Reviews

THE WATERMELON is a small-budgeted comedy-drama full of characters who range from flaky to downright insane. Our hero, Achilles, is stewing at home in clouds of pot smoke following a nasty divorce. His estranged stepfather dies and leaves him a trailer that his step-sister had painted like a watermelon. The presence of the colorful trailer next to his house draws a succession of oddballs into his life, most consequentially a homeless woman fleeing her own bad relationship, and the step-sister returning to reclaim her handiwork.

The only produced screenplay by the late San Diego-based experimental fiction writer Michael Hemmingson, THE WATERMELON keeps the viewer involved, waiting to see what strange things the strange personalities will do next. (Hemmingson claims in the DVD commentary that some of the characters and even some of the events were directly inspired by real life.) The use of ancient Greek names for the dramatis personae was apparently just for the hell of it; there's not much in the way of mythical resonances in the story. The generally unknown (to most of us) performers bring a blank-slate quality to the film, and they're good enough one wonders why there aren't seen more frequently in film and television nowadays.(Hemmingson's credited cameo as "Waiter" apparently is on the cutting-room floor.)

The comedy is of the sort that provokes constant smiles rather than continual guffawing-- not quite Bill Forsyth-level, but almost. If you have a taste for that sort of humor, track this one down and check it out.

THE FIRST MAN spends much time spinning its wheels, with a plot vaguely hinted at occasionally: humanoid extraterrestrials have crashed to Earth, and government agents are hunting some down while keeping another in a lab to study. Apparently the lab specimen is so handsome that he has irresistible power over human females (in real life, it's usually the human males who misplace their rationality when an attractive member of the opposite sex walks in.)

A lot of the time we viewers are just hanging around with the characters; in the lab, roaming around Los Angeles, at the breakfast table, and, in a climactic sequence, at a Halloween party. The civilian characters include a just pre-stardom Heather Graham as a newlywed; in one scene she tells a joke that would get her "canceled" these days. Other recognizable faces (given the film's microbudget look, perhaps all of the money went to hiring them) include Roxana Zal and Lesley Ann Warren.

The arty, oblique fashion in which the minimal story gets adumbrated (with blackouts in between scenes a la STRANGER THAN PARADISE) leads me to wonder if the art-film approach was planned from the beginning, or eventually adopted as an expedient due to the lack of budget for special effects. Thematically, writer/director Danny Kuchuck obviously has the old Philip K. Dick theme of "How can one tell what is really human?" (as in "Impostor" and DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?) in mind, but does nothing with the idea.

Bottom line: I can see why this was just included as a Blu-Ray extra (on the Vinegar Syndrome BLUE VENGEANCE disc) and not given its own release. On the plus side, suburban LA looks pretty.

FRIED SHOES COOKED DIAMONDS documents a gathering of Beat Generation figures (Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Amiri Baraka, and more), plus some non-Beats such as Meredith Monk and Miguel Pinero, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. They give readings to audiences, converse with each other, and Ginsberg performs a couple of songs. They leave campus for an anti-nuclear protest at Rocky Flats, where they read more poetry.

Naturally, this documentary won't be of much importance to you if you aren't interested in any of the figures involved. If you are a Beat Generation fan, you will enjoy the chance to watch them interact with each other, and hear their spoken-word performances. Conversations revolve around the expected topics, such as literary composition and politics. The politics are not monolithic, ranging from Baraka's opposition to capitalism to Burroughs's opposition to Marxism. Best of all is hearing the poetry performed aloud, really the way it was meant to be experienced, rather than just eyeballed on a page. Unfortunately, most of the Beats are no longer around to give readings, so we only have recordings and films like this to give us the full impact.

FRIED SHOES COOKED DIAMONDS is nothing like a comprehensive overview of the movement; it is a documentation of a particular moment in time, when the writers were no longer young scandalizers but were beginning to find their niche in academia, and attract young followers of their own. It's under an hour, and hard to find as of this writing (I saw it on an old Mystic Fire Video VHS), but where else are you going to get to see Anne Waldman in a bikini?

PERDITA DURANGO came late in the 1990s glut of violent, darkly comic couples-on-the-run road movies which was initiated by David Lynch's WILD AT HEART. A few minor characters from WILD AT HEART appear in PERDITA DURANGO, but director Alex de la Iglesia seems to have modeled his film not on Lynch's lyrical surrealism, but on the ham-fisted satire of Oliver Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS (or, even worse, Gregg Araki's THE DOOM GENERATION). (I also saw the Barry Gifford novella this was based on as a let-down from Gifford's original source novel for WILD AT HEART; as the novella also relied on mindless shock value, PERDITA does seem to have captured its spirit well.)

Romeo (Javier Bardem) and Perdita (Rosie Perez) are the "charismatic" heroes of the film, smuggling human fetuses and kidnapping a teenage American couple for a voodoo sacrifice. Iglesia depicts the teens in broadly caricatured fashion, and the viewer apparently is supposed to find their abuse at the hands of the older couple "funny". I don't object to black comedy per se, but that subgenre usually deals with sudden death (as in the man accidentally getting his head blown off in the backseat in PULP FICTION), while here the filmmakers expect us to be "amused" at prolonged suffering. Aimee Graham, playing the female half of the teen couple, strives to make her character more human and sympathetic, but it's not something the filmmakers will let her get away with. The impression given is that we are to prefer the south-of-the-border couple's uninhibited, self-destructive lifestyle over the American couple's suburban blandness-- Romeo and Perdita are more "authentic", I guess. (Do many artists still have that old Holden Caulfield worldview?) The only bit that really amused me is that both the killers and the suburbanites are Herb Alpert fans-- if that's "satire", though, I don't see the point.

The whole Starkweather/Fugate-derived violent road movie genre has been squeezed dry for at least a decade now. There have been great movies with amoral/psychopathic protagonists before (textbook example: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), but PERDITA just isn't one of them.

This little-seen (at least in the United States) experimental film is a truly astonishing experience. I saw it in a film class, the likely place most people will see it, and at first I wondered if I was dreaming or hallucinating. I looked around at the other students in the class to see if they had similarly bewildered reactions.

This short film appropriates a domestic scene from the classic film of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and plays around with it, like a hip-hop DJ manipulating a record on a turntable. A character begins to say something, and that brief second of footage repeats rapidly, so the character seems to twitch and stutter mechanically. The film continually halts and repeats infinitesimal instants.

Ignore whatever pretensions about "deconstruction" and the like the filmmakers have dressed "Passage" up in and, if you get the chance to watch it, just cherish how totally bizarre it is. I wish it was more readily available on video or DVD.

This documentary focuses on the state of anarchism in America during the early 1980s, with brief looks at the history of anarchist movements. The narration and several of the interviewees imply that anarchism is deeply rooted in American character and tradition, more so than other countries. Students of anarchism will enjoy the interviews with prominent anarchist writers like Murray Bookchin and Karl Hess. Given the hostile split in anarchism between "right" (free-market) and "left" (socialist) anarchists, each claiming that the other faction doesn't deserve to be called "anarchist," it is gratifying to see this documentary treating both philosophies as equally valid, and indeed not so far off from each other. Many anarchists of both "right" and "left" persuasions will be shocked to hear Hess (a former speechwriter for Barry Goldwater!) favorably compare Emma Goldman with Ayn Rand, or hear him claim that anarchism embodies what he had always thought the Republican Party stood for.

In addition to interviews and photographic history, we see footage of demonstrations, worker-owned businesses, and Thoreauvian independent farms. The punk-rock scene is represented by the Dead Kennedys, who give an interview and perform. We even see a Libertarian Party convention (with special guest Murray Bookchin), even though the official Party position has always maintained that government should be minimized, not eliminated.

Both newcomers and those with an already developed interest in the subject will enjoy this film, which unfortunately is hard to find nowadays. I was rather bemused at the ending, however, when a caption reveals that this rather sympathetic portrait of anti-government ideas was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, _a government agency_. I'm getting a headache...

Godard made this film during his ultra-loopy "Marxist polemics" period, although before he stopped being so individualistic as to credit himself, rather than a "collective," as the director. It is a rare English-language Godard film, made in the UK. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL alternates documentary scenes of the Rolling Stones developing and rehearsing the title track (a chilling examination of the seductiveness of evil behavior, and one of the Stones's best songs) with what are basically political skits, plus quick bits showing characters spray-painting political slogans on various surfaces, always cutting away before the character finishes the message.

The Stones scenes in themselves make the film worth seeing (for fans of the song, at least). The process of creating and refining an instantly classic song makes for truly fascinating viewing for those interested in making music and seeing how a song evolves. The viewer initially sees Mick Jagger demonstrating the song on acoustic guitar for the other band members. Gradually (in between political interruptions!), the band fleshes out the song's arrangement, adding keyboards, electric guitar, and multiple layers of percussion, developing this work into the rumbling tempest Stones fans know and love. At one point famous Stones hangers-on Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull appear to help with the "whoo-whoo" backing vocals. Near the end, Godard himself materializes to pass out cigarettes to the band members, an oddly post-coital gesture.

The film's other scenes? Amusingly absurd at times, the skits usually involve the characters reading various texts for the viewer. Black militants read from Eldridge Cleaver and the like, while the owner of a porno shop reads from what sounds like Nazi texts, while customers present their selections to him, give a Nazi salute, take their purchase and leave. (The equation of pornography with National Socialism here must have warmed Andrea Dworkin's heart.) The black militant scenes feel rather disturbing, as the viewer sees white women in white gowns led at gunpoint into a junkyard, underscored by Cleaver's thoughts on white women. Later the viewer sees the bloodied corpses of a couple of the women, and the film ends with a dead white woman draped over a crane adorned with red and black flags. Godard seems to be endorsing the vengeful Leftist by-any-means-necessary morality, the kind of thing the Stones's song warns against.

The completed version of "Sympathy of the Devil" plays under the film's ending; allegedly Godard was incensed by the producers' inserting the finished song here. Godard probably wanted the rehearsal scenes to symbolize the development of "the revolution" ("you'll get yours, bourgeoisie!"), and, since "the revolution" hadn't come yet, using the _complete_ song would ruin the parallel. That must also be why the vandals never get to complete their spray-painted slogans. I would be quite interested to see ONE PLUS ONE, Godard's director's cut of this film.

Godard and Gorin's collaboration LETTER TO JANE, a follow-up to their relatively more conventional TOUT VA BIEN (1972), is pretty much impossible to see these days, except in film school. Unsurprisingly, there's not much demand for it.

The viewer sees a series of still pictures, accompanied by narration by Godard and Gorin in heavily-accented English. The photo that keeps returning to view is one of Jane Fonda listening to Viet Cong members during her infamous visit to Hanoi. Fonda was the star of TOUT VA BIEN, and Godard and Gorin predictably criticize her for not being "radical" _enough_ in her activism-- the opposite of what the many haters of "Hanoi Jane" say. G & G analyze that and other photos of Fonda and other people, using trendy French theories of semiotics.

Ironically, the two philosophers criticize Fonda's thoughtful facade as reinforcing evil Cartesian thinking-centered philosophy-- all the while speaking of subjects they themselves _thought_ about a lot, and presenting this analysis as important. Being Maoists, of course, they want to validate revolutionary _action_.

If you're interested in conceptual art, like I, you will probably appreciate LETTER TO JANE, even if you disagree with the politics. Others will never see it, anyway. A novel format-- philosophizing-over-still-pictures is certainly unique in film history. However, as with TIMECODE, I wouldn't want every film to be like this-- especially with such dubious politics.

The narration itself is also quite amusing, for those who find bad English funny.

This film, directed by New World Pictures alumnus Jonathan Kaplan and starring cult favorite Aimee Graham, is part of the "Rebel Highway" series of remakes of 1950s juvenile-delinquent films.

For what was basically a chance for the filmmakers to have fun, _Reform School Girl_ is quite watchable. There are the allusions to McCarthyism characteristic of the "Rebel Highway" series (and a well-done general 50s ambiance), and the usual array of interesting types we meet in women-in-prison films. This one is nowhere near as graphic as a typical entry in that genre, but there is one lesbian love scene that is strikingly filmed and acted, suprisingly graphic for such young-looking actresses, and really kind of a tonal shift from the rest of the film. Unfortunately, the film never really resolves the lesbian relationship.

The only time I really cringed was the scene where Donna (Aimee Graham) started dancing and singing with the mop, and the camera began moving around and getting in the faces of the onlookers. This was a totally ridiculous scene (but I guess it's hard to pad these things out to 80 minutes).

Graham is stellar in the title role, a girl who has had to deal with abuse and, while in reform school, awakens to more positive sexual experiences. I really wish Hollywood would take more notice of her.

This documentary on the famed experimental writer, directed by Klaus (DECODER) Maeck, is of value mostly to fans, although it may kindle some interest in the uninitiated. Nowhere near as in-depth as Howard Brookner's BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE, the film focuses on interviews with Burroughs and scenes of him giving public readings, with a concentration on THE WESTERN LANDS. For me, the most memorable bit was Burroughs talking about evolution and space travel. Could have been longer and have more extensive info (I assume Maeck was on a budget), but fans will not really complain.