Learning Day: The Buttercream Gang

Alright maybe you remember when youd go over to a new friends house as a kid and there you are getting used to the new smells and carpets and wonderin: is there mom nice or mean? And you get to looking at their movies and theres the normal star wars and disney and stuff but you also see ALOT of ones like this:

Yes these are all from a production company called Feature Films for Families and the more of these cassettes you saw in a familys entertainment center compared to regular secular movies, the more you knew they were probably going to say “no” if you asked to do anything fun. Like if they had this many…

…don’t even ask if you can have a coke on a Sunday.

So these were real popular where I came up I think because they were Christian, but adults could pretend they were as good as real movies. And I think that pressure was too much for some of my peers who got some kinda stockholm syndrome about it and would say outloud that they liked Rigoletto.

To which one can only respond: Nuh-uh dude don’t lie, that aint no way to impress anybody.

So you can guess that I did my best to stay away from these films and me and my friends thought it was pretty funny to call them “Triple-F” movies because that made it sound like pornography. But all my decades’ of evasive maneuverings only bought me finite time which is now expired because guess what shows up on this very website’s discord one day and Robert used his artifact discernment powers, honed over years of study and refinedment, to ask me: have I seen this one:

Which no, I hadn’t. Now some of you are maybe getting that little bit painful brain tingle right behind your eyes that is our bodies way of warning us when a Mormon PR effort is close by and in this case you are very correct. Although this isnt a official BYU Studios production, our first few minutes gives us several clues:

1900HotDog Person of interest and known latter-day-saint creative: TC Christensen

Who i for real was gonna make the joke is Utah’s John Tesh, but damn, Kurt beat me to it

And of course just look at them Wasatch Peaks:

Yes, this tells us this film is a member of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints in disguise as a casual civilian. The film tries to hide this a little bit by throwing in some Generalist Christian tids and bits, like a khaki mulcahey:

But we are not fooled, we see the truth of it.

So after decades of successful sleep-over lobbying to watch Krull or whatever for the 500th time instead of any FFF films, i sat down in my own home and voluntarily watched The Buttercream Gang for the first and last time. And I’m glad I did! Not because I was entertained, heavens no not in the slightest. But because this film gave me a good reminder of how frightened the 90s rural christian parent was about: “Will my child catch Gang?”

It can happen so fast.

Now Im not saying gangs theyre not a problem, but I think the level of concern that lets say a church-going mom in Tumwater WA in 1992 had about my friend Damon starting to wear a white sox jersey maybe didnt quite match the actual level of danger that I was in. Although Damon did end up watchin Friday a lot so…

Anyway in the buttercream game what happens is there is The Buttercream Gang and their president and coolest member is named Pete. Here he is showing good leadership by giving his friend Scott’s nurple just the right amount of purple:

Pete has to move to Chicago, the movie subtly explains why:

And you can guess that it doesnt take long for him to catch a bad case of Gang.

It is tragic his fall from Just a Real Good Kid to delinquent. We dont actually hear about he does crimes or anything wrong other than struggling in school but just look at him.

The movie decides: it’s time for him to go back to The Ranch, which for all of the gang-aware parents watching probably felt just like that part in The Stand when the infected guy breaks containment out of the army base.

And you know what they were correct to be afraid, the Gang infection is so strong that right away Pete starts criming and even spreading it to other used-to-be good boys and they pretty much immediately decimate the peace and tranquility of Draper, UT i mean The Ranch. Behold there mighty wave of mutilation:

TC Christensen is a competent cinematrographer though, look at that! The whole movie is shot in that spielberg nostalgia golden-hour light, with little artful touches like: what if the sunflowers were in focus instead of the wanton violence? Meanwhile the Buttercream Gang says no no to that sort of vandalism littering and spends their time PICKING UP garbage:

The Bad Gang steals unripe apples:

The Good Gang helpfully picks unripe apples:

Goofusly painting swear words like I think “Black”:

Or gallantly painting a fence of probably a lonely widow:

This goes on for a while, and culminates in the bad gang engaging in horrific outright assault:

The whole town is so upset by this but can only watch on impotently:

I’ll note at this point that the kid playing Pete does a really good job, he’s kinda slouchy and smart-assy in a believable way and seems like hes having fun playing a bad boy vato loco. Like if a young Paul Reubens was being directed by Max Fischer maybe.

Would that i had any such words of praise for his be-jorted and corn-cheeked counterpart, “Scott”!

We’re not going to get into being mean about a child’s performance (c’mon they shoudnt even really be worrying about having a job at that age) so I just won’t say anything at all. I’d probably stand and walk and talk weird in front of the camera at that age too. Something strange does happen when I try to find out what else that actor was in though, look:

I dont think thats real, that just the kind of thing my computer starts doing after I research one of these hot dog articles for a while. I think its what they refer to as a Artificial Illusination. I’ll just take the ol PC in to get the Geek Squad to do a nother RAM flush on ‘er for me.

So back to A Gang in My Valley: we have this terrible Chicago gang just reeking havock, the contamination is already heartbreaking but the film doesn’t hold back. Suddenly theres a grand championship baseball game the next day and The Good Boys are just KILLING IT, really winning the hell out of the game, and this calms us by helping us remember that no matter whats going wrong in the world, if young people are still excelling athletically than thats what really matters. But then EVEN THAT is punctured and polluted by the insideous touch of Gang:

Pete shows up in full criminal regalia and says mean teases about the boys and MAKES THEM LOSE. If your family was like mine this is where your dad would get for real upset about the movie and say he needed to stand up and walk around because of his back but you could tell it was actually his emotions cause thats the same thing he’d do at the specially unjustice parts of Shawshank Redemption.

So what is to be done!? The boy talks to his mom and dad about it. Well he talks to his dad anyway, who gets to have good hair and work on trucks and have Robin William wisdom:

Mom is not acknowledged or spoken to and she has no lines:

That’s ok, she seems to say, she’s just so proud of her boys. Dad says the solution to the dilemma is: its the Pure Love of Christ, ya dummy, so get to turning them other cheeks now y’hear.

So the buttercream gang ASSEMBLES and just fires beam after beam of unconditional compassion and insufferable martyrdom at the Pete and the Urban Gang like:

Tricks them into Wholesome Football!

Just gives him another bike for no reason!

Actually turns the other cheek!

Somehow this does not earn Pete’s friendship and respect so Scott gives up and turn to violence and throws a pipe bomb when their grouped up:

Haha JK that “bomb” is more Christian Fellowshipping: a framed friendship picture!

I really enjoyed thinking about if this one was in real life and how teenage boys would actually react to this. It doesnt work in the movie either. Guys, nothing works. The plot is so desperate that they even let girls be in it and try. These two girls…

…I for real felt a deep admiration for them because they made a truly valiant effort to pass through the Bechdel trials in this one: they got up some good speed and inertia by 1) existing (and one of them even has a name!) and then ramped up to a new level of escape velocity by 2) going to the treehouse after the boys left and talking to each other! But then they both got clotheslined so hard in the throat by the final Red-Rover iron-grip line of patriarchy defense of: Girls exist only as daughters/sisters/wives/helpmeets. They soon found the only thing the movie would let them talk about is “How can we help our boys?” Remember Mom?

That’s right, no you dont and neither do I and maybe she doesnt either. The girls realize the reality of their situation, that they are only allowed to exist and reason in relation to the male protagonists, and sadly decide that: if not all will have names then none shall. We will remember them here:

They cease to have any more speaking parts in the movie and accept their fate as scenery in the sequence depicting the pulsing glamor of a Mormon Rural Utah Ranch dance.

If I ever get the time travel I will go back and tell them girls to watch Troop Beverly Hills which is a contemperaneus picture which just kicks the Bechdel Test in the BALLS!

So nothing worked really and Pete has to go back to chicago again for some reason. Scott just accepts that his friend has been consumed by the beast of Gang Affliliation and so he doesn’t seem too surprised when one day the whole town comes to his house to Let’s Talk About Pete. They are very serious and we all know that they are about to tell us that Pete has died, possibly in a AIDS-related drive-by.

BUT PSYCH its actually: Pete is in the paper shaking the hand of the mayor of chicago because he’s in the World’s First Good Gang!

How is it good, you ask? Like how did it become good and what does it do now? It just is!

Well, the mainstream media thinks its the first good one but you and I and the good people of Utah know that ACTUALLY there was another Gang, this one maybe a little further along the buttercreamy end of the spectrum, who got there first and most righteously.

So it was a not very good movie but we did remember how corrosive gangs can be to our society’s bonds which i can imagine using this as a good learning opportunity. Like the grandparents who subjected their grandchildren to this film can now turn to them to explain that: yes, we had fun with the buttercream gang this afternoon but that MS-13 is a real problem actually, i hate to bring it up but now that your seven and nine its time you kids learn about sex-trafficking.

Huh, the movie’s over but that…tingling under my scalp…hot-dog senses…still prickling in the empty of my mind. Speak to me, The Buttercream Gang, reveal me your final secrets unto me…

Ok that is a name with some pretensious, I trust this as a sign and a vision. Let me google this Forrest Sandusky Baker III. Alright so it turns out he not only wrote the script for this one, Forrest is actually the guy that started Feature Films of Families, and he just died recently and his obituarty mentions that Forrest developed a “robust system for selling his films over the phone” which yeah robust is one word for it.

Oh no Forrest what have you done

Huh so i guess i have entered a time of my life where I no longer have to go looking for weirdo Mormon scofflaw types, but they will simply arrive to my doorstep unbidden. Which: hell, that’s perty much just like reglar Mormons, I guess. But that really is pretty enlightening to me about why everybody had these movies, I guess it wasnt just the good christian content sold itself, it was somebody was scamming grammas and grampas over the phone to buy them. Folks I am finding out about this side of FFF in real time as I’m writing this and a part of me i guess is finding this hypocrisy compelling and very delicious but another part of me knows that were already all of us working pretty hard to stay ahead of the inevitably incomin’ tide of cynicism, and this is just more sticky mud to wade through and its even harder since we lost Artax. But i guess thats not our message today, lets stay on point, our what-did-we-learn for today is: Stay frosty for gangs out there thats whats really wrong with this country in the name of jesus christ amen.

This article is thanks to a tip from Djonin at the very bottom in italics

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: CommonCentz, founding member of a similarly named but VERY different Buttercream Gang.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.