This took a ton of work, but man, it was worth it!
If you've ever seen the movie Cocktail, the Tom Cruise bartending saga from the Summer of 1988, you probably don't remember much, as it was a pretty forgettable movie. You'll probably recall that Tom Cruise plays a flashy bartender, mentored by an older bartender, played by Bryan Brown who shows him the tricks of the trade, which include flipping bottles and glasses in the air like a circus juggler. Then there's a third-wheel character, a terrible bartender named Chris with a serious case of borderline personality disorder, who stalks Tom and Bryan's characters, gets in fist fights with them, and murders a couple other characters in the movie. What's that? You don't remember that third character? That's because this is Cocktails & Dreams, a weirdly engrossing alt-version of Cocktail, Directed and Edited by Mike Upchurch, a former Mr Show and Chris Rock writer. Though it has new actors digitally inserted into it 27 years after the movie was in theaters, the piece manages to work completely on its own for 11 minutes of sublimely ridiculous comedy. Comedian Chris Fairbanks is just about perfect as the desperate guy trying to start a business with these two bartenders who clearly aren't interested.
You may notice this bears a distinct stylistic resemblance to another project from 2013 called Greenboy, a reworking of the old Dragnet TV show into a modern tale of dangerous prescription marijuana. That one also starred Chris Fairbanks, was directed by Upchurch, and if you scan the credits, you'll also see MST3K's Frank Conniff credited as a writer too. This newest installment is even more technically ambitious, inserting characters into moving shots, having new characters embrace and punch characters in the movie, and inserting freeze-frame jokes all over the place.
