Thane Furrows: I'd rather be dead!
High Strung is an independent film that stars and was written by Steve Oedekerk. It features Oedekerk as a short-tempered young man, Thane Furrows, who spends his whole time getting annoyed at basically everything around him all while getting mysterious messages about something coming to him at 8:00 pm that night. It was directed and produced by Roger Nygard.
Other cast members shown in the movie are Thomas F. Wilson as Thane’s friend Al Dalby, Thane’s idealistic friend. Denise Crosby as Melanie, Thane’s despicable boss. Fred Willard as Ray, a polite insurance salesman who visits Thane. Jani Lane as Vol, Thane’s obnoxious rock-star wannabe neighbor. And Jim Carrey (who was uncredited) as Death itself.
It was released in several film festivals that took place in January and February of 1992. It did not get any video release date, but is available to watch on YouTube
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Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Death is pretty creepy all things considered since he’s been harassing Thane all day, but once he drops his scary act, he can be polite if socially-impaired.
- Age-Gap Romance: Marvin is old enough to be Melanie’s father. Lampshaded by Thane as he describes Melanie as half Marvin’s age.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Thane is called by an artificial intelligence answering machine of a carpet cleaning company has said machine at least four times (though the fourth time was Death manipulating the call to remind Thane of 8pm).
- Bad Boss: Melanie publishes books that children make children happy and doesn’t approve of anything that would either confuse or upset children, despite the fact that those upsetting aspects could be helpful to them.
- Bait-and-Switch: After a scene where Melanie basically establishes her bitchy attitude and Thane's Inner Monologue hesitates to reprimand her, we get a scene where Thane puts his foot down and tells Melanie off. We see it's actually his inner monologue practicing but the real Thane does nothing of the sort, much to Inner Thane's dismay.
- Benevolent Boss: In contrast to Melanie, Marvin is rather kind and friendly. Thane even describes him as. A boss who was tolerable.
- Bottle Episode: About 95% of the entire film takes place in Thane’s apartment.
- Ceiling Banger: Thane does this to his upstairs neighbor Vol on account of the latter playing music too loud.
- The Cynic: Thane spends a majority of the movie giving bleak descriptions of mundane activities.
- Dartboard of Hate: Thane has one of Melanie in his room.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Thane's griping and refusal to shut up caused him to do this to Death himself.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Thane in no small part criticizes Death's rule about only being allowed to wish for death 18,000 times, deeming it to be ridiculous (and admittedly, anyone wishing for death at that rate is rather fantastical).
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Since Death is played by Jim Carrey, could you expect anything else?
- Everything is Big in Texas: It’s implied that the movie takes place in Texas since Thane at one point says he went to a Texas State Fair, but we are mostly limited to the confines of Thane’s apartment.
- Fantastic Racism: Among Melanie’s many vices is that she looks down on people with different nationalities.
- Freak Out: Thane does this so many times it's almost criminal.
- Jerkass:
- Thane is quite belligerent and often acts anxious and impatient to everyone, including people who are remotely nice to him.
- Melanie, Thane’s boss, is quite the bitch who is dedicated to publishing children’s books to make money rather than anything that could be useful for children.
- Vol, Thane’s neighbor, plays loud music which annoys Thane and has the gall to complain to Than when he bangs his ceiling.
- Death spends a majority of his screen time scaring the bejesus out of Thane.
- Hypocrite:
- Thane gripes about his mother constantly talking when he is no better in that respect.
- Vol gets on Thane's case for banging on his floor as it disrupts his music, even though Thane only did that to stop his disruption.
- Jerkass Has a Point: A Motor Mouth jerk he may be, Thane brings up some good points, like how his neighbor plays his music too loud or how Melanie approves of books that are geared more to 5-year-olds or younger (like Happy the Clam) and not approving more practical books.
- The Load: As Death states, Thane spent his whole life griping instead of making himself useful. This doesn’t stop Thane from using his trademark complaining against Death however.
- Lonely Bachelor Pad: Thane’s apartment is pretty much built for a bachelor such as himself.
- Lower-Class Lout: Thane is this in spades. He’s abrasive, lives in a sustainable but admittedly small apartment, works as an unappreciated children’s book author, and barely has a social life.
- Nice Guy:
- Al, Thane’s friend, is an idealist who tries to get Thane to see the best in life.
- Ray, the insurance salesman seen at the start of the movie, is also pretty polite to Thane, despite Thane’s passive-aggression.
- Not Afraid of You Anymore: Thane to Death at the end.
- The Oner: A majority of scenes are framed in one shot, most notably one scene where Thane is seen screwing around with an answering machine in his bedroom that lasts for about a minute.
- Rule of Symbolism: The fly that’s been harassing Thane all day drops dead when it stares Death in his face. Note that whenever the fly appeared, Thane would lose his temper about something. Now that the fly is gone and Thane has told Death off to the point where he decides to leave Thane alone forever, Thane has lost his cynicism, at least mostly.
- Satellite Character: A majority of the secondary cast have their characters revolve around Thane.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Death when Thane unleashes a "Reason You Suck" Speech on him decides that Thane is more trouble than he's worth, even telling God Himself that he won't be coming back for Thane.
- The Shut-In: Thane almost never leaves his apartment, most likely to avoid coming into contact with everyday annoyances.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: It’s implied that Al works in an office, but he is anything but worn down by the mundanity of his job.
- Take That!: Thane at one point says that book publishing companies ;like the one he works at are trying to shield reality from children due to wanting to keep their innocence.
- Take This Job and Shove It: After telling off Melanie for her bitchy behavior, she silently leaves, and Thane sees this as a sign of him getting fired. He gets upset at first before deciding that he wasn't big on the job anyway.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Thane does this to Death.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Thane really likes cereal and refuses to eat anything else, though he does mention liking popsicles.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Thane isn’t so much unsympathetic as he does suffer through many misfortunes, it’s just that he’s pretty belligerent about life and can’t stop complaining about every little inconvenience.
- What Does She See in Him?: Gender-inverted as Thane says this word-for-word regarding Marvin’s marriage to Melanie.
