Top Ten Videos of 2009: 6. Funny or Die, “A Gaythering Storm”

In the early part of 2009, American TV airwaves were polluted by a particular commercial that became known as the “Gathering Storm” ad. Made by a group calling itself the National Organization for Marriage, it was a clumsy, mendacious message of anti-gay fear-mongering. I don’t care to put the original ad here on my own blog, so if you haven’t seen or don’t immediately recall it you can fill yourself in by clicking this link.

The ad could have been a milestone of unintentional comedy were it not for the fact that so many Americans actually buy its central falsehood that same-sex marriage could impose anything whatsoever onto heterosexual marriages and families. Needless to say, the ad’s overblown, portentous bigotry practically begged to be parodied. I made calls to a few filmmaker friends with a mind toward producing one myself, but to do it right ended up being logistically impossible.

Fortunately, the popular comedy site Funny or Die soon rolled out their version, which more than filled the comedic void. Entitled “A Gaythering Storm,” it comes in at number six on my list of the top ten videos of 2009.

Quite a cast, huh? As a fan of Scrubs, I knew Sarah Chalke was funny. Conversely, I was caught off-guard by Jason Lewis, the the super-good-looking guy in the dark sweater, who connected squarely on the kind of punchlines that weren’t in the offing for his role as Smith, Samantha’s lover on Sex and the City. I got a kick out of George Takei’s just-campy-enough riff on his old Sulu-style declaiming, and I don’t recall seeing Alicia Silverstone be this funny (or indeed, even in a comedic role) since Clueless, the role that made her a star all the way back in 1996. But what really made the whole thing for me was the hilariously cloying “there is hope” conclusion delivered by one of my favorite comic actors, Jane Lynch.

Jane Lynch

My earliest recollection of Lynch is in Christopher Guest’s 2000 dog show mockumentary Best in Show. Since then, her unaffected comic élan has laid me out laughing in A Mighty Wind, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and the first season of Party Down, a little-seen comedy series on the U.S. pay-cable Starz network (and in Canada on Super Channel) which I recommend.» Now Lynch appears to have broken through to a new, well-deserved level of fame as the overly-intense cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester on Fox’s hit series Glee: earlier this week her performance in the role earned her a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Go Jane!