Better Off Dead

Most animation aficionados of the 1990s know "Savage Steve Holland" as the cocreator (with Bill Kopp) of the all-stops-out TV cartoon series Eek! The Cat. But Holland had been exercising his own peculiar brand of deviltry on live characters long before Eek! came into being. In Holland's Better Off ...more

Cartoonist Savage Steve Holland made his directorial debut with this acid comedy about a going-nowhere hamburger flipper and his run of bad luck. Its gleefully twisted tone, exemplified by a goofy suicide attempt in a basically lighthearted film (John Cusack's character jumps off a bridge, only to land among the refuse of a passing garbage truck), made it a minor quotable classic to a generation of young anti-authoritarian filmgoers. In one of his earliest roles, Cusack wears his expression of ...more