Rock n’ Roll in the Rising Sun: Tokyo Pop

Tokyo Pop is probably an unrecognized film title to all but a handful of people, most of whom are likely rabid 80s film fans. And without the transition to the more readily accessible DVD, it remains not a great film (pacing tends to be a problem), but still an overlooked, low-budget gem in the grand universe of obscure cult films.

Centering on young and naive aspiring American and Japanese musicians, Tokyo Pop contrasts the mid-80s new wave, punk and rock influences of urban Japan with the backdrop of idyllic tradition and historical roots; an obvious criticism of commercial globalization and the “Americanization” of a once-distinct Eastern identity. Rock, pop, punk and new wave (check out an early performance of “Rauken Rauken” by Japanese goof-girl rockers, Papaya Paranoia) – it’s all image and personality. Like the old photos of youth in 1980s post-Communist countries: a carefully manufactured young “cool”.

There are essentially two leading characters who, by fate (and the script!), cross paths. Carrie Hamilton, the late daughter of comedienne Carol Burnette (she may be more recognized as one of the instigating rivals in Shag), shares the lead as Wendy Reed, a struggling singer with no hope for security and mobility in the New York City dives scene. Inspired by a postcard of a friend who boasts of success in the business following a move to Tokyo, Wendy packs up her sparing belongs and decides to join her friend. Except things don’t go as plan. Stunned not so much by culture shock, but news of her friend having already moved someplace else, she sticks it out. And, on the advice of fellow nomadic gaijins (the romanticized gringo: Americans) she,  takes up residency in a group house plastered with Disney memorabilia and, in the closest thing to paying singer she could quickly find, entertains drunken entourages of Japanese businessmen in a karaoke bar with half-hearted renditions of corny American folk songs.

Stranded in the city one night, Wendy meets Hiro (Yutaka Tadokoro, the vocalist for the Red Warriors who is probably better recognized as the director of the whiskey commercial in Lost in Translation), another young, aspiring rock musician. Obsessed with American and British pop culture, especially the musical legends like Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles, this is basically the bulk of the limited English he can communicate to Wendy. His family is the same – in one scene, his grandfather, in traditional garb, scowls at his daughter who is attempting to follow the jazzercise routines she’s watching on television as they sit around the dinner table with Hiro and his sister. A big bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken crowds the table and Hiro’s mother is ironically bewildered that her son isn’t interested in more “Japanese” things. Even Hiro’s father, a divorcee (taboo no more!) specializes in the 80s novelty of synthetic food sculptures.

Hiro and Wendy’s first encounter is eventually miffed by a misunderstanding over the sharing of a hotel room, but eventually the two hit it off, much to the delight of Hiro’s band, a rock quartet, who want the newfound blond gaijin to be in their band, certain that this is just the gimmick they need to get recognized by the country’s most famous producer, since sneaking trying to sneak him demo tapes hasn’t worked. Reluctant at first, Wendy seems unable to find any other band to meaningfully support a singing career (X of Japan briefly appear in their massive coifs, and delegate Wendy, the new band mate for about a second, the back up singer’s tambourine).

Hiro’s band is basically a cover band, churning out live performances of corny American pop songs like Three Dog Night’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” Amazingly, they do achieve major public recognition, but only through some trivial event – a photographer happened to capture a backstage spat between Wendy and someone else. Suddenly, the cover band is topping the country’s charts. And yet, both Wendy and Hiro, at the helm of  a thriving gimmick band, aren’t entirely happy with the expected definition of “success” (money and fame). In private, Hiro has performed for Wendy the songs he has written, which he sings in Japanese. Completely absent of the Western manufacture, the songs are sincere. Wendy, willing to walk away in order to get Hiro and his bandmates to abandon the gimmick, encourages Hiro to perform these songs for his audiences. In other words: art for the sake of art.

Released in 1988 and yet to be re-released, the film was co-written and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, though her 1992 directorial effort is more widely known: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tokyo Pop was a lot like the 1987 culture-clash dramedy, Living on Tokyo Time. Unfortuantely, there’s little net-recorded history on the movie, other than (surprisingly) a 2007 New York Times Review.

Imagine That! Rumors of a Mighty Boosh Movie

Okay dear anglophiles… yes, the Muvika! blog is reserved for posts about movies. But, rumors of The Mighty Boosh finally making it to the big screen in the next two years, gives license to discuss the television show here… even if the status of the movie at this point is unclear to the point of making it little more than a vague rumor.

It’s not just any show, which is why I’ll take this stretch of liberty. The Mighty Boosh is one of the funniest and most original British sitcoms in the BBC catalog in at least the last five years. And, that’s a tough claim to attempt to defend, considering that the competition these days include the wonderfully written League of Gentlemen, Spaced, Black Books, Peep Show, the inter-related Garth Merenghi’s Dark Place and IT Crowd, and even the redundant sketch comedy of Little Britain and Catherine Tate.  But, while every one of these shows (and others I haven’t mentioned) puts nearly every bit of American sitcoms of the last decade to utter shame–except for the intermittent genius in shows like Seinfeld, Arrested Development, and 30 Rock–few have attained more than cult status among American television consumers (unless introduced to wider audiences redressed as a tame American version of its more daring British source). These are the brilliant secrets that, until they ever achieve that transition into a region code suitable for DVD players in the United States, must often be enjoyed in fragmented bootlegs. To that I’ll say thank goodness for YouTube… but, damn the copyright police!

At least in the realm of network television, BBC offerings expose the limitations of American sitcoms. The BBC sitcoms aren’t “daring” just because the British allow fewer restrictions on language and sexual content. But that most American sitcoms, bound by the hollow FCC restrictions on language, indulge sexual innuendo to an overly compensatory extreme.  Maybe a writer for American television can get away with slipping in the words “dog penis” more than twice, but this is basically what has come to embody the definition of “risque.” Despite the supposed history of more daring content in American television in the last twenty or thirty years (especially anything with Bea Arthur attached), the bulk of American sitcoms today are predictable and watered down, an observation was recently made in an episode of 30 Rock. (Imagine being subject to hours of episodes of The Big Bang Theory). By contrast, the BBC has nurtured shows that experimented with the traditional notions of sitcom construction. League of Gentlemen completely destroyed the paradigm in terms of consistency of characters throughout the life of a series, and, along with Little Britain and Catherine Tate dedicated a significant part of the budget to costume and effects. Even the more familiar Extras, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant following the success of their previous sitcom, The Office, offered criticism of its own industry’s obsession with celebrity and spectacle–albeit in a sort of defeatist soapbox manner.

The brilliance of modern British sitcom has been injected into the American lineup in another form: Americanized versions. The most obvious example is The Office, although in Americanizing the show, the emphasis has shifted to its comedic ploy of heightened awareness and awkward situations taken to an extreme, while omitting the social and political commentary regarding the drudgery of the office life. HBO recently bought the BBC comedy Little Britain, pumping money into the show and now having it filmed live on location. Most recently,  NBC was to have an American version of The IT Crowd, but thankfully the project was scrapped before a pilot even aired, although the Independent Film Channel (IFC) had talked about picking up the project. And in November of 2008, MTV2 discussed the development of  a Boosh spin-off.

The Mighty Boosh originated from the stand-up performances of Noel Felding and Julian Barratt. Before the irreverent adventures of the Zooniverse aired on television for three series (British sitcoms typically run shorter terms than do American ones and are referred to as “series” rather than “seasons”) beginning in 2004, it was performed as a live stage show (and still is, touring in festivals in Europe), and later, as a BBC radio program. Described as a surrealist comedy and increasingly more so as it reached a third series, the show was something obviously targeted for younger, hipper audiences. Most of the episodes retained that theatrical look to it, especially in fantasy scenes which depended more on costume, color and lighting for effect.

More accurately, The Mighty Boosh is a surreal musical comedy. Like Cheech & Chong did in their stand-up and later, in their movies, the Boosh cast (and primarily, Barratt and Felding) wrote and performed an array of hilarious and relevant new wave tracks to highlight their situations, with the duo establishing a trademark for crimping.

At least for American viewers not really yet exposed to revolutions occurring in British sitcoms, this violated the assumption of most British sitcoms being very dated and mildly funny shows surrounding proper English folk, something influenced by the handful of shows like Are You Being Served and Keeping Up Appearances which continue to run on PBS, the poor Yanks outlet of the cultural products (outside of films) coming from the Motherland.

BBC’s uniqueness, too, is the luxury of situational comedy whereas the American sitcom settings tend to be very limiting, centering around the interactions and relationships of family and close-knit friends, the primary setting typically being someone’s home. Originally, The Mighty Boosh took place in a zoo (the Zooniverse) where the ambitious traditionalist, Howard Moon (Barratt) and his charmingly dim-witted Mod friend, Vince Noir (Felding) worked as zoo keepers. And it was usually Howard envisioning himself the revered hero of every occasion that got them both in trouble. Secondary characters include Dixon Bainbridge (originally the IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade), Bob Fossil, the wry shaman Naboo (played by Noel’s brother Michael, who was the inspiration for the show’s name), his faithful gorilla companion, Bollo, and the Hitcher, a regular, rhyming semi-nemesis. As the series aged, the setting changed to Howard and Vince sharing a flat with Naboo and Bollo in second season, and then, steered into the really surreal with Howard and Vince working in Naboo’s second-hand shop.

BBC Films has expressed their interest in producing a Boosh movie, but there has never been a firm date set because the order of projects for the Boosh team at this point is unclear. They intend to tour the live stage show (which has been solidly booked in venues around Eastern Europe for the last few months), but afterwards, expect to take a break and then resume with either a fourt series or the film. Whatever the next move, nothing is likely to be ready by 2010. Get started catching up on the episodes, my fellow Americans.

*Thanks to J. Rushton & Co. for introducing me to the show.

One For My Brother: A ‘Best Of’ List

(DRAFT) Anecdotes and commentary on Gilroy Drastik’s Top 10 favorite movies… (as hard as it was to limit the list to just 10)…

Jaws.

Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women!

Inspired by the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, Spielberg’s 1975 iconographic movie of the predatory Great White terrorizing the fictional northeastern Amity Island (filmed at Martha’s Vineyard) was adapted from Peter Benchley’s novel. Ironically, Benchley has said if he’d known a bit more about the behavior of Great Whites, he’d not have written the book as it was. Although, when approached by Doubleday, the writer was told that what they wanted wasn’t non-fiction. They wanted a story about a shark terrorizing a town. For once the Creature Feature was enormously successful (rated among the top 250 of IMDB) and only slightly corny (the obvious moments when on-screen actors are dealing with difficult, animatronic puppet). Despite the intensity and suspense that establishes Jaws as one of the greatest horror movies (or maybe plain old thriller is a better genre heading), it was followed by several sequels, a shitty NES game, and one incredibly ridiculous cheesy theme park ride that only nominally have anything in common with their predecessor film (they were definitely “some bad hat, harry!”).

In a nutshell, the plot centers on the newly ordained Amity Police Chief, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) who inherits a major dilemma in his initial service – a string of shark attacks during the Island tourist town’s busiest season. Initially met with stupid, yet understandable political and economic pressures bearing down on him as to whether the beaches should be shut down, a few deaths has the small town eager for a quick solution like taking row boats out and a hanging a slab of meat on a fish hook, waiting to throw a handful of dynamite in a hungry shark’s mouth. But, Brody, ever the pragmatist, solicits the help of a university-trained marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a wry traditionalist boat captain (Robert Shaw, who also starred in The Deep, another sea-side Benchley adaptation) to put an end to the town’s crippling threat – a great white shark.

Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies…

In part, the movie has survived the test of time because of the cool of its leading late actors, Roy Scheider (Brody) and Englishman Robert Shaw (Quinn). But, it also survives as an example of effective elements in suspense that went beyond the transparent thrills and scare tactics that have saturated most modern American horror. Jaws manages to bring all of its nervous development to a claustrophobic climax rigged with intense doubt – will three desperate men aboard a rather small boat managed to finally put an end to the small town’s persistent terror?

It’s been said that the beach population was significantly down in the year of Jaws’s release, something understandable where audiences were just as unfamiliar with shark behavior as the author of its source material.

Alien.

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Talk about claustrophobic settings… Alien’s tensions are brilliant invoked before the movie even begins. Just look at the isolation of the glowing egg encompassed by the black background on the promotional material.

Alien centers around the crew of a commercial spaceship returning to Earth who’s mission quickly turns into tragedy. Ordered by their corporate employers to investigate the unidentified signals coming from something like a mini-planet, they destroy parts of the ship in the process and unknowingly transport the seeds of a vicious alien.

Alien was penned by two guys who made their early career in alien-based science fiction and initially pitched it as “Jaws in space.” In all, it was shopped around nearly ten years before getting the greenlight. Dan O’Bannon was involved in the early stages of Dune (as was director Ridley Scott, who later abandoned the option to direct the project in order to work on Blade Runner) and Ronald Shusett would later work on Total Recall. British director Scott lead a fairly prominent cast for the first of the (so-far) five film Franchise. By 1986, James Cameron took over for Aliens, followed by David Fincher for Alien3.

The notoriously meticulous Scott had been trained in advertising and his early work was as a director of commercials before moving into directing episodes of various series. Alien was only his second feature film, following The Duelists, but really, his first major one, and, as a major commercial success with lasting cult popularity, he quickly earned a spot among sought out Hollywood elite. The funny history is that, in bout 10 years of shopping around the script for financing, Roger Corman’s studios nearly picked up the film. In the end, 20th Century Fox signed on.

The beauty of Alien, too, is its visuals; the chilling environment modeled on the imagination of then-obscure surreal artist, H.R. Geiger, distinguishing it as a Gothic horror film. But of course, what audiences remember most and what eventually lead to winning an Academy Award was the special effects, especially those few moments so frequently highlighted in horror homage clip show productions like the oft-spoofed (Spaceballs) alien bursting out of John Heard’s chest and the face-to-face encounter between Harry Dean Stanton and the heavily salivating alien, Mother. Outside of a few questionable haircuts and obsolete catchphrases, the film manages to avoid looking too dated (which, hopefully means, suggestions for remakes are quickly dismissed!). Though, what might it look like had Roger Corman’s team actually succeeded a contract to fund the project?

The Thing.

Noticing the trend of creature features in (eventual) isolated settings?

The Thing is a remake of the Christian Nyby’s 1951 science fiction horror of the same name, arguably a better adaption of its novella source: John Campbell, Jr.’s “Who Goes There?” Directed by John Carpenter and released in 1982, The Thing expands on the general plot of Alien: greater odds against the heroes. Here, a Norwegian helicopter carrying the seed of a predatory alien with the ability to mimic its prey is shot down in the Arctic region where a small group of American scientists are stationed. Alien was more political – the fate of the crew was in part, caused by the betrayal of their employers. On the other hand, The Thing, is stripped down to pure psychological play. Uncertain of who can be trusted when the victims can distinguish between human and alien, tensions rise and morals are tested: some prefer the survivalist credo of every man for himself.

Like Alien, the movie doesn’t bend entirely to the expectations of a neat resolution, among other genre standards (finally, the black guy doesn’t die first!) Film editor Todd Ramsay had suggested to Carpenter that the film have a “happy ending,” and an alternative ending was shot in which MacReady (Kurt Russel) is the lone victim to be rescued and, following a blood test, is shown to be human rather than the alien replica. However, this was never actually shown to test audiences in either of the two endings that were screened. Although, The Thing has appeared in “Best Of” lists (including IMDB’s user-rated Top 250 movie list) and archived in the clip-show styled homage Terror in the Aisles, the movie was hardly considered successful in the opening weekend. Carpenter had blamed this on the competing release of Spielberg’s E.T., which of course was a positive,  family-oriented view of alien visitors (and Carpenter’s 1984 romantic sci-fi Starman would be kinder, too) whereas The Thing was bleak and, for critics, the tremendously detailed special effects, were rightfully described as just being too gross (especially a scene in which the doctor has his forearms bitten off while he’s got his hands in a chest cavity).

Blade Runner.

“I am the Nexus One, yeah! I want more like, fucker I ain’t done!” White Zombie – More Human Than Human

Blade Runner is one of the best films of dystopic future (and Paul Sammon’s book gives the best history of the film from inception to release). It was never well-received and not surprisingly survives as a cult classic because it is quite technical, moody, slow, and artistic science fiction. But, the best features is that visually, it’s beautiful; a painstaking construction of what dismal, over-populated Los Angeles might look like in 2019. Director Ridley Scott’s meticulousness and close guard over the craftsmanship is evident and the product is so pristine and perfect for the high-definition home theater luxuries these days. (Scott’s meticulousness, too, is also responsible for some of the off-screen rivalries with the crew and studio).

Scott directed Blade Runner after completing Alien, although initially he was supposed to direct Dune. According to Scott, however, he needed to keep himself busy following the sudden death of his eldest brother and with production on  Initially, the next project not expected to begin for another year, he accepted the invitation to direct this.

It took a long time for Blade Runner to even get studio backing. Hampton Fancher, a book-smart, former child actor was the second to approach the eccentric Phillip K. Kick to option the rights to his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (The title Blade Runner came from a William Burroughs novel). Dick was never quite satisfied with Fancher’s screenplay version, once calling it too simple. Although, he never seemed too happy with Scott’s version, either, eventually going to lengths to publicly express his disapproval. And when the initially small production team tried to find financing for the film, studios continuously doubted there would even be a significant audience for the film. The novel, too, was always said to be hard to translate to film, anyways.

Blade Runner is a variation of Frankenstein. Man has created a destructive lifeform that ultimately must be destroyed for reasons beyond the creature’s own understanding; means beyond its control. In Blade Runner, when Earth became so over-populated and pollution, the humans looked to inhabit other planets. Replicants – nearly perfect synthetic simulations of humans built to expire in four years – were created for the colonization of other planets, first to fight in the wars, then to be used as slave labor. The movie went beyond the obsolete notion of androids – there was nothing that appeared artificial to the naked eye. Even memories were implanted. A special machine that used an iris-scan while the tester asked a series of mood-altering questions was the only way to really tell.But even this method wasn’t fool proof.

When the Nexus 6 androids staged a violent revolt, replicants were declared illegal on Earth. Blade Runners are the agents hired to kill them. With word that there had been a group in the desolate Los Angeles city looking for their maker – the Tyrell Corporation, Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford) a pathetic looking blade runner (who seemed even more pathetic and jaded in the book) had been forced out of retirement to track them down. With the exception of a chase sequence and the battle-to-the-death-style finale, Blade Runner isn’t really an action movie. It had long been described as noir science fiction. Deckard is a detective asked to solve a mystery with a moral dilemma. He’s on a trail of clues that will eventually lead him to the replicants he’s been hired to kill.

Deckard isn’t really as interesting as a the replicants. He’s like a very drained Sam Marlowe. But, replicants are dynamic, sympathetic creatures, particularly Deckard’s love interest, Rachel (Sean Young, who claimed, ironically,  that Harrison Ford would not speak to her much off-screen), and the ringleader Roy Batty. They merely desire a solution to their plight: stalling the clock on their limetd lifespan. While the replicants are a simulation, the question is, “what does it mean to be human?” There was a particularly heartbreaking exchange between Roy Batty and Richard Deckard during the final showdown:

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”

Cheech & Chong: Up in Smoke.

“You wanna get high man?”

Cheech & Chong were a great team; masters of the weedsploitation drama, although with the duo’s film debut, Up in Smoke, released in 1978, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong started on a high (literally and figuratively) and would gradually end on a low by the final film in the franchise. Other than Nice Dreams, few of their other films were worth much note.

The Cheech & Chong films were borne out of the duo’s stand-up comedy of the 70s and 80s. Up in Smoke was brilliant, improvised silliness and came out of the old days of riskier ventures. Given Lou Adler’s commentary on the DVD, it seemed like the film’s director and producer knew the comedy pair, or their potential, and, with a scant idea of what it should be, had the money to finance a goofy venture. But, they had trouble advertising the movie through traditional means. There was the obvious liability and public relations crisis expected when it comes to promoting a pothead movie to the mainstream… although it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem these days, given the mainstream successes of movies like Half Baked and Pineapple Express. Cheech and Chong was a novelty, too, in that they were also a musical duo, something they did in their stage shows and might have inspired the Flight of the Conchords duo. Cheech and Chong performed some of the songs on their film’s soundtracks and are seen in Up in Smoke actually performing against a handful of self-indulgent punk bands at the Battle of the Bands show. So, the film was advertised in comic strips and left on bus benches. Weirdly enough, it was successful. Released by Paramount, the movie grossed over $40 million and was the 12th highest grossing film of 1978.

There’s a wonderful scene towards the opening of the film where Anthony Stoner (Tommy Chong), hitchhiking, dresses as a woman (including the added detail of fake hooters) in order to get someone to stop and give him a ride. Pedro (Cheech), cruising the strip in his polished boat (this was really Jack Nicholson’s car), catches a glimpse of the hitchhiking woman and the brain to response connection is clear when his his widen and he cries out, “She’s hitchhiker!!. And finally, the center of attention were two non-white guys! Chong had absconded from his rich, nagging white adopted parents who basically yell at him to make something of himself. Cheech is a sort of stereotypical Mexican from the Southern California barrio. Chong befriends Cheech and joins his mariachi band as the drummer. Cheech has the idea that they should compete in the up-coming battle of the bands and in between the journey to finally score some weed and make it to the competition, the oblivious duo is always, and inadvertently two steps ahead of the bumbling drug agents and their frustrated supervising seargent (played wonderfully by Stacy Keach who has the great line: “To think of the time and money I’ve wasted on your training…”).

Nice Dreams came along in 1981, the third in the franchise. But, it somewhat continues the adventures of Up in Smoke. Bumbling drug agents are once again trying to track down the once-again oblivious Cheech and Chong’s successful, covert weed operation, “Nice Dreams.” But this time, Stacey Keach’s character, who has taken an unquestioned desk job where he basically smokes a pretty potent brand of weed, gradually transforms into an iguana. Needless to say, Nice Dreams is more of a surreal comedy (and appropriately so, given the weedsploitation context) than it’s predecessor, Up in Smoke.

The Terminator.

Intimacy. Intimacy. Ya ya ya ya….

For people of the video-cassette age (and I suppose, of the DVD age, as well, though it’s fairly newer), there is that one movie they’ve watched so often, especially as kids, that they’ve ruined the tape it came on. For my brother and I, that movie was the 1984 technophobic sci-fi, Terminator. The hyperactive kid that my brother was, this would surely set him off for invisible combat and inevitably led to us getting on our folks’ nerves and being ordered to go outside and play.

And despite the gaping plot hole (a soldier fighting in the cyber wars of the future volunteers to go back in time to protect the mother of the future hero he will eventually help conceive), the corny dialogue, and the financial glut of the movies to follow in the never-ending franchise (including a television series and theme park attraction), it will always be one of my favorite science fiction films. The first Terminator took place in gritty, punky Los Angeles, and the urban wasteland served as a proper prologue environment to the violent future predicted by Sara Conner. By the first sequel, Terminator 2, studios shelled out millions for the Hollywood polish. By comparison, the first movie was made on a surprising budget of less than $7 million (which might mean that this was not an expensive cast) and obviously, continues to gross well over the double-digit million dollar mark (it too, holds a user-rated ranking in the Top 250 films on IMDB). Gritty as the first one, though, that’s not to say it was a cheaply done production. That’s just not James Cameron’s style even with just $7 million. And the budget was probably largely allotted for special effects. There’s plenty of explosions, construction of active futuristic battleground, stop-motion Terminator animation, and the terrific scene of The Terminator chipping away at the fleshy disguise to reveal the functioning exoskeleton.

Throughout the Terminator franchise, the demise of the future is blamed on the Skynet corporation. Like Blade Runner, the artificial intelligence embodied in creepy chrome exoskeletons created by the corporations defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems, became self-aware and took over military hardware, declaring war on the humans. This plot point doesn’t really become more fully developed until the sequel, Terminator 2, when a now beefed-up Sarah Connor tracks down Skynet engineer Miles Dyson, the man behind the machines. The Terminator 2 3-D attraction at Universal Studios in Orlando introduces the movie with a brief propaganda film from Skynet and its defense operations, Cyberdyne Systems before Sarah and John Connor looking like two butch lesbians, hack into the system to override the video and warn audiences to get out of the building.

What the hell? Goddamn son of a bitch…

Like Blade Runner and a host of other 1980s technophobic science fiction films, The Terminator opens in Los Angeles. In 2029, it’s buried in rubble and destroyed by the hopeless war between Man, a resistance force led by the heroic John Connor, and Machines, who decide to assassinate him preemptively by going back in time to gritty 1984 Los Angeles and disguised as human, kill his mother, Sarah Connor. Sarah was played by director/co-writer James Cameron’s then-wife Linda Hamilton. The movie also introduced Austrian bodybuilding celebrity, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Terminator was a formidable villain because he was an indiscriminate killer, and one didn’t feel emotion. His method for finding Sarah Connor, initially, is thumbing through the phone book and killing all the Sarah Connors in the county, it didn’t matter which was the right one, as long as one was in fact the future mother of John. (Imagine how doomed the mission would be if she wasn’t listed!) The beauty of the villain was also that it was immune to pain, and the chrome skeleton under the normal wear of human flesh made regular weaponry ineffective, though the T-1000, the liquid metal villain of Terminator 2, was more challenging.

Initially, the Terminator was envisioned to be more inconspicuous rather than the intimidating build, something followed through on in the sequel when the athletic and speedy Robert Patrick was cast as the T-1000. B-movie king Lance Henriksen was considered for the role of the Terminator, but instead was cast as one of the investigating detectives alongside the late, humorously wry Paul Winfield. Michael Biehn was considered, too, but instead played played Kyle Reese, the noble resistance soldier from the future who volunteers to go back in time and protect Sarah Connor. It’s a suicide mission, since the time portal wouldn’t open again to allow him to travel back. This is where the inevitable problem of time traveling tales occur as Kyle Reese is eventually shown to be the father of John Connor, although previously, he’d never met Sarah Connor before.

Sarah Connor… mother of the future resistance leader was supposed to be a mere 19 year old at the time working a thankless job as a waitress and sharing an apartment with an iguana and a spunky roommate named Ginger. Of course, after become enlightened by Reese about the future, she undergoes a complete 180 and turns into the short-tempered, premature resistance fighter with visions of a fatal future. Of course, it’s that kind of babbling that gets her thrown into a mental institution, as seen in the beginning of Terminator 2.

Christian Bale is the latest to be cast as John Connor in the fourth installment, Terminator: Salvation, which, at least suggested by the previews, is that the movie has taken a new direction altogether. Now in the aftermath of Skynet’s nuclear Holocaust and further fighting against the machines, the movie, directed by the American television director rather pretentiously known only as “McG,” transforms into more of a combat movie than the computers-and-bytes kind of science fiction movie it first started as.

The Omen and The Exorcist.

If I had to pick between Richard Donner’s The Omen (released in 1976) or William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (released in 1973 and adapted from William Blatty’s 1971 novel) in terms of movies about demonic children, I would prefer The Exorcist. (I discuss both films here because of the similar theme). My brother has long been a fan of both films (though surprisingly, not of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby). I’ve always found The Omen to be excessively cheesy in parts, using the glassy effects and dramatic strings music (not Jerry Goldsmith’s “Ave Satan”, the one it’s most famous for) in the saccharine portrayal of the American couple played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick welcoming their first child in contrast, of course, to the devilish threat he’d become. (Liev Schreiber’s remake, released in 2006, was only slightly better since it avoided doing that. But, while visually stunning, it substituted cheesy for bland).

On the other hand, while Linda Blair’s character, Regan, in The Exorcist was a complete nerd, Friedkin manages to mostly stick to the point – the transformation of the darling nerd into the vessel of Satan. (Blair was far from desired for the role of Regan, and one person seriously considered for the part was Denise Nickerson, who is better remembered as Violet in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, since her parents pulled her from the production because of the vulgarity of the material). But then again, there’s a unique regional difference between the two films: The Omen is very English; The Exorcist is an American production. While The Omen was fairly simple, The Exorcist was a little more complex. The film begins with an archeological excavation, and along with this, integrates the story of Father Damien (Jason Miller) who doubts his faith, and the actress mother who needs more than medical help for the disturbing and mysterious symptoms showing in her pre-teen daughter in Georgetown.

The bulk of the movie was filmed on and around the Georgetown University campus. The building that housed the graduate schools of business, public policy, and my former graduate program buttress the infamous steep stairs that in the film, were an instrument in the demise of a priest. Runners tend to make two or three incredible laps up and down that thing. Passerbys have scrawled on the wall things like “the power of Christ compels you” and so-and-so “conquered the Exorcist stairs.

The Omen anniversary DVDs released recently contain the 2005 documentary regarding the weird occurrences during production like lightning hitting planes, lions devouring crew, and dobermans attacking the trainers, not that The Exorcist was without its own rumors of strange occurrences during production, though I wonder how many had to do with William Friedkin’s method directing. The Exorcist carries a lot of possibly dubious reports about how audiences reacted when they first saw it in the theater, vomiting and being dramatic. The movie certainly was stark enough, and sometimes vulgar enough to get some kind of reaction to audiences not yet jaded by horror films like today. The Exorcist was also one of the highest grossing horror films of all time and earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress (Burstyn), Best Supporting Actress (Blair, who really wasn’t supporting at all, though I suspect “supporting” is sometimes a limitation made on the basis of age), Best Supporting Actor (Jason Miller), Best Director (even though he was chosen to direct only after the success of The French Connection), and Best Picture.

Unfortunately, both were followed by a few sequels that never made much note. Damien was followed into adulthood (oops, spoilers!) and Regan became like the spokesman for chronic demonic possession.

Dead Calm.

Dead Calm is a rather obscure, three-character thriller released in 1989. It was a great little suspense film, winding up on cable every once in a while and more recently, on Netflix’s Instant Demand. Based on Charles Williams’s thriller novel of a bi-polar shipwreck survivor who terrorizes a young couple that invite him aboard their boat, it was actually the second time the book was attempted to be translated into film. Orson Wells never finished his film, The Deep, filmed between 1967 and 1969 but abandoned when the film’s star, Laurence Harvey, died. (There were rumors that Wells’s widow was trying to get the incomplete film cut and released in 1997). Australian director, Phillip Noyce, directed the 1989 version, which was a dramatically pared down version of the novel – it only centered on three of the characters: John (Sam Neill) and Rae (Nicole Kidman) Ingram and their tormenting visitor, Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane).

In the novel, Hugie’s wife and the surviving half of another couple aboard their yacht–the husband–were central to John’s survival when, doubting Hughie’s version of what happened to the other crew aboard the sinking vessel, swims over to investigate. We learn that Hughie was a good-looking young guy, in his early 20s. He’d been an aspiring painter and the financing for his work often came from rich women who selfishly sought his company more than admired the brilliance of his work. He’d become habitually spoiled and always flirted with the women who never denied him what he wanted. It’s speculated in the book that, when Hughie and the wife of the other couple are swimming and accidentally left behind, he drowned her in an effort to save himself. When Hughie’s wife an the husband finally figure out that they’ve left their passengers behind, return two hours later to find only one has survived – Hughie, who in a panic, claims that the wife died of a shark attack. When the boat begun going down, already in disrepair and being navigated by an inexperienced crew, Hughie’s wife and the husband of the other couple were locked in the cabin. Hughie had left to save himself, climbing aboard the Ingram’s boat with a story that the rest of the crew had died of food poisoning.

In the novel, John and Rae Ingram are honeymooning. Rae seems like more shrewd character, more outspoken and meets John when he is first suspect to having stolen her yacht, but then, because of the former naval officer’s nautical expertise, helps the widow track down the boat. Had the movie been made closer to the book, it would’ve called for someone a little older than the milky white Nicole Kidman. Maybe Angelica Houston. Or Joanna Cassidy. But when the backstory changed to an instant tragedy explaining the couple’s voyage – a therapeutic trip following the death of their toddler son – Kidman’s cherubic appearance fit.

In both the novel and movie, John swims over to check the condition of the boat and the holes in Hughie’s story of what happened to the other passengers, when Hughie, in retaliation, leaves with the Ingram’s boat, and Rae still on board. John is stuck on a sinking ship and Rae can’t easily convince Hughie to turn back and rescue him.  Billy Zane was perfect for the role of the villain – the baby-faced young man who was a total weirdo, abruptly shifting between empty good moods and a violent temper, much to the confusion and frustration of Rae (Kidman) who in the end, had to figure out how, if not by herself, then with Hughie’s cooperation, she was going to get back to John before time ran out. Luckily, neither Rae nor John were dumb characters. One of the great tactics here was pacing: the never really slows, and with it, neither does the suspense. Stripping down the number of characters and the details of Hughie’s past (not to mention the author Williams’s reliance on too much nautical terminology) obviously makes it much easier for the filmmaker to translate the nail-biting tension into a 96 minute movie.

Jurassic Park.

In the summer of 1993, the year of Jurassic Park’s release, I had spent several weekends seeing the movie with my brother. Admission was a dollar, so this was easy to do. It was one of the rare moments that a film should run more than a month, and that it should still serve packed audiences after weeks of being there. Priority movies were shown on one of two of the theater’s largest screens. As weeks progressed, and the audience size waned, they moved the movies down the hall, to smaller and smaller theaters. We watched the movie in several.

March of the Indie Kids: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist generated buzzing interest prior to its theatrical release in early October. But, as a film where most all of the positive reviews could offer little more than descriptions as a “sweet little movie,” it’s destined for cult status upon DVD release.

The failure to make much of an impression isn’t all that surprising. Adapted from Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s pop novel, the anti-climatic plot centers on a handful of bland, interconnected teenage indie music fans who spend a Friday night traversing Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Village to fend off obnoxious ex’s, flesh out potential new relationships, track down a missing drunk friend, and find clues to a secret show hosted by their favorite band. All of it is very reminiscent of young, night-out vignette relationship comedies like 200 Cigarettes and Detroit Rock City. But where Nick & Norah lures admirers with innocent charm, it becomes persistently (and annoyingly) unimposing. This is “indie” personified.

With playful lettering doting about the opening credits, or the casting of Michael Cera as the leading character, Nick, or filling the soundtrack with popular indie bands, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist might elicit expectations that this is something obsessed with being quirky like Juno or willing to trump substance entirely for the sake of novelty like Napoleon Dynamite. Aside from Nick’s unique mode of transportation – one of the last functioning Hugos, a queer-core band called The Jerk Offs, and a running gag involving chewing gum, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist gives its characters and settings a genuine and sincere focus, but to the extent that it becomes about as “slice of life” as you can get… well, except for Norah’s family ties to the music industry.

The movie begins with the typical exaggerated teenage dramas. Heartbroken Nick (portrayed in Michael Cera’s typical soft-spoken, down-to-earth manner) takes the day off from school to busy himself with making a mix CD for the insensitive Tris (Alexis Denzia, who makes a more believable as a Romanian Olympic gymnast than a high school student), the girl who broke up with him on his birthday. His friends, with whom he plays in The Jerk Offs, encourage their depressed mate to get out of the house and join them for the gig they’re playing in the city (curiously, they’re headlining for Bishop Allen).

Elsewhere at a posh private school, Tris tells a gaggle of gossipy classmates that she’s glad she and Nick finally broke up as she tosses into the trash yet another mix CD he’d given her. It’s the typical situation of the decent guy temporarily clouded by the insincere girl. Norah (Kat Dennings) rescues the CD from the trash, as she’s done before. She’s Tris’s classmate and also her opposite. She doesn’t know Nick, but she’s a fan of his mix CDs, noting that he doesn’t just carefully select a playlist, but creates the artwork for the sleeve, too. Obviously, Tris just never “got it”.

Nick and Norah: innocuously adorable smart kids with a musical kinship who are clearly perfect for each other.

The young cast of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist are are unsupervised, vintage-clad, self-conscious, occassionally profound, and randomly adventurous. And they share a Friday night we’ve all had at that age: vague plans with friends and no particular need to remain stationary. Hell, the aimless wandering and haphazzard interaction still occurs for the unsettled drinking-age crowd living in the city. And for the curiously nomadic, the possibilities are endless in New York City. Though, it’s funny how much gas these particular friends blow driving all over Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Village, or how they always manage to find a parking space right in front of their destination.

But, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist deserves praise for reviving a seemingly dead sub-genre of teen films: music as a quintissential role in youth socialization (not to sound so academic about it). This is a sub-genre distinct from the urban teen movies that have emerged in the last ten years, as the vicarious thrill of breakdancing showdowns or the epic drum cadence take on music in a more concrete, rather than abstract political and expressive form or, more simply, that understanding of “better living through music.”

Early on, it was rock n’ roll (American Grafitti, I Wanna Hold Your Hand) that embodied the youngster’s principals, ambitions and rebellion and, for most teen films (exceptions being movies like House Party), it has been variations of rock n’ roll ever since (Quadrophenia, American Pop, Suburbia, Empire Records, 200 Cigarettes). Indie music is the latest epoch of rock music (derivative as it is), one guided by a new generation of music-makers and fans quite different from the cigarettes-and-leather generations before them. It may seem tamer by comparison, but indie music embraces themes of the inward and emotional, the sentiment (even Juno did the same, with it’s Moldy Peaches/Kimya Dawson-filled soundtrack). Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’s own playlist includes the likes of the more well-known: Band of Horses, Ratatat, We Are Scientists, Tapes N’ Tapes, The Ravonettes, Vampire Weekend, Modest Mouse, and Bishop Allen, who also make a cameo appearance, among others.

Indie, in its somber form, shares a devotion to the internal with the last major epoch of rock: Grunge (although only to some extent, since Grunge itself still had ties to the politics of punk). But, where indie does avoid indulging quirky novelty, it seems to remain so dreadfully subtle. The marching feet fade into whimpers.

All Your Synthetic Charms Are Belong To Us: Making Mr. Right

“Who am I? Why am I here? What does it mean to be human?”

- Paul M. Sammon, drawing the common philosophical questions presented in Blade Runner and its source novel, Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The romantic science fiction comedy is a rare one, but found its niche in the 1980s. Blade Runner, released in 1982, approached the subject of relationships between human and non-human species early on: Blade Runner Fred Dekkard (Harrison Ford), assigned to kill replicants, an illegal brand of synthetic human, instead falls in love with the almost completely inconspicuous contraband, a young woman named Rachel (Sean Young). The replicants paralelled much older fiction – Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein. The replicants are the creation of Man and consequently, are declared monsters by their creator. The replicants, however, were designed immediately for burdened life: first as the fighters in Man’s wars, then as slaves in the colonizing of other, cleaner planets. Almost all of the replicants are aware of the life plan designated to them (all but Rachel who’s entire memories… her defining human quality… turned out to be mere implants). The Nexus 6 replicants of this story don’t really seek baseless revenge – they desire to reverse their tragedy.

After Blade Runner, the anthropomorphic android was removed from the typically dark, technophobic context of contemporary science fiction, instead placed into causal, modern life. Adapting to the most abstract of human emotion – love – aliens (Starman, Earth Girls Are Easy), computers (Electric Dreams), and robotics (Short Circuit, Heartbeeps) alike became the new source of competition; the new possible prospective mate.

(Horror comedy would similarly find its niche in the tackiness of the mid and late 1980s. Although, more frequently, its purpose was to satirize the awkwardness of adolescence [Teen Wolf, My Best Friend Is a Vampire, Nice Girls Don't Explode]).

Director Susan Seidleman’s third feature film, Making Mr. Right, written by Floyd Byars and Laurie Frank and released in 1987, transitions into the science fiction/romantic comedy genre and borrows on that narrative of non-humans trying to understand core human emotion. But in this case, the lesson in love is imperfect – a curious android seeks his guidance from a woman who is just as confused (and cynical) about relationships (hell, most of the characters are).

Momentarily placing aside the typical tacky bohemia for which her New York City settings were most conducive (Smithereens, Desperately Seeking Susan and returning to this in 1989 with her fourth film, Cookie) Making Mr. Right is set in Miami, a location that nonetheless allowed Seidleman access to her trademark fusion of art deco and 80s new wave (in both visuals and soundtrack). (It also enabled her characteristic commentary on lavish consumerism).

Ann Manguson plays Frankie Stone — characteristically bold, fashionable, witty and… currently single. She exhibits that perfect for that pop feminine chic central to Seidleman’s leading women. Roger Ebert’s 1987 review highlight’s the director’s sensibilities of character perfectly: “…she hits her stride as a comedy director who would rather be clever than obvious, who allows good actors such as Malkovich to go for quiet effects rather than broad, dumb cliches).” With this story (romance and the identity crisis) and this decade (the 80s), there is often that risk of coming off as pitifully saccarine. But, Seidleman’s work always managed to steer from being disastorously campy and in largely because her choice of leading women in particular were key in maintaining that momentum. And, Manguson was perfect for the part. She had previously (and very briefly) appeared in a bit part in Seidleman’s previous comedy caper, Desperately Seeking Susan (as a traditional cigarette vendor at the Magic Club), she is more famously known for her singer/songwriter work with experimental bands like Bongwater and Vulcan Death Grip.

Bumped by her colleague as the public relations lead for the mayoral race, a move that coincided with her breaking up with the conceited candidate, frazzled career woman Frankie Stone is hired by NASA to work on their latest project: a human-looking robot named Ulysses (a young John Malkovich). Originally designed to explore space beyond human’s physical, mental, and emotional capacity (think: isolated missions), the business-minded team of engineers want to expand the android’s uses, eyeing marketing potential for the robot as a domestic servant and emergency services assistant. Ulyesses, unlike predecessor robots, has the ability to learn and adapt, both mechanically and socially. Unfortunately, the brilliant scientist who invented the robot, the arrogant eccentric Jeff Peters (also John Malkovich, since the robot’s appearance is modeled identical to Jeff’s), is hopelessly incapable of “humanizing” Ulyessus; making him seem less robotic and more human (something appealing to grantors and investors!). That’s precisely what Frankie is hired to do.

In the isolation of the lab, his lone source of knowlege about people, about human interaction, about the outside world, is all learned through Frankie, whom smitten Ulysses falls for. The film’s promotional poster of course sums up the doubt about the robot being a Mr. Right (the springing head is a reference to a scene with Glenn Headly), or at least Frankie Stone’s answer to the most suitable mate. Unlike the almost-indistinguishable replicants of Blade Runner, Seidleman’s android centerpiece still retains robotic qualities, even though it’s sometimes forgettable until he seriously malfunctions. It leaves that resistance to call the robot a possible “perfect man” (even where this robot is… well-endowed).

But, the more interesting element, rare to narratives like this one (expanding beyond Blade Runner’s meta-physical posturing), is that the android and the human (in this case, his inventor) increasingly become a mutual doppelganger. Ulyessus becomes more sociable, more curious about human interaction and the oustide world. And, for his innocence, he’s hypnotically charming. (This leads to two particulary great scenes – a shopping mall date with Laurie Metcalf’s character, who mistakes Ulyesses for her ideal love interest Jeff, and a scene in which Glenn Headly’s character think she’s accidentally decapitated Ulyesses when his head falls off during sex.) On the other hand, Jeff blames any of the hijinks initiated by Ulyesses insatiable curiosity about human life on meddlesome Frankie Stone. But worse, he’s increasingly defined more by limited social qualities of a pure robot – little else than mechanical scientific genius (save one brief attempt to be personable). It is perhaps John Malkovich in one of his most versatile roles, simply because he had to exhibit such a wide range of personality (or lack thereof). For once it was not merely the robot steadily transforming (as much as he could) to human, but his maker had increasingly taken the form of the robot (and happily so), indifferent to social connection and its consequential emotional attachment.

*Credit to AC for the title.

Titty Power: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains

“We need to make being poor cool again.” - John Waters, This Filthy World (2006)

The 1980s was really the last decade of true grime cinema. Its resulting Bohemia, that unusual and corrupted regarded with ambivalence, sadly disappeared in the national tide of gentrification, reluctantly or not, and in the film world, dilapidated city life was traded for Rob Reiner-esque Americana. The vanguard of modern filmmaking was eventually traded for censor-safe subjects, refining even the most revolting if it was to reach any kind of audience. Film-making, and it’s sister world of contemporary art, really stopped being daring.

In 1981, director Lou Adler’s and writer Nancy Dowd’s über-obscure punk rock epic, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains was already probably considered passé when it was released in late 1982 (Dowd’s pseudonymous writing credit, Rob Morton, symbolized her displeasure with the final product). Although it came about at the same time as the similarly grimy, low-budget punk-themed movies, Smithereens and Times Square, post-punk and New Wave had already started taking over as the next musical epoch. The chord combinations of punk too few, the angst too redundant, and the drugs too plentiful. Shot over a two year period, it was released to near-obscurity, even with its ties to well-known music icons and convenient timing (Mtv was born), and it only made the transition to DVD last month. But, the movie wasn’t really all that original: the triumphant marriage of music and youth rebellion. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is much more significant as an understanding of just how far from drawing lines in the sand film-making has become. While it never arrived in time to be part of the closing curtain on first-wave punk, it could be for the last vestiges of grime cinema.

Diane Lane was just 15 when she starred as Corrine Burns, the typically baffling, teenage “misfit” orphan turned equally baffling superstar heroine in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. The film opens with a reporter interviewing the distant teenager as a follow-up to her minor stardom when she was seen on the news being fired at the fast food place where they were doing a story. Shocked by her indifference more than her having to absorb continuous disappointment, the reporter finishes the interview with that typical rhetorical question so replete with disgust and demand: “What are you going to do with your life?!” (Cue the Kelly “Shoes” video!)

Corrine envisions future celebrity and her novice, three-piece all-girl punk band, The Stains (which features a mere 13-year old Laura Dern as “Peg”), are their only ticket out of dingy, hopeless Dodge. “Were there even girl bands before this movie?” Diane Lane asks on the DVD commentary (the Lane-Dern commentary is a great additional feature), frequently citing this movie as the inspiration for a lot of bands’ sound and image. It sounds like an excessively self-congratulatory claim, but it’s especially possible that The White Stripes drew on this movie for plenty of their retro red-and-white imagery. But to answer Diane’s question… yes, there were the Runaways, the girls who didn’t give a damn about their bad reputations. However, the angst-ridden girl bands never really came about in full effect until much later, and most notably with the Riot Grrrl period in the 90s.

Corrine’s escape is not without cynicism, hardened further by the two bands they tour with. Tubes lead singer Fee Way Bill and guitarist Vince Welnick played The Metal Corpses, an aged duo of extremely self-indulgent 70s rockers who desperately ignore their obsolescence. The others are a British punk band called The Looters, which featured Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones and ex-Clash guitarist Paul Simonon while the lead, Billy, was played by Ray Winstone who most recently played Frank Costello’s henchman, Mr. French, in The Departed. They all compete with one another in their bid to be famous and even the most well-meaning can be corrupted; the gatekeepers of fame all have their price.

But the Stains, as young girls never taken seriously to begin with, use outrageousness and rejection and altruism to their advantage, and like the characters in Time Square and The Legend of Billie Jean, they eventually become the headlining success. Not surprisingly, their fan base are screaming crowds of equally alienated teenage girls, something that might be called neo-feminism, had the loyalists who adopted the band’s look (they call it “Going Skunk”) and slogans and lyrics not been shallow followers. The enlightenment to eventually break their bond is just a simple, obvious warning from Billy (The Stain’s big hit single, “The Professionals” (actually a Sex Pistols song, was stolen from him). The spectacle had gotten too far out of hand.

Diane Lane, on the DVD commentary, suggests that this is a film in dire need of a remake. The dirty word that it might be (that dreaded “R” word!), that grimy Bohemia, the drastic differences in the music industry then and now, and the silliness of a youth rebellion epic would probably lost in translation to modern film. Although, sadly, there are few films anymore that really depict the relationship between music and youth, especially teenagers. The closest it has really come lately, at least in more popular film, is where this has been done to supplement the narrative (Empire Records, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist), or even through the popularity of soundtrack (Juno).

“You can’t make a movie like this anymore,” Laura Dern accurately replies. It featured plenty that would set off conservative censors today: the fighting was authentic because stunt people weren’t hired, the kids were shown to be chain smokers, and even at 15, Diane Lane was filmed partially nude for a brief shower romance with Billy. Grime cinema was low-budget, daring was the default because on the one hand, controversy drew the cult appeal (look at John Water’s catalog of films), and on the other, because there wasn’t much money and expertise to making these films (see Susan Seidleman’s acclaimed debut feature film, Smithereens). The era of grime cinema produced a lot of shitty films (although so did those outside of that context), but it also produced a lot of cult films of note. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains probably isn’t likely to generate a sudden rise in noteriety, even with the careers that Diane Lane and Laura Dern have both established for themselves, but it is at least a glimpse into where the limitations of the medium used to be (music, too).

There was a recent, related comment on imposed limits in a second season episode of 30 Rock in which Liz Lemon’s (Tina Fey) idol, an old writer for Laugh-In (Carrie Fisher), is brought on as a guest writer for The Girlie Show. Her skit proposals for off-colored satire are nixed by Lemon, acting as the proxy of what the corporate-owned, advertiser-weary networks would allow. “Oh hell, we’d do something like that on the Mandrell Sisters!” the guest writer protests. In the end, the skit they decide to feature instead revolves around jokes about dog penises. American films today are too clean and even those considered the new avant garde within the last decade alone have more often been visually daring rather than topically so.

Boy, You’ll Be A Man Soon: White Water Summer

Lord of the Rings was not the first time Sean Astin had been filming in New Zealand. Shooting began on TV director Jeff Bleckner’s adventure movie, White Water Summer in 1985, primarily shot in parts of California and New Zealand. The movie wasn’t actually released, however, until 1987. The flashback of a summer of various, critical rites of passage (well… except the ones of sexual maturity) are narrated by teenager Alan, played by Astin, reflecting on the events when he is a little older. A little wiser.

This is a movie that begins on a somewhat unusual premise: door-to-door camp recruitment. Kevin Bacon plays a purist wildnerness guide named Vic. This was in his period of bouncing around in an unpredictable array of roles in terribly obscure films, even despite the noteriety of Footloose. He’s standing in the living room of Alan’s New York apartment, presenting a slideshow of his previous summer of “making men out of boys” by hiking them around the Northeastern United States. He promises great experiences. Alan’s dad is vicariously hyped for this opporunity for his son, having said that most of his summer vacations at Alan’s age were spent in the backseat of the family station wagon going to an uncle’s farm. Alan’s mother is understandably fretful for the safety of the boys in the vast wildnerness, though Vic assures her they’re in good care. And Alan… well, he’s less than enthused about the inopportune timing of the trip, given that a certain the parents of a girl he likes are going out of town for a month.

Well, Alan’s successfully managed to duck all kind of camp, but since he has no real skills of persuasion, he’s off to join George (K. C. Martel), Chris (Matt Adler), Mitch (Jonathan Ward), and their new-age fearless guide, Vic for a few weeks of camping. And it’s true, Vic delivers on his promise for some adventure. Things like hiking to near-death exhaustion, white water rafting, made-up lore told by the campfire, trout fishing with bare hands, crossing gorges on flimsy footbridges, testing the thresholds for exposure to the elements, and swinging from face of Devil’s Tooth.

Sure, the description makes it seem like an intentionally comical movie, but seriously, Vic is crazy. But his being crazy is crazy since there is no real consistency in his character. Though, there really isn’t any consistency to young Alan either, who seems in startling contrast (whiny nerd) to his older counterpart (hot shot). But Vic, on the other hand, makes a more severe, but unexplained, leap in personality, transforming from easy-going purist camp guide who encourages his troupe of young campers to abandon their city-bred vices to a sociopath who forces four, relatively unprepared teenagers to survive on their own. The movie might have been better as a thriller and that whole idea of young boys pitted against a loose screw (which Bacon does particularly well) in an unfamiliar environment, making the harsher lessons, particularly those wielded against Alan — Vic’s pet project — more understandble.

White Water Summer never made much noise, and really still hasn’t, which unfortunately leaves little background available on the movie, though it did make the transition to DVD. Sean Astin might be a draw. Kevin Bacon, as well. But the remaining members of a cast of five are three actors who rarely showed up in much else of note. Matt Adler’s more prominent role was the leading part in the late 80s surf movie, North Shore (see the related Muvika post). Jonathan Ward co-starred as one of the first batch of kids to be looked after in Charles in Charge, but may be better remembered by the decade’s B-movie nostalgic as the older brother in the E.T. knock-off, Mac & Me. And K. C. Martel, aside from playing one of the oldest brothers friends in the real E.T., would go on to play Mike Seaver’s friend, Boner [insert Boners jokes here] in the TV sitcom, Growing Pains.

Obscurity and character inconsistencies (and sometimes, just plain annoyances) aside, this movie has several things working in its favor. For one thing, Englishman John Alcott, who frequently worked with Stanley Kubrick, served as the cinematographer for this film. A dedication for him appears in the ending credits, since he died 1 year before the film’s release. The movie offers amazing glimpses into some vast wildnerness, and generally does well enough to project that sense of alarm and adventure.

This is also one of those movies that had a characteristically 80s soundtrack with some decent songs that were never released beyond a few popular selections by The Cult, Bruce Hornsby, and Journey on unrelated albums. Once in a while, faithful diggers might find them in their digital hunt, as had been done for fans of Real Genius or with Michael Sembello’s “Rock Until You Drop” single from Monster Squad, but with this movie, those unfortunately remain rare to even find off-screen.

Considering the high obscurity factor, it’s a wonder the movie ever made it to DVD at all. But it’s something the younger nostalgics will likely add to lists of coveted favorites if the cheesiness is forgivable. (For now, the movie is available in full on YouTube).

Emotional Rescue: Fearless

In 1990, an Emory graduate and DC-metro native named Chris McCandless donated his entire savings to OXFAM, gave away his belongings, burned in car in a field out West, and eventually kept less contact with his family before ceasing communication altogether. In that time, he had traveled up and down the Western United States by foot, by boat, hitchhiking, motivated by a neo-Walden (maybe more neo-Rousseau) desire to experience life as the most purest form of Man in a world that seemed to him riddled with absurd baggage that had corrupted Man’s most basic civility.

It had been done before, even long after Thoreau penned Walden. A trend of young men from well-off families who had backgrounds similar to McCandless: intelligent, good students, accomplished atheletes. Chris’s parents owned a business and lived in the suburbs. These modern day adventurers would eventually resign to the wildnerness, and it was often a failure to really prepare for it that lead to early deaths. McCandless, at the age of 24, died only two years after resolving to indulge this indefinite primitive experiment, surviving 112 days in the Alaskan wildnerness until he was poisoned by a variety of plant he’d eaten. His story was retold in Jon Krakauer’s article for a 1993 issue of Outside, “Death of an Innocent,” before being turned into Into the Wild, a book that included Krakauer’s own experiences in the wilderness, and most recently, adapted for film by director Sean Penn.

Critical reactions to McCandless’s story and those of his predecessors tend to miss the point of their voluntary transformation: it was an act of escape. By contrast, any willingness to accept these absurdities otherwise, were baffling to them; something like Fight Club, but without an excessive (and violent) catharsis. The simplest example of this point is when McCandless wanted to raft down the Colorado River and was told, he’d first have to get a permit. Before he was issued anything, however, he’d have to put his name on a waiting list. Reservations for requested permits already filled the next twelve years. McCandless, in stunned disbelief asks, “12 years – to paddle down a river?!”

But, McCandless and his fellow escapists also had to go to great lengths to satisfy their separation from the world they’d view as alienating and corrupt, wandering far into the fringes of the last bits of siolated, American wilderness. McCandless made that journey nearly 20 years ago.

One of the characters in Charles Williams’ suspense 1962 novel, Dead Calm, later adapted twice for film (the first being an unfinished Orson Welles picture), suggests that there is no idyllic setting to retreat to anymore. The young painter who wants to go to Polypenisia to live like Gaugin once did won’t find what he’s looking for, this particular character reasoned. “In the first place, there’s no escape from our so-called civilization anymore; the twenties century is something we’re locked into and there’s no way we can get out; when we got to Papeete we’d probably find the same jukeboxes, the same headlines, the same cocktail parties, the same jet service from here to there, the same Bomb, and the same exhorations to embrace the finer life by buying something.”

If trivialities conquer the universe, the only escape then, is within yourself, something Tyler Durden most poignantly demonstrated in Fight Club; his philosophy simply being “just let go”. In 1993, director Peter Weir’s Fearless was released. It was more of what might be thought of as an independent drama by today’s standards, one devling into philosophical debate rather than typical hum-drum narrative. More importantly, it offers a different view of escapism in the modern, 20th century-saturated world.

Adapted from Rafael Yglesias’s novel, it stars Jeff Bridges as Max Klein, a plane crash survivor. This is how the movie immediately begins and we see Klein, deftly nervous about flying while his colleague assures him that everything will be just fine. Klein appears dazed amidst the wreckage, but looks to help others who were aboard the plane. His behavior seems almost matter-of-fact, and instead of notifying his wife and son of his survival, he instead checks into a hotel and visits an old friend before police come knocking on his door, having finally found him. But in those few days since the wreck, he had entered a strange new plane of invincibility. And in his disappearance, a sort of escape. He became invisible to his world and sort of wandered through it like a living ghost, no longer burdened or afraid of anything. (In one scene he closes his eyes while driving on the interstate and allows the car to veer as it may while he presses the accelerator to the floor). The film does an amazing job of taking demonstrating that abstract for the viewer, to see the world as Klein does before and after the crash.

While he manages to transcend the limitations of his previous life, it’s something that his wife and others around him don’t seem to understand. And the local news crews that constantly hound him, parade him as the 6 o’clock headline hero. John Turtorro plays Bill Perlman, a psychiatrist hired by the airline to console the survivors, but the ones he can’t seem to connect with are Max and the seriously depressed Carla Rodrigo (Rosie Perez, earning a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for this role), who blames herself for her infant’s death when the plane crashed. Max, who views most everyone around him reacting to the crash (the lawyer, the media, Carla’s husband, etc.) as selfish and instead, he befriends Carla and helps her with her emotional recovery, trying to reveal to her the same change he had undergone: that she has to start letting go. Her child’s death isn’t something she can change, nor should she blame herself for.

As Max and Carla become closer friends, he draws further away from his wife, Laura (Isabella Rossellini) who doesn’t understand the lasting personality change in her husband, and further becomes frustrated when he tells her that she didn’t really understand what he had gone through when they crashed, nor that she ever could. How could he go back to what he had escaped, or what would it take for her to reach that unbound reality, too, especially where it took drastic means to transform Klein.

(The video clip above is a fan video montage using scenes from Fearless. Song: “Excess” by Tricky.)

Fiberglass Underdogs: North Shore

The creators of the 1987 cult surf adventure, North Shore, deserve a lot of credit. Granted, it manages to pack several cliches of the sports movie genre into the span of 96 minutes: the triumph of an underdog, the Romeo and Juliet-inspired romance, and the preserved spirituality of a sport that’s become a billion-dollar industry. But, the filmmakers managed to successfully avoid the heavy Hollywood hand that, for example, movies like Thrashin’ and Under the Boardwalk suffered from. Having come out around the same time as North Shore, they were skate and surf movies that were obviously steered by studio executives and filmmakers who had no real concept of the then-modern teenager or their sport, eventually creating pure caricatures from browsing pictures in top-shelf sports magazines and reading slang dictionaries.

North Shore, on the other hand, albeit in dated fashion, still managed to maintain a certain respectability. The movie introduced relatively unknown actors (many of whom could surf, which eliminated the need for too many stunt doubles). Major supporting roles were filled by some of the best professional surfers of the decade like big wave superstar Laird Hamilton, Gerry Lopez, and Mark Occhilupo, while guys like Shaun Thompson, Corky Carroll, and the late Mark Foo showed up in cameos. There was nothing particularly hands-off kind of luxurious about the settings or the characters. And most importantly, the filmmakers remembered to keep surfing the top priority, emphasizing this with some gorgeous 35 mm surfing footage for a documentary effect which would later be blatantly duplicated in director John Stockwell’s mediocre surfer girl drama, Blue Crush. When the movie surfaced on cable movie channels in the past, it had sometimes been accompanied by a short behind-the-scenes commentary with director William Phelps (who co-wrote this movie with Randal Kleiser and Tim McCanlies), and it focused primarily on the cinematography, which may seem rare, considering that behind-the-scenes shorts are usually edited to be used as promos and extended trailers.

Plus, like the 80s cult favorites, Real Genius and White Water Summer, North Shore was one of those rare 80s movies whose cult appeal partly stemmed from a fairly decent soundtrack (by 1980s standards, of course!), this one featuring tracks by Australian performers such as Gangajang’s excellent and unofficial national anthem, “Sounds of Then (This is Australia).”

Despite corny dialog and again, rampant cliches, the film has maintained a strong cult following over the years, which of course, helped the transition to DVD in early 2007, marking the 20th anniversary of the movie. Thankfully, too, it’s not a bare bones one, although the drawback is a somewhat excessively saccharine commentary about how it was just about everyone’s dream just to appear not just in a surf movie, but in this movie.

The leading role of Rick Kane was played by Matt Adler. Like most of the actors in this film, he kicked around as a supporting character of B-movies for years, though John Philbin may have been the more visible among the professional cast. Ironically or not, Adler would kind of repeat the Kane model when played a timid high school swimmer in the 1990 movie, Diving In. (By the mid 90s, Adler would take blink-and-you-miss-him roles in an array of idiotic and convoluted indie dramedies like Quiet Days in Hollywood and Hollywood Palms before fading out altogether with just a footpath of ADR Loop credits every now and again).

But here, he’s just Rick Kane, a surfer fresh from the wave tanks of Arizona. Just out of high school, he plans to take his meager contest winnings (well… maybe meager by today’s financial standards) and heads to Hawaii for the summer. His mother pleads that he consider his future, since he’s been offered a scholarship to an art school in New York City. “I hear the East River’s got some pretty hot waves,” he jokes, viewing the trip as an imperative, not only as a much needed break from 12 consecutive years of schooling, but also to learn whether he has any sort of talent for surfing before it’s too late.

Kane is ambitious, inspired by his idol, Lance Burkhart (Laird Hamilton) who makes fine bank surfing professionally. But Kane is also young, naive, and extremely cocky. For someone accustomed to surfing ripples in a wave tank, he can’t just expect to float a twin fin shortboard into some of North Shore’s most intense surf with any sort of ease.

Rick gets no warm welcome when he arrives, anyway. The guy he intends to stay with flakes on the invitation. All but his board is stolen at the beach by an obnoxious local with no tolerance for haoles (tourists). And the big kicker: he even finds out his surfing idol, Lance Burkhart, is a major asshole. Uncertain what to do at this point, having travelled 4,000 miles only to wind up broke and stranded, things start to turnaround when he meets goofy, Pidjen-speaking surfboard shaper, Turtle (played wonderfully by scene-stealing John Philbin who now runs a surf school on the North Shore alongside his acting career) who tries to explain to Rick the social customs of the legendary surf destination (“[He works] only when the surf is bad… cause when the surf is good, no one works!”). And Turtle introduces Rick to the surfboard company owner, Chandler (Gregory Harrison), who becomes his soul-surfing mentor when Rick agrees to redesign his company logo in exchange for a place to stay.

A great feature of this film is that as Chandler mentors Rick on surfing, the viewers are given a speed course on the mechanics of board shaping and the anatomy of the beach, a rare piece of Surfing Appreciation 101 for a fictional surf film. Amidst the obligatory shaping of the underdog and inspiring that drive away from commercial to a more spiritual fondness for the sport even (when he’s registered to surf in the annual Pipeline contest) is the sub-plot of Rick falling in love with the lovely local girl, Kiani (Nia Peeples), and is constantly met with intimidating opposition from the overly-protective males in her family (her uncle is played by pro-surfer Gerry Lopez).

The movie was left open for a sequel and Rick Kane assures his friends, Turtle and Kiani, “Hey, I’ll be back!” but the idea was nixed due to poor ratings. That can be an awkward way to leave things off… unless it became a reunion film at this point.

Pressed Against the Looking Glass: Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading arrived in theaters this month with tremendous skepticism. Could Joel and Ethan Coen follow with another film to match their 2007 Best Picture adaptation, No Country for Old Men? One review immediately suggested that the writing and directing team made their first mistake by reverting back to their “default” genre: comedy.

The Coen brothers didn’t fail audiences with reversion to a comfortable genre, one in which, with their trademark fashioning of humorously idiosyncratic settings and characters has already proven successful. Were critics going to suggest that, because of the strength of No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers should basically make the same movie again. That is… until of course, getting backlash from critics that they’re being redundant? (The brothers alternated between penning the scripts for this and No Country. This is their first original screenplay since their 1990 film, Miller’s Crossing).

More specifically, the Coen brothers return to write and direct a black comedy. And it’s always been a suitable genre, considering their choice of subjects – the persistent theme of Karma’s watchful eye. Although, comedies or not, it is common in most all of their films. In fact, Burn After Reading is like a funny take on Stanley Kubrick’s classic noir, The Killing (and maybe the draw on classic noir was a conscious one, given the retro style of the promotional materials). There is a dramatic shortage of redeeming characters on screen, and since this is a mainstream American production, their fate is pretty clear.

Set in Washington, DC (some of the movie was filmed in New York, and most in Brooklyn Heights, although there are several apparent scenes shot around the Georgetown University neighborhood), the film opens with the demotion of a high-strung, aging CIA Agent (John Malkovich, for whom the part was initially written for) who struggles to resist the fact that basically, in both professional and personal life, he is now irrelevant. His wife (played emotionally elusively by Tilda Swinton), impatient with her husband’s transition to shiftless layabout, weighs divorce. Her lawyer suggests that, while the two should try to reconcile, a picture of his future financial prospects should be a relevant factor in the ultimate decision. Crass as it may sound, marriage seems like a mere necessity for security, considering she’s having an affair with their friend’s husband (George Clooney) who himself is a hobbiest of womanizing.

The bone to pick about the movie is really execution. The initial unraveling of the tale begins with what feels like a disconnected vignette, that for a little too long, remains unexplained in its relevance to the rest of this narrative playing out among the vile, upper class narcissists (although we find no class exception to anyone’s self-involvement).

So begins a scene in which a dim-witted, self-conscious fitness gym employee (Frances McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife) is being consulted by a doctor about various nip-and-tuck procedures to hide some of her aging body. It is, she claims, necessary to her job and her ticket out of the single life. Denied by her insurance company coverage for cosmetic surgery, her silver lining comes along when her dufus Hardbodies coworker (Brad Pitt, perhaps in his loosest form for a change) thinks a CD discovered at the gym has some valuable top secret information. And after a little digging, they figure out who it belongs to and so begins a blackmail scheme that was trouble from the start. Despite the initial disconnect between the stories, eventually linked by the discovery of that CD, it is clear that the first part was just much too serious. This pair of idiotic, scheming Hardbodies coworkers are just the kind of odd-ball comic relief the audience needs. It’s this kind of idiocy and assumptions, fueled by unrelenting personal desire, that feeds comedies like these (see Guy Ritchies gangster follies, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch).

But of course, the Coen Brothers, even in comedy, never offer pure cartoonish humor. There is violence and there are body counts. And this is no different, and to a more graphic extent this time around. These handful of characters are eventually confined to a narrower playground, and once they are, their interaction becomes a concentration of self-destruction that barely poses much lasting impact on the rest of the world when all is said and done, which makes things in the end seem even more alienated because, the self-involvement lasts beyond just these characters that seek our attention. The more disturbing feeling, however, springs from a sense that the nihilism is far from fiction.

Burn After Reading is a sharp look at stupidity. Despite some initial poor reviews, Coen brother fans shouldn’t be too disappointed with the results. It is probably not likely to gain the cult following of their earlier comedies like Raising Arizona, O! Brother Where Art Thou? or The Big Lebowski, but it’s probably also not likely to fall into complete obscurity like Intolerable Cruelty).

Closing this review with a nugget of trivia: the contraption that Clooney’s character builds in his basement was inspired by both an invention of a key grip and something out of the Museum of Sex in New York City.

Garbage Gets Me Hot: Student Bodies

A few weeks ago, it popped up in the Netflix library search: Student Bodies, something so hilarious, yet so obscenely low-budget and obscure (and perfect for those past-midnight cable horror marathons that never run anymore), it’s transition to modern movie technology seemed unlikely.Don’t toy with a girl’s emotions!

But indeed, it was finally released to DVD in June.

See, long before the one-laugh sequels of the Scary Movie franchise, well-known screenwriter Mickey Rose, who had written for several popular sitcoms such as Happy Days and All in the Family as well as better Woody Allen films, co-directed with Michael Ritchie (who also directed the Fletch movies and the Bad News Bears, among other things) this 1981 horror parody that is first introduced as basically a spoof of any memorable horror movie at the time like Halloween, Prom Night, and When a Stranger Calls, but soon just becomes a free for-all for screwball humor that wavers between being hilarious trash and disturbingly weird.

The plot is simple: the promiscuous students of Lamab High School are winding up dead and have raging hormones to blame. Says one innocent young man: “I can’t help it, mechanical bulls get me hot!” The prime suspect is Toby (Kristen Riter), the skittish virgin in hideous polyester (“I didn’t do it, I never do it!”). But the girl is intent on proving her innocence by finding out the real identity of mysterious Breather, who kindly sets up the list of potential suspects for the viewer:

“Hello, it’s me, The Breather. You’re probably wonder who I am. Who could I be? Could I be the innocent looking Toby? Would you trust a girl who looked like Prince Valiant in a plum sweater? Maybe I’m Dr. Sigmund; a man who was once arrested for corrupting the morals of a hooker. Then there’s Malvert; with an I.Q. of a handball and the personality of a parking meter: violated! Could I be the principal Mr. Peters; a man who keeps cheese in his underwear to attract mice? Let’s not Ms. Leclair; English teacher by day and English teacher by night. Ah, Miss Mumsley; She’s eats 12 prunes a day and nothing happens. Nurse Krud and Ms. Van Dyke; what’s in a name? Everything! And then there Dumpkin; a man who sleeps with nuts in between horsehead bookends.”

Despite the obscurity of almost the entire cast, who would have few other film credits, if any, Richard Belzer surprisingly supplied the voice of the mysterious Breather, a serial killer with a contempt for sexually active teenagers and an interesting foray of weapons: paper clips, belt sanding cases, and even eggplants. Every time someone or something (a fly) is killed, the body count flashes on screen, making this just about the easiest damned murder mystery to solve! Well… maybe if it was one that adhered to any sort of logic. But even the Breather gets stupidly irreverent, calling and informing the investigative team of various school administrators and teachers where he will strike next.

Of course some of the free-for-all approach has been criticized as a drawback when it comes to coming up with a reasonable ending. This one seems to run out of steam by the last five minutes in a wash of circus-like surrealism. It becomes so spoof-heavy as humor trumps any real desire to follow a sensible, solvable mystery. But then again, the piss-your-pants stupid nonsense style is the movie’s best features! Who gives a damn whether the mystery in the end makes any sense when the killer on the loose is attacking people with typing team trophies?!

Nonetheless, the film has finally achieved the transition to modern format, but despite the enthusiasm of the cult comedy’s fans, there is relatively little background available on the film. Even with the notoriety of its writers, co-directors, and actor Richard Belzer), it was released as a bare-bones DVD.

Damnit! They have toyed with the girl’s emotions!

Strange New World – Wristcutters: A Love Story

“Miracles only happen when they don’t matter.”

The hook of Wristcutters: A Love Story, adapted from Etgar Keret’s short story, “Kneller’s Happy Campers” is most certainly its premise. A contribution to the surrealistic road trip genre, it centers on an entirely different afterlife. The place where people exist after they “off themselves.” Our main character, somewhat, is Zia (Patrick Fugit). He was once a happy man, until somehow the relationship with his beautiful blond girlfriend, Desiree ended. And that’s when Zia decides to kill himself.

Welcome to this strange kind of post-suicidal universe, it looks to have been shot along the desert-lined highways out West, it looks as though these are perfectly regular locations, but given the coloring (often bleached or grayed) and appearance of the surroundings, there is something hopelessly depressing. Allowed closer inspection, it is clearly a depleted version of the world they’d once known. (Says the lead character, Zia: “I thought about suicide again, but I’m afraid I’ll just wind up someplace worse than this.”) Buildings are mostly junked abandons. People (who’s method of suicide is sometimes apparent) can’t even smile. The female companion on this roadtrip, Mikal is on a mission to find the “leaders” and explain that her arrival was an accident: “Are you joking? Do you guys like it here? Who the hell likes being stuck in a place where you can’t even smile? It’s hot as balls, everybody’s an asshole. I just wanna go home. ” There’s elements of the former world as well, such as the enforcement of vandalism laws. Or having to get a job and pay rent. It’s also kind of futuristic (in that post-apocalyptic sense) and this universe even has it’s charms and magic, so it’s not completely undesirable. People are reminded of suicide here, their own and others, but do they ever regret it? The characters simple seem so matter-of-fact about it’s occurrence.

When Zia runs into a familiar face (don’t it just seem like everyone is committing suicide after a while… time to revive Big Fun!), he learns that Desiree, distraught over her boyfriend’s death, killed herself too, and that she is somewhere to be found in his world now. He solicits the companionship of his friend, Eugene (Shea Whigham, a Florida doing a good job playing a Russian), a guy who’s whole immediately family wound up there with him, and Eugene, who has the car, agrees to embark “Eastish” in search of this girl. He is somewhat his wisdom, somewhat his source of confusion, especially with Eugene’s philosophies tied to his nature of trying to always be the Man’s man.

As the road trip genre obligates, they’re journey intersects with a lot of strange characters and one more for the trip: Mikhal (Shannyn Sossamon), the one who claims she got there by accident and is hitchhiking her way around in search of the leaders to explain that it was a mistake, something that might convince the reader they’re about to head into something more like liabilities as a result of typos (Brazil). Croatian writer and director Goran Dukic, who’s film credits mostly include shorts, did a lot of adding to Keret’s short story. Like the black hole in the car, for example, to emphasize the surrealism of the after-life, though larger ambitions were restricted by the shooting budget and an inflexible 30-day shooting schedule at 17 locations. And while Dukic was working with several well known actors, including Will Arnett who seems like he’d be totally out of his expected element if this weren’t black comedy, Patrick Fugit, John Hawkes, and Tom Waits, it’s funny to hear what inspired his cast selection: he really thought they were good in movies that pretty much everyone has seen. And Tom Waits? “I’d been listening to him since I was a little kid.” Which might hint that they worked for incredibly little money to appear in this movie, which seems inevitable for a movie with such intense low-budget quirk.

Thankfully, despite that low-budget quirk, it’s spared the typical “quirky indie” paint with childish block lettering and bold colors and excessive irony. Instead, Wristcutters is fairly steady black comedy (fairly stead because there’s this weird experiment involving Will Arnett’s guru-type character) that brings it closer to surreal road trip movies (a mishmash of activity and points of focus) and it even has a happy ending. Add to that a soundtrack dominated by rock singers who had committed suicide at one time, and the modern gypsy-punk of Golgol Bordello (the lead singer of which, Eugene Hutz, is modeled upon for the character, Eugene), the movie rarely seeks convention and for that reason, can take it’s viewers just about anyone it wants in this strange new world.