"Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie" premiered at Sundance this week (and is available On Demand as of today), and fans of the comedy duo should be pleased to hear that the film is getting many positive reviews. The fact that scores of audience members have walked out during the screenings only seems to confirm that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have delivered a product that may be as enraging as it is funny.
But Tim and Eric themselves have something to be enraged about: The movie "Rango," the children's animated film from 2011 that stars a cowboy lizard in the Old West.
On January 18, Heidecker tweeted: "Sundance gang: B$M got Rango'd (large portions of out movie replaced with Rango outtakes) please ask #sundance to take out the Rango!" After being retweeted widely, Heidecker kept up the campaign.
On the movie industry interview show "In the Can," Heidecker and Wareheim told the host that producers had spliced their film beyond recognition in order to include scenes from "Rango" into "Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie."
"They have decided to intercut outtakes from the film 'Rango' into our film and take large portions of our film out, because they want to create some kind of synergy for the DVD release of 'Rango,'" Heidecker explained on "In the Can."
"I know a lot of people out there may have friends and family involved in the festival," pleaded the co-director, co-star and co-writer of "Billion Dollar Movie. "Call them now, and ask them to de-'Rango' our film so that we can show the film that we made."
Of course, the film doesn't actually include clips of "Rango." Heidecker told Philly.com, ""It's unbelievable after all this time that there are still people who don't know if it's serious or not. I'm not ever going to be serious, so let's just get that over with." But it's still pretty funny to listen to Tim and Eric express outrage that their horrifying, grotesque comedy film was turned into a promotional piece for a cartoon where Johnny Depp voices a cowboy lizard.
Check out the red band trailer for "Billion Dollar Movie" here, and the family-friendly version here.