Tommy Avallone & his Community College

Tommy Avallone is not quite sick of his latest movie, Community College, which would surprise anyone if they knew anything about the past few years of his life. The indie comedy has been four years in the making. The 80-minute movie finally reached its first climax when it premiered at the Trocadero Theater on April 1, packing 350 seats of the near-500 in the venue. Among the general audience there was a very respectable response: laughter, turning in chairs, having a pretty good time, and a bit more laughter.

Community College follows four guys—Chino (Jordan McSorley), Rod Oswald Dean (Tim Dean), Herby (Tommy Avallone), and Jonny300 (Jonathan Dean), who are all attending a very purgatorial college in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. As they get drunk daily, fall asleep in class daily, and generally slack off, it’s revealed that the group is merely staying connected with academia to get free health care. But the short class periods, complete with annoying peers and too much work, are not good for the group. The guys spend most of their time at a local bar, the “Barrington Pub,” where they get free drinks from their bartender friend, Smutty.

After a day where the bar is closed without warning, and all four of the guys are trying to find some logical explanation and not freak out, Smutty fills everybody in that the bar has been going through some economic throws and will have to be shut down. The guys are informed, however, that if they can raise the $10,000 to pay off the bills, they can become the owners of the bar, and then, logically, they can start getting free drinks again. The catch: they only have a month to do it. “The goal is to work hard to eventually not work at all,” explains Avallone. And the main story makes a lot of sense—it’s familiar but not cliché, on the border of comedy and tragedy, yet never becoming melodramatic.

At times, Community College runs a bit into the realm of absurdity, leaving viewers scratching their heads at all the over-the-top zaniness—like when Avallone’s character, Herby, recalls his last girlfriend, who is a mermaid. He dumps her because she won’t put out: “No vagina, no dice.” Where does that come from? At the same time, the movie hits on a humorous, nonsensical side to college life, an alternate reality in itself, that anyone and everyone who has ever set foot on a campus can probably relate to. Ever heard anyone say they are “majoring in rebellion”?

Perhaps the movie succeeds in its comedic relevance because Avallone, who wrote, directed, edited, co-produced (with Brian L. Hagan) and co-starred in Community College, has always been of the mind to write what you know. “I wrote this in 2005 and, at the time, I was going to college and I was working as a video store clerk,” Avallone remarks. “Well, you can’t write a movie about being a video store clerk, so I wrote about a community college. I didn’t want to grow up, so the whole movie is about not wanting to grow up by going to college.”

The content of the movie, which includes countless cameos by friends and celebrities, as well as strange characters, like a purple octopus hanging around the bar all the time without any reasonable explanation, give this movie a weird, inside-joke vibe that is confusing but humorous nonetheless. The movie seems to obviously draw in from some bigger names in indie comedy. “I was influenced by Kevin Smith because he did a lot with little,” says Avallone. “And early Richard Linklater. Anytime there’s something [in Slacker] about anything at all, they move on to nothing.” But Avallone has also been trying to get away from the obviously-mimicked approaches in his first movies (Wasted Apples, Small Kid Tank Top, Here’s the Yesterday) and develop a look of his own, an idea not too difficult for someone who ran for town mayor as an homage to Andy Kaufman.

One of the most creative qualities to Community College is its core plot. Some of the best comedy movies have really only been successful as movies because of their stories, characters and settings, and Community College would probably never have succeeded without its memorable scenes. Examples include entry into a college class for dumb and deaf students, featuring Avallone’s character, Herby, making fun of his unsuspecting peers with a live studio audience; a war between two lemonade stands; a crashed party where the four protagonists each get some very strange action; a flea market where a boxed-up head is purchased. Then there’s the reoccurring home base at the school’s library, which is used by the four as a center for schemes, plans and, ultimately, recovery. Yes, Avallone has created a masterful micro-world by doing so much with not necessarily so little, but with what is available, and what many know.

While the movie was a thrill ride that moved fluidly from scene to scene, the humor’s source was often hidden. Where did that joke come from? What the heck is going on? Are they talking about what I think they’re talking about? These questions and more ceaselessly pop up, making the movie stagger and turn, working to both break up the endless stream of jokes but also raise an eyebrow or two. A perfect is example is Michael Ray Bower’s cameo. You probably remember Bower back in the day from Salute Your Shorts. He was the one who played Donkey Lips. He was also in Dude, Where’s My Car? and more recently, he was in an Amp (the beverage) commercial involving jumper cables attached to his nipples. The genius and ultimate issue with Bower’s presence in Community College was that Bower’s hypnotist character is directly referred to as Donkey Lips, and not everyone may know the reference. But only seconds away, Herby pegs this young grade-school girl in the head with a dodge ball.

Working with Bower meant a lot to Avallone, who really never had the chance to work with an established actor before. “He grew up doing this. I’m the guy in charge and I had to talk to a guy who’s already a professional about what to do,” Avallone says. “We ended up suiting the role to him. We said, ‘Let’s rewrite this so we can make this funny for you.’ So we had him playing himself as a hypnotist. I always like when people make fun of themselves in the movie. You have Donkey Lips in a movie and you have him reference Donkey Lips.”

Despite how much is going on under the surface, the movie constantly rebounds from its hidden side of strange, anecdotal references. Even if you don’t know the history Scott Schwarts, Brian Heffron, MC Lars, or Bob Levy, their roles are still hilarious. Scott Schwartz, who plays the bars owner, played Flick in A Christmas Story. Brian Heffron is the infamous wrestler, Blue Meanie. MC Lars is the self-proclaimed originator of post-punk laptop rap. And Bob Levy is the popular comedian from New Jersey, featured regularly on "The Howard Stern Show."

But these great guest actors, and the dynamic roles they play, as well as the quality of the video and audio, and the overall pizzazz of the story itself, almost never happened. Community College has a history, and the end result is far more substantial than it could have been. Through an amazing resilience, Avallone and his team, which includes Brian L. Hagan, Michael Licisyn, Tim and Jon Dean, Bower, Robert Boileau, and Michael Pallante, went through excruciating difficulties in trying to get the film to be where they want it. “In 2005, we canned the movie for the first time and decided we wanted to rehearse. It’s always better to shoot in nice weather, so we decided to wait and shoot in the summer of 2006,” explains Avallone. “We rehearsed for a little bit, then we decided to shoot on the weekend. That took up until November, 2006. Some of the cameos we had to wait on. MC Lars—that was February 2007. Then there were a lot of it was technical problems. 2007 to 2008 was spent capturing everything.”

Now, it’s well into 2009 and Avallone’s entertaining movie has had its initial success, but Avallone still wonders, ponders, all the effort he put into it. “After you hit a certain point—you work on a movie for so many years—you ask the question: is it ever going to be good enough to face completion?," he says. "But I haven’t gotten tired of the movie yet. I think the movie’s short. At 80 minutes, it’s not too long, and you’re never like this [looks at his watch]. I haven’t hated it yet.” - Greg Bem