Coming to DVD and VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7: RUDE DUDE
Ian Fischer’s portrait of an acclaimed but troubled comic book artist has screened at various Comic Cons this past year, including San Diego, Philadelphia, Denver, and Phoenix. It now comes to DVD as well as to iTunes and Amazon.
To comic book fans of the 1980s and 1990s, Steve Rude is known as an artist who co-created an acclaimed independent series, NEXUS, about a superhero who executes cosmic mass murderers. While he’s done work for the major publishers, DC and Marvel, his style is rooted in a classical mode that modern readers might find old-fashioned. What’s more, as explored in Fischer’s film, he’s developed a bad reputation after bad experiences in the industry, and, as the film commences, he’s attempting to leave the field and transition to fine art, where he anticipates he will easily make billions. If that delusion, or his irritating tendency to refer to himself as “The Dude” in the third person, don’t clue the viewer in, Rude is seriously unhinged. Suffering from bipolar disorder, he also has severe anger issues, and is remarkably self-absorbed, potentially costing his family their home, and making his poor, suffering wife bear the brunt. Despite the promise of this set-up, Fischer’s film is a workmanlike fanboy appreciation for most its running time, largely inaccessible or of very limited interest to non-comic fans, while those elements that could crossover – “The Dude’s” personal/psychological struggles – unfortunately paint him as so thoroughly unpleasant that he engenders next to no sympathy.
what (not) to doc 