“Highball” (1997)
It’s a bit unfair to critique, or even include, this title as it was never meant to be seen. When Baumbach finished “Mr Jealousy” in 1997 he put together a quick experiment using most of the same cast and six available days to shoot an off-the-cuff narrative that revolved around the Brooklyn apartment of a married couple and the disparate friends who come over for various parties. Set over the course of three soirees— a birthday celebration, a Halloween costume party and a New Year’s fete— “Highball” is essentially a collection of thin conversations and quips stitched together into a fractured, often bitter history of these various friendships. Outside of the “Mr Jealousy” cast (Eric Stoltz, Carlos Jacott, Chris Eigeman, Annabella Sciorra, Peter Bogdanovich — doing impressions the entire time) other cameos include Ally Sheedy and Rae Dawn Chong playing themselves, Justine Bateman, Luna frontman Dean Wareham, who would go on to become a musical collaborator soon after and Baumbach himself. Sadly, the film is, glaringly, not actually about anything and Baumbach decided to scrap it, but after he fell out with the producer, Shoreline Entertainment put it out against his wishes (he then took his name off the film and used the pseudonym Ernie Fusco). And so what feels like a home movie goof between Baumbach and some friends was haphazardly slapped together — the incoherent editing appears to have been done by a high school student as mistakes, unintentional jump cuts and missing frames litter the movie — and released as “Highball.” For hardcore Baumbach-ites there are a few curious pleasures: the director’s acting (no worse than anyone else’s in the film, frankly); the underrated Carlos Jacott, a Baumbach regular, doing his thing, and of course the highlight, the hilariously bad/awesome “Everybody Felix” closing credits song performed by Wareham. But for the most part “Highball” is tedious in the extreme — exactly why the filmmaker never wanted it released. But its looseness does point to something that Baumbach craved and eventually made happen: a reinvention of his form and method, favoring spontaneity over labored filmmaking. One could even go far as to see it as his proto-“Schizopolis,” the experimental film that Steven Soderbergh made as a cathartic purge to get him out of his filmmaking funk. Baumbach would reclaim his mojo on his next film, but it wouldn’t be until “Frances Ha” that he would finally discover the reboot he was after, the roots of which can be seen in “Highball.” [Grade Withheld/Real Talk: D+]