The Compleat Al

The Compleat Al
VHS cover
Directed by	Jay Levey Robert K. Weiss
Produced by	Robert K. Weiss
Written by	Robert K. Weiss Jay Levey Hamilton Cloud "Weird Al" Yankovic
Starring	"Weird Al" Yankovic
Music by	Derek Nakamoto Pat Regan "Weird Al" Yankovic
Cinematography	David Lewis
Editing by	Bruce Austin John Carroll Kurt Tiegs
Distributed by	CBS/Fox Fox Video
Release date(s)	August 1985 (rereleased in 1991)[1]
Running time	100 minutes
Language	English

The Compleat Al is a mockumentary about the life of "Weird Al" Yankovic, from his birth to 1985. It was partially written by Yankovic and directed by Jay Levey. It premiered August 7, 1985, on the Showtime network. The title of the film is a parody of the 1982 documentary The Compleat Beatles.

Although it is a mockumentary, it is roughly based on Yankovic's real life. For example, Yankovic was raised in Lynwood, California, and has a degree in architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. His real-life parents appear in the mockumentary, as does a picture of his real-life childhood house. Because of the mixture of Yankovic's real life and fiction, many of the film's fabricated information was accepted by fans as real, such as Yankovic being born in a Saint Vitus hospital (Saint Vitus is the Catholic patron saint of comedy), or the film's pun which claimed his birth in an elevator signified his "rise to the top".

The mockumentary also contains clips from his first Three "AL-TV"s, and all of Yankovic's music videos up to 1985: "Ricky", "I Love Rocky Road", "Eat It", "I Lost On Jeopardy", "This Is The Life", "Like a Surgeon" ,"One More Minute", and "Dare to Be Stupid".

The parody also extends to the technical aspects of the film, such as the copyright warning message which starts routinely but escalates to warnings that copying the video may result in damage to your VCR, smoke may come out of your TV set, escalating to possible destruction of the planet due to the greed of the viewer.

The film was released in the VHS (rare), Betamax (extremely rare), and laserdisc (very rare) formats.^[vague] A 10 minute version of the mockumentary appeared on one of Weird Al's "AL-TV" specials, #6, which aired on MTV in 1992.

The Compleat Al was released at roughly the same time as the book The Authorized Al (ISBN 0-8092-5133-7), which is essentially a book version of the video.^[2]

References

1. ^ The Compleat Al VHS (1991), Amazon.com
2. ^ What's the difference between "The Compleat Al" and "The Authorized Al"?, Frequently Asked Questions List for the Usenet Newsgroup alt.music.weird-al

External links

• The Compleat Al at the Internet Movie Database

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