The late ‘90s and 2000s were a dark time for mainstream comedies. After the success of American Pie, studios seemed interested in greenlighting only also-ran teen sex comedies, complete with marquee gross-out scenes, and more Rob Schneider movies than any population is able to healthily tolerate. It was a time where no bad idea was off limits and any film could be made, regardless of what good taste dictates.
In celebration of this era, comedians Nick Ciarelli (also a contributor to some site called Clickhole) and Brad Evans have “unearthed” a copy of the Seann William Scott vehicle, Vincey Masters: Born To Be A Karate Meister, inventing a new chapter in pop culture history in the process.
The whole thing started with Evans wondering on Twitter if anyone else could remember “a 2000s comedy starring Seann William Scott where he gets electrocuted at an aquarium then gains martial arts powers.”
Ciarelli responded by suggesting the dreamlike team-up Bulletproof Monk, starring Scott and Chow Yun-fat.
But no. This matter could only be solved by “finding” a copy of Vincey Masters in the wild, which Ciarelli soon did.
Everything about the cover, from words to image, is a perfect snapshot of the time. Scott’s Stifler grin, the faceless woman in a bikini, the requisite “comedic” homophobia, the fonts placed over a blank background, and the bright red “Widescreen Edition” are so evocative they almost smell like a Blockbuster.
While Ciarelli’s impressive work is just a very strong mood piece, not an actual long forgotten movie from the time, this hasn’t stopped Twitter from summoning up old memories from the Vincey Masters craze of their youth.
Even the killjoys trying to question Vincey Master’s existence are being forced to question whether they can believe what Google, IMDB, and Wikipedia claim to be true when weighed against the collective memories of the movie slowly worming into our cultural consciousness.
How can protests like this hold up against the essential, non-empirical truth of the Karate Meister?
Think long enough about Vincey Masters and it becomes impossible that the movie didn’t—or doesn’t—exist. Kicking and flipping (and probably getting hilarious, gi-tenting boners) through our minds, Masters is knowable in a way no data can refute. He existed and exists, and that scene where he goes cross-eyed after someone throws a sumo’s mawashi loincloth onto his face is just as real as anything you can reach out and touch.
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