CowJews and Indians: An Adventure in Racism and Insanity

The Most Wonderful Horrible Documentary You'll Ever See

In preparation for writing this, I took the time to collect over one dozen "wtf" reaction gifs. You'll understand why soon enough. Just trust me, by the time you're done reading this, you'll be saying "what the fuck?" right along with William Shatner here.

So, without further ado, let's talk about the film "CowJews and Indians." Well, that's not really fair, the full title of the movie is much longer, and you really need to know the full title because, well:

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My thoughts exactly, Oprah!

Describing this movie is going to be one of the most difficult tasks of my professional career, made more difficult by the fact that I am neither a professional, nor do I have a career. But here is goes: 

Part One

The documentary follows a man named Marc Halberstadt. He's a bit, erm, odd. The film begins with him randomly taking three Native Americans (whom he calls Indians throughout the entire film, but I'm going to try to be a tad more politically correct), into a field, sitting them down in folding chairs, and telling them a story for... some reason. We never really find out why he's talking to them, and they don't really play any role in the story. And the three Native Americans appear to have been coached or told about some of this before, because their reactions to things throughout look a) incredibly forced, and b) not exactly appropriate for the occasion. 

But I get ahead of myself. 

You see, Marc's family is Jewish. Marc is Jewish. His family managed to escape from Germany back before the whole holocaust thing sent everything to shit. They were forced out of the country because Hitler was sort of a big asshole. Yeah, okay, that sucks, man, sorry Marc. After his family left the Germans took the family's house and somewhere along the line Marc's family got about $2,000 in reparations for their lost property. 

But Marc is still mad about his family being forced off of their property, which is understandable. It's not nice to be basically forced to sell your land, or face things like concentration camps. 

So here's Marc's plan: he's going to go to Germany, return the reparation (in today's currency), get his family's property back, and then charge the Germans 65 years of back rent. 

Marc Halberstadt

Mmmmmm, okay... I guess... I guess that makes some sense, maybe sort of kind of. I mean technically yeah that would be the polite moral thing to do, but, like, the Germans are not going to, just, like, fork over property and 65 years worth of rent. And, while I am a mere child and know not about the ways of law, I feel like there's little to no legal grounds for any of this.

Marc takes it further though. He realizes that he himself has been living on land more or less (okay, more) stolen from the Native Americans (or "Indians," as he calls them). So shouldn't he owe the Native Americans 65 years of back rent as well? So why not cut out the middle man, he says, and allow the Native Americans to collect 65 years of rent directly from the Germans?

Foolproof!

So yeah, the first half of the movie consists of Marc trying to explain this idea to people. Somehow he convinces a couple of Indians that this idea totally will work and together they travel to Germany to collect rent. (The fact that he travels with them sort of goes against the whole "cut out the middle man" part of his plan, but whatever.)

It's while they are in Germany that the documentary reaches new heights of ridiculousness.

I'm not one for "hate watching," or for watching things that are "so bad they're good." CowJews and Indians is the one exception to that. Words can not explain how terrible and ridiculous this film gets during it's time in Germany.

Here is a short summary of two of the more ridiculous events that happen. Remember, my words will not do enough for these situations. You need to watch this film to fully appreciate just how stupid and horrible this all is.

Ridiculous Event One: The Mayor. 
Somehow Marc and his Indian friends get a meeting with a Mayor of some town. I'm being terribly unspecific because it doesn't matter at all because this movie is ridiculous and crazy.
So they have this meeting where they explain their idea. Their weird idea that just... just doesn't make much sense.
But they explain it to this mayor and he's polite and all, while not exactly committing to anything. Nothing particularly strange happens, but afterwards, two of the Native Americans are standing outside discussing the meeting and they go: "I don't think that was the real mayor."

They basically turn into conspiracy theorists, saying things like "maybe he was just an impostor, and the real mayor will see us later," and "maybe he just came in and we called him the mayor so he went with it."

Again, there was nothing out of the ordinary to suggest that he wasn't the mayor. They were just being incredibly paranoid and weird. 

Ridiculous Event Two: A Raid!
The series of events leading up to "the raid" is probably my favorite series of events in anything ever (except maybe for the twist ending to Rise of the Governor.) Everything about it is so stupid and funny that it's sort of hard to believe it all actually happened. It's just... it's possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen.
Okay here's what happened:
For some reason Marc decided he's going to go to what used to be his family's home and, like, sleep there or something. He finds the home and finds that is now a store. He goes into the store.

Here's his plan of attack in stunning detail:

1. Tell them it's his house. 
2. Live there. 

Somehow, it doesn't work. Somehow the police show up and they drag his flaccid body out the door ("I'm a passive fighter!" he says, "If you touch me I'll go limp.")

Here's where thing's get really awesome. He goes around back and sort of waddles up the back gate, and then awkwardly sits on top of it, one leg handing over each side. He looks terrible out of place.

The owners of the propterty come running out, shouting "A raid! It's a raid!" in German. 

It's not a raid. It's one strange and misguided man sitting on your fence. 

Then Marc's voice comes on as a narration:

"Because of the police threat, my first camera man quit. My second cameraman... also quit. And my translator developed a nose bleed because of the stress of the situation. He had to go and lie down."
The situation was not stressful and there wasn't any major police threat, the police were gone at the time Marc climbed the fence in a half assed manner. And why was it this point that the cameramen decided to quit? Marc has literally been doing insane, nonsensical shit the entire flipping movie.
And a "stress induced nosebleed?"

And then some more weird, illogical things happened and then part two began. That's right, all of that ridiculousness was limited to the first half of this film.
Before we move on to discussing part two of CowJews and Indians, le us watch the commercial that Marc produced to promote his "collecting rent from the Germans" idea. This is not a joke:


Part Two
And then the movie takes a sudden and dramatic turn that makes less sense than anything else up to this point: Instead of blaming the Germans we'll blame the Christians who didn't oppose the Holocaust and did mean things to the Indians. So yeah the Christians are the real bad guys here, the real driving force behind all of this badness.
He explains how Christians have "Americanized" Indians, which is a fair point. Somehow he decides that the way to fix this is to fix the Americanization of Jesus.

Hold tight Minion, I'll explain. 

So you know this image of Jesus, the "Sacred Heart," right?

We all know that this image of Jesus is somewhat Americanized and romanticized, that's a fairly well known thing. Jesus almost certainly didn't look like that.
Okay. So what did Jesus look like Marc?

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No Marc, no! Bad Marc! Jesus did not look like a photo of you wearing glasses and putting on a dumb expression photoshopped onto a painting of Jesus! That's not... no!

The second half of the movie is mostly Marc and his indian friends hoping from church to church trying to get them to put up this new image of Jesus. 

This image: 

....

I've had enough of this movie. I can't say anything more. I just...

Really I think Marc suffers from "I look sort of a little bit like Woody Allen and my family is Jewish and the Holocaust happened so I should make a movie" syndrome.

He seems to believe he can fix all the wrongs that happened in history. Yes it was wrong and bad that the Jews got forced out of Germany, and yes America was stolen from the Native Americans (they're called Native Americans for god's sake, Marc!) But it's not as simple as finding one party to blame and then having them pay for it. History is little more than an endless string of people screwing each other over. If you back far enough I'm sure you can pin all of the world's problems and disagreements on Urk tripping Blurk so he could get to the berry bush a little bit faster. 

So yeah, the past may suck, wrongs may have been done, but trying to go back and right every wrong is impossible and, frankly, stupid. The way to make the world better is not to focus on the past, not to try to fix the past, but to focus on there here and now, and the future, and to try and make those better, not just for those who were wronged in the past, but for everyone, for humanity as a whole. 

And Marc doesn't seem to get that. 

Awesome quotes either said in the film or printed on the film's website:

• "There are two types of floods in Florida, the ones with water, and the ones with Jews."
• This just seems racist and a bit rude. 
• "The film is very appropriate for a family, especially one that likes a fresh understanding of Jewish and Indian history, because it a.) entertains, b.) occasionally has cartoons, c.) encapsulates 500 years of history inside of 90 minutes, d.) provokes thought, e.) has Jews, and f.) has Indians."
• Let's address these points:
• A. Okay, yes, it entertains, but not for the reason you think it does, Marc. 
• B. Wow. It occasionally has cartoons. Holy fucking shit. How awesome is that!? Why didn't you mention this earlier!? If you would have told me that your movie occasionally has half assed looping cartoons, I would have been praising it this whole time instead of making fun of it!
• C. No. Just... just no. There is barely any history in this film outside of Marc's family history. Occasionally they mention some history, but saying that it "encapsulates 500 years of history" is simply a disgusting claim and a flat out lie. 
• D. Literally everything provokes some amount of thoughts. A flipping apple provokes thoughts, as in "Do I want to eat that apple?" or "Why is that apple hovering three feet off the ground?" Your film does little but provoke laughter, and not in a good way. 
• E, F. ... This sounds like me making a lame joke about the movie. You don't want to sound like me making a lame joke when you're trying to sell your movie. I tried to sell my movie "CowCats and Negros" that way, and trust me, it didn't catch on. 

Here's a trailer for CowJews and Indians. It really does exist guys I'm not making this up, it has a website and all. You can't go out and watch the movie anywhere right now, I only managed to get my hands on it because I'm a cool insider who knows people. But the trailer is available to everyone, and it will serve as proof that this movie exists.