During a phone call, two friends clash over their political differences in Ryan Osborne’s short film Get Your Smoke On.
After the September 11th attacks in 2001, cartoonist David Rees launched a series of satirical comic strips called “Get Your War On”. These strips weren’t full of your typical slapstick humour. Rees used his sharp wit to take aim at the big political issues of the day, particularly those arising from the War on Terror, and skewered them.
Despite their hard-hitting content, the format was simple, basically red clip art office workers with a few variations against a stark white background. But the basic visuals of “Get Your War On” found a loyal audience, appearing in magazines like Rolling Stone and even getting a collected volume in book form.
Using Rees’ material as a launch pad, writer director Ryan Osborne creates his own satirical cartoon here in the form of the three minute moving picture Get Your Smoke On – a two-handed short film that sees actor Shelby Hightower’s wired Beth argue and curse at her stoned friend Sid, played by Soulo Smith.
The film opens with a red and white title card and a voice over that will be familiar to many people who have followed American politics over the past 20 years – former Info Wars chief conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Hightower’s Beth is transfixed by the world of alt right conspiracy theorem and is obsessed with those who share her beliefs. Sid calls her to complain about all the political GIFs and memes she has been posting to his social media wall and begins to attack her sanity but overall he is the far more chilled of the two friends. Smith’s performance excels in these early stages coming across as cool and relaxed. He is still unable to stop Beth’s raging onslaught however, as she rallies against everyone from communist China, to the EU, CNN, Covid, Hollywood paedophile gangs, cigarettes and the deep state. It is here were Hightower impresses with her maniacal, over-the-top, yet enjoyable rantings, but Sid is able to bat away her attacks with humorous ease. They calm down and come to an understanding when they both agree to meet up and smoke pot together, but Beth ignores her friend’s request to wait and decides to smoke without him, leading to the finale of Sid sharing with the audience some video footage of the last time Beth got far too high and turned into a zombified right wing MAGA supporter.
With Osborne using minimal sets and movements in his short, the cinematography by Wesley Mellott remains somewhat static. Both Beth and Sid are in small bedsits with plain white walls; this an obvious nod to the Get Your War On publications, but Beth’s location is slightly more interesting due to the fact the room she inhabits is messy and untidy with food stains all over the wall. While both locations give us a sense that these places are realistic, Beth’s room feels a little bit more lived in. Osborne also acts as his own editor and he manages to encapsulate something of a tennis match with his back-and-forth cuts between Sid and Beth’s banter over the phone. This tight work helps to give the short film a sense of urgency.
Get Your Smoke On does feel like a satirical cartoon getting ready to bite, but unfortunately it just misses the mark by slowly fizzling out towards the end. Thankfully, with a brisk 3-minute runtime, it never overstays its welcome.
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