Fighting for better narrative conventions

When We Were Kings is a sloppy documentary. It relies to heavily on the authority of George Plimpton and Norman Mailer to add drama and significance to the Ali / Forman fight. Other times, the film leans heavily on concert footage and musical montages to pad the film. While the original footage, shot in Zaire in 1974 is the most compelling aspect of the picture, the filmmakers stare at Africa with the eyes of tourists.

I recall watching this one in the theaters when it was first released where I was more enamoured with it then I am today. I wish we were allowed to just witness the fight, to hear from those in the footage how important this match was to both men, to Zaire, and to race relations back in the U.S.. Instead, a series of talking heads is constantly popping in to stress these points.

Its gay in that eighth grade way

That Pink Angels provoked me to rekindle this dormant journal is about the best thing I can say for this film.

The impetus behind a making a low-budget, drive-in minded, transvestite-biker film is what I find most perplexing. By 1971, biker films were a dime a dozen, but there was no precedent for transvestite films; Rocky Horror Picture Show was 4 years away, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar was almost a quart of a century away. So, what inspired these filmmakers to make Pink Angels?

A) Did they really think there was a market for this sort of film and that they’d re-coop costs, maybe even make a buck or two?

B) Could this have been a near and dear personal project?

C) Were they expecting to make people laugh?

The answer must be C, but really this is not a funny film. It is a one note joke that feels as beaten to death as a bad Saturday Night Live skit, only here the pain and suffering is dragged out for 80 minutes. The production quality is sub-par and just below that is the script. The film’s ineptitude is about the only laughable aspect of the production. A series of dual plot lines never develop and only collide in the waning minutes of the film. An out-of-left-field ending provides the slimmest of excuses to stick with the picture, but the juvenile jokes one must endure to reach the shocking conclusion are hardly worth the effort.

In better, more competent hands Pink Angels could play as camp. Perhaps, even better hands are not needed. Repeatedly, I thought of Warhol’s filmic endeavours, particularly Lonesome Cowboys, only to wonder if Warhol’s reputation distorts the perception held towards his films.  Larry G. Brown doesn’t have the luxury or the notoriety of Andy Warhol and he’s probably not as daring nor as trashy, but he did go on to direct The Psychopath, a film with a wonderfully twisted premise about a children’s television show host who kills child abuser . I can only hope Larry G. Brown tackles the issue with more sensitivity than he does toward transvestites…or biker gangs, for that matter.

They must have hid the funny in those additional 145 minutes.

For all the hype and self-promotion this film received on The Howard Stern show, there is really nothing here worth talking about. What feels more like a self-indulgent venture amongst friends, fails to be a comedy or a sports film. Perhaps, Beer League should be filed under Mystery. The big question being, what exactly is so wrong with this film?

Artie Lange is no leading man. His quips and interjections make good banter on a radio show, but here all of his dialogue sounds like non sequiturs mixed with exposition. While a few lines produced chuckles, i might as well have just read the script and saved myself from suffering through a roster of retched performances. Everyone’s timing is off the mark, no one is reacting to one another, and the direction is scattered. Frank Sebastiano has a ton of writing and producing credits to his name, but both his resume and this film express a severe lack of inability to think visually. The montages of baseball and physical comedy eclipse the excruciating verbal humor in this film. Still, most painful of all is watching Seymour Cassel deliver some of the most vulgar lines in a manner that leaves me wondering if he even knows what he’s saying.

Watching The Unholy Three reminds me of Bad Santa. It also leaves me wanting more films that have the audience rooting for less than likeable characters.

Keep It Simple Stupid

Rob Zombie’s Halloween evokes but one phrase – “Did you have to?”

Repeatedly, I asked this question of Rob Zombie as I watched a remake that just did not need to be made. The original is both a classic slasher film and example of the ingenuity that comes with low-budget independence.

Whereas Carpenter ’s original felt bare-bones and driven by suspenseful builds to shocking bursts of action, Zombie’s Halloween wastes no time getting right to the violence. Acts of brutality are only interspersed with vulgar obscenities, that sound like children just learning to swear, and gratuitous innuendo and nudity.

Zombie had too much money and too little talent to create anything more than gore, and he doesn’t even do that well. While not completely insufferable, this film might have been forced to think more creatively about its construct if it did not feel like most of Rob Zombies whims where answered with a blank check. Zombie’s soundtrack probably cost more in clearance rights than the budget of the original Halloween and one only has to look at the songs he chooses to evoke feeling or responses from the audience to see where his priorities lie. They are not in creating something new, but in taking something somone else created and reusing it to meet his own desires.

There is one new aspect to the Halloeen franchise that Zombie offers up. Zombie spends the first third of the film attempting to explain the psychology behind Michael Meyers. Sadly, this is just the first in a series of horrible decisions that Zombie can never complete. Our killer’s childhood is depicted as an abusive, trashy dead-end, preparing him for a life of misery or murder. That or he’s the devil incarnate. Zombie can’t seem to decide.

Even the simple act of build suspense seems outside of Zombie’s abilities. I recall very little killing in the first Halloween. Yes, many people died, but their deaths were quick. What I do recall is a far greater sense of dread that is absent from Zombie’s remake. There are few false scares, maybe none. Instead, what you will find in Zombie’s version is a high level of trashiness, especially in the beginning of the film. It’s so over the top it seems farcical. For instance, Michael’s mom is a stripper. I get it, you established that with an advertisement in a newspaper. Did you really have to show her dancing in the club? Especially while you intercut between her and a young, dejected Michael Meyers sitting on the curb with “Love Hurts” playing over the soundtrack? Seriously, did you have to?”

As the picture progresses from Michael Meyer’s past to the present, the story takes on a more familiar structure. Hell, with a few rather wrongheaded exceptions the latter part of the re-make plays just like the original. There are some heavy nods to the original source, but most of the time I felt as if Rob Zombie was simply uglify a corspe. He took someone else’s ingenuity and added his own vile finger prints.

This is the problem of so many re-makes. They merely ratch up the sex, violence, and action to make an old story ‘more palpatable’ to our modern eyes. How did it come to this? When was it determined that we crave an excess of action and vulgarity to feel up to date? Did Rob Zombie have to make his Halloween with these excesses to meet our demands. Did he have to?

Quite the pleasant surprise. Patrick McGoohan is subdued, but always interesting, as a young, idealistic prison guard who gets involved with the wife of a quare fellow, or condemned man. New evidence comes to light and McGoohan’s pro-death penalty stance begins to shift. The Quare Fellow is adapted from a Brendan Behan play, but loses much of its stage trappings in Peter Hennessy’s cinematography.

The Prisoner as warder

A Day in the Death of Donnie B is not perfect, but watching it right after screening the  stilted failure that is Lars and the Real Girls makes this 40 year old short feel vivacious and refreshing. The mixture of audio testimonies and visual re-enactment create a mixture of documentary and fiction that is nothing new, but it is inspiring. The film is quite dependent on its soundtrack to tie together a series of random actions, seemingly shot on a non-synch 16mm camera. I could easily describe this film as being like a student film, but that would leave me to wonder why so few student films I see feel this ambitious or relevant.

I get it! Lars has a pervasive developmental disorder and that is funny. Lars and the Real Girl taps two rich, under-utilized comedic goldmines. Really, what is more hilarious than a socially awkward delusional guy and rural Northerners, what with their frumpy cloths and their simple living. Why, it’s Asperger’s Syndrome in the heart of Lake Woebegon.

Social impairment as schtick. Ha, ha!

Look, this film is cute and quirky. It puts a semi-original spin on the boy meets girl story. In this case it is boy orders fake plastic girl, boy loses fake plastic girl, boy gets real girl. Still, unless you are looking to land a real girl of your own, this movies is drivel best reserved for a date night.

Oh how great and rewarding it would have to to use this premise to force people to question the true meaning of love or caring for another. Oh how harrowing it could have been had at presented us with a troubled character, dealing with a crippling issue like Asperger’s. Instead, we get a dressed down dramedy, with good looking actors playing salt of the Earth characters pulled right from the frozen, offbeat soils that sprouted half the folk in Fargo.

Real love and real pervasive developmental disorders are not this simple or this quaint. To see the heart-shattering truth of this matter I would highly recommend Finally, Lillian and Dan or even James Mangold’s first feature film, Heavy, over Lars and the Real Girl.

Oh, what a tease!

Jacqueline Bisset can’t find the right man. She walked out on the one truly great guy in her life. He was a practical man, a working man, the kind of guy who has a job at a bank and is saving his money for a better tomorrow. She didn’t want to wait for tomorrow. So, she packs her bags and hops into bed with various men. In three short years she transforms herself from a nineteen year old girl to a burnt out and dejected prostitute.

Let’s this be a lesson to you ladies.

The Grasshopper has all the makings of a porno, but it lacks all the sex and nudity. It’s a hardcore story with less than soft-core titilation. There are a lot of pasties and many lecherous sleazeballs, but for a film with such a nasty spirit this is pretty tame fare.

The Grasshopper lacks all the humor and satire of Candy or the comic Phobe Zeitgeist. This just feels like misogyny. It makes me wonder why so many male directors are driven to tell stories about women who stumble into prostitution. It’s even more curious when the woman ends up a prostitute after refusing the help or advice of a man. The most suprising fact about The Grasshopper is that Gary Marshall had a large hand in its making. The film is a far cry from Laverne & Shirley. Though Laverne (Penny Marshall) does show up as a groupie for a band with tight pants. In fact one character proudly states, “You’ll love these guys, they have the tighetest pants.”

Feminists could have a field day with this picture.

New York's Alright If You Like Being Jaded

“Are you really so down on people, or are you just being fashionable?” asks Patsy, an eternal optimist. She refuses to let life in New York City beat the smile from her face. Alfred, on the other hand, has turned off his feelings. As a devout apathetist Alfred no longer feels pleasure or pain. Opposites attract, so of course, they fall in love…sort of.

Little Murders explores the ways we defend ourselves from madness, either through well recognized institutions and traditions or by developing our own system of procedures designed to protect us.  Before his world collapses into madness Alfred states, “It’s dangerous to challenge a system unless you’re completely at peace with the thought that you’re not going to miss it when it collapses.”

Prior to meeting Patsy, Alfred exists as an emotionally zombie, uncaring, unfeeling. She tries to change him and nearly succeeds, but when he opens up, he falls apart. I hate to think that either director Alan Arkin or writer Jules Feiffer truly believe the only way to survive in this world is to become jaded. Funny as he maybe, Albert’s character holds a deep sorrow. Whereas, Patsy and even her rather particular family, overflow with emotion. Her mother and father often start their statements with a hand clap or a knee-slap.  The percussive sound of hands slapping quickly call to attention the excitement of the speaker. It as if their joy can no longer be contained.

That hand-clap along with the exclamation “Terrific”, a phrase Patsy’s mom and dad both use, is a lively, animated gesture akin to what the characters in a Cassavetes film do. I find this just terrific. Yes, “Terrific!” It is not only a phrase you don’t seem to hear that often, but it is done with such a leave of energy that its strikes my ears in a strange yet comforting fashion. Today, most people live more reserved, like Alfred, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to get socked with the next big disappointment.

I certainly don’t think this is anyway to live life, whether in New York or otherwise, but as a survival tactic it might do just fine. So the question is, do you risk it all for the heights of joy knowing that there might also be great pain or do you block it all out and save yourself from both joy and pain? Little Murders takes a satirical look at this troublesome paradox.