“Meditation is terrific and all, but I never heard of it saving anyone from a gang rape-type situation.”By the time I caught up with Jody Hill’s The Foot Fist Way last year, it was already the recipient of impossible hype. Drew “Moriarty” McWeeny told me that the entire Judd Apatow crew was obsessed with the movie, while Patton Oswalt was declaring it a sui generis work on par with The Big Lebowski. So when Patton screened the movie for a select group of folks down at the Hollywood UCB Theater, I braved the congested Franklin Avenue traffic and horrific Tamarind Avenue parking just to see what all the fuss was about. For the next several weeks, I was quoting the film incessantly… pretty much for my own amusement, since I barely knew anyone else who’d seen it. Such is the power of sensei Fred Simmons (the great Danny McBride), North America’s finest tae kwon do instructor and the self-anointed “King of the Demo”.
It’s taken forever for the folks at Paramount Vantage to get off their rumps and release this sucker, but it looks like The Foot Fist Way will get to work its magic on paying customers this April 11th (though it’s currently set for a limited roll-out). I imagine they’re going to get around to cutting a trailer at some point, but until that blessed day arrives, you can get a primer on Sensei Simmons’s teachings at the recently-launched official website. It’s got a soundboard and everything. You can also try to chase down a YouTube clip of Simmons’s appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien; I’d embed it, but NBC is wiping the videos as soon as they go up.
And just like that, Danny McBride’s World Domination Tour ’08 begins.