UHF (film)



UHF is a 1989 movie starring "Weird Al" Yankovic, written by Al and his manager Jay Levey (who directed). Al plays George Newman, a young man with an all-too-fertile imagination adrift in life. After getting fired from yet another job due to excessive daydreaming, he is appointed by his uncle Harvey as manager of Channel U62, a local UHF television station that Harvey won in a Poker game.

George and his friend Bob soon discover that U62 is a near-abandoned station with a staff of three, almost no reception to speak of, and nothing but stale reruns for programming. With optimistic enthusiasm, George tries to revitalize the station's schedule, but quickly realizes that the channel will soon go bankrupt; the local airwaves are dominated by Channel 8, a network affiliate VHF station whose owners are card carrying villains with good publicity.

Things change when a depressed George carelessly puts station janitor Stanley Spadowski in charge of the channel's early-morning kids' show; to everyone's surprise, Stanley's Cloudcuckoolander antics become an instant hit across all demographics. Emboldened, George unleashes the full force of his creativity with a line of unique, oddball shows to fill out the rest of the schedule, with Stanley as their flagship superstar. These moves quickly catapult U62's ratings to #1 in town—which prompts Channel 8 head honcho R.J. Fletcher to take them down by any means necessary...

Like Weird Al's music, the film focuses its comedy on oddball humor and satire, parody, and pastiche of pop culture. Released in 1989, at the height of Weird Al's popularity, the film was expected to be a summer blockbuster, but barely broke even at the box office (opening against the 1989 Batman movie, after all) and instead became a Cult Classic.

Then again, maybe a feature making fun of independent local TV does fit best on the small screen?

"R.J: You idiot! Can't you do anything I tell you to do? Does this look like a Number 2 pencil? Richard: Well... I-I just thought -- R.J: You thought?! I don't pay you to think! Richard: But Dad -- R.J: Shut up!"
 * Abusive Parents: R.J. Fletcher portrays this well, when he's first seen and heard abusing his son R.J Fletcher Jr. for not acting intelligent enough.

"Philo: You're welcome. Well, it appears that my work on this planet is finished, so I must now return to my home planet of Zarquon. George: [dubious] Oh...okay. Have fun!"
 * Affectionate Parody: The entire movie is strewn with them, especially the opening sequence.
 * Conceptually, the movie as a whole is an Affectionate Parody of cheaply run UHF stations from the 70s and 80s.
 * A-Team Firing: Taken to a ludicrous extreme in the Rambo sequence.
 * All or Nothing: At the end of the "Wheel of Fish" scene, the prize box turns out to be empty.
 * Almighty Janitor: Broken into two roles. Stanley lives for being a humble janitor even after becoming famous as a show host (and God help you if you try to take his mop from him). Philo's the somewhat spacey engineer of this run-down station who proves to be a damn sneaky bastard when needed, possibly a Mad Scientist, and definitely
 * And Starring: "and Victoria Jackson as Teri". She gets the extra mention because she's the last name listed on the opening credits. This may seem strange, but having been a prominent player on Saturday Night Live, she may have been the most famous person cast in the movie, other than Al himself.
 * Apparently, Al and Victoria were dating at the time, which couldn't have hurt.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The human version...during the "Town Talk" promo, a bunch of weird guests are on the panel. They are, in order, A Neo-Nazi, A Dominatrix, A Klansman...A little girl with blond pigtails...and Jason Voorhees (or a Captain Ersatz therof). Subverted in that the little girl is implied as an Enfant Terrible with a perpetual Slasher Smile.
 * Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: George is this in spades, especially in the film's early scenes.
 * Author Existence Failure: Trinidad Silva, who played Raul, died in an auto accident before shooting all his scenes. The film is dedicated to him. The movie also had to abort his subplot, where
 * Axe Crazy: The "Killer Thug" is implied to be this.
 * Berserk Button: Just try to take Stanley's mop away. I dare you.
 * Big Win Sirens: Used in "Stanley Spadowski's Funhouse" when the kid finds a marble in a sandbox full of oatmeal. His prize? Getting blasted in the face with a fire hose.
 * Bloodless Carnage: Spoofed in George's Rambo fantasy sequence, where he sweeps an automatic rifle along a line of Mooks on a hillside. A moment later, they bloodlessly collapse simultaneously.
 * Burger Fool: George and Bob work at "Big Edna's Burger World" before.
 * But Now I Must Go: Philo makes his grand exit at the end of the film this way.

"Bob: I dunno about this, George.. I don't know the first thing about what goes on in a television station. George Don't worry, Bob! It's just like working in a fish market, except you don't have to clean or gut fish all day."
 * Chekhov's Gun/Hoist by His Own Petard: The single coin Fletcher gives to the homeless guy
 * And a Rolex!
 * Closer to Earth: George's girlfriend, Teri.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: "Hello. I'm Philo." Ultimately justified:
 * Stanley himself also exhibits Cloudcuckoolander tendencies.
 * It'd probably be quicker to list characters who don't exhibit these tendencies.
 * Contrived Clumsiness: One of the jerkasses from R. J. Fletcher's station trips the camera man for U62, and sarcastically chimes "Oopsie!" after. Later, the victim of this action enacts his revenge by doing the same thing to the Jerkass, except this time, the trip ends in a mud puddle.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: R.J. Fletcher and his goons.
 * Crazy Homeless People: The bum who ends up saving the station. In an often-missed gag, his first appearance has him hitting up George for change; not as a handout, but because he needed to break a dollar.
 * Creator Killer: Often used as a scapegoat for Orion's current status as MGM's in-name-only subsidiary by its executives. To be fair, they brought it on themselves by pitting it against Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Licence to Kill, Star Trek V the Final Frontier, Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2, Do the Right Thing, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and, oh yeah, Tim Burton's Batman, and they probably wish to save face for this scheduling blunder as much as possible.
 * Cute but Cacophonic: Pamela Finklestein (she's played by Fran Drescher, after all).
 * Deleted Scene: Included, along with Al's reasoning on why they were deleted... "Because they suck!"
 * Several of the deleted scenes involved a subplot with Teri's (Victoria Jackson's) secretary, who was completely taken out of the movie. Unfortunately, the actress playing the secretary wasn't told this until she saw the premiere.
 * Defictionalization: Attack of the Show did a recreation of the "Find the marble in the oatmeal" segment by having Candice Bailey and Sarah Jean Underwood wrestling in oatmeal. Complete with the winner getting the drink from the firehose.
 * Dissimile:

"R.J. Fletcher: This town means about as much to me as a festering bowl of dog snot! You think I care about the pea-brained yokels of this town?! If you took their collective IQ, and multiplied it by 1,000, you might just have enough intelligence to tie your shoe, if you didn't drool all over yourself first! I can't stand those sniveling maggots! They make me want to puke! But, there is one good thing about broadcasting to a town full of mindless sheep: I always know I have them exactly where I want them! (maniacal laugh)""
 * The Ditz: Stanley Spadowski.
 * Drowning My Sorrows: George's blueberry daiquiris.
 * DVD Commentary: One of the best ever. Largely consists of Mystery Science Theater 3000 style riffing.
 * Echoing Acoustics: Utilized when Philo introduces himself in "Secrets of the Universe".
 * Engineered Public Confession:

"Stanley: Don't let your parents know that you do this."
 * Evil Old Folks: R.J. Fletcher, who else?
 * Excited Kids' Show Host: Stanley Spadowski proves to act like this all the time. Putting him in front of the camera was just lucky. Subverted beforehand in that George tried to fill this role and failed miserably.
 * Fingore: The clumsy shop teacher, with a table saw, during George's interview with him.
 * The Fool: George Newman.
 * Free Prize At the Bottom: Stanley Spadowski, while hosting his show, goes through the process of digging a cheap plastic toy out from the bottom of a box of cereal.

""That's right, Yappy's Dog Treats! Your dog will love that real liver and tuna taste... ...With just a hint of cheese!""
 * The Gambling Addict: Uncle Harvey, who regularly plays the horses and poker - the latter got him the station, and the former nearly resulted in him selling it to R.J. Fletcher.
 * George Jetson Job Security: The janitor, Stanley Spadowski got fired from Channel 8 by R.J. Fletcher who accused him of throwing away some very important files. They were later discovered right where Fletcher had left them, but Stanley wasn't un-fired.
 * There's even a slight implication that R.J. Fletcher did this deliberately to rid of Stanley.
 * Gilligan Cut: From Uncle Harvey saying "no way" about George becoming the manager of a TV station, to George and Teri on their way to the station for the first time.
 * A package meant for Channel 8 (Fletcher's station and lair of doom) arrives at Channel 62 (George's UHF station) by accident. George offers to deliver it personally to Fletcher. Pamela warns "...he's not the nicest guy in the world." After George scoffs and says "You just have to know how to talk to those guys..." CUT TO Fletcher berating his son about a pencil (see Abusive Parents example above).
 * Grumpy Old Man: R.J. Fletcher himself.
 * Harpo Does Something Funny: Aside from one action sequence, Michael Richards' part is entirely ad libbed because "it was funnier than anything we could write."
 * Historical Badass Upgrade: Gandhi II.
 * Humiliation Conga: R.J. Fletcher goes down HARD.
 * HARD doesn't even begin to describe it!
 * Weird Al states in the commentary that he put this in because he doesn't like it when a movie has a Karma Houdini.
 * And yet, ! Then again, by the time, Al must've decided that there was only so much hell he could inflict on Fletcher without making him into a Jerkass Woobie.
 * I Ate What?: George accidentally feeds dog biscuits to Bob during filming of a Product Placement segment during the kids' show. As Bob is in character as "Bobbo the Clown", he has to fake a smile even as he's grossed out by the taste of the "cookies" he's eating.
 * Cue sound of Bob being violently ill*

"Come on, Bob. You gotta grab life by the lips, and just yank as hard as you can."
 * I'm Your Worst Nightmare: George says this during his Rambo-parodying fantasy.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Sort of. During the dreaded phone call between Uncle Harvey and Mr. Big, Mr. Big detaches his hand, replaces it with a meat cleaver appendage and violently chops a big loaf of lunchmeat (since it's Weird Al, probably balogna), signifying he means business. Harvey staggers in the pool (where he's lounging when the call takes place) and says, "I'm dead meat!".
 * Indy Escape: Parodied in a dream sequence with a dauntless boulder. Averted since the dream was interrupted, killing the character in said dream.
 * I Need a Freaking Drink: Invoked by George, but Bob calls him on it, saying he doesn't drink; George says he's been meaning to start.
 * Japanese Ranguage: "Supplies!"
 * Jingle: Spatula City.
 * Kitschy Local Commercial: There are a few of these, including the Spatula City ad ("we sell spatulas, and that's all!") and the ad for Crazy Eddie's Used Cars.
 * Large Ham: Kevin McCarthy's performance is so hammy that some major religions forbid eating watching it.
 * Laugh with Me: When R.J. Fletcher starts laughing, the two managers under him realize, after a short pause, that they'd better start forcing themselves to laugh along with him.
 * Like Reality Unless Noted: The town. It's a normal city with normal people watching their normal Channel 8... but when you see the odd content being aired on Channel 62 and realize all these people and things must have been out there already before they got TV shows, it makes you wonder what anyone found weird or odd about George at the beginning of the movie.
 * Loan Shark: Uncle Harvey owes $75,000 to an unseen shark who has a detachable cleaver for a hand.
 * Who may or may not be Merv Griffin, according to the commentary.
 * Man Child: Stanley, so very much.
 * Market-Based Title: Since the concept of UHF stations differs overseas (as some countries, like the UK, moved everything to UHF years ago), they asked Al for an alternate title. He suggested "The Vidiot". The film was then released in some countries, much to Al's chagrin, as "The Vidiot From UHF", succeeding only in transforming an incomprehensible title to a terrible one.
 * Of course, modern televisions don't differentiate between UHF and other frequencies, and haven't for years, so it's not much better in the US anymore.
 * The Latin-American Spanish dub is known as "Los Telelocos".
 * Media Watchdog: The FCC appeared in the end of UHF.
 * Metaphorgotten: George delivers many of these.

"And now they're throwing me out like a bag of moldy...tangerines."
 * Stanley squeezes in a couple as well.

"Conan: Don't you know dah dew-ay dec-ihm-ahl sys-tahm?"
 * Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In Brick Joke form.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: as a parody of Geraldo and other 80's talk shows that lead the way for Jerry Springer, a bruised George tells us about what could be described as the ultimate controversial matter: "Lesbian Nazi hookers, abducted by UFOs and forced into weight-loss programs... all this week onTown Talk."
 * No Budget: While this limited who could be hired and where shooting takes place, this shows up most with the props. They couldn't afford to have any lead time on, leading to such things as a helicopter helmet with a Channel 8 logo made out of tape.
 * Used In-Universe, too, as U62 had a shoestring budget until "Uncle Nutsy's Clubhouse" got turned into "Stanley Spudowski's Clubhouse".
 * In the commentary Al jokes that they blew half the budget on the scene with the kid spitting in George's face on CG spit from Industrial Light and Magic.
 * Old Shame: Apparently, if you bring this film up to Michael Richards, he will not react well, though he did appear in the cast commentary.
 * For a couple of minutes... at a time. Of course after his infamous outburst in late 2006 he hopefully will recall this movie as a happier time.
 * Well, given his role...
 * The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: R. J. Fletcher's Engineered Public Confession ends with "But, there is one good thing about broadcasting to a town full of mindless sheep: I always know I have them exactly where I want them!"
 * Parody Commercial: Contains a number of commercials for various U62 shows, including "Gandhi II", "Conan the Librarian", and "Wheel of Fish", as well as a few fake companies, such as "Spatula City" and "Crazy Ernie's Used Cars". The audio for some of these commercials was included on Weird Al's UHF CD.
 * Periphery Demographic: In-universe, this is what turns around U62's fortunes.
 * Prop Recycling: The producers struck a deal with KOED to build a news set in their studio. The Tulsa network used the set for their own broadcasts for a couple years afterward.
 * Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "A U! H! F! Station!"
 * Real Trailer, Fake Movie
 * Red Right Hand: Although he's technically not the main villan, Mr. Big is a spooky unseen loanshark/crime boss with a detachable meat-cleaver hand. Also, Evil Sounds Deep applies to him as well.
 * Sassy Secretary: Pamela Finklestein.
 * Scary Librarian: CONAN: THE LIBRARIAN

""No more Mr. Passive Resistance... he's out to kick some butt!""
 * Science Marches On: An interesting tidbit in the very beginning at Big Edna's. You can see a sign in the background saying that they cook all of their meat "medium with a pink center unless otherwise specified". This was in 1989 and not a joke, as it was before the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box E coli disaster in which four children died and hundreds of others became sick in the Seattle area as well as California, Idaho and Nevada, after eating undercooked and contaminated meat from Jack in the Box. These days all meat is cooked well done unless specified, and menus have warnings against eating undercooked meats.
 * Though to be fair, pink beef can still be hot enough to kill bacteria. It's red beef that's trouble.
 * Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: R.J. Fletcher
 * Severely Specialized Store: Spatula City.
 * Shouting Shooter: In the Rambo parody.
 * Smug Snake: RJ Fletcher.
 * Styrofoam Rocks: Parodied. In the opening sequence, a rock bounces right off George Newman's head mid-fantasy and does nothing to him.
 * Technology Marches On: The UHF band in general. There's a long history which (at least in the US) goes back to The Fifties - although the history in other countries (like the UK) will differ:
 * TV was publicly demonstrated by NBC (then WNBT channel 1, on the Empire State building) as a curiosity at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City but only became common after World War II. Channel 1 was lost to land-mobile radio in 1948 and a few channels above VHF 13 were lost to the military; with only twelve possible channels, the hundred or so US stations on-air in 1948 were routinely interfering with each other. The Federal Communications Commission stopped issuing any new TV licences for three years while they decided how to fix the mess; ultimately they opened seventy new channels (14-83, 470-890MHz) in the then-unproven UHF spectrum. By 1953-54, a hundred underpowered UHF stations went on the air... and eighty of them went out of business within the first year. Apparently the feds didn't think to require set makers include UHF tuners until the 1964 model year.
 * The early tuners were of such poor quality that UHF TV licences in any given city were routinely spaced at least six channels apart due to receiver limitations. The end result was seventy channels of not much except static. With only 12 VHF channels, each major city could usually be given three (adequate for NBC and CBS as the two main networks of the era, although perennially third-ranked ABC often ended up struggling on outlying stations. A few UHF stations did survive and thrive in places like South Bend, Indiana or Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania where these were the only channels available - but these were the exception, not the rule.
 * By the late 1960s, three stations per major city was no longer enough, due to the need to accommodate educational television (NET and its eventual successor, PBS) and programming in other languages (such as Spanish). In the largest cities, there were more stations than viable mainstream networks, leaving more than a few struggling big-city "independents" to fill most of their schedules with live sports and old movies. The strongest network affiliates kept the prime spots at the low end of the VHF TV dial. ABC often landed on high-VHF channels while most PBS, independent or niche broadcasters were relegated to the UHF wilderness. Oh look, it's Big Bird on channel "U", why does he look all fuzzy?
 * Even the hugest top-of-the-line "82 channel" antennas claimed to offer "up to 100 miles VHF, 60 miles UHF" as the longer-wavelength VHF signal had the advantage of being more capable of bending a bit to get around obstacles. (This is likely still true today, but digital low-VHF stations have their own technical issues.)
 * Over-the-air TV began to lose viewers to cable TV in the 1970s; the cable companies often moved signals which were UHF over the air to VHF on the cable. TV sets were also slowly improving; by the mid to late 1980s, separate tuners were no longer necessary for UHF and VHF, nor was it necessary to endlessly 'clunk' through seventy empty channels to find the few UHF stations available in glorious fuzzy analogue.
 * The launch of FOX TV as a fourth US commercial network in 1986 was a tipping point; it ensured that twelve VHF TV channels (which had been enough for three commercial stations in each major market) were no longer adequate. Many former independents were quick to join this nascent fourth network. By 1994, Fox was openly poaching affiliates from the established networks and outbidding CBS for NFL games. New World Communications switched a dozen stations from CBS to Fox, forcing CBS onto UHF in Atlanta, Austin and Cleveland. CBS ended up on a very poor UHF channel assignment in Milwaukee and ended up purchasing U-62 station WGPR Detroit (now WWJ-TV) outright for $24 million out of pure desperation. Yup, the same frequency way up the dial which "Weird Al" figured no sane broadcaster would want only five years earlier. Oh well.
 * Satellite TV was also a major "equaliser" as UHF stations like Ted Turner's WTBS 17 Atlanta got picked up nationally. Canadian cable companies were prone to pulling stations from Shaw's CANCOM satellite feed and dumping "U-62 Détroit" into distant communities as far afield as Newfoundland. Eventually, in some cases the Détroit HDTV feeds started turning up on cable in Canadian border communities which already had perfectly viable in-region US stations.
 * The final straw that made "UHF as underpowered independent station" a Discredited Trope? The digital transition after the turn of the millennium. The new system worked very well on UHF and very poorly on low-VHF due to a form of interference known as "impulse noise". The digital system inserted a few extra bits in the signal as spares for "forward error correction" - if the interference is small-scale random white noise which only clobbers a random bit now and then, the new TV's could correct those errors and - to a point - display a perfect HDTV picture right up to the point where the video goes off a "digital cliff". When there are too many errors to correct, audio and video break up and freeze entirely - but until then, everything looks perfect. By contrast, the "impulse noise" dumped by motors and appliances on the formerly-valuable low-VHF channels came in bursts, periodically wiping out the entire channel for some brief fraction of a second. That's not so easy to fix these days. Because the DTV signal is digitally compressed, it takes a second or two for the receiver to find its place in the image and recover - and by then the next burst of impulse noise will have wiped everything out again. VHF 2-6, once some of the most valuable spectrum in broadcasting, was a Ghost Town and an empty wasteland. There were even suggestions that VHF 5 and 6 be dropped to provide space to extend the now-crowded FM radio band, although this was never implemented. And then there's the flood of so-called "digital antennas" into the 21st century marketplace, which are small but often perform poorly as they're merely a low-quality rebrand of a "UHF-only antenna". Quite a few of these cheap antennas actually perform worse on VHF 7-13 (which remains in use digitally in many communities) than on UHF because the antenna is physically too small to do the job.
 * In the meantime, mobile telephone companies have their own beady eyes on huge chunks of the now-valuable UHF spectrum, which is getting crowded. The number of available vacant channels has dropped; UHF 14-83 becomes UHF 14-69 becomes UHF 14-51 becomes UHF 14-36 with stations forced to move to lower channels as governments realise they can sell this frequency spectrum to mobile telephone companies for billions of dollars. In some cases, the government has even paid longtime broadcasters (including Boston PBS flagship WGBH) millions to move back to VHF channels which no one wants, so that precious UHF spectrum can be auctioned and sold.
 * Temporary Substitute: Anthony Geary wasn't originally planned to play Philo; one of Al's favorite comics, Joel Hodgson, was. But he couldn't accept the role. Before you go "aw, man!" keep in mind that Joel had turned it down due to being burned out in Los Angeles and returning to Minneapolis, where he ended up starting his own little show on its own UHF station KTMA.
 * They Just Didn't Care: Parodied with Gandhi II, which deliberately misses the entire point of the original movie (and, for that matter, Mahatma Gandhi's way of life).


 * Aside from the obvious, he's also depicted ordering a steak.
 * It's Weird Al. They Just Didn't Care, or Comically Missing the Point?
 * Trailers Always Spoil
 * What Could Have Been: Sylvester Stallone was going to cameo as the helicopter ride ticketer during the Rambo parody scene, but had to cancel due to schedule issues.
 * And as mentioned above, Al originally wanted Joel Hodgson to play Philo.
 * After Hodgson turned down the role of Philo, Al asked Crispin Glover if he wanted the role, and Crispin said he would only be in the movie if he could play Crazy Ernie. Al turned him down.
 * David Spade was one of the people who auditioned for the role of Bob.
 * Christopher Lloyd would've been another choice for Stanley if Michael Richards turned the role down.
 * If the movie hadn't been picked up, Yankovic would have toured Europe opening for Michael Jackson.
 * The Unseen: Mr. Big. Picture "Dr. Claw" from Inspector Gadget but with a white jacket, smoking a cigar, no cat and a hand that detaches and can be replaced by a meat cleaver.
 * Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Although the station's location is never mentioned, it is clearly filmed in Tulsa, with several landmarks making appearances. There's an entire fan page listing these locations.
 * Al lists off the addresses for many of the locations as they appear during his commentary track.
 * Your Favorite: The "Twinkie Wiener" sandwich, a hot dog cut into a Twinkie and topped with spray cheese, offered by Al to his friend Bob.
 * These remain Al's Trademark Favorite Food, though as a vegetarian he uses tofu dogs now.