The Weasel Has Landed

Forget Pauly Shore, "the Weasel." Meet Pauly Shore, buzz-cut guerilla indie filmmaker, whose HD magnum opus, alternately titled Pauly Shore Is Dead, wowed a crowd of admirers Tuesday night at the Alamo Drafthouse. The audience might have been too young for Totally Pauly but cheered when SXSW's Matt Dentler announced the creation of the "Pauly Shore Award" for directors "independent to the point where they offend the hell out of you." Shore introduced the film with a mini-rant about studio politics, but Wiez evinces its creator's sense of humor concerning his Hollywood career, which nose-dived after his Fox sitcom Pauly tanked. The opening montage brings it all back -- the spritz, the spandex, the spring-break tomfoolery, the porn stars, and that indescribably bracing call, "Hey, buhhhhhdddd-yyy!" -- before transforming into a black comedy about Shore faking his own death for a career boost. Say what you will about the Wiez, but he sure puts himself out there. He jerks off while on the phone with his mother and asks for a reach-around from a Heidi Fleiss Girl, while a parade of celebrities in cameo appearances heap scorn upon Shore. (He prompts Bill Maher to declare, "God, I hate this country!") To say more would spoil the fun, just in case Shore's juggernaut of festival promotion lands Wiez a theatrical distributor.