The other two are equally douchey. The sexually confused one tricks the handsome kid into accepting head from him under the auspices that the blowjob is actually coming from the sexually confused one's sister. Later on, the handsome kid assfucks the sister, though this is interrupted when his two friends come in and "seagull" the couple. Seagulling, by the way, is when guys jerk off, run into a room where people are fucking, and throw their cum on the couple. They then make noises like a seagull. Ha-ha.
If the boys are meant to be charming cads, the girls are damaged whores that need a scolding, or at least Scordia thinks so. One of them is a naïve sixteen year old who is dating Feldman's man-child. She says she loves him, even after he forces her to strip in front of his friends. Later on, he smacks her around and knocks her down a flight of stairs. Still, she keeps coming back. Another girl is the aforementioned anal sex chick, who we meet blowing guy after guy at a party. Note: the first person the girl blows in the movie is Jeff Siegel. Way to not be creepy, Screenwriter.
The third girl possibly has the most bizarre storyline. She's a goody two-shoes who hasn't done anything sexually. Her dad (played with zero ability by Clerks' Brian O'Halloran) is the principal, which makes getting laid difficult for the girl. To alleviate her horniness, she sets her sights on her science teacher, played by that bastion of manliness, Bronson Pinchot. She tries to seduce him, first by stripping off her thong underwear in front of him, then trapping the man in her bathroom during a faculty cookout. Upping the ick factor more, the girl slides her hands down her pants, brings her fingers to her lips, and says she tastes like flowers. It's fucking vile. Pinchot isn't innocent, though; he sniffs her panties after she gives them to him. Way later in the film, she aims to fuck the handsome boy, but plans fall through and she ends up fucking Corey Feldman. His girlfriend shows up, can't understand why the principal's daughter is there, and is coerced by Feldman into having that tearful threeway. Watching the former Lost Boy pound what is supposed to be a fifteen year old girl while another crying "teenager" sits nearby in her panties asking him to stop is one of the most depressing visuals I have ever taken in. You're a rotten cocksucker, Scordia, for showing me that. I hope you develop diabetes and lose your feet.
There is no development to any of these characters. Immediately following the threesome, the credits start to roll and we get a montage of what happens the next week. The sadness experienced by one of the characters is completely ignored, and we're instead treated to some more wacky hijinks. The last gag in the film involves a doctor calling Feldman and informing him that he's contracted "cunt worms." Nothing is learned! No one takes away any lessons, grows as a person, or learns a goddamn thing! Heady topics are introduced, but disregarded for jokes about "cunt worms." It's fine if the movie just wants to be a lightweight comedy, but the humor is the most distressing, mean-spirited shit around. The girls are laughed at, humiliated, and mocked endlessly, always derided for being "sluts" or not putting out. In a culture where rape is (somehow) still up for debate, I question the taste and wisdom of a man who creates a picture that also functions as a rape apology. A grown-up with even a modicum of sense would have looked at this script and thrown it the fuck away. Vincent Scordia must have been one of those genius kids who kept sticking metal objects in electrical outlets, even after the fiftieth shock. Only a dummy would take on this project and proudly slap his name on the finished film.
Vincent Scordia and Jeff Siegel not only hate women, they hate themselves. The utter contempt they have for their own humanity trickles out of the frame. Both men are the kind of lame motherfuckers that just want to pretend to be movie people. Actually trying to make something good would take too much effort, and that would leave them too lethargic to pick up pussy. It's easier to just role-play. Neither of them has a creative bone in their body, opting to piece together a film so meandering and lazy that it is an insult to anything alive and breathing. If you don't believe me, consider this: We are introduced to each of the characters with MySpace-esque computer screens. The sexually confused kid lists one of his interests as Nicolas Cage. The problem? Scordia fucking spelled his name Nicholas with an H. This schmuck couldn't even be bothered to double check if a famous actor's name was right. It does my heart good to know that Scordia hasn't made a single movie since Hooking Up. I'm sure he's great weekend help, though, at Payless Shoes. Repulsive slimebags deserve such a bleak fate.