The Spirit Molecule (2010)

Disclaimer: I’ve never done dimethyltryptamine (DMT), I’ve never even smoked pot. I come to the world of drug use as a complete outsider. So, in no way can I speak to the accuracy or validity of the experiences described in this documentary. I have however read, Dr. Rick Strassman’s book on DMT, an extremely powerful psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in each of our bodies. Strassman, through his research and observation, speculates that the intense, otherworldly visions and sensations described by those under the influence of DMT may have a correlation to mystic, religious, and near-death experiences, not to mention stories of alien abduction.

I’m intrigued by all of this, but The Spirit Molecule, as a film, serves merely as a primer on the subject matter, just grazing the surface of the scientific understanding of DMT and coming no where near recreating the supposed life altering encounters with the unknown described throughout the film (and the book). Rather than rewiring our brain or giving us new eyes with which to see the world, The Spirit Molecule simply stands as a long string of talking heads describing their experiences while under the influence of DMT. Interspersed between these testimonials are scientific and cultural attempts to explain the effects of DMT. Much of this is done beneath wild psychedelic imagery that feels all to artificial, like computer screen-savers pushed to the extreme.

Most maddening of all are the small interludes with Joe Rogan, a comic once known mostly for hosting a show that challenged contestants to eat gross things and perform wild stunts. Rogan often comes across as a man’s man, a real bro. Here he’s asked to play the role of a Rod Serling like questioner, someone encouraging us to keep an open mind to the seemingly implausible. Sadly, I’ve heard Rogan, elsewhere, speak wonderfully about his own use of DMT. I only wish the filmmaker had let Rogan recount those tales here.

All in all, the documentary is highly informative and I hope it gets people curious about DMT and renewed research into psychedelic research. I guess, I was simply looking for something more mind-altering, something that would embody the actual experience of the compound. Perhaps, such an experience is outside the scope of cinema. Though, I am more and more certain that the film Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees is influenced by a DMT experience.

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)

For me, the purpose of art lies in its remind us of the value of life, both the good and the bad, and to prepare us for the inevitable end of life. Make Way For Tomorrow does not paint a pretty picture of old age, but it is a picture resonates with our present times. An elderly couple finds themselves being evicted from their home, they are forced to move in with their children, who have no time for their parents, and by the end of the film the couple is torn further apart when one of them is sent of too California for financial and health reasons. The entire idea is soul crushing, there is a nice comedic levity, brought to the film by director Leo McCarey and a parade of writers – the screenplay was adapted from a novel, play, and poem.

Make Way For Tomorrow went on to inspire Tokyo Story, one of my all-time-favorite films. McCarey has the same delicate touch Ozu has for balancing the gravity of drama without losing site of the small comedic moments we all cling to, just to survive. I had seen other McCarey films, all of the comedies, and I suppose the old saying that comedy is harder than drama is true, still I was surprised at the emotional levels of this film. I am sure such down-beaten stories are box office gold, but I really wish McCarey could have existed in a time or system that would have allowed him to continue to explore the issue of coming to terms with life’s hardships, in the same way Ozu was allowed to do so in Japan.

During his video interview about the film, Peter Bogdanovich makes an astute point about directors like McCarey, Capra, and Ford not dreaming of being film directors when they matured, but being something else, lawyers, chemists, truck drivers, etc. Things you might call real-world jobs. He attributes this connection to the common man as being one of the reasons their films have such a strong human touch. I have to agree and I really do think a great deal of film has become an echo chamber, detached from life.

We Live in Public (2009)

Oh how I wanted this to be grand. Instead it felt like three movies crammed into one. Partly a history a history of social media and partly the tale of Josh Harris, a forgotten internet pioneer, We Live in Public, contains wildly fascinating characters and topics, perhaps too many. Director Ondi Timoner, has a style that immerses you in the tech-boom of the late 90′s while it explains the experience through a carousel of talking heads. From media experts to performance artists a menagerie of voices try to explain the wild times that existed at the dawn of the Internet, up until the fall of the twin towers. For the most part, they simply sound like partygoers trying to tell you about the excitement you missed out on. Though all of them do agree what perhaps the most exciting character of all was Josh Harris.

One of the most wild innovators during those times was Josh Harris a man who saw the potential of the Internet during its infancy and made a fortune predicting the next big thing in tech culture. Later, Harris became obsessed with surveillance and creating living environments where the occupant’s every action would be recorded. His two most famous experiments “Quiet” and “We Live in Public” predicted our modern social media wherein people willingly record their daily events through text, photos, and videos all shared with a network of friends and strangers.

Since he was actively recording experiments like “Quiet” which was designed to be a bunker like experience with participants submitting themselves to being recorded while they lived in a fully monitored facility, there is a wealth of archival footage for this documentary. I understand the need to cut the banal, but mostly we see the titillating parts. Plus, it should be noted that most of the people we see in “Quiet” are artists, outsiders, and attention seekers. From a sociological stand point we could hardly say this study reaches wide enough to encapsulate the broad spectrum of people who make up society. However, the rather shallow pool of participants is never called into question in this film, nor is it made clear that the filmmaker herself appears to have had some role in “Quiet”. I am not sure whether she was working as a videographer or simply existing in the confine of “Quiet”. Her experience is hardly communicated in the film, even though she narrates the movie.

While I found the entire idea of investigating how people would behave under 24 hour surveillance interesting, I certainly think Josh Harris went about this in all the wrong ways. He seems more interested in being a puppet master, a dramatist trying to provoke reactions. The wild inclusion of a shooting range in the basement of the “Quiet” bunker, stocked with some heavy fire-power is a highly questionable factor. Furthermore, I cannot express enough how off-putting it was for so many of the participants to be performance artist who appeared to use this opportunity to torture a trapped audience. It’s one thing to wonder how people will act under the ever-watching eye of a camera. It’s another to pick someone who desperately wants to be stared at, desperately.

The footage from “Quiet” is extremely engaging, but it’s spliced together so fast and quickly that there are only a few instances when you can really observe how people interacted with the cameras and one another. I would have far prefered to watch extended clips from this footage. I wanted to know the people who partook, especially the 11-year-old child who pops up for a brief instance. The editing doesn’t have time for such luxuries. The whole film doesn’t. It moves by too briskly. I could defend the editing by saying that it mimics the rapid-fire changes that were taking place in the late 90′s, new technologies, new companies, new ways of communicating where spring up left and right. The whole era was a bit maddening, especially if you were in the middle of it, and We Live in Public certainly gives you a small taste of being there, but then again it doesn’t. So many of the images we are bombarded with feel like flashes of stock imagery put against an alternative music soundtrack. They hold little meaning and they certainly don’t hold my attention. What I want is time to observe.

We do get more time to observe Josh Harris’ more personal project – “We Live in Public”. Here we witness Josh and his girlfriend at the time living in their New York apartment that has been fully wired with video camera. People could log on and see what Scott and his girlfriend are up to at any hour of the day. They can even chat online with the two of them. This project ultimately records the crumbling of their relationship as well as the financial downfall of Scott Harris. Today he lives in Ethiopia, possibly to evade taxes, though he says it is where he belongs for other reasons, less selfish reasons.

I am also interested in the filmmakers reasons for making this film. If in fact she was a part of the “Quiet” experience where is the self-reflection? Where is the explanation of how she came to be involved with Josh Harris’ work? Even though I sometimes questions someone like Herzog who critics his subjects from within his film, I do see great validity in this approach in documentary, especially when the filmmaker is part participant. We must not forget that even if the filmmaker is quietly observing they are still thinking and participating and perhaps it would be useful to know their thoughts on what we are seeing. I certainly would have liked them here.
You can watch it here:

We Live in Public

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

The King of Kong tells the story of Steve Wiebe, an unemployed husband and father of two, who dedicates his free time to achieving the highest ever recorded score on Donkey Kong. The man he must beat is Billy Mitchell, truly one of the great villains of cinema. I’d swear that Billy Murray modeled his character in Kingpin after Billy Mitchell, but Kingpin came first. If Billy Mitchell oozes with confidence, Steve Wiebe comes across as the perennial runner-up.

I must admit that in the first ten minutes of this film I feared it simply could not sustain my interest for 90 minutes. In setting up the history of competitive arcade gaming, the filmmakers cycled through a great deal of b-roll, archival material, and interview, many seemingly stolen from different moments in time. As a filmmaker, I pay attention to such things and many of these items read list a disaster waiting to happen. Instead, the film transforms into this epic struggle between two men over something so trivial, at least to most of us. Yet, director Seth Gordon makes us care. He has us worried that Steve Wiebe will destroy his marriage. He has us wishing someone would just take Billy Mitchell down a peg or two. He even has us engrossed in the intricacies of competitive video gaming. He creates two warring camps of competitors and spins tales of espionage and cheating throughout a story that keeps you hoping Mitchell and Wiebe will finally square off in a classic head-to-head battle, the kind we are already used to seeing in fictional films like The Wizard or Joysticks.

I really marvel at the amount of drama packed into this quirky subject and Gordon should feel blessed that the two men vying for the title of King of Kong are such great characters. I am sure what is on the screen belies the struggles behind the scenes to make this movie. I will certainly be watching this film again, like a magician watching another magicians act, studying just how the illusions are constructed. I will say that I’m a bit upset that the filmmakers did not license the work of Buckner & Garcia or utilize the same song as in the opening credits of Joysticks.

The Other (1972) + An American Haunting (2005)

I simply stumbled into watch An American Haunting, where as The Other has been on my must-see list for some time. My anticipation for the latter film was met with great reward and quick deflation, while my feels towards the other went from ambivalence to disdain rather quickly.

To explain my downturn in attitude towards both films I must first state that I don’t like twists. The twist ending is often a cop out or a moment of ridiculous ego-driven grandstanding. Twist endings can be used to explain or justify just about every damn foolish event we’ve just witnessed. They make an excuse for or pardon a character’s actions. Worst of all, they often feel designed to place the filmmakers in some heightened role; like a grand puppet master or god able construct complex worlds that mystify audience.

For me, the only twist endings that work, the one’s that truly entertain are the ones that fail miserably. They must come completely out of left field, make absolutely no sense, and leave you even more confused. In short, the must look and feel like connect-the-dots done by blindfolded drunks.

Neither The Other nor An American Haunting fall into this latter category.

These are two distinctly different films about childhood trauma working itself out through supernatural forces. Both rely on a twist ending.

The Other is wonderfully creepy an atmospheric, set against a chilly Connecticut backdrop it tells the story of twin boys – one evil, one good. As the poster asks, I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that as soon as I suspected what was coming my interest dropped like a baby down a well. At least the cinematic values of this picture lifted in past the shortcomings of the script.

I can’t say the same about An American Haunting. This tale of 18th century witchcraft, cursing, and possession reveals its twist early on, and I really don’t think you have to be all that versed in these sort of films to catch it. The red herring they throw to the audience is so obvious that it is almost offensive.  For the duration of the film I really hoped they were being so open simply to disguise an even more outlandish twist. I was wrong.

My rather sad reaction two both these films is one that speaks more to my intolerance for the sort of twists that take an interesting psychological or sociological premise and turn the film into wild what-if fantasy. Rather than ponder how two seemingly identical children could take to drastically different paths could be interesting. How a family hexed by a witch might create their own demons and fall pray to their own superstitions could be interesting. Those are films I want to think about, not ones designed to keep me guessing as the filmmakers attempt to prove the greatness of their imaginations. Most times, the results are far from mind-shatter and miles short of greatness.

Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene (2008)

The first time I encountered Petey Greene it was probably on a party tape – a sort of video mix tape of wild clips pulled from strange movies, public access shows, and various ephemeral films. Such tapes were traded amongst odd video enthusiasts and often played at parties. I remember being in college, just at the dawn of the Internet. There was no You Tube, there was not even Wikipedia or Google. So, watching something like Petey Greene was rare, understanding just what you were watching was even harder.

Petey Greene’s political talk show played for years on Washington D.C. television and later on the early days of BET, but this was well before most of America had cable. Even if they would have had the opportunity to see Petey Greene I don’t think America would be ready for him.

Petey Greene on Eating Watermelon

Unfiltered, out-spoken, and perhaps most shocking of all, African-American, Petey Greene’s shocked viewers with its statements and messages. Greene was not one to shy away from tackling issues of race, stereotyping, even the justification of domestic violence. Sometimes it was hard to tell if Green was speaking from his heart or simply playing devil’s advocate.

No matter what he was talking about, Petery Greene was always entertaining. His over-the-top, extremely dramatic, and often hilarious commentary was electrifying. It’s no wonder clips from his show would show up on party tapes and later on You Tube. Unfortunately, these wilder moments overshadowed the real political and social impact he had during his career.

Petey Greene on Hustlin’ Backwards

Adjust Your Color is a documentary that works to paint a fuller picture Petey Greene. While the talking heads that populate this film and help explain Petey’s history do a decent enough of a job, they are not electrifying, especially when set against the wonderful and plentiful archival footage from Petey’s show. Sadly, Howard Stern, who was one of Greene’s biggest fans and an early guest on Greene’s show is not in this documentary. Knowing of Stern’s affinity for Greene one can truly see that the shock jock learned a lot from Greene, especially when it comes to mixing politically incorrect humor with political commentary.

Watch it here:

http://itvs.org/films/adjust-your-color

Ready to Work: Portraits of Braddock (2010)

The corporate sponsored documentary is perhaps one of the oldest forms of documentary and one of the most troublesome. Anytime a corporate interest invests in a documentary we want to know how much control they held over the final outcome. We scrutinize the piece for a pro-corporate message and grow suspect of alterer motives.

Ready to Work: Portraits of Braddock is a feature length documentary funded by the Levi’s jeans corporation. Material from the film is similar, if not the same, as that used in television commercials for Levi’s. Even though denim products do not lead a primary role in the advertisements, on screen graphics ensure that the viewing public knows just who is behind these spots. Whereas, the feature film could play out with only the keenest individuals uncovering that the film they have just witnessed was born of a marketing campaign.

Knee-jerk reactions to the the corporate influence that might have been applied to this work could easily blind a purist to the beauty of this film. Set amongst the ruins of a once thriving steel mill town Ready to Work presents a series of portraits of a new generation of Braddock residents working to re-vitalize the community. The film is shot with a steady and focused eye finding great beauty in the crumbling and rusted remains of a blue collar town. From their young mayor, a man who looks more like a professional wrestler than a politician, to artists and urban farmers who have re-imagined Braddock as a Bohemian land of opportunity those who remain in Braddock are a portrayed as a motley band of survivors emboldened with the spirit best described as – American.

Local Braddock resident and  filmmaker Tony Buba, who’s wonderful autobiographical film Lightning over Braddock partially documents the downfall of Braddock, has stated that the Levi’s commercials only portrayed a glamourous collection of individuals, not commonly seen in Braddock. While, without a doubt, the ad men and the filmmaker (Aaron Rose) behind Ready to Work: Portraits of Braddock did a casting call for just the right individuals based certainly on both looks as well as personal stories, I can hardly find enough credence in Buba’s criticism to dismiss the uplifting and magnificent looking evidence that is presented.

I can say that when I heard someone made a documentary about the re-investment of Braddock I immediately wondered if Tony had made a new film. I was a bit saddened to find it was an outsider hired to tell Braddock’s story, especially when this unique rust-belt town already has a great filmmaker of its own. Still, were Buba to have been hired, Buba’s film and Ready to Work would be two totally different films, perhaps each with their own merits, but none-the-less I am quite surprised at just how engaging this film was, not to mention how free of corporate influence it felt.

Watch it here:

http://chumpchampion.com/2010/09/20/ready-to-work-portraits-of-braddock-on-ifc-sundance-streaming-online/

Underground Aces (1981)

It seems by 1981 just about every blue collar job deemed itself worthy of being represented in a motion picture comedy. So, I really shouldn’t be too surprised that a film about parking attendants would have been produced. Still, I was surprised that I had never even heard of Underground Aces.

sometimes it is not so bad to forget where you parked.

This film about a motley crew of Beverly Hills parking attendants strives to be likeCaddyshack or Car Wash, a zany comedy populated with a cast of characters the likes of Dirk Benedict, Melanie Griffith, Michael Winslow and Jerry Orbach.

You can start to see why this film went no where fast. Not that it is awful, at least not enough to be memorable. Like so many comedies of this era much or the story revolves around love and money while the comedy comes from slapstick silliness and the most mild of innuendo.

Were it not for the simple fact that I had never even heard of this film, I probably would not have bothered to watch it, but at least I can now reference one other film Michael Winslow has been in outside of the Police Academy films.

Astro Zombies (1968)

Hollywood, please take a memo. Especially anyone looking to re-make or re-boot a film. Stop pillaging films and franchises that worked and start looking for ones that didn’t.

You can start with Astro Zombies.

Hollywood needs someone to transmit new ideas to its brain.

“Knowledge from the minds of our top astro-physicists, aerospace-medical scientists, neurosurgeons, could be combined and projected into the receiving device of a quasi-man in interplanetary space flight.”

“Quasi-man? You mean a sort of a zombie?”

“Well, it’s not exactly scientific terminology, but it would be close to the truth.”

“Well, what else would you call a man with a synthetic electrically driven heart, a stainless steel mesh stomach, plastic pancreas and liver, not to mention a few things for starters?”

“Incredible.”

Designed to Kill (Go-Go Dancers)

This exchange of dialog is about all the b-movie science you need to get rolling on what will could surely be a far stellar plot than the one you’ll find in Astro Zombies. Why just settle for making another zombie movie when you can make a space-aged zombie movie that can also serve as a platform for issues of tele-presence, artificial reality, genetic modification, and synthetic organ harvesting? A re-do of Astro Zombies could tackle all of this and the slightest interest in making a film about something more than just scantily clad women in peril is going to be a step above what the original offers.

Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m totally down on the original. If I were three sheets to the wind and well without a care I’d see no reason for improvement. Astro Zombies, as it presently is, serves for great fun. It’s not mind-bendingly bad or so outrageously out there that I’d recommend it to anything but the most die-hard fans of bad movies or those looking to take cheap-shots at a cheaply-made film. It does however show that sometimes a semi-serviceable idea that was outside of the original filmmakers’ scope or budget might provide for a far fresher and more interesting re-imagining in more modern and capable hands.

Daddy Long Legs (2009)

 

Are good experiences born of conflict?

I am really conflicted about this one. There are moments when I wanted to embrace this film and other times when I just wanted to choke the life out of it. Such a conflicted reaction is probably a good film. Some of my favorite films left me feeling this way upon first viewing.

The knocks against Daddy Long Legs are big, things that might usually seal my dislike of a feature. It’s a closely linked to that troublesome upstart genre – mumblecore, but in its defense, its themes are more mature. This isn’t all about twenty-something, trust-fund babies with existential angst and wild libidos. If Daddy Long Legs‘ plot is slightly more grown up its main character certainly is not. Ronald Bronstein (Frownland) plays Lenny, a divorced father who is about as mature as his two grammar school aged boys. Bronstein does a wonderful job depicting a befuddled grown-man caught between the responsibilities of parenthood and his own selfish desires. It is not for a lack of love that Bronstein’s character continually screws up his life, and the life of his kids, but simply put he has never learned how to transition past adolescence.

In this respect, I really champion the film as it takes a rather deep look at a growing archetype in film and television, that of the arrestedly develop male. I am certain such a character has been born of reality and I’m even more certain that these characters, often played by former Saturday Night Live comedians, have influenced the retarded behavior of many men. Daddy Long Legs shows the price, both emotional and economical, that such selfishness takes on those who do not age into new roles.

There is a quote by John Cassavetes that speaks to his film helping people transition past the age of 21. Knowing that the directors of Daddy Long Legs – Ben and Joshua Safdie – have a close association with Cassavetes scholar and champion, Ray Carney it would not surprise me if much of Daddy Long Legs is born of this comment. I could not help but watch Brownstein’s character struggle with tending for his young children without thinking of Peter Falk in A Woman Under the Influence when he is left in charge of his children. Both men simply do not know what to do with their kids, but they know they love them and want to provide, if nothing else, happiness.

Having my own children, though far younger, than the ones in these films I feel a kinship to the frustration of these characters, even the selfish desire to simply return to a simpler time when the only needs I had to care for were my own. I do not know if I would ever have cared as much for Daddy Long Legs as I do, were it not for such personal connections.

At the same time, there are some matters of convenience built into the script as well as a few instance of  parental disregard that had me mortified. I am just not sure if my anger stems from the filmmakers taking liberties for dramatic effect or from the idea that a parent would actually do some of the things Brownstein’s character does in the course of the film. So as to not spoil the drama, but to elaborate my point, all I will say is that with just a moment of deeper thought given to the circumstances presented in the film, it is quite clear that the looseness of the films style disguises a script that hinges on some rather pretty well orchestrated and convenient events.

Hiding this fact is a jittery hand-held camera that often hides behind objects catching brief, sometimes beautiful glimpses, of the film’s main actions. This too is heavily reminiscent of Cassavetes, in particular, Faces, but it only works to a point. Like all hand-held camera work it gives you the illusion of being in the immediate vicinity of the action and that there is more going. At the same time, I kept thinking over and over of Tarkovsky and how he accused handheld camera of only getting the surface detail right. In many instances I think that’s what is at play in Daddy Long Legs. At other times, it’s so violently shakey that I felt ill.

Still, when the camera work lands on an images and pause, if ever so briefly, it has a preciousness to it, one that is quite fragile. So much of the film could be defined by that word: fragile. Perhaps, this is its greatest attribute. Could the same teetering sense of a life on the verge of shattering come about with a steady, more stable camera? I’d like to think so, but it might also eradicate much of the energy that ignites so many of the scenes in this picture.

And, there are many scene. One positive thing I can say about the Safdie’s is that they know how to make the most of even the most minor scenes. They are professionals when it comes to cutting right to the heart of a scene. While so many of them are memorable for an array of reasons, my personal favorite had to be seeing Abel Ferrara playing a mugger. While it’s not a huge part of the over-all story. It is a fun little pleasure.

I can’t say the same about the rest of the film, and that’s no knock against it. This film takes a heavy emotional toll. Its both fun and terrifying to watch Bronstein’s fathering and that’s exactly how his kids, played by Sage Ranaldo and Frey Ranaldo react to his behavior. One senses that they love their dad, fear their dad, maybe even pity their dad. It’s a whole mess of conflicting feelings and its is exactly how I feel about the father and even the film.