Directory of World Cinema: American Independent (IB - Directory of World Cinema)

INDEPENDENT

AMERICA

DIRECTORY OF

WORLD

CINEMA

EDITED BY JOHN BERRA

Volume 2

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AMERICAN INDEPENDENT

Edited by John Berra

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Directory of World Cinema

First Published in the UK in 2010 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2010 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2010 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Publisher: May Yao Publishing Assistant: Melanie Marshall Cover photo: Half Nelson, Journeyman Pictures. Cover Design: Holly Rose Copy Editor: Heather Owen Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971 Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X Directory of World Cinema: American Independent ISBN 978-1-84150-368-4 Directory of World Cinema: American Independent eISBN 978-1-84150-385-1 Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.

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Japan

ONTENT

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AMERICAN INDEPENDENT Acknowledgements

5

Introduction by the Editor

6

Film of the Year The Hurt Locker

8

Familial Dysfunction Essay Reviews

162

180

Industry Spotlight Interviews with Adam Green and Wayne Kramer

12

Narrative Disorder Essay Reviews

198

Cultural Crossover John Waters and Baltimore

24

On the Road Essay Reviews

28

Queer Cinema Essay Reviews

218

Scoring Cinema Mulholland Dr. Directors Stuart Gordon Charlie Kaufman David Lynch

32

Rural Americana Essay Reviews

240

42

Slackers Essay Reviews

258

African-American Cinema Essay Reviews

62

The Suburbs Essay Reviews

276

The American Nightmare Essay Reviews

84

Underground USA Essay Reviews

296

Chemical World Essay Reviews

Recommended Reading

316

American Cinema Online

319

Test Your Knowledge

322

Notes on Contributors

325

Crime Essay Reviews

104

Documentary Essay Reviews

126

Exploitation USA Essay Reviews

144

CKNOWLEDGENT

Directory of World Cinema

This first edition of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent is the result of the commitment of a range of dedicated contributors from the fields of academia and film journalism, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to this volume. Although the backgrounds and approaches of the writers are quite diverse, their collective passion for the project has yielded an analysis of American Independent Cinema that is both informed and invigorating. The depth and scope of the entire Directory of World Cinema project is a credit to the dedication of Intellect with regards to the field of Film Studies, and I would like to thank Masoud Yazdani, May Yao, Sam King, Melanie Marshall and Jennifer Schivas for their continued support throughout what has been an immensely rewarding process. I would also like to extend special thanks to Dr. Yannis Tzioumakis of Liverpool John Moores University, who organized the American Independent Cinema: Past, Present, Future conference in May, 2009. This was an especially interesting event which encouraged a wide range of approaches towards the subject of American Independent Cinema and enabled me to make contact with a number of the contributors who feature in this volume; the essays concerning the films of Jon Jost, Charlie Kaufman and John Waters, and also the entire section devoted to the Suburb film, arose from papers delivered at, and debate generated by, the conference. I also greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss the rich history and ongoing cultural and industrial evolution of American Independent Cinema at such a crucial juncture in the development of this volume. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to my fellow contributors to Electric Sheep magazine for taking on reviews and essays alongside other commitments, and Adam Green and Wayne Kramer, two film-makers who took time out of their busy schedules to candidly discuss their work and their navigation of the industrial networks of the American independent sector.

John Berra

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INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR

The pressing – and perplexing – question of what exactly constitutes an ‘American independent film’ is integral to any account of this unique form of national cinema; even if such studies somehow manage to avoid addressing the question directly, they ultimately offer their answer through the films and directors which they choose to include or exclude, while arguments centred around ‘authorship’ or ‘independence of spirit’ lead to the grey area of corporate sponsorship and the suggestion that this sector is simply an offshoot of the Hollywood studios. As with other volumes in the Directory of World Cinema series, this entry does not aim to be a definitive guide to a particular form of cinema; rather, it covers the key genres and thematic concerns of a still-vital sector of cultural production, focusing on specific films and directors which exemplify American Independent Cinema at its most socially significant or aesthetically adventurous. While this may not yield a finite definition of the term ‘American independent cinema’, it certainly sketches a map of its unique industrial and cultural networks, revealing a cinema that balances art with exploitation and celebrates the conventions of genre whilst frequently defying them. At the time of writing, media commentary suggests that American independent cinema is in a state of emergency, struggling to sustain itself due to economic crisis; however, reports of such industrial issues have referred not to genuine independents, but to the Hollywood sub-divisions which were established to appeal to the niche audiences which turned Steven Soderbergh’s provocative talk-piece sex, lies and videotape (1989) into a surprise hit and would later exhibit such enthusiasm for Pulp Fiction (1994) that Quentin Tarantino’s crime epic grossed over $100 million and became the first ‘independent blockbuster’ – arguably a contradiction in terms, but one which the studio system could not afford to ignore. While these boutique operations have arguably nurtured a number of unique film-makers since the mid-Nineties (David O’Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alexander Payne), whilst also investing in their forerunners (Robert Altman, the Coen Brothers, Jim Jarmusch), their aggressive attempt to industrialize independence has ultimately ensured market saturation, critical cynicism and audience apathy. This retreat from the speciality market by the Hollywood majors has been efficiently executed: Warner Independent and Picturehouse have been closed down, while Miramax and Paramount Vantage have been severely downsized, despite delivering such cost-efficient critical and commercial successes as No Country for Old Men (2007) and There Will Be Blood (2007). However, the dependence on prestige to attract audiences to ‘quality’ product has entailed expensive awards campaigns, promotional exercises that have brought the overall investment in such titles to such a level that the industrial accolades have been undermined by eroding profit margins. However, on the margins of the mainstream, American independent cinema remains a vital force, with enterprising directors overcoming budgetary restrictions to deliver films that are timely and socially relevant, emphasizing characters

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over caricatures and psychology over spectacle: both Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River (2008) and Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre (2009) tackle the topic of immigration within the confines of the road movie and succeed in making their economically-disadvantaged protagonists fully-formed moral constructs rather than political mouthpieces, thereby engaging their audiences on a humanist level that transcends genre trappings. Steven Soderbergh continues to surprise, if only to prove that he still can, alternating between the studio project The Informant! (2009) and the The Girlfriend Experience (2009); the latter film followed Soderbergh’s Bubble (2005) in aiming to establish new distribution avenues for independent cinema with The Girlfriend Experience being available as an Amazon Video on Demand rental title before its theatrical release. The subject of the American occupation of Iraq, which has been explored by a long line of well-meaning but under-performing studio productions, was finally dealt with in a sufficiently invigorating and incisive manner by Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2009), a taut warzone thriller that largely jettisoned political stance in favour of day-to-day minutiae with occasional bursts of life-threatening danger. The publication of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent finds the American independent sector coming full circle. 1999 was the year that the independent sensibility successfully penetrated the Hollywood mainstream; films such as Being John Malkovich, Magnolia and Three Kings utilized studio resources to fully realize the personal visions of their directors, while The Matrix became an international phenomenon by placing its ground-breaking ‘bullet-time’ effects within the philosophical realms of Immanuel Kant and Jean Baudrillard, and the microbudget The Blair Witch Project demonstrated the power of viral marketing, with an ingenious online advertising campaign, to reach blockbuster status. 2009 found Hollywood distancing itself from the independent sector, concentrating on youthorientated franchise films, while directors willing to work outside the studio system were able to make politically-engaging and emotionally-challenging projects, which resonated with audiences on the festival circuit and beyond. Of course, the ‘next Blair Witch’ finally emerged in the form of Paranormal Activity (2009), but Oren Peli’s debut feature is already being cited as a triumph of marketing strategy rather than individual quality, indicating that the American independent sector may be allowed some creative breathing room before the major studios seek to maximize its commercial potential through in-house development and Oscar acceptance. Regardless of its current industrial importance, the cultural diversity of American independent cinema is undeniable; from existential road movies, to uncompromising exploitation, to politicized documentary, to deconstructive genre cinema, to explorations of race and sexuality, to depictions of dysfunctional family units, this is a form of film-making which thrives on the intuitive instincts, and of film-makers who are unafraid to examine the social-political fabric of their nation. Many of those films and film-makers are featured in this first edition of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent, and the essays, reviews and interviews that follow are indicative of both the diversity of American independent cinema and the serious critical consideration which its output receives from cultural commentators; after all, this is a cinematic sector that is home to both Abel Ferrara and Jon Jost, and has been discussed in depth by both David Bordwell and Peter Biskind. If American independent cinema is synonymous with the open highways of Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970) and Two Lane Blacktop (1971), then it is hoped that this volume provides the appropriate route map to an unspecified destination.

John Berra

Introduction 7

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The Hurt Locker, First Light Productions/Kingsgatefilms.

FILM OF THE YEAR THE HURT LOCKER

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The Hurt Locker Studio/Distributor:

First Light Production Grosvenor Park Media Summit Entertainment Director:

Kathryn Bigelow Producers:

Kathryn Bigelow Mark Boal Nicolas Chartier Greg Shapiro Screenwriter:

Mark Boal Cinematographer:

Barry Ackroyd Art Director:

David Bryan Editors:

Chris Innis Bob Murawski Composers:

Marco Beltrami Buck Sanders Duration:

131 minutes Cast:

Jeremy Renner Anthony Mackie Brian Geraghty Guy Pearce Ralph Fiennes David Morse Evangeline Lilly Year:

2009

Synopsis Staff Sergeant William James, a soldier known for his ability to disarm bombs whilst under fire, joins his latest detail in Iraq and finds he is an unwelcome presence: his new teammates, Sergeant JT Sandborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge, are mourning the loss of their previous commanding officer, Sergeant Matt Thompson, whose zen-like approach to bomb disposal is immediately contrasted by James who, comparatively, behaves like a bull in the proverbial china shop. The three soldiers gradually bond during the remaining month of their tour, with Sandborn and Eldridge initially infuriated by James’ impulsive actions in dangerous situations, but eventually respecting his bravery and the efficiency with which he makes life-and-death decisions. They dismantle a bomb in a crowded public area, evade sniper fire in the open desert, and become involved with a local boy who makes a living selling pirate DVDs. James attends sessions with the base therapist, but prefers to relieve stress by playing violent video games and knocking back alcohol. Back home in the States, James is unable to fully adjust to family life, and returns for another tour of duty in Iraq.

Critique The post-9/11 era has led to the political engagement of filmmakers working both within the studio system and on its industrial margins, resulting in a series of films that examine the effect of American military presence on foreign soil, both in the field and back in the United States. Studio investment has led to such films as Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah (2007), Kimberley Peirce’s Stop-Loss (2008) and Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies (2008), while the independent sector has delivered David Ayer’s Harsh Times (2005), Brian De Palma’s Redacted (2007) and James. C. Strouse’s Grace is Gone (2007). Most of these projects have received critical respect for their worthy intentions but they have all failed commercially, with audiences unwilling to visit the multiplex to see a Hollywood version of the combat footage, or the grief of bereaved families that has become a fixture of the evening news. An Academy-Award-nominated performance by Tommy Lee Jones could not generate interest In the Valley of Elah, while a positive Sundance reception for the John Cusack vehicle Grace is Gone did not lead to wide distribution. Even the cross-generational star power of Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe could not carry the $70 million Body of Lies beyond a disappointing $39 million at the domestic box office. By comparison with those films, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker arrived ‘under the radar’, much like the insurgent IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that her mismatched team of soldiers must dismantle if they are to make it through their tour of duty largely unscathed. Unlike the aforementioned films, The Hurt Locker does not weigh in on the political arguments surrounding the Iraq conflict, rather it details the activities, both on duty and off duty, of three soldiers, paying particular attention to the character of Staff Sergeant William

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James, and examines the male psyche in situations of extreme physical and emotion duress. Rather than relying on a traditional three-act structure, and the mentor-student conflict that is characteristic of the American military movie, or the fatalistic relationships that provide the dramatic friction in Bigelow’s own work – such as the fetishistic cop thriller Blue Steel (1989) or her cyberpunk excursion Strange Days (1995) – The Hurt Locker opts for an episodic narrative, one that probably stems from screenwriter Mark Boal’s prior experience as a war correspondent. Bigelow’s film follows James, Sandborn and Eldridge from mission to mission, taking in their downtime and interaction with the local community. Almost as if she is working with the virtual-reality technology that was integral to Strange Days (video units which allow users to experience the extreme activities of others, in the first person), Bigelow takes to the mean streets of Iraq (the film was shot in Jordan) and captures much of the action from the perspective of her protagonists. Establishing overhead shots and sweeping pans are not part of the aesthetic; much of the suspense of The Hurt Locker stems from the unknown, the threat of enemy – or friendly – fire, which could be waiting on the next patrol, around the next corner, or beyond the next road block. The title refers to the place deep inside where these men put away their pain, frustration and fear, and Bigelow expertly conveys James’ ability to substitute emotion with adrenaline; an unlikely ‘hero’ and team leader, James (portrayed brilliantly by Jeremy Renner) is not a typical ‘action man’ and Renner’s somewhat pudgy features and short stature would usually find him lost amidst an ensemble in a Hollywood war epic rather than taking centre stage. Bigelow has, of course, made two earlier films about groups with charismatic leaders: the vampire thriller Near Dark (1987) with Lance Henriksen as the head of a makeshift family of bloodsuckers is an enduring cult item; and Point Break (1991), with Patrick Swayze as the sky-diving mastermind of a gang of bank robbers who mix crime with extreme sports, has become something of a pop-culture classic. However, while those films were undeniably exciting and technically proficient, they were firmly rooted within Hollywood genre and the folklore of the American outlaw, their moments of psychological insight occasionally at odds with the mythic sensibility applied to main protagonists. The Hurt Locker strips away such iconography to capture ordinary people undertaking day-to-day duties in a morally-questionable international conflict. The action sequences are excellent, but it is the small, telling, explorations of character that linger: a heavy after-hours drinking session which lurches uncomfortably from joking to a dark night of the soul; James opening a juice box for his fellow soldier whilst pinned down by sniper fire in the desert; Sandborn breaking down in the final days of the tour and demanding that James explain how he keeps his sanity amidst the chaos. The character of James is something of an enigma throughout, as perpetually in motion as Bigelow’s hand-held camera, but the final ten minutes find him back with his family in the United States and bring his seemingly-contradictory nature (careless yet caring, impetuous yet informed) into focus: in a suburban supermarket, James stares at an entire isle of cereal, defeated by having to make a decision about

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whether to go with the Cheerios or the Captain Crunch. Eventually selecting one of the varieties on offer, he meets up with his wife (Evangeline Lilly), who has already loaded up her trolley. James can only function amidst chaos, and can only make a decision when it is a life-or-death choice that has a definitive outcome. His love for his son is evident in the tender manner in which he cradles the child, but as he talks to his family about his experiences in the field in a manner of almost winsome longing: it is obvious that he would rather be somewhere else. In the closing moments, back in Iraq for another tour of duty, James strides towards yet another unexploded IED, calmly composed and clad in his metal suit. A loud blast of rock music plays on the soundtrack, and it is clear that this is how James sees himself when he is putting his life on the line on foreign soil: a rock star amongst soldiers, always aiming to top the previous ‘performance’. The opening quote states, ‘War is a drug’, and the final image of James back in the thick of the action brings that statement full circle. Incisive and invigorating, The Hurt Locker eschews politics for sheer experience, and the often inexplicable allure of mortal danger, and delivers an uncompromising depiction of the modern battlefield.

John Berra

Film of the Year 11

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Courtesy of AireScope Pictures.

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: INTERVIEWS WITH ADAM GREEN AND WAYNE KRAMER

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Interview with Adam Green A cursory perusal of two chapters in this volume (The American Nightmare and Exploitation USA) will reaffirm the assertion that horror is the genre of choice for first-time film-makers seeking to make a movie which will both the attract attention of a core audience, and deliver the required return on investment to endear them to financiers in the future. Unfortunately, since the low-budget horror heyday of the 1970s, which gave birth to such cult classics as Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), many independent horror films have felt more like cynical positioning exercises than exciting excursions into genre territory. Such comments, however, do not apply to Adam Green, whose swamp-bound slasher Hatchet delivers shocks and laughs in equal measure without ever descending into the sheer nastiness of the current ‘torture porn’ craze, or the postmodern parody of Scream (1996) and its imitators. Harry Knowles of Ain’t it Cool News.com insisted that, ‘Adam Green is the real deal – and Victor Crowley is a friggin’ fantastic horror icon waiting to be unleashed on y’all’, later including Hatchet in his Top Ten Films of 2007. A limited cinema release courtesy of independent distributor Anchor Bay yielded impressive returns on a per-screen basis, and Hatchet found more fans on DVD. Adam took time out of post-production work for his latest thriller Frozen (2010) to discuss his career to date, his influences, and the inherent challenges in making low-budget genre movies. You are most widely known as the director of the horror film Hatchet (2006). How did you develop an interest in the horror genre, and which film-makers have had a particular influence on you with regards to either their films or their working methods? Horror has always been my first love in terms of the films I choose to go out of my way to see. When I was just 7 years old, my older brother showed me Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), The Thing (1982) and Halloween (1978). It was love at first sight. I was not so much scared by them as I was challenged to figure out how they pulled off their effects, and also inspired by how ‘cool’ the villains were. I was only 8 years old when I first invented Victor Crowley, so in many ways Hatchet was over 20 years in the making. In terms of film-makers who have inspired me, I’d have to say it still comes down to Steven Spielberg. E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial (1982) will always be my favourite film of all time and I know that may not get me much credit with the horror fans, but it’s the truth. Spielberg will always be that unreachable shining star that I will strive to reach as both an artist and a human being. Other favourites include John Carpenter, Guillermo del Toro, and I rip off John Landis in almost everything I do. I always find it funny when critics compare Hatchet directly to Friday the 13th (1980) when An American Werewolf in London (1981) was my inspiration in terms of comedic tone, shooting style, and composition. How did you raise the $1.5 million budget for Hatchet, and how did you secure cameo appearances from such genre icons as Robert Englund, Kane Hodder and Tony Todd? My team and I were able to raise the money for Hatchet by having a proposal package that spelled everything out. Another important device was a mock trailer that told the story of Victor Crowley and got people excited about seeing the film. In fact, that mock trailer was the template for the theatrical trailer when Hatchet was released in 2007. One of the producers, Sarah Elbert, had recently produced the special features for the Friday the 13th DVD box set and was able

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to get the script for Hatchet in front of FX wizard John Carl Buechler. He helped me create the make-up job of ‘Young Victor Crowley’ for the mock trailer. He also slipped the script to Kane Hodder, who signed on almost instantly. Fate found me at the same party as Robert Englund one night, and though I didn’t have the audacity to approach him about my project, he instead approached me and asked where I got the Marilyn Manson Suicide King Shit T-shirt that I was wearing. Tony Todd was already working with Buechler on another project and I met him on his set. Again, I didn’t bring up Hatchet at first, but once I knew him a little more, he asked me about it. These guys are all legends in the genre and I think what they responded to was the spirit of Hatchet and how it was a celebration of what horror movies used to be. There is a fine line between comedy and horror, one that Hatchet treads skilfully and knowingly. How did you achieve the balance between the laughs and the shocks, and to what extent did you ‘find’ the film in the editing room? I was making my living as a comedy writer at the time, so it was a style that I was very comfortable with. With my biggest inspiration being An American Werewolf in London, I could see that the key was to keep the comedy out of the horror. In Hatchet, the villain was never presented in a light manner, unlike the cast of characters that were trying to survive the situation. I also find that comedy is the quickest and easiest way to make characters likeable, endearing and three-dimensional. I wrote the ‘victims’ in Hatchet in a humorous way and it was Hatchet’s sense of humour that really won over the crowds. That experience can never be replicated on DVD at home, no matter how many rowdy, gore-loving friends you cram into your living room. Nothing about Hatchet was found in the editing room as the budget limitations meant that I could rarely get more than a few takes. In fact, Hatchet’s running time is technically under 80 minutes if you don’t include the credits – that’s how lean the script and the shoot had to be. The trend in independently-produced horror cinema since the success of The Blair Witch Project (1999) has been to utilize lo-fi production methods, or to approach the genre from a psychological perspective, yet Hatchet is an unapologetic throwback to the studio-financed body-count horror films of the 1980s. What do you particularly like about that period of horror cinema, and to what extent do you think Hatchet imbues that material with an independent sensibility? In my opinion, the lo-fi production gimmick only works if it is a story point. The Blair Witch Project was a brilliantly innovative piece of storytelling that spawned a whole new genre of ‘found footage’ films but, more often than not, the lo-fi thing is a cop out. You’ll hear film-makers give a laundry list of why they chose to shoot a film with low-fi gear but the truth is really that they just couldn’t get a bigger budget together. When I wrote Hatchet, I merely wrote the type of movie that I grew up on and wanted to see again. The goal was never to make the 80s’ ‘slasher’ formula hip again but to remind people what horror used to be like and give people that theatrical communal experience of laughing, cheering, and screaming together. The independent sensibility really comes down to the script and the fact that I was making a movie that brought the old formula back in a modern way. No Hollywood studio would have ever touched a movie that’s got comedy in one scene and then a woman having her head torn off in the next. We had a very limited budget, but we also had a lot of good people and close friends that cashed in every favour they had. One of the best things about Hatchet is that, when you watch it, you can almost feel the crew scrambling around, covered in fake blood, doing whatever they could to get it done. 14 American Independent

Courtesy of AireScope Pictures.

Despite support from critics, particularly Harry Knowles of Ain’t it Cool News, Hatchet grossed a disappointing $155,873 domestically before finding a wider audience on DVD. Do you think the genre has become dominated by the Hollywood majors to the point that even commercially-orientated independent productions have trouble breaking through theatrically? Something to keep in mind is that Hatchet opened on only 80 screens and through Anchor Bay, a distributor that, up until then, had only been a DVD catalogue company. The person in charge at the time seemed to feel that, with the buzz, audiences would just ‘find’ it, but most people had no idea it was out, or they lived two states away from a theatre playing it. In fact, unless you were a frequent reader of the horror websites, there was no way of knowing the film existed. A great example is how in San Diego there wasn’t even a poster or a listing on the marquee of the theatre that was playing Hatchet. It was essentially an experiment to see if online buzz and my MySpace page alone could open a movie, and it was devastating to watch it go down like that. Yet, when Hatchet opened, it actually did surprisingly well. Shows sold out [in] Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston, Austin, and New York. In fact, Hatchet grossed $17,000 on one screen in Los Angeles alone, beating the studio film 3:10 to Yuma (2007) that weekend. At the end of the day, though, the only horror films that are really shining at the box office have outrageous budgets behind their campaigns and usually sport pre-packaged titles that bring even the most passive fans out in droves. A tiny film like Hatchet had no chance of standing up to the remake of Halloween (2007). At the end of the day, though, the fact that Hatchet went from passion project to a theatrical run was something to be grateful for and, on DVD, it has been a monster hit for Anchor Bay. It is far and away the biggest success they’ve ever had with an original genre title and a sequel is now in the works. So, while some may consider $155,000 on 80 unadvertised screens disappointing, for everyone who was actually involved it was really quite a feat. Industry Spotlight 15

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Hatchet was swiftly followed by Spiral (2007), the story of a socially-awkward telemarketing agent haunted by his past which was marketed as a horror film, but plays more successful as a dark character study. How challenging was it to shift from a gross-out horror film to something more psychological? Spiral was shot before Hatchet had finished post-production. Joel David Moore and I had such an exceptional time working together on Hatchet that we just didn’t want it to end, so when he showed me his script for Spiral, it was a no-brainer to sign on. What I loved about it was that, although it was a small arthouse film, it was a project where I could flex a completely different creative and artistic side of myself. Knowing how Hollywood works, I knew that Hatchet was going to define me around town and I didn’t want to be put in that ‘box’. Shifting gears was really not difficult at all, though having the film come out right on Hatchet’s heels was a bit scary. At Fantasia in Montreal that summer, Hatchet played on Friday night to an 800 seat sold-out crowd that was on their feet cheering, and then Spiral played the next night to a crowd of 100. When I introduced the film, and looked out at the fans in their Hatchet T-shirts, all I remember thinking was, ‘Oh no, they’re gonna hate this.’ But many said they liked Spiral more than Hatchet. For me, Spiral is the movie that much better illustrates what I am made of as a director. You co-directed Spiral with Joel Moore, who also played the lead role. How did you collaborate, and do you think that this is a working method that would be more characteristic of an independent production than a studio feature? Co-directing with Joel Moore really couldn’t have gone better. When he first asked me to come onboard, it was because he was already wearing the hat of producer, writer, and lead actor, and he wanted to make sure that nothing fell through the cracks. We sat down and created a bible of shot lists and visual concepts so that there was never the chance of not seeing eye-to-eye when making decisions on set. Once we began production, I took on the role of ‘leader’, though Joel was still involved with every choice. Co-directing is not something I would encourage, although I had a great experience doing it. Joel is one of my closest friends, and there was complete trust on both sides. It would be naïve to think that it would always work that way. Most of the cases I’ve heard of usually involve a first-time director who could not be removed from directing their own script but was forced to agree to have an experienced director come onboard in order to secure financing. No one ever wants to admit it, but it happens a lot. Your other professional activities have ranged from stand-up comedy to fronting the heavy metal band Haddonfield. Do these activities complement each other in some way, or do they represent distinctly different outlets for your creativity? I suppose it all comes down to that childhood thing of wanting to entertain and the fact that I needed the attention and that rush of adrenaline. The first time I did stand-up it was simply to prove to myself that I could do it. It’s the scariest thing in the world, and any stand-up who tells you that they are comfortable up there is a liar. But I conquered my fear, did it for a few years as a hobby, and learned whatever I could about timing, word choice, and how to get the reactions I want. There’s just something in performing live that really feels good. The instant gratification of hearing a large crowd laugh at a joke, or the relaxed high I get after screaming myself into the stage with a band. Film-making is the only thing I consider a professional activity though. I’m not serious or good enough at any of the other pastimes to make a good living at them. I guess I never outgrew the whole ‘Hey, Mom look at me’ thing. And thankfully, I also have a mother who never outgrew wanting to look.

John Berra 16 American Independent

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Interview with Wayne Kramer Although born in Johannesburg-Kew, South Africa, the writer-director Wayne Kramer always aspired to work in the American film industry, and has succeeded in establishing a career within the independent sector. After toiling away as a screenwriter for many years, and suffering the setback of struggling to complete a directorial debut which never saw the light of day, Kramer finally enjoyed critical success with The Cooler (2003), a dark comedy set in Las Vegas which showcased superb performances from William H Macy as a perpetually-unlucky former gambler in debt to Alec Baldwin’s volatile yet strangely-loyal casino boss. Kramer followed his breakthrough with Running Scared (2006), a violent crime thriller that was released by New Line Cinema and became a cult sensation on DVD. This interview was conducted following the release of Crossing Over (2009), Kramer’s controversial immigration drama which, despite coaxing Hollywood superstar Harrison Ford into a rare excursion into independent territory, was effectively discarded by financier and distributor, The Weinstein Company. Although the studio-sanctioned version of Crossing Over that was eventually released deviates dramatically from Kramer’s original vision, it remains a brave attempt to tackle a difficult issue within the confines of narrative cinema. Kramer discussed his career to date and elaborated on the behind-the-scenes battles of Crossing Over.

The Cooler (2003) is often referred to as your directorial debut but, according to IMDB, your first directing credit is actually Blazeland (1992), which apparently deals with a dead rock star returning from the grave to promote a new band. What has happened to this movie? Technically, The Cooler is actually my directorial debut since Blazeland was never completed and no one has seen the film – and I’d like to keep it that way! Blazeland was an absolute nightmare from beginning to end; an investor who thought I might amount to something decided to invest about a hundred grand Courtesy of Wayne Kramer.

Directory of World Cinema

in a low-budget feature. It was about a Jim-Morrison-type rock star whose vocal chords are severed by windshield glass during a car wreck and he loses the ability to sing. His manager and his groupies plot his comeback from the rock star’s gothic mansion. They’ve been convinced by a crackpot scientist that, if they can find the right vocal chord match for the rock star’s voice, he can perform the world’s first vocal-chord transplant. So, this crazy group keeps luring wannabe bands to the mansion and offing them, until they find the right candidates for his transplant. I was completely inexperienced with regards to production and I brought onboard a very sweet guy named Russell Droullard to produce the film for me – neglecting the fact that he had zero experience, other than having been a production assistant. It only got worse from there. We hired a DP based on his having shot one documentary – the result of which was that the entire first week of photography turned out over-exposed and out of focus. We had to reshoot, as well as hire an entirely new crew. We had rented a warehouse down in Fullerton, Orange County and were shooting there without any permits. Of course, the police turned up within a week or two and suddenly we were paying out of our eyeballs for permits and insurance and everything else that goes with that. I was broke and homeless and living off production catering. Did you complete Blazeland and does it still exist in any form? I spent the next two years saving every cent I could and begging and borrowing money from my family to complete production – which I did for $7,000. During that time, I had gone down on hands and knees and begged a post-production house in LA to let me rent an editing room. Since I was homeless, I basically slept in the cutting room for about three months – until they got wise to me and told me to rent an apartment or lose the cutting room, which I was barely paying for in the first place. As far out on a limb as I was, I remember my cutting-room experience quite fondly. Oliver Stone had ten editing rooms down the hall from me and was cutting The Doors, which was really cool. Anyway, after I finished cutting the new footage together, I tried to find a distributor. One day, some fly-by-night producer turned me onto this so-called distributor operating out of Orlando, Florida – who, if I had done my homework, I would have found out was a thief and a fraud and was already being sued by a dozen film-makers and investors. He managed to convince me to release the negative to him and that he would finish posting the film in Florida and provide us with home-video distribution. Two years later, the guy still had not delivered the film – and wouldn’t even show us what he had done! Russell and I spent thousands of dollars on lawyers and eventually a private investigator to track this guy down. When his wife realized a PI was sniffing around, she contacted us and offered to ship the negative back to the lab. We agreed, and that’s the last I saw of the film. I seriously doubt that the lab has kept the negative all these years. All that exists of Blazeland is a work print in my garage. What kind of career path did you take between the Blazeland experience and The Cooler? I always intended to use screenwriting as a means to arrive at a directing career so, all throughout that period, I was writing away. I was also doing any job I could to survive. Finally, I was able to sell a script I wrote called Mindhunters to 20th Century Fox. For the first time in my life I had made some real money and had a small cushion to make the right choices for myself. I had wanted to direct Mindhunters, but I was essentially told that, if I tried to attach myself, the deal would fall apart, so I took the money and walked away. Fox put the project into turnaround about a year later and Intermedia bought it from them and set it up with Dimension Films. They brought on about ten different writers. At no point did 18 American Independent

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they ever come back to me and say, ‘have another shot at it.’ They turned it from a taut suspense thriller into a full-on action film and there are plot holes that you can drive ten trucks through. Nothing makes sense – the characters are all supposed to be the best of the best in the FBI Academy and every one of them makes the stupidest decisions. People mistakenly think I wrote Mindhunters after The Cooler but it was written in 1997 and shot in 2002. Dimension kept it on the shelf for about two and a half years. The money and residuals have been good over the years, so I don’t entirely regret the experience. Did you have a particular interest in, or experience of, Las Vegas before you wrote and directed The Cooler? The film presents a fairly balanced view of the city in that it revels in some of the glamour and nostalgia associated with the Strip, yet does not shy away from the tragedy and violence that occurs there on a daily basis, especially around the casino business. I always had more of a cinematic interest in Vegas than a hardcore gambler’s interest. I loved the Fellini-esque world of downtown Las Vegas – the section that attracted the more old school, hard luck cases than the Strip. I’ve always been a sucker for film noir and damaged-character studies and the seedy, yet glamorous world of Vegas really spoke to me. To me, the film was always more about the interaction of the characters – the weird triangle of relationships – than any real fascination with gambling, other than the superstitious nature of the entire enterprise that lent itself perfectly to telling an old-fashioned love story with a contemporary, high-concept spin. The project came about when my friend Frank Hannah pitched the idea to me. I fell in love with it immediately and asked him if he wanted to write it with me – and I would do everything in my power to get it made. Frank is the real deal when it comes to gambling. He is obsessed with the world and makes religious trips to Vegas to hit the tables. He basically served as our technical director on the film. Right from Frank’s first pitch, I knew I could write those characters and put flesh on their bones. There was some controversy over the scene in which Alec Baldwin’s oldschool casino boss kicks a ‘pregnant’ woman in the stomach. Although it is made clear that he knows that she is faking her pregnancy, some viewers found it hard to get past the brutality of the moment. Were there any particular challenges to executing or editing that scene, and were your worried that it might repel members of the audience who had been enjoying the usual love story? Right from the moment that we wrote that scene in the script, I knew it was going to blow people’s minds. The challenge was how to pull it off and milk it just long enough before the reveal, without having the audience rushing from the theatre. We literally had to time the editing so that if someone got up to leave the theatre, he/she would hear a gasp from the audience before they could get to the door – and would realize that it was a fake pregnancy. And true to our calculations, there were always some audience members who couldn’t handle it and decided to walk out until they heard laughter or clapping from the rest of the audience. They always returned sheepishly to their seats. Alec Baldwin tells the story that when he first read the script, he got to that scene and threw it down, declaring there was no way he was doing this movie. When his agent called him to see what his reaction was, he told his agent he’s not going to do a movie where he kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach. His agent asked him if he read the rest of the scene. Alec told him he hadn’t bothered. His agent told him to finish reading it. I guess that from that moment Alec was pulled into it.

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Alec Baldwin once quipped that the budget for chewing gum on the set of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour (2001) was equivalent to the entire cost of The Cooler. How did you manage to deliver such a stylish first feature, with a cast of well-known actors, on such a limited budget and schedule? With regards to the actors, we were able to attract them due to the material – and most of them wanted to work with William H Macy. Everybody loves Bill and he proved to be a big talent magnet. He was the first to come onto the film – we wrote it for him, but it took him a long time to come around. He was tired of playing ‘lovable losers’ and was looking to do more studio films. But producer Ed Pressman and I dogged Bill and his agent on a weekly basis, and wore them down. I think Bill recognized the potential of doing the role and basically said, ‘If I’m going to never play another loser again, let me at least play the Super Hero of losers.’ I knew that I didn’t have a great resumé when it came to directing before The Cooler so I meticulously storyboarded the entire film to be able to show the producers my vision for it. We were also helped enormously by the location. Our line producer, Elliot Rosenblatt, found a casino in Reno, Nevada, that was undergoing renovations and made a deal with them for us to shoot, and house our cast and crew in the hotel, while they were tearing the place up. You made the crime thriller Running Scared for New Line Cinema. However, the film was shot on location in Prague to keep the costs down. When you are dealing with adult material that is often violent and potentially divisive, are than any significant differences between working with a Hollywood studio or an independent financier? Running Scared was as much an independent film as The Cooler. We were completely independently financed, and only sold the film to New Line in the homestretch of post-production. Once New Line got involved, I feared that they would inflict huge changes upon the film in terms of toning down the content. But Toby Emmerich and Bob Shaye were very respectful of what the film was, and I ended up only having to tweak a few moments for pacing issues. With regard to the budget and having to shoot the film in Prague, there was just no other way to make the film with the limited budget we had. It would have cost us twice as much to shoot the film in New Jersey, where it’s actually set. We did shoot about a week in New Jersey and it cost a fortune – but I insisted on getting those shots to tie the film together. I didn’t think a film set in New Jersey could be effectively pulled off by shooting in Prague, but Toby Corbett, who has worked on all my films, designed some great sets and found the appropriate locations. But it wasn’t without its immense challenges and we spent a lot of time keeping Prague out of our field of view.

Running Scared is an extremely violent film, yet it received the R rating when submitted to the MPAA, whereas The Cooler was slapped with an NC-17 due to a few seconds of pubic hair. Do you see this as a reflection of American society’s acceptance of violence as opposed to its almost puritanical attitude towards sex? I definitely agree that the MPAA is way more lenient when it comes to violence versus sexual situations. But if you’ll recall, there were some pretty explicit fullfrontal shots in the strip club and the MPAA had no problem with them. I had always feared that the MPAA might rate us NC-17 on The Cooler but I would have thought it was for the first sex scene, where Maria Bello puts her hands on Billy Macy’s goods after they’ve just had sex. I never imagined it would have been for a two-second glimpse of pubic hair. Their explanation was that Macy’s head was right next to her pubic hair and that was a no-no – as in they slam you for nudity 20 American Independent

Courtesy of Wayne Kramer.

only when seen in context of performing a sexual act, rather than just strippers cavorting in a nightclub. The burden on receiving an NC-17 was that we had already completely finished the film and had already screened at a number of festivals. Usually, as in the case of Running Scared, you present the MPAA with a work in progress and try to gauge if you’re going to have any rating’s issues, so that you can address them without having to re-open the film once it’s already been mixed and the negative has been cut or, as is more likely these days, once the film has already gone through the digital intermediate process. We had to reopen the offending reel in The Cooler, which cost Lions Gate quite a bit of money. Your most recent feature, Crossing Over, deals with the issue of immigration in the USA. As you became a naturalized US citizen in 2000, how much of your own experiences are reflected in the film, and was the naturalization process simply a professional necessity for you, as it is for the Alice Eve character in Crossing Over, or did it hold deeper meaning and personal significance? I pretty much identified with all the immigrant characters because, having been through the bureaucracy of legalization, I know how challenging – and arbitrary – it is. More specifically, as an artist trying to make his mark in the United States, it’s so important that you have access to working and raising financing in America. Speaking for myself, I always wanted to live in America and I always wanted to be an American. I grew up on American culture and felt spiritually connected to the country and the opportunities that it promised, or should I say, advertised, to the rest of the world. I have come close to achieving the ‘American dream’ and have the privilege of making films that get seen all around the world, as opposed to being just a ‘South African’ film-maker whose work is perceived as ‘foreign’. My attitude was always: why be a big fish in a small pond when you can be a big fish in the biggest pond. I applied for naturalization the first day I became eligible because it Industry Spotlight 21

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was something I very much wanted and as an immigrant it’s the smart thing to do. I only travel on my US passport and don’t maintain a South African one at all. In fact, when I travel to South Africa I use my US passport and they stamp me in with a tourist visa – which is pretty surreal. My intent with Crossing Over was to make a movie that wasn’t trying to solve America’s immigration problems but to give an honest portrayal of the diversity in the immigrant struggle to achieve legalization or naturalization – and the differences in each immigrant’s struggle. Your original cut reportedly featured a story strand involving Sean Penn which book-ended the film. Can you explain more about how these scenes function alongside the other narrative elements, and has removing this footage significantly altered the overall impact of Crossing Over? For me, this was the most damaging cut that Harvey Weinstein made to the film and the one I can least live with. The film originally opened with Sean Penn, playing a border patrol agent, driving his truck through a heavy storm on the eve of the Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead. A young Mexican woman steps in front of his truck, causing him to swerve into a ravine and total his truck. When he comes around, he finds her standing there at his window. He climbs out of the truck and detains her. They both end up having to share the back of the totalled border patrol truck because the rain is coming through the shattered front windshield. He warms to her over the course of the night and they end up showing photos of their respective families. It appears that she has a young son who is waiting for her in Los Angeles. She keeps telling him, ‘You’re the one who’s going to help me cross over.’ He keeps insisting he’s a border patrol agent and he has a job to do. She just smiles at him and appears to fall asleep. He realizes that she’s not going anywhere in the storm and drifts off to sleep as well. On screen it then said: One week earlier. So now, the audience knows that whatever transpired in the border patrol truck between Penn and Braga was happening one week later. Toward the end of the film, when the timeline has caught up with the events in the prologue, we find Sean Penn waking up the next morning to find Mireya missing from the back of the truck. He climbs the ravine looking for her, but she’s nowhere around and he just assumes he’s been played. He returns to the truck and slumps down, exhausted, against the back wheel, where he notices a piece of blanket sticking up from under the tire. He starts digging at it, revealing a decomposed human arm. The big reveal is that Mireya is buried underneath his truck and it was her ghost that he encountered the previous night on the Day of the Dead (where it’s mythologized that the dead get to commune with the living). The storyline breaks with the tone of the rest of the film and adds a metaphysical component – and a transcendent quality to a sad storyline, which I felt was badly needed. What were the circumstances surrounding the excising of the Sean Penn footage? Sean Penn wanted to be cut out of the film due to political issues with the honour killing storyline. I’m hesitant to even call it an ‘honour killing’ storyline because the incident that takes place in the finished film is more a crime of passion than a traditional honour killing. The National Iranian American Council lobbied Penn to insist on changes to the film, which we were already in the process of making per Cliff Curtis’ input and, if that couldn’t be achieved, to disassociate himself from the project. This was after Penn had committed to a more extreme version of the script that featured a genuine honour killing. The NIAC’s position was that honour killings do not happen frequently in Iran and they managed to convince Sean that was the case, contrary to the many accounts that I researched on the internet – many of them quite recent. None of the changes ultimately satisfied Sean, who is 22 American Independent

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very heavily invested in Iranian politics; he’s written for the San Francisco Chronicle about Iran and believed that the United States was on the verge of bombing Iran and didn’t want to ‘villainize the Iranian people’ in these tense times, so he insisted on having his scenes cut from the film. No matter what Sean’s attitude and position was, the ultimate decision was Harvey Weinstein’s. Penn had signed a contract to appear in the film and had no legal position to dictate his removal. Harvey chose to cut Sean because he opted to preserve his professional relationship with Sean over the good of the film. Once it became publicly-known that Sean had been cut out of the film – with only rumours and internet gossip to account for why – the film was seen as damaged goods by critics, bloggers and discerning moviegoers alike. Especially since it had been announced as an awards-season candidate and then bumped out of contention two years in a row. Although there are perhaps more financing avenues available to independent film-makers today, the main obstacle for anyone working outside the system, or on its industrial margins, seems to be that of distribution. In the case of Crossing Over, it seems bizarre that a film starring Harrison Ford would be released on just nine screens with a minimal publicity push, and never expanded beyond forty-two screens before being sent to DVD. When companies like TWC keep films on the shelf for extended periods before granting them, does this create the sense that the films are ‘damaged goods’? Absolutely. A film has a limited shelf-life and it’s getting worse in terms of internet trackers and fan sites. If a film is announced for release and doesn’t meet that release date, the chatter immediately starts up and the word starts to filter out that there’s something wrong with the film. Weinstein is habitually oblivious to that factor and announces and cancels film-distribution dates indiscriminately. What galls me about the treatment of Crossing Over is that Harvey beat me up constantly to get the cut he wanted – a cut that I warned him would not be critically well received. They got pretty negative reviews and I guess that convinced Harvey to just throw Crossing Over out there and see if anyone turned up. I thought the trailer was a rip-off of Crash; they should have marketed the film as a Harrison Ford political thriller and used more provocative moments in the trailer. You recently set up your own group on the social-networking website Facebook to interact with your audience and to discuss your work alongside other related interests. What motivated you to do this, and do you think that more film-makers should be making themselves available to their audiences through cyberspace? I’m really new at the Facebook thing. I get the sense that a good number of people have enjoyed my films, but I’m not sure they assign any identity to the film-maker behind them. I feel I need to build my audience – which allows me to get the films I want to make into production – and have them turn up to support my work when it opens theatrically. Most of my success has happened on DVD. From some of the numbers I’ve been quoted, I think The Cooler and Running Scared have done really well on DVD, so I feel good about that. But my films have never opened well theatrically and I need to make some effort on my own to change that – because I’ve stopped relying on the distributor to get the word out. I questioned whether I wanted to engage about Crossing Over on Facebook, but it’s been such a dispiriting experience for me that I feel compelled to let the world know how I feel about it. I’m not sure if that helps or hurts me, but the book is far from closed on this one.

John Berra Industry Spotlight 23

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Pecker, Polar Entertainment

CULTURAL CROSSOVER JOHN WATERS AND BALTIMORE

24 American Independent

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From his earliest short black-and-white underground pieces made in the 1960s, to the multi-million dollar features that followed Hairspray (1988), John Waters used his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, as the quirky, sometimes charming, and often bizarre, setting for his films. The portrait of Baltimore that emerges from Waters’ twisted scripts may not always be flattering, but Baltimoreans have come to accept Waters’ vision, and are now as devoted to the director as he is to the city. There is clearly a contradiction evident in Baltimore’s two most popular nicknames. On the one hand it is Mobtown, on the other, Charm City. For Waters the contradiction is easily resolved. Baltimore’s reputation as a rough-and-tumble port city replete with violence and corruption is the key to its charm. When Baltimore leads the nation in per-capita murder rate, teen pregnancy, incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases, or other dubious distinctions that might embarrass civic leaders and promoters of tourism, Baltimore’s best-known film-maker sees it as a source of great pride. In his autobiographical first book, Shock Value (2005), Waters writes, ‘Baltimoreans (or Balti-morons, as they sometimes are called) shouldn’t hang their heads in shame when they hear Baltimore referred to as the Armpit of the Nation, or Bumberg. Be proud! Think of it as Trashtown, U.S.A., the sleaziest City on Earth, the Hairdo Capital of the World.’ Even Waters had to learn to appreciate Baltimore’s rough charm, however. As an aspiring film-maker coming of age in the early 1960s, Waters was drawn to New York where avant-garde film-makers like the Kuchar brothers, Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith were beginning to get attention in arthouse theatres for making films that Susan Sontag and other cultural critics categorized as ‘camp’. Waters was clearly attracted by camp’s ability to transform the discarded refuse of mainstream culture into art but, for him, New York was a city with too much good taste to really be a capital of bad taste. For genuine bad taste, one had to go to Baltimore. Fortuitously expelled from New York University’s film programme in his first semester for smoking marijuana, Waters never regretted his lack of academic credentials. He returned to Baltimore with the goal of becoming a successful film-maker, and started an ensemble group with friends and neighbours, a loose collection of Baltimore’s hippie outcasts, that operated from a bedroom in his parents’ house, which he called Dreamland Studios. Dreamland could certainly never match Hollywood for glamour but, in a camp spirit of glorifying bad taste, Waters fashioned a ‘trash aesthetic’ to compete with Hollywood spectacle. It was a strategy that took full advantage of Baltimore’s dubious attributes. In Shock Value, Waters writes, ‘You can look far and wide, but you’ll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style’. Although Waters’ early films, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Roman Candles (1966), and Eat Your Makeup (1968), show the influence of New York’s underground, Waters began employing the ‘trash aesthetic’ as a way to promote the made-in-Baltimore aspect of his films. Publicity flyers for Roman Candles described it as a ‘trash epic’. Waters went even further with his first feature-length film, calling it Mondo Trasho (1969). It starred Divine, the actor most closely associated with Waters’ early films. Born, Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine was a 300-pound female impersonator whose massive wigs and radical make-up perfectly reflected Baltimore’s extreme style. In the 1970s, Waters pushed bad taste to its limits, taking trash to the level of filth by devising increasingly-outrageous stunts for Divine and the Dreamlanders to perform onscreen. Drug usage, nudity, crime and perversion were common in Waters’ films, but his fail-safe method for creating cinematic controversy was to mix deviant sexuality with religious devotion. Divine, whose name Waters specifically chose for its religious connotations, was Dreamland’s exemplar of a holy hell-raiser. Waters was raised Catholic in one of the most Catholic cities in the United States. Baltimore, home of the first American diocese, with the first Cultural Crossover 25

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bishop and the first Cathedral, is located in what was also the last state to have a functioning censorship board. For over twenty years, the reigning queen of the Maryland Censor Board was an Italian Catholic grandmother named Mary Avara, who was famous for her appearances on TV talk shows with Johnny Carson, Mike Douglass, Dick Cavett, and others, but also for her Maryland Senate appearances whenever the question of the Censor Board’s budget renewal came up. Pointing her finger at lawmakers, Avara would inquire in her heavy Baltimore accent, ‘Do you like filth?’ Her aversion for Waters’ movies was legendary yet, in Shock Value, Waters called Avara, ‘the best press agent I could have’. With his gift for showmanship, Waters realized that condemnation from Avara constituted a strong endorsement for his counter-cultural audience. Multiple Maniacs (1970), which featured Divine as the murderous leader of a circus of sexual deviants, is Waters’ most filthy film from this uniquely-Catholic perspective. After Divine is raped in a Baltimore alley, she has a vision of the Infant of Prague who leads her into St. Cecilia’s church. There she meets Mink, the religious whore, who performs a ‘rosary job’ on Divine while reciting the Stations of the Cross as the film cross-cuts between a realistic crucifixion scene and Divine’s sexual ecstasy in the church pew. The film was banned in Baltimore until 1981, the year Maryland’s Censor Board was abolished, but it was picked up on the Cinema 12 circuit and toured sixteen cities in the early 1970s, enjoying its greatest success in San Francisco. In Shock Value, Waters stated that, ‘Multiple Maniacs really helped me to flush Catholicism out of my system, but I don’t think you ever can really lose it completely … Being Catholic always makes you more theatrical.’ Waters may have temporarily flushed Catholicism out of his system, but the desire to create filth remained. His next film, Pink Flamingos (1972), features a battle between two Baltimore families, each vying for the title of ‘the filthiest people alive.’ Playing out like a laundry list of carefully-orchestrated comic grossout stunts, Pink Flamingos features acts of murder, cannibalism, bestiality, castration, transsexual exhibitionism, and incest, but the film’s most memorable scene occurs at the very end when Divine proves she is ‘the filthiest person alive’ by eating (in one long take so that there is no doubting its authenticity) dog faeces. Once the film was picked up by New Line Cinema and released as a popular midnight movie, it made Waters, Divine, Mink Stole, and other Dreamlanders like Edith Massey, David Lochary and Bonnie Pearce, famous beyond Baltimore. Waters followed Pink Flamingos with Female Trouble (1974), which tells the story of career-criminal Dawn Davenport (Divine) following her rise to criminal stardom from her high-school years as a juvenile delinquent to her execution in the electric chair. Made with the $27,000 Waters received in profits from Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble is Waters’ most technically-proficient and narrativelycoherent film, but it is bizarre enough to have prompted film critic Rex Reed to write, ‘Where do these people come from? Where do they go when the sun goes down?’ The answer, of course, is Baltimore, but Reed had inadvertently raised an issue that would cause problems for Waters’ next film. David Lochary, the male lead in all of Waters’ films since Roman Candles, died of a drug overdose in 1977, while Divine was contractually obligated to tour with a stage production. Female Trouble was the last film Waters made through Dreamland Productions. With Desperate Living (1977), which was filmed on a set composed almost entirely of garbage, Waters had reached the limits of filth and the trash aesthetic. By the 1980s, either because he had matured or because the lack of a functioning censor board made filth a little less fun, Waters began to show Baltimore in a slightly different light; Baltimore becomes a city of idiosyncratic charm in the Waters films that follow Polyester (1981). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the nostalgic portrait of Baltimore Waters creates in his most commercially-successful film, 26 American Independent

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Hairspray (1988). Set in 1962, Hairspray recreates the Baltimore of Waters’ youth for a story about outcast teenagers breaking racial barriers through dance. The fictional Corny Collins show of Hairspray is based on The Buddy Dean Show that aired in Baltimore as a daily after-school teen-dance programme from 1957 until 1964. The show was cancelled after its tentative attempts to integrate spawned controversy. Waters, who was once a guest on The Buddy Deane Show and even won a twist contest, recalls this troubled racial history in Hairspray. It would be Waters’ last film with Divine, who died of heart failure a week after Hairspray’s release, but the film introduced Ricki Lake, who played the heavy-set heroine Tracy Turnblad and went on to become a star in her own right. Cry Baby (1990), which stars Johnny Depp, takes a similarly nostalgic look at Baltimore, but focuses on late-1950s’ class divisions in the city, rather than race. The Dreamlanders were gradually being replaced by a new generation of Waters regulars, including Ricki Lake and Patty Hearst, but Waters continued to highlight specific Baltimore locations, such as Turkey Point, and used regionallyspecific terms, such as ‘drapes’, for the juvenile delinquent greasers who battle the upper-crust squares. Serial Mom (1994) is set in the Lutherville neighbourhood where Waters grew up. While making Serial Mom, Waters commented on the irony of being invited to use the homes of neighbours who chased him away while he was making his first films. The high school where Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) commits her first murder occurs at the same school that Divine attended in the early 1960s. Actual Baltimore establishments, such as the movie rental shop Video Americain, also feature prominently. In Pecker (1999), Waters valorizes Baltimore as a place that is decidedly less pretentious than New York. Set in Baltimore’s Hampden neighbourhood, Pecker stars Edward Furlong as a photographer whose portraits of Baltimore characters are celebrated for their ironic commentary on Baltimore’s clearly-backward culture. Pecker is an alter ego for Waters. Friends steal film for him, as they did for Waters when he started out, and Pecker struggles with the ambivalence he feels as his success in the phony art world of New York takes him further from the real world of Baltimore. Similarly, Cecil B. Demented (2000) takes its title from a review Waters received early in his career: a group of guerilla film-makers kidnap a Hollywood star (Melanie Griffith) and force her to appear in their underground movie, something Waters wrote about years earlier in his second book, Crackpot (1987). For A Dirty Shame (2004) Waters again chose a working-class neighbourhood on a specific Baltimore thoroughfare: Harford Road. A movie about sex addicts who strive to liberate their ‘neuter’ neighbourhood from prudish sexual prohibitions, A Dirty Shame returns to some of the themes of Waters’ earliest films. Waters has struggled to find an audience for his most recent films, but as a speaker, actor, and raconteur he is always in demand. As host for the Court TV series Til Death Do Us Part, Waters introduced half-hour dramatizations of real-life marriages that ended in murder. He is also a frequent host of the Independent Spirit Awards. Despite his celebrity status, Waters continues to keep a house in Baltimore. As one of the city’s famous natives, he joins a list of luminaries that includes Eubie Blake, Babe Ruth, H L Mencken, ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot, John Astin, Frank Zappa, and many others. In most cases, these Baltimore entertainers were as renowned for their quirky personalities as for their professional achievements. Waters is no different. With his pencil-thin moustache, flamboyant suits, openness about his sexuality, and quick wit, Waters remains a true Baltimore eccentric. The city honoured Waters’ contributions to his hometown on 7 February, 1985, when presiding Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer proclaimed it ‘John Waters Day.’

Joseph Schaub Cultural Crossover 27

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Mulholland Dr., Studio Canal+/Les Films Alain Sarde/Universal.

SCORING CINEMA MULHOLLAND DR.

28 American Independent

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Mulholland Dr. Studio/Distributor:

Asymmetrical Productions Studio Canal Universal Director:

David Lynch Producers:

Alain Sarde Mary Sweeney Neal Edelstein Michael Polaire Tony Krantz Screenwriter:

David Lynch Cinematographer:

Peter Deming Art Director:

Jack Fisk Composer:

Angelo Badalamenti Editor:

Mary Sweeney Duration:

140 minutes

David Lynch has always been obsessed with getting beneath the surface. From the start of his most famous film, Blue Velvet (1986), where the camera dived beneath a lawn to reveal a subterranean world of gigantic insects, reality in Lynch’s works always seems to be a cover for something more evil and monstrous. Mulholland Dr. is perhaps the apotheosis of this, taking the analytical eye to the extreme in its examination of fairy-tale Hollywood and its frightening underbelly. After a car accident, Hollywood actress ‘Rita’ becomes a confused amnesiac, adrift in Los Angeles. Concurrently, a young ingénue, Betty, arrives in Tinseltown keen to make her name. When the two women discover each other, they are drawn into an increasingly-disturbing fantasy, where the glossy veneer of LA is peeled back to reveal a nightmare world of mistaken identity, murder, love affairs and more besides. Can Betty help ‘Rita’ discover who she once was? Is everything as straightforward as it seems? Inseparable from Lynch is his regular composer Angelo Badalamenti, who gets so little attention (outside his iconic theme for Twin Peaks) simply because his music is so intertwined with both the director’s soundscape and twisted visuals. One is faced with a similar challenge when taking a casual listen to the score for Mulholland Dr. The eerie, sinuous string/synthesiser lines that have earmarked all of the composer’s albums on the surface appear to have little going for them … but, as with Lynch’s own obsession with getting under the skin, there is much more going on than meets the eye. Indeed, what becomes apparent on listening to this soundtrack is how well it blurs the line between traditional score and piece of sound design. Just as its rumbling sonorities in the film are sometimes barely distinguishable as music, the music on the album functions much the same way. Much of this, of course, is down to the influence of Lynch himself, who frequently describes himself as a ‘sound man’. These contradictions make for a surprisingly hypnotic and fascinating listen away from the film.

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Cast

Naomi Watts Laura Elena Harring Justin Theroux Robert Forster Year

2001

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And then, of course, there are the cues that are completely off-kilter yet tuned into Lynch’s bizarre world. The first of these is ‘Jitterbug’, a funky jazz number set against the film’s opening mix of live action and animation. It is an oddly appropriate way to begin, hinting at decadence and mischief lurking beneath the surface. However, tonally at least, it is deceptive; Badalamenti’s more familiar voice comes to dominate in ‘Mulholland Drive’: a brooding series of dark electronically-enhanced string lines, accompanying the credits sequence of ‘Rita’s’ car making its way along the titular road. Accompanied by Peter Deming’s lush night-time photography, Badalamenti and Lynch together set out their stall early in casting LA as a menacing landscape, both physically and psychologically. The theme (if it can be described as such) is the flipside to its more beautiful cousin in The Straight Story (1999). Post-car-crash with ‘Rita Walks’ – as the character does so, confusedly, into the night – the score becomes even more unnerving: acoustic and electronic elements mirroring her confusion, the strings sinking lower into their registers. ‘Diner’ is quietly terrifying – the growling, rumbling electronics building to the seemingly-disconnected scene of a man coming face to face with the monster of his nightmares in Winkies. The briefest of contrasts comes in ‘Betty’s Theme’, a quietly-uplifting moment as Watt’s character arrives in LA, ironically triumphant in tone prior to the score’s plunge back into darkness, as she and ‘Rita’ come face to face with a Hardy-boys-style mystery. Lynch though has always had an acute eye for absurdity and a dark sense of humour. The inclusion of Milt Buckner’s ‘The Beast’ should seem out of place but, as with ‘Jitterbug’, it speaks volumes about Lynch’s satirical focus – accompanying the scene where movie director Adam (Justin Theroux), frustrated at having a different actress cast in his movie, returns home to find his wife having an affair with the pool cleaner. The sly choice of song makes an ironically-jaunty mockery of the Hollywood dream, as Adam’s paint-fuelled attempts to ruin his wife’s jewellery result in little more than a bloody nose. Sliding comfortably back into a more mysterious groove is the main theme making a haunting re-appearance towards the end of ‘Dwarfland/ Love Scene’ as things turn increasingly weird. As identities are crossed and characters are confused, the composer, by using the title track to represent a new agenda, adds to the mystery by ‘merging’ Betty and ‘Rita’ during the notorious lesbian love scene. As Naomi Watts’ formerly apple-pie, blue-eyed Betty performs a startlingly-bitter about-face in the film’s latter half, confusing our perception of her character, so Badalamenti mirrors our confusion with subtly-different musical textures. However, rather than overwhelm the score and film with multiple themes and motifs, it remains monothematic and consistent in its moodiness – from the sleazy noirish trumpet in ‘Silencio’ to the laid-back guitar vibe of ‘Pretty 50s’. ‘Diane and Camilla’ gives full reign to Betty’s identity crisis and is quite moving – the strings toiling with a mystery where the answer lies just beyond our reach.

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Elsewhere there is more twisted humour in ‘Llorando’, an acappella version of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’, and a grungy, vaguely-apocalyptic rock track, co-written with Lynch, entitled ‘Mountains Falling’: an apt title in mimicking the collapse of reason and logic in the film’s climax where things end on an eerie note, with a reprise of the main theme and its counterpart, the love theme, hinting at the inscrutable mystery we have tried our damndest to work out. What is most remarkable is how Badalamenti plays the mystery admirably straight in contrast to the incoherent nature of the film, crafting a psychological tone poem and ode to weirdness that allows the listener to make up their own mind, just as the viewing audience is invited to. Deceptively bland, for those who are willing to dig deeper there are subtle delights to be found, but it is highly recommended that one watches the film first to hear the music in its proper context.

Sean Wilson

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DIRECTORS STUART GORDON

An interest in horror and fantasy, satire, and maintaining a repertory company of performers are elements that weave in and out of Stuart Gordon’s oeuvre. For many directors, the film they are remembered for is an early effort and this is certainly the case with Gordon: his debut Re-Animator (1985) is still a fan favourite, and one of the best comedic horrors of the 1980s. However, in the 1970s, Gordon held the position of Artistic Director of the Chicago Organic Theatre Company, which garnered a reputation for productions of experimental and challenging plays including the first staging of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Despite a further six horror films over the next two decades, Gordon has recently returned to his theatrical roots, filming dramas and thrillers with small casts, revolving around life-threatening situations and issues of morality. Gordon’s prolific output has varied in popularity and the relative success and failure of each project is often due to the director’s level of artistic control. His H P Lovecraft adaptation, Re-Animator, includes dozens of zombies and mutated creatures, which shows a unique mixture of Frankenstein-style experiments and the gore of the increasingly-modern horror films of the early 1980s, such as The Evil Dead (1981). The film is played straight by all involved, and it is the absurdity of the blood-and-guts set pieces that provides the humour, not to mention the music, which has been accurately described as a disco version of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Gordon’s follow-up, From Beyond (1986), is less successful. Although another Lovecraft adaptation, with much of the same cast and crew, this is a gorier film with less-sympathetic characters that favours spectacle over content.

Left: Edmond, 2005, Muse Prods.

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Gordon’s last two films of the 1980s, while both located within the fantasy genre, varied in style and content. His killer-toys movie, Dolls (1987), is reasonably entertaining but does not have the spirit or anarchy of the best example of the genre, Child’s Play (1988). However, Robot Jox (1990) is a terrific movie about men piloting giant robot fighting machines that never found the audience it deserved. Gordon believes that a combination of the belated release of Robot Jox, which was shot in 1988 and gathered dust on the shelf when production company Empire Pictures went bankrupt, and the dwindling popularity of the Transformers craze lead to the film’s box-office failure, not to mention that its Cold War subtext was out of date by the time it eventually reached theatres. Robot Jox cost $10 million, the director’s largest budget to date, and, as it made only $1.27 million at the box office, his next film was Daughter of Darkness (1990), a TV movie made in Romania. The director would remain in Europe for his adaptation of The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), filmed in Italy, with genre stars Lance Henriksen and Oliver Reed adding some gravitas to one of the goriest Poe adaptations to date. Continuing his professional globetrotting, the director made the futuristic prison movie Fortress (1993) in Australia and brought the stereotypical homoerotic machismo of the genre to the familiar motifs of sex crimes and the thought-police. Gordon took advice from his mother when making his excursion into science fiction: if you don’t have the budget to make it expensive, you should make it smart, and Fortress evokes a convincing futuristic world outside its subterranean walls. Fortress is let down only by an odd coda that sees the protagonists attacked by a robotic truck, something which was sensibly excised from some prints of the movie. Gordon’s next project, Castle Freak (1995), was a considerably-more frugal affair. A tale of a psychotic deformed killer living in the bowels of an inherited Italian castle, Castle Freak is a particularly incongruous film as it seems to exist on a purely perfunctory level, which may have a lot to do with the main location being owned by one of the producers. Space Truckers (1996), however, while uneven and episodic, is a terrific mix of science fiction, comedy and road movies which borrows heavily from the ‘Ace Trucking Co.’ strip which featured in the British comic book ‘2000AD’. After dabbling with magical realism with The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998), Gordon returned to Lovecraft, but Dagon (2001), like Castle Freak, was shot in Europe out of financial necessity rather than choice and the dubbed performances of the non-English speaking cast do not do the end result any favours. Unperturbed by his failures, Gordon had earned a reputation as one of the modern film’s ‘Masters of Horror’, so it was appropriate that he found himself contributing to the TV series of that name. He directed another Lovecraft adaptation, Dreams of the Witch-House (2005), for the first season and another Poe adaptation, The Black Cat (2007), for the second. These are reasonable entries into an anthology series but the other three films made by Gordon in the 2000s are all tight, stylish dramas that provide their actors with meaty roles. King of the Ants (2003), Edmond (2005) and Stuck (2007) all depict people who are dehumanized by extreme situations, and present gruelling scenes of torture and suffering, thereby allowing the director to align his skills for directing both horror and theatre. Perhaps working within the confines of fantasy and horror allowed Gordon to deal with these themes, but a return to his background in theatre shows that he does not need fantastical trappings in

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order to tell tales with gravitas and intensity. That said, at his most conceptually ambitious, as seen in Re-Animator, Space Truckers and Robot Jox, Gordon can mix satire with special effects to great aplomb. Working outside of genre with high calibre actors, such as William H Macy in Edmond or Joe Mantegna in The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, has garnered him a greater reputation with cinéastes afraid of zombies, but the casting of Macy in the role of the American President in the proposed House of Re-Animator may result in his most enjoyable film to date.

Alex Fitch

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Synecdoche, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.

DIRECTORS CHARLIE KAUFMAN

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Charlie Kaufman is the author of the screenplays Being John Malkovich (1999), Human Nature (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Adaptation (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Synecdoche, New York (2008), the last of which he also directed. He has a fondness for inserting himself into his own work and writing about sex. When asked over the phone: ‘You do have a reputation for being reclusive, for being extraordinarily shy, for refusing to have your photo taken and so forth. Is it all true?’ Kaufman replies: ‘There’s a bit of a mythology about me. And there are photos. I was on a panel at Cannes. They were snapping away.’ But he follows what appears to be a factual statement with the caveat: ‘Then again, I am talking to you on the phone, in a completely dark room with infrared goggles on.’ In this interview, Kaufman plays with his public persona and, as he does in his films, purposefully refuses to delineate the differences between various levels of reality, truth and fiction. In Adaptation, when Charlie is having difficulty adapting Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief, he inserts himself into his own screenplay because he decides that the only way to get past his writer’s block is to ‘write about what you know’. Apparently the screenwriter knows himself pretty well. In interviews concerning the film, a stock question put to Kaufman is, ’Why put yourself into your film?’ And, so far, he has always given the same reason as his fictional counterpart: it was out of artistic necessity. Kaufman also creates a fictional brother for his fictional self called Donald Kaufman. Donald represents the pro-Hollywood aspect of the film industry that both Charlies claim to despise, but, as the film progresses, it become apparent that they have to incorporate Hollywood elements into their scripts to get the green light. If we were to assume that the real Charlie is like the fictional Charlie, and vice versa, then we would be ignoring practically every assertion made by contemporary film theory about narrative, genre, and subjectivity. Kaufman performed in his high school’s production of Play It Again, Sam and, in his yearbook entry, he ironically states: ‘At last, my dream had come true; I wasn’t a victim of my machismo physique. I was able to free myself, to be short ... to be somebody!’ The desire ‘to be somebody’ and have an identity is as evident throughout Kaufman’s work as his desire to subvert and question the methods of obtaining and portraying such states. Human Nature engages with subjectivity as a system that is intimately connected with the self. A deceased Nathan declares, ‘What is love anyway? From my new vantage point, I realise that love is nothing more than a messy conglomeration of need, desperation, fear of death, and insecurity about penis size … I don’t want to be dead yet.’ In Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, motives of love and a malleable nature/ environment are used to drive the characters into areas of themselves that are equally disturbing and ‘messy’ so that the narrative can develop askew to audience expectations. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the most visually-complex film from the most intricate Kaufman script. The chaotic narrative, developed from Adaptation, reflects Joel, the confused protagonist, who is accompanied by the mental image of his past/future girlfriend Clementine as they travel through his memories to stop her being erased. Furthermore, Charlie’s professional disappointment in the process of adapting Orlean’s novel is paralleled in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, where, on hearing that his shows have been cancelled, Chuck Barris exclaims: ‘They killed my babies. I pushed them into the world through the birth canal of my imagination. Lovingly. Tenderly. Where’s the humanity of these people?’ Barris is a game-show host with a dual life as a CIA

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agent who finds his bi-polar strategy for living dissolving into a schizophrenic morass. Synecdoche, New York, is another example of the conflation between artist and product, and the pains that the artist must suffer to elevate a creative act into something incredible (or merely credible). Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) builds a replica of his life on a stage, which becomes a matryoshka matrix for further simulacra, that eventually dominates and subsumes his life as his quest for the elusive ‘Truth’ is pushed further out of sight. According to Spike Jonze, ‘Adaptation had a great script … it was so modular and non-linear, it was limitless since it wasn’t plot driven … Losing the momentum emotionally, as opposed to losing it plot wise is a much more abstract thing to figure out.’ Nevertheless, the emotional content of the modules do not resolve or clarify the situation of the protagonists to themselves; they only emerge from one scenario to be shuffled into a new context that has been created from the emotional rivalry of an ‘other’ character. Caden constantly rebounds off the mental inflictions he reciprocates with his numerous paramours, and the same rebounding technique is applicable to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is, in many ways, a generic romance, but one which strives to break free from the trappings of the genre. This seemingly-paradoxical binding to convention is evident in all of Kaufman’s films. In Being John Malkovich, once Craig falls in love with Maxine, he becomes singularly obsessed with sleeping with her. He obsesses over the Maxine puppet, has mixed success in ‘wooing’ her, abuses everything (and everyone) so that he can take the position that he needs in order to seduce Maxine, and then adapts himself into his new role only to lose everything as, ironically, he cannot control himself. Furthermore, Lotte and Maxine spontaneously become lesbian lovers and, in the draft script, Elijah (the ape) and Lotte also become entangled – which is possibly too ridiculous to contemplate, until Human Nature is considered. If sexual orientation and sex dominate Being John Malkovich, then ‘natural’, and ‘unnatural’, sex are the driving forces in Human Nature. Lila is hirsute, Nathan has a tiny penis, Gabrielle pretends to adopt the nationality of (allegedly) great lovers and seducers, and Puff has to deal with his primal primate urges. The characters all have their quirks because it directly affects their socio-sexual competency. The film takes the shape of a sex farce – as everybody jumps into bed with each other and the premise is that the characters feel insecure. Sex and relationships are treated differently in this story compared to the other Kaufman films, as the others appear more realistically motivated, if not more realistic, but here the sex is as fantastically skewed as Gondry’s approach to mimetic cohesion. In Adaptation, Charlie’s attempt to adapt the material is the central theme; he starts the narrative incapable of having a successful relationship, and the last communication that he has with another person is that he now knows the secret to having a relationship. During the course of the film, he has various imaginary flings that devolve into masturbatory sessions; book sleeve photographs and waitresses are fair game for his imagination. Once Charlie fixates on Susan Orlean as the subject of his work, he develops a crush on the image of her that he has within his imagination. As such, the diegetically ‘real’ Orlean does not adhere to his expectations; she is unhappy with her husband and engages in drug-fuelled romps on the settee with orchid thief, John Laroche. Nevertheless, unlike Human Nature, Adaptation is about trying to find love. This can be seen in the way that Orlean approaches the orchids and clings to Laroche. This relationship is comparable to the one that the fictional Kaufman brothers share, as

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Orlean and Charlie are almost parasitic in their search to feel fulfilled and have their narrative arc completed by others. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind attempts to be anti-romantic as the film depicts a relationship being erased, with several scenes featuring ‘realistic’ disagreements until Joel and Clementine’s animosity is unbearable; although, as the story progresses, Joel forgets each bad memory and seeks reconciliation, which fits a standard romance genre. The characters in the sub-plot all represent generic romance figures. Mary is infatuated with Howard, an older man who is her mentor, and Stan is subjected to unrequited love, but Stan and Mary, together, fleetingly represent a youthful relationship which contrasts with that of Howard and his wife, as Howard is a serial adulterer (with the same girl). Patrick is the token comedy relief: a weird, panties-stealing pervert who will stop at nothing to achieve what he thinks is love. For Kaufman, representations of the self can only be defined in relation to the shaky representation of others that we endow them as having, and Kaufman ably demonstrates that this method of understanding and directing our lives is precarious and often prone to failure. But he also suggests that it can ultimately generate fleeting and fragmented moments of happiness, and that that is more important for a satiated sense of the self than a fixation on an impossible-toreach stardom, orchid, ex-girlfriend or play.

Carl Wilson

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David Lynch.

DIRECTORS DAVID LYNCH No career in contemporary American cinema has seen more re-invention than that of David Lynch. His ten feature films to date have caused him to adopt more personas than Laura Dern’s actress in Inland Empire (2006). Consider his blackand-white debut Eraserhead (1977), made on and off over five years before becoming a staple of the midnight-movie circuit. If this positioned him as an independent film-maker of startling originality, his sophomore film The Elephant Man (1980) brought him into the bosom of the Academy with eight Oscar nominations – with a love story about a deformed Victorian circus freak. A flirtation with the mainstream that was as brief as it was bizarre, The Elephant Man was followed by the Dino De Laurentiis-produced science-fiction folly Dune (1984), Lynch’s wildly uneven adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. Then came the under-the-radar Blue Velvet (1986), which returned him to critical adulation, followed in 1990 by the Palme d’Or-winning road movie Wild At Heart. Two years later, he was critically vilified for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), the prequel to the cultural phenomenon that was his ABC-produced murder-mystery serial Twin Peaks (1990–91). The remainder of the decade saw him becoming increasingly marginalized. The warmly-received road movie The Straight Story (1999) aside, he saw television projects such as On The Air (1992) and Hotel Room (1993) either pulled or panned, while the quite brilliant Lost Highway (1997) was greeted with indifference. Worse was to come when his pilot for the proposed television series Mulholland Dr. (2001) did not result in a network pick-up. Little wonder, after he rescued it from the ashes with a third act that turned it into a minor movie masterpiece, that this Hollywood-set story about a naïve actress who becomes embroiled with a femme fatale felt like a nightmarish evocation of an industry that had burnt him one too many times. By the time its thematic companion Inland Empire (2006) was released, it was as if Lynch had looped back on himself in much the same way as Bill Pullman’s Fred 40 American Independent

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Madison in Lost Highway. Made over three years, in an on-off production process that mirrored that of Eraserhead, Lynch included shorts that first appeared on his subscription-based website, most notably the surreal Rabbits skit. With Dern’s unfaithful actress Nikki Grace trapped in a movie that is wrapped inside a dream, Lynch’s dramatic departure from narrative convention played out, literally, in the heart of Hollywood. Regarded by some critics as his tribute to Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), a tale of an embittered silent-movie actress, there is nothing more telling about Lynch’s ambivalent feelings towards the industry than the scene in which Nikki, ‘a woman in trouble’ as Lynch has referred to her, collapses on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Stabbed with a screwdriver in her gut, she falls on Dorothy Lamour’s star before vomiting blood. For Lynch, who has made his home in the heart of the Hollywood Hills, is as enthralled by Tinseltown as he is removed from it. He has cited Eraserhead as being his The Philadelphia Story (1940) and his appreciation for the golden age of Hollywood film-making does not stop there. Dern’s wholesome Sandy in Blue Velvet, a film that merges the menace of 1940s’ film noir with compelling psychosexual drama, has a poster of Montgomery Clift on her wall, while her good time girl Lula in Wild at Heart is indebted to the spirit of Marilyn Monroe. Meanwhile, in Mulholland Dr., Laura Harring’s amnesiac christens herself ‘Rita’ after noticing a poster of Gilda (1946) starring Rita Hayworth. Indeed, for all his association with the small-town, white-picket-fence weirdness of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, his fascination with Hollywood is far more evocative. As he once said, ‘There’s something about that place. It’s the dream factory, and it has so much hope, and despair and horror. The whole thing is beautiful.’ Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons), the director of the film-within-a-film in Inland Empire, talks of the film industry in terms of ‘politics, fear, ego’, which feels like the flip-side to the world of Mulholland Dr., where, to quote William H. Macy’s announcer in Inland Empire, ‘the stars make dreams and dreams make stars’. If the Los Angeles-located Lost Highway felt like an early pressing for both of these films, with its story of a death-row inmate (Pullman) who transmogrifies into a garage mechanic (Balthazar Getty), both Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire suggest the danger of being in a business that encourages the adoption of alternate selves. In Mulholland Dr., after undertaking a cringe-inducing audition in which she is seduced by a sleazy perma-tanned actor, Naomi Watts’ starry-eyed Betty Elms finds herself transformed into Diane Selwyn, a woman whose rotting corpse she already discovered in a mouldy apartment. If the final third of the film represents a sexuallycharged anxiety dream, from the moment that ‘Rita’ kisses Betty in bed to their visit to the unnerving Club Silencio, Inland Empire is a three-hour continuation of this heightened mood. Nikki Grace’s husband warns her philandering co-star Devon Berk (Justin Theroux) that ‘my wife is not a free agent’, a reversal of Mulholland Dr., wherein Theroux’s put-upon film director Adam discovers his wife in bed with the pool cleaner while a chat-show host (played by Dern’s mother, Diane Ladd) asks Nikki, ‘Are you going to be true to hubbie with a wolf in the den?’ Infidelity has frequently proved a pertinent topic for Lynch – from the Sandy/ Jeffrey/Dorothy love triangle in Blue Velvet to the jealousy felt by Fred Madison and Mr. Eddy in Lost Highway regarding their unfaithful partners, respectively, wife Renee and girlfriend Alice (both played by Patricia Arquette). But it is in both Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire that the theme of being unfaithful becomes inextricably tied to the ways in which Hollywood can cause the loss of artistic integrity. At least that is an accusation that can never be made against David Lynch.

James Mottram

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AFRICANAMERICAN CINEMA

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African-American cinema differs from the history of blacks in Hollywood cinema, as studied by Leab in From Sambo to Superspade (1975). With the exception of producer/director Oscar Micheaux, stars and film-makers from the 1920s–1970s were not autonomous, nor did they own the means of production. Therefore, instead of a chronological study, this introductory essay will consider certain political momentums that instigated film movements, thereby enabling an understanding of the significance of African-American cinema today, while also explaining why the 1970s marked an increased presence of race in the frame. Cripps’(1977) Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900–1942 provides a detailed study of Hollywood industry, and Cripps goes on to examine stardom and Hollywood’s ideology of Black identity in the message movies from the 1940s to the 1960s in Making Movies Black (1993). Both texts are informative, but what remains a concern today in popular culture is why there have been so many ruptures in the progression of the African-American cinematic movement since the 1960s. In Black Film/White Money (1996), Rhines argues that Hollywood’s discrimination against African-Americans up to the 1980s was based on America’s history of racial discrimination, specifically in the hiring of black people in the unionized film industry. This fact is essential in understanding why the progress of African-America cinema has been so sporadic. The end of the studio system by 1960 coincides with the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the call for equality, particularly for black people. Humane equality can be translated to the representation of African-American lives from 1960–1970 and Melvin Van Peebles’ Watermelon Man (1970) stresses that issue. That film dealt with a bigoted white male who wakes up one morning to find that he has turned black and follows him as he loses his job, friends, wife, children and home; yet he learns to be a proud black man. As an allegory, Watermelon Man challenges the indignities inflicted on blacks in Hollywood mainstream cinema from Lost Boundaries (1949) to Edge of the City (1957) and up to Black like Me (1964). In these films, and many others, Hollywood often constructs ‘blacks’ (that is to say, phantom figures imagined as people of African heritage) as archetypal racial inferiors based on white supremacist resistance to African cultural history and Black diaspora intellectual growth. Prejudiced notions of this kind frequently result in black film-makers reclaiming African-Americans’ disparaged achievements and inscribing a black epistemology of everyday life. It is at this intersection that white supremacist Hollywood and disenfranchised Black America usually part company, as the movies and Hollywood’s film industry strain to reach a common ground of humanist narrative fiction. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) and The Killer of Sheep (1977), mark two distinct progressions in Black Liberation momentum. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, also directed by Van Peebles, rejected dominant white fiction in its patriarchal capitalist cause and narrative paradigm of ‘black’ subordination. Charles Burnett’s The Killer of Sheep employed documentary strategies to portray the survival of Black America’s underclass and family unity through a Black realist aesthetic. The importance of these filmic strategies relates to Black self-determination in post-emancipation society when African

Left: Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song.

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Americans’ political objectives entered mainstream American news media and social culture. The Blaxploitation movement of 1971–76 helped to reverse the prospects of many studios and proved to be Hollywood’s answer to attracting black spectators and the mass audience. Hollywood neutralized existential Black Liberation autonomy and substituted materialist goals, and then enforced a narrative regime of Christian capitalism and patriarchal mastery that subordinated ‘blacks’ within mainstream cinema. The Afrocentric momentum in the 1980s aimed to move blacks from the margins of social history to the centre of American cultural activity. Central to Afrocentrism is Black epistemology, namely a self-defined worldview based on knowledge of Black experience. African-American cinema relies on this specific awareness and a creative process born out of Black liberation and a philosophical psychology. Subsequently, the African-American cinema of the 1980s saw a movement of reclaiming Black heritage after the near invisibility of Black identity in Hollywood films from 1976–82. The bi-racial buddy action movies, such as 48 Hrs. (1982) and Lethal Weapon (1987), did not examine Black life but Hollywood clearly understood that having ‘blacks’ in big-budget movies brought in a black audience. However, it was Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle (1987) and Keenen Ivory Wayans’ I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), three independent films made on credit cards and State grants, that marked the new movement of African-American Cinema. The 1990s proved to be the boom period in African-American cinema, with a great deal of its socio-political momentum being underlined by Black sexual politics: Hill vs. Thomas in 1991, Mike Tyson’s rape conviction in 1992, the Michael Jackson child abuse allegations in 1993 and the OJ Simpson trial and verdict in 1994–5, in addition to the 1991 assault against Rodney King and the LA riots in 1992. These cases are contrasted against the white supremacists’ pathological black male phantom, as alleged by Susan Smith in South Carolina who killed her children and accused a black man, and Charles Stuart who killed his wife and insisted that a black man had committed the crime. White America was willing to believe the worst of ‘blacks’ until it was discovered that Smith and Stuart had falsely accused ‘blacks’ because they were sure the country would believe them. Subsequently, African-American cinema differs from Hollywood movies with black stars because the film-makers are often racially conscious of their existential cul-de-sac in achieving life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Film-makers such as Spike Lee, Carl Franklin, Mario Van Peebles, Bill Duke, John Singleton, Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons accept the conditions of independent film-making. This is marked by working outside Hollywood’s control of production, distribution and exhibition, and independent films are often characterized by the dissident film-makers who dramatize life outside of the status quo. Released amidst the plethora of New Jack gangster flicks in the 1990s, Theodore Witcher’s Love Jones (1997) stands out as a romantic drama charting the courtship of a professional man and woman. It is the stuff that Hollywood romantic comedies are made of but it exceeds the genre because it documents the romantic, sexual, emotional and professional aspects of African-American life liberated from white control. Furthermore, its greatest achievement is that it opens up a space for black men to identify with a jaded romantic character that speaks to our subjectivity and motivates black men to believe in love within the context of commercial narrative film without changing their racial identity to empathize with a white male hero. Afrocentric spectatorial psychology is so profound that it reminds clack spectators why many black men and women cannot identify with white male characters if we are conscious of our black collective unity, because

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white male mastery frequently destabilizes Black self-determination. Subsequently, in order to attain love, black folk have to translate success through the image of the idealized white male or female. Therefore, the Afrocentric filmmaker often strives to re-inscribe and empower the black male protagonist with heroic virtues to overcome black spectatorial resistance. The twenty-first-century Hip-Hop momentum has arguably been the benchmark of racial diversity and unity which have underpinned visual narratives in Hollywood, typified by The Matrix Trilogy (1999–2003) that disavows all derogatory racial terms. African-American cinema cannot reach the same global audience, yet the issues of identity and liberation, coupled with the personal vision of an auteur, underlines the aims of African-American films today. Films such as Bamboozled (2000), Love and Basketball (2000), Brown Sugar (2002), Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005) and Stomp the Yard (2007) demonstrate the range of genres within African-American cinema. One of the major objectives of African-American cinema has been to tell stories about the black experience in the US. It would, therefore, be a profound oversight to ignore the work of other American and European film-makers who have defied Hollywood’s control of black images and narratives on screen, directors that have had the guts to portray a more truthful vision of Black humanity and who have been there from the birth of the post-World War II independent scene, work such as John Casavetes’ Shadows (1959), Michael Roemer’s Nothing But A Man (1964), Martin Ritt’s Sounder (1972), Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (1967) and A Soldier’s Story (1984), Warren Beatty’s Bulworth (1998), Michael Mann’s Ali (2000) and John Sayles’ Brother From Another Planet (1984). Hollywood tends to usurp new strategies in independent film, and that continues to halt the progress of African-American cinema. Moreover, because Hollywood acts as moral guardians in narrative film, the studio powers continue to be myth-makers. But, thankfully, that breeds new rebels who challenge the representation of race and gender and the control of production, distribution and exhibition whereby films can now go straight-to-DVD, or find receptive audiences at film festivals and Black community centres.

Martin L. Patrick

African-American Cinema

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Baadasssss! How to Get the Man’s Foot Outta Your Ass Studio/Distributor:

Sony Picture Classics Director:

Mario Van Peebles Producer:

Mario Van Peebles Screenwriters:

Mario Van Peebles Dennis Haggerty Cinematographer:

Robert Primes Art Director:

Jorge Gonzalez Borrelli Editors:

Nneka Goforth Anthony Miller Composer:

Tyler Bates Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Mario Van Peebles Joy Bryant T.K. Carter Year:

2003

46 American Independent

Synopsis Melvin Van Peebles’ 1971 directorial debut, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was a landmark film in the history of black independent cinema. Baadasssss! dramatizes Van Peebles’ struggle to get Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song made despite financial difficulties, institutional racism and physical problems suffered by the director. Due to financial limitations, Van Peebles was forced to sidestep the Screen Actors Guild by pretending that Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was a black pornographic film. An illuminating study of America and American cinema in the early 1970s, the film is a testament to one man’s belief in the power of cinema to participate in revolutionary change, illuminating many of the hurdles that black filmmakers, technicians and actors faced at the time from studios wanting to perpetuate stereotypes of black African-Americans by situating them in mainly comedic roles and supporting roles.

Critique Although Baadasssss! sidesteps some of the more problematic parts of Melvin Van Peebles’ film, such as the objectification and sexualization of women, this is a fascinating exposé of American cinema at the time that Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was made. Baadasssss! is a timely reminder of the political urgency which motivated black directors such as Melvin Van Peebles and the surrounding political and social climate that the film was made in. Mario Van Peebles (son of Melvin) is a talented actor as well as director and gives a multidimensional performance in the role of his father as a single-minded man who goes as far as to neglect and use his children, in particular his son, in order to get his vision to the screen. Khleo Thomas is excellent in the role of the young Mario, who, though only thirteen, is forced by his father to take the role of the young Sweetback, even though it involved a sex scene. The film is effectively directed and edited. Melvin’s voice-over provides an insight into the director’s thoughts and motivations as well as moments of comic relief, as in the scene when he discovers to his horror that a loaded weapon has been stored amongst the prop guns that had been used by the performers. Frequent inserts of camera-facing interviews with the main characters and similar interviews with their real-life counterparts, such as Melvin Van Peebles and Bill Crosby at the close of the film, offer a further insight into the making of the first black independent film using a multiracial cast and its central role within the development of black film-making. Baadasssss! highlights and illuminates the significance and importance of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in American film history in terms of opening up the film industry for black directors, such as John Singleton and Spike Lee, performers and film crew. It also inaugurated the Blaxploitation era of Hollywood films, which began with Shaft (1971) as its success alerted the major studios to the fact that there were large profits to be made from films (made for $150,000, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song eventually grossed approximately $15 million) which

Directory of World Cinema

offered a gritty perspective on the lives of black African-Americans, however unrealistic or stereotypical such representations might be. Baadasssss! reminds us of the difference that one man made in the history of independent and Hollywood cinema despite institutional and societal racism. It is a shame that the son’s homage to his father’s groundbreaking film has been considerably less successful; while it can be construed as a testament to the changes undergone in American society in the last 40 years, black and other ethnic groups are still under-represented in the film-making industry.

Colette Balmain

Bone Studio/Distributor:

Larco Productions New World Jack H Harris Enterprises Director:

Larry Cohen Producer:

Larry Cohen Screenwriter:

Larry Cohen Cinematographer:

Synopsis Bill is a successful car salesman, famous from his television advertisements. He and his wife Bernadette are an affluent couple living in Beverly Hills. One day, they find a rat in their swimming pool; suddenly a big, black man, Bone, appears in their garden, disposes of the rat and then, despite being completely unarmed, invades their home, demanding money. There is no money in the house – indeed, Bill and Bernadette are deep in debt, living on credit – but Bone discovers that Bill has hidden $5,000 in a secret account. Bone sends Bill to withdraw the money while he holds Bernadette hostage, and threatens to rape and murder her if he is late returning. Bill begins to wonder whether or not this might be a way to get rid of his wife and, while he has run-ins with two kooky women, Bone fails to rape Bernadette. She counsels him about his problems, and makes love to him. Together, they set out to kill Bill for the insurance money.

George Folsey Jr

Critique

Composer:

While Bone’s opening caption announces the political and comic intentions of Larry Cohen’s debut picture (‘The year is 1970. The most powerful nation on earth wages war against one of the poorest countries – which it finds impossible to defeat. And in this great and affluent nation exists its smallest richest city ... And it is called Beverly Hills’), it barely hints at what will follow. Scathing of the tawdry emptiness of contemporary American life, and particularly acute in unravelling the white racial imagination, it is as if Chester Himes and Luis Buñuel had teamed up to gene-splice The Desperate Hours (1955) and Week End (1967). Despite successful previews and some good reviews, it was too controversial for any major distributor to handle, and its poor marketing (as Blaxploitation thriller, horror movie, even sexploitation) condemned one of the most inventively-problematic films of the period to ill-deserved obscurity. Full of Cohen’s trademark quirky characters (including Brett Somers’ widow, whose husband committed suicide by dental x-ray, and Jeannie Berlin as The Girl, a young woman who survives on the fruits of shoplifting, new customer deals and writing complaint letters), it dissects a credit-and-consumption culture that pays no heed to

Gil Melle Editor:

George Folsey Jr Duration:

95 minutes Cast:

Yaphet Kotto Andrew Duggan Joyce Van Patten Year:

1972

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consequences. It opens with Bill presenting a TV spot for his car lot, but it soon becomes clear he is surrounded by wrecked cars and in each of them are torn and bloody corpses (their make-up by an uncredited Rick Baker). The status of this footage remains uncertain but it introduces the film’s dreamlike aspect – although it is unclear whose dream it might be: possibly that of Bill and Bernadette’s son, who is not serving in Vietnam as they claim but languishing in a Spanish prison for smuggling hash; or of Bill, fantasizing that Bone is murdering his wife while he is enjoying a dalliance with The Girl; or of Bernadette, who might have conjured him up so as to get away with murdering her husband. Regardless of such ambiguous metatextuality, Bone’s sudden appearance associates him with the rat as something that should not be in Beverly Hills, and the film is – like Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) – constructed so as to manifest and thus Critique – how white America imagines the black man. In the most troubling and intriguing sequence in the film, Bone attempts to rape Bernadette even though he takes no pleasure in it because ‘I’m just a big black buck doing what’s expected of him’. He cannot go through with it, and so she – having taken a psychology course – gets him to talk about it. He reveals that he can only rape women who fight back – it dawns on her that he must be the ‘unidentified negro’ you are always hearing about – but, of late, even that has not been enough. With the relaxation of rules about representing interracial romance, he has suddenly lost ‘the nigger mystique’. Thus, white culture has robbed the black man of the one thing it ever allowed him to possess.

Mark Bould

Coffy Studio/Distributor:

American International Pictures Director:

Jack Hill Producer:

Robert Papazian Screenwriters:

Richard Fire John McNaughton

48 American Independent

Synopsis Coffy embarks on a spree of bloody vengeance against drug dealers, dirty cops, and corrupt politicians after her family become casualties of organized crime. Her older sister is a prostitute, her brother a coke addict and her younger sister, LuBelle, is brain-damaged as a result of contaminated drugs. The film begins with Coffy meting out her own brand of street justice with a sawn-off shotgun and a syringe to two drug dealers responsible for supplying LuBelle. At first Coffy is conflicted by her actions but when her childhood friend, and one good cop, Carter Brown, are violently attacked when Brown takes a stand against police corruption, by refusing to go on the take like his partner, McHenry, she is transformed into a vengeful femme fatale, wreaking a path of destruction and mayhem as she seeks justice for those close to her, and the black community as a whole. Disguising herself as a high-

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Paul Lohmann Art Director:

Perry Ferguson II Composer:

Roy Ayers Editor:

Chuck McClelland Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Pam Grier Roy Ayers Robert DoQui Year:

1973

call Jamaican call girl (appropriately named Mystique), Coffy seduces her victims – including the pimp who supplied the heroin that left her sister brain-damaged, and the Head of the Mafioso – before bloodily dispatching them to the hereafter.

Critique Coffy is generically part of the Blaxploitation movement that emerged at the beginning of the 1970s, with black independent films such as Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) before becoming assimilated into the mainstream with films such as Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1972). While Blaxploitation films were generally misogynistic in their sexualization of women, who functioned merely as external signifiers of the black protagonist’s virility and potency, there was a female strand of the genre with strong feisty and sexually-liberated black women at the centre of the narrative, beginning with Coffy and including films such as Foxy Brown (1974) and Cleopatra Jones (1973). Coffy is a much more subtle and nuanced film than Hill’s follow-up Foxy Brown or, indeed, Cleopatra Jones (for which Grier was considered for the leading role) due to a combination of a relatively-tight narrative and a powerful lead performance. This is especially evident in the final confrontation between Coffy and her politician lover, Howard Brunswick (Booker Bradshaw), as Brunswick tries to justify his actions and betrayal of Coffy and the black community. Grier’s subtlety of expression provides a map of interiority articulating Coffy’s emotional conflict when faced with the extent of her lover’s deceit and deception. While Coffy participates in many clichés of Blaxploitation – it is white society which is ultimately to blame, women, both black and white, are often objectified (the girl-on-girl fight scene is gratuitous by any standards and seems to be an excuse to show as many breasts as possible at one time) and black men are either pimps or hustlers obsessed with money, fashion and sex – it raises thoughtful questions around the relationship between societal oppression and criminal behaviour that go beyond the cliché by condemning rather than glamorizing drug culture. Coffy is black, bold and beautiful and, as the song lyrics at the film’s conclusion state, a ‘symbol of black pride’, which suggests affinities between the Black Power movement and second-wave feminism denied by male-orientated Blaxploitation cinema with its pimps and pushers and objectified women.

Colette Balmain

African-American Cinema 49

The Cool World, 1963.

The Cool World Studio/Distributor:

Wiseman Film Productions Cinema V Director:

Shirley Clarke Producer:

Frederick Wiseman Screenwriters:

Shirley Clarke Carl Lee Cinematographer:

Baird Bryant

50 American Independent

Synopsis Duke, a young African-American, struggles to survive and make a name for himself in the slums of Harlem. The film opens with a close-up of a bearded, black Muslim on the street preaching hate against whites and the cruel world we live in. We then get a tour from Duke’s high school teacher, the only male Caucasian in the film, guiding his class through Fifth Avenue to the public library. The rest of the movie plays out in the ghetto, depicted with montages of real locations and real people around the city. Duke’s main motivation is to obtain a ‘piece’ (a gun), and thus become president of the ‘Royal Pythons’, the local gang that he belongs to. Once he has the weapon, Duke can wage war on their rival gang, the ‘Wolves.’ There is also a love story, which follows Duke’s seduction of the gang’s official prostitute, Luanne. He takes her to Coney Island to see the ocean, which she had no idea was just a few subway stops away. The movie culminates in gang warfare, ironically waged around a playground.

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

Mal Waldron Art Director:

Roger Furman Editor:

Shirley Clarke Duration:

105 minutes Cast:

Hampton Clanton Carl Lee Clarence Williams III Year:

1964

Critique In addition to The Cool World, Shirley Clarke’s earlier The Connection (1962) and later Portrait of Jason (1967) also carry similar themes of racial prejudice, drugs, and life on the bottom rung of the inner-city ladder. Her distinct style is evident here; to capture the essence of life in the ghetto, Clarke’s camera floats around with a cinéma-vérité approach. For example, during a conversation the camera will shakily pan back and forth between subjects instead of using shot/ reverse shot. The grainy black-and-white film stock, natural lighting, and use of non-actors (with the exception of Carl Lee and Clarence Williams III) also add an authentic feel to the movie. Meandering shots of New York City cops, buses, taxis, ice cream vendors, record shops, and so forth, puts the audience in a real world that future generations can see first-hand, as though it jumped off the pages of a history book. Occasional narration from Duke takes the audience from the streets into the psyche of our anti-hero, and much can be learnt about the mentality of ghetto life through the thoughts of this 14-year-old kid. ‘The piece is the key,’ he states, in reference to his positioning on the social ladder through acquiring a firearm. The external pressures around him skew his view of manhood, much like the characters in Larry Clark’s Kids (1995), a film undoubtedly inspired by Shirley Clarke’s work. However, in The Cool World the emphasis is placed on violence rather than sex, although both are present. Frederick Wiseman, the film’s producer, was an advocate of independent cinema. He wanted to make something that would be more socially conscious than Hollywood product. By combining elements of narrative and documentary, the artists behind The Cool World succeed at creating a piece of cinema that will remain significant for generations.

Matt Delman

Hustle & Flow Studio/Distributor:

Crunk Pictures MTV Films New Deal Productions Paramount Classics Director:

Craig Brewer

Synopsis DJay is a Memphis pimp and small-time drug dealer who operates out of his car and resides in low-rent housing with erratic air conditioning, sharing his space with his hookers Nola, Shug and Lex. Frustrated with his life, DJay decides to reinvent himself as a rapper with the assistance of former school classmate Key, who is now a recording engineer. Despite lacking experience and money, they set up a makeshift studio in DJay’s home with the aim of cutting a demo that will sufficiently impress hometown rap star Skinny Black and lead to a recording contract.

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Producers:

Stephanie Allen John Singleton Screenwriter:

Craig Brewer Cinematographer:

Amy Vincent Art Director:

Alexa Marino Editor:

Billy Fox Composer:

Scott Bomar Duration:

116 minutes Cast:

Terrence Howard Anthony Anderson Taryn Manning DJ Qualls Year:

2005

52 American Independent

Critique An independent film with obvious crossover potential, Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow was bought by MTV Films at the Sundance Film Festival for a record $9 million and later released through Paramount Classics. Produced by the studio-affiliated African-American filmmaker John Singleton, who parlayed his breakthrough success with Boyz n the Hood (1991) into a lucrative career as a journeyman hack specializing in such action vehicles as the remake of Shaft (2000), the sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) and Four Brothers (2005), Brewer’s second feature is as slickly packaged and skilfully engineered as any slice of Hollywood wish-fulfilment fantasy. Brewer would emphasize his humble Memphis roots when promoting both Hustle & Flow and his swiftly-realized follow-up, Black Snake Moan (2006), but Hustle & Flow did not excite buyers on the festival circuit because it was an authentic depiction of the downtown Memphis milieu; it is dynamically entertaining and boasts a great soundtrack, while the narrative momentum – which builds gradually and forcefully in tandem with DJay’s growing confidence behind the mic – partially obscures some of the negative aspects of its central protagonist, not to mention Brewer’s suggestion that even responsible family men like Key occasionally need to break free of their middleclass suburban trappings in order to reassert themselves. Even the dirty streets and lower-class housing of modern day Memphis are lent a romantic quality by Amy Vincent’s stylish cinematography. The retro-style opening titles and Terrence Howard’s introductory monologue, in which DJay philosophises that, ‘A man ain’t like a dog. Man, they know about death. They got a sense a history’, suggest a blaxploitation vibe, but Rocky (1976) and 8 Mile (2002) prove to be more appropriate comparisons as Brewer’s film chronicles DJay’s quest for success and some form of redemption for his exploitation of women. Despite his raw talent, DJay has the propensity to be a despicable human being, and Terrence Howard thoroughly deserved his Academy Award nomination for maintaining audience sympathy towards such a self-contradictory character. Yet even the actor’s raspy charisma cannot eradicate the nagging doubt of whether DJay is really an underdog deserving of audience empathy as the pimp-turned-rapper exploits friendships and manipulates situations to get ahead in the game; he pimps out Nola to obtain a microphone and tries to jump-start his career by forming a ‘friendship’ with local rap star Skinny Black, while moments of tenderness towards Shug are undermined by flashes of violent temperament. His lyrics may declare that ‘it’s hard out here for a pimp’, but DJay has everyone around him working for his own financial and artistic gain. MTV Films obviously expected a breakout smash when they paid such a significant sum for

Directory of World Cinema

Hustle & Flow but, in commercial terms, the film peaked early in its theatrical run and ultimately grossed $22million, a disappointing figure when the cost of prints and advertising were taken into account; it is possible that audiences did not embrace DJay as willingly as Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa and Eminem’s Jimmy ‘B-Rabbit’ Smith as that they did not feel comfortable rooting for an ‘underdog’ who was all too eager to use that status to his advantage.

John Berra

Killer of Sheep Distributor:

Mypheduh Films Milestone Film and Video Director:

Charles Burnett Producer:

Charles Burnett Screenwriter:

Charles Burnett Cinematographer:

Charles Burnett Editor:

Charles Burnett Duration:

83 minutes Cast:

Henry Gayle Sanders Kaycee Moore Angela Burnett Year:

1977

Synopsis An angry black man shouts at his son for failing to get into a fight to protect his younger brother; the boy’s mother contemptuously slaps him. Years later, the boy, Stan, lives with his wife and children in Watts, a black Los Angeles neighbourhood. He works in an abattoir. He cannot sleep, and is unable to respond to his wife’s sexual desires. Life unfolds slowly, a day at a time. Children play in vacant lots, on rooftops, in derelict buildings and railroad sidings. Two men try to get Stan to join them in committing a crime. The white woman who runs the liquor store hits on him. He scrapes together the money to buy a car engine, but the engine gets broken. He tries to take his family out into the country to a racetrack, but the car gets a puncture and there is no spare tire. Back home, it looks like it might rain. Stan is finally able to – wants to – return his wife’s attentions. He still works in an abattoir.

Critique Burnett’s debut feature – submitted for his MFA at UCLA and only recently commercially available – is often compared to such Italian neo-realist films as Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (1948). However, it diverges from such models in significant ways. It eschews the sentimental, and its emotional pay-off – the stirring of mutual desire and intimacy between Stan and his wife – is downplayed, diverted into the hinted-at rain and the low-key celebration of another woman’s pregnancy. The slow accretion of incidents and events might invite comparison with Robert Bresson rather than De Sica, but there is no sense of a narrative driving the careful observation of everyday minutiae. Favouring a fixed camera, desultory, half-heard conversations and the distant sounds of children playing, Burnett depicts the brute facticity of the material and the quotidian. There is no trace of the frenetic or the talkative that one finds in John Cassavetes or Spike Lee. Unlike Georges Franju’s Le sang des bêtes (1949) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974),

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Killer of Sheep, Milestone Films.

the abattoir scenes do not suggest that slaughterhouse work is somehow necessarily more alienating than other labour; nor do they draw the kind of overtly metaphoric comparison that we find in Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) between workers and sheep; nor do they make a political point about the long-established connection between slaughterhouses and marginalized, at-risk workforces, such as we find in John Sayles’ Silver City (2004). The abattoir does not become a site of resistance, like the sausage factory in Jean-Luc Godard’s and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Tout va bien (1972) or the zinc mine in what is probably the nearest thing to an American precursor, Herbert Biberman’s Salt of the Earth (1954). Perhaps the reason for making such comparisons is not so much to triangulate Burnett’s particular accomplishment

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but to admit him – albeit belatedly – to the company of such film-makers. Rejecting the Blaxploitation depiction of the ghetto, Burnett captures the mundane experience of impoverished urban life. When Stan struggles down an awkward staircase with the car engine only to see it destroyed, there is no attempt at the abstracted absurdism of Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box (1932); and his insomnia is not some pat cliché about individuated psychological trauma, as in the conclusion that ruins Brad Anderson’s The Machinist (2004), but the product of a life that just goes on and on, relentlessly. Instead, Killer of Sheep is about the specific contours of the community in which he grew up. This is even more evident in the ways in which it captures children at play when they have nowhere to play, except potentially dangerous spaces fallen into disuse, and nothing to play with, except each other. And it is evident in the remarkable soundtrack (featuring Faye Adams, Louis Armstrong, Arthur Crudup, Lowell Fulson, Cecil Gant, Elmore James, Paul Robeson, William Grant Still, Dinah Washington, Little Walter and Earth, Wind and Fire) which weaves AfricanAmerican culture, and a particular cultural experience of it, deep into the fabric of Burnett’s blues movie.

Mark Bould

She’s Gotta Have It Studio/Distributor:

40 Acres & A Mule Island-Alive Director:

Spike Lee Producer:

Spike Lee Screenwriter:

Spike Lee Cinematographer:

Ernest R. Dickerson Art Director:

Wynn Thomas Composer:

Bill Lee

Synopsis Nola Darling is a young black woman living in Brooklyn. She is sexually involved with three men: the caring but overlyprotective Jamie, the affluent but arrogant Greer, and the fun but immature Mars. Each man wants to date her exclusively, but Nola resists deciding on a single partner, wanting to maintain her independence. The impatience – and insecurity – of her three suitors pressurizes her into making a choice, but she soon begins to question whether she has picked the right man, or if she even needs a man at all.

Critique As the cultural landscape of American independent cinema becomes increasingly obscured by the perception of the sector as an industrially necessary stepping stone, discussion surrounding Spike Lee’s directorial debut, She’s Gotta Have It, has centred less on the black sexual politics which caused such a stir in 1986 and more on Lee’s entrepreneurial production methods: shooting in grainy black and white, not being able to afford re-takes, and making sure that the cast and crew did not throw away any aluminium soda cans as they could be turned in for recycling money. Lee was

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Editor:

Spike Lee Duration:

84 minutes Cast:

Tracy Camilla Johns Spike Lee Tommy Redmond Hicks Year:

1986

actually motivated to embark on the shoestring production by the success of Stranger than Paradise (1984), but as Lee has always been a more outspoken personality than Jim Jarmusch, not to mention an expert media manipulator, he became the figurehead of ‘credit card film-making’, with his enterprising attitude inspiring such directors as Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith and Nick Gomez. A mere two years after the release of She’s Gotta Have It, Lee published Gotta Have It: Inside Guerilla Filmmaking, a guide to making low-budget movies, establishing himself as a guru of DIY production, although by this point he had already made the leap into studio features, directing School Daze (1998) for Columbia Pictures. If, however, Lee had somehow fallen into obscurity following his debut feature, She’s Gotta Have It would remain a cultural milestone worthy of discussion. Structured as a documentary, with characters being introduced via title cards and then speaking directly to the camera, Lee’s film exhibits enough anxiety about sex and relationships – and the distinction between the two – that it was almost appropriate that he was briefly dubbed, ‘the black Woody Allen.’ Each of Nola’s would-be suitors (the safe but dull Jamie, the propertyobsessed Greer and the motor-mouthed Mars, the last amusingly played by the multi-tasking Lee himself) represents an aspect of the modern male and, taken collectively, they are, as Greer puts it, a ‘three-headed monster.’ Nola keeps each man informed of the others, but the matter of who ‘owns’ whom is always open, relative to the individual point of view, or the need that is being satisfied: Nola uses each man in her life for a different purpose, but Jamie, Greer and Mars have their own ideas about how Nola would fulfil their social and sexual aspirations should she decide to go steady. The sharp script, which leads to such quotable lines as, ‘Baby, you’re so fine, I’d drink a tub of your bath water’ and ‘Nola’s about as dependable as a ripped diaphragm’, are matched by Lee’s tight, rhythmic editing and a terrific jazz score by his father, Bill Lee, ensuring that you can enjoy the raucous humour of She’s Gotta Have It, and let the sexual politics bother you later.

John Berra

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Directory of World Cinema

Straight Out of Brooklyn Studio/Distributor:

American Playhouse Blacks in Progress The Samuel Goldwyn Company Director:

Matty Rich Producer:

Matty Rich Screenwriter:

Matty Rich Cinematographer:

John Rosnell Art Director:

Gena Brooks Editor:

Jack Haigis Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

George T Odom Ann D Sanders Larry Gilliard Jr Year:

1991

Synopsis Brooklyn, New York. Dennis’ father is a depressed alcoholic who blames ‘the White Man’ for his own inability to succeed in his life, but transfers his downtrodden frustration into beating his wife and stopping his children from going to college. Away from home, Dennis relays to his friends a plan to escape the shackles of Brooklyn and to ‘get paid’, giving them all the life that he feels they deserve. His plan is to rob a drug dealer whilst he makes his collections. Dennis is serious about his foolish agenda and he repeats to his girlfriend his desire to get out of Brooklyn and into Manhattan. After the three friends acquire the gun and car needed for the illegal task, they carry out their robbery of the drug dealer. However, because they were not wearing masks, the dealer now knows Dennis’ identity, placing his family in danger.

Critique Straight Out of Brooklyn was made on a budget of less than $500,000 and achieved a domestic gross of $2.7 million. It was written, produced, directed, and featured Matty Rich, who was only 19 years old when the film was released in 1991. Furthermore, to enhance the ‘independent’ credentials of the film, Straight out of Brooklyn received industry recognition when it won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Best First Feature award at the Independent Spirit Awards. The film can be seen as a potentially more authentic experience when compared to the far more lucrative ‘hood movies’ released around the same time – Boyz n the Hood (1991) and Menace II Society (1993) – because of Rich’s controlling extent in shaping the film. However, it would be simplistic to assume that the weltanschauung within the film matches that of the young director who plays one of the three friends. Although the gang narrative is fairly generic, the feeling of suffocation and despair turning to rage forcibly emanates from the film because of the characters within the story. Aided by real locations and low-budget cinematography, the slightly uneasy/amateurish acting serves the characters, as their mindsets become partially caricatured, thereby exacerbating their situation. However, they are also loaded with what one would assume to be authentic details that would have been left out of a ‘Hollywood’ take on the material. Dennis’ permanent rage significantly diminishes the motivation behind his Robin Hood activities, and the unmasked daylight robbery threatens to undercut the film as it seems a particularly ill-conceived action to perform on local drug-dealing gangsters, but the three friends within Straight Out of Brooklyn do not behave as smooth-talking-

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gangster stereotypes, instead they have inane conversations, try to convince girls that they are sexual magnets overflowing with love, worry about eating their fast food, and fantasize over their employment prospects in a realistic manner. Furthermore, the necessary weakness of his mother to allow the father to expand his character is frustrating to watch. But, then, this is the same frustration that Dennis himself has to deal with, and the film, saturated with characters that have already become inured to the misery, draws the viewer in, not to glorify and share in Dennis’ fleeting ‘success’ of sorts but to witness how disappointment and banality is a default position for the inhabitants of Red Hook and that positive intentions can easily lead back to failure.

Carl Wilson

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song Studio/Distributor:

Cinemation Industries Director:

Melvin Van Peebles Producers:

Jerry Gross Melvin Van Peebles Screenwriter:

Melvin Van Peebles Cinematographer:

Robert Maxwell Editor:

Melvin Van Peebles Composers:

Earth Wind & Fire Melvin Van Peebles Duration:

97 minutes

58 American Independent

Synopsis After police enter an African-American brothel and ask for someone to accompany them to the station for routine purposes, the stud Sweetback is nominated to go along. Along the way he witnesses the two policemen stopping the car to assault a black activist (Mu Mu). Sickened by what he sees, he eventually steps in and brutally attacks the policemen. For the rest of the film Sweetback is on the run across America, towards the Mexican border. A picaresque journey sees him captured by police, helped out and released by ghetto residents, encounter an assortment of characters including a biker gang, assault more policemen, and indulge in numerous sexual activities.

Critique Melvin Van Peebles’ second feature is a milestone in independent cinema: a film often credited with kick-starting the Blaxploitation craze of the 1970s. It was filmed on a very low budget, with Peebles producing, directing, editing, and writing both the screenplay and soundtrack. Unlike many of the films that followed in its wake, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is raw, edgy, experimental, and much more overtly militant in its racial politics. Its confrontational, in-your-face stance is heralded near the beginning of the film with titles announcing: ‘This film is dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the man’. Sure enough, the film primarily consists of Sweetback on the run from the police, sticking it to the ‘man’. While the plot is simple and threadbare, the style of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is as radical as its racial posture: repetitive, with plentiful use of split screens, solarized and

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Melvin Van Peebles Hubert Scales John Dullaghan Year:

1971

multiply-superimposed images, and swift, unconventional edits. The relentless repetition of the film is crucial to its aesthetic: it is evident in Sweetback’s sexual movements, his movements across America, and the rhythmic insistency of the soundtrack. This repetitive motion produces a quite hypnotic cadence and is opened up by the textural play with image quality, resulting in what could be described as a black psychedelic-funk film. This rhythmic style reflects Sweetback’s, need to constantly move in order to evade confinement and score a victory for the black community. Sweetback’s movement serves to highlight the plight of African-Americans’ subordinate position, and to stimulate black citizens into action. Thus, as news of Sweetback’s escape and pursuit spreads, he is helped out by many of his brothers and sisters in a series of acts which disrupt the actions of the authorities. So, for example, when he is captured by two policemen, a number of people set fire to the police car and drag Sweetback from it so that he can escape their clutches. The resulting conflagration and explosion resonantly symbolize the growing militancy which develops throughout the film. If the film is formally and racially radical, its sexual politics are somewhat less so: for the most part, the film’s females are prostitutes and, within the subordinated black community, the women are doubly subordinated. Sweetback, however, is also defined by his sexuality and earns money through sexual performance, which somewhat muddies the film’s sexual politics. Such muddiness is further complicated through the controversial opening sexual initiation of Sweetback as a young boy, which follows a series of females gazing at him eating, a scene which is partially blacked out on its UK release in order to comply with the Protection of Children Act, 1978. Ultimately, though, Sweetback is defined as a super-sexual animal, able to ‘conquer’ females through his ultra-masculine prowess. While the film was crucial in countering the black stereotypes pervading Hollywood film-making, Sweetback’s hyper-sexualized, action-oriented figure would nevertheless itself become a different kind of stereotype, frequently redrawn within a number of subsequent Blaxploitation films.

Jamie Sexton

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Watermelon Man Studio/Distributor:

Columbia Pictures Director:

Melvin Van Peebles Producer:

John B Bennett Screenwriter:

Herman Raucher Cinematographer:

W Wallace Kelley Art Director:

Malcolm C Bert Composer:

Synopsis Jeffrey Gerber, a middle-aged insurance salesman, lives in a nice suburban home, with liberal wife Althea, who is very concerned about the race issue, and two children. A health fanatic and a joker (who is not as funny as he thinks), he is also a sexist who ignores his wife’s domestic and sexual discontent, a conceited ‘smartass’ and a loudmouth racist. One day he wakes up to discover that he has become black. His social position changes immediately: Althea’s liberalism wavers, and her sexual interest in him wanes, while that of Erica, the Norwegian blonde in the office who has always snubbed him, is awakened; when he is out running, police stop him and crowds gather, assuming he must be a thief fleeing a crime; black characters talk to him differently than they did before, and so do white ones. His neighbours club together to buy his house before the value of their own property is threatened by his presence; his boss wants him to exploit the untapped insurance market among black people; Althea leaves him. Slowly, Gerber not only accepts his changed identity but begins to take pride in it.

Melvin Van Peebles

Critique

Editors:

Following the success at the San Francisco Film Festival of La permission, (1968) Melvin Van Peebles’ French film about a black American soldier’s three-day affair with a white French girl, Columbia offered him Herman Raucher’s script to direct. One of the first African-Americans to direct a Hollywood movie, he has discussed the fight over casting a black actor in the lead (apparently both Alan Arkin and Jack Lemmon were considered, even though they would have had to have been in blackface for the majority of the film) and about changing the ending (Raucher reportedly had Gerber literally waking up from his nightmare). Shot in 21 days, it was sufficiently successful for Columbia to sign a three-picture deal with Van Peebles, which they tore up when he started to make Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). Many of the techniques Van Peebles utilized so effectively in his seminal Blaxploitation film are evident in Watermelon Man – zooms, strobing colour, jump cuts, location shooting in unfamiliar parts of Los Angeles, abstract backdrops of spotlights and neon in front of which a black man moves, the director’s own distinctive musical compositions. It, too, is a problematically-misogynist film about a black man who runs and learns to resist, but its tone is very different. Reminiscent of such suburban sitcoms as Bewitched (1964–72), in which an outsider is at odds with the cosy setting, Watermelon Man exposes the real costs of difference. Skewering the

Carl Kress Sydney Z Litwack Duration:

100 minutes Cast:

Godfrey Cambridge Estelle Parsons Year:

1970

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hypocrisies of white America with a humour that is broad and raucous, its very crassness discomfits the kind of middle class liberalism practised by Althea. The humour is mainly articulated around racial stereotyping: the white Gerber constantly speaks of black people in such terms; when he becomes black, he proclaims the same stereotypes but as a form of mocking self-defence, forestalling possible attacks. His own attitudes begin to change, not merely from being on the receiving end of racism but also from meeting black people when he sells them insurance and makes a new home for himself in a black neighbourhood. When he sets up his own insurance office in the black community, he – perhaps unknowingly – is following a cultural politics concerned with African-American self-development and economic independence. But he also goes beyond that. In a striking closing sequence, Gerber and other black men practice a martial art with mops and broom handles. In the final shot, as he cries out, the camera zooms in to freeze for ten seconds on his face. The allusion is presumably to the end of François Truffaut’s Les quatre cents coups (1959), but the context suggests a better parallel might be found in the last shot of Jorge Sanjinés’ Bolivian revolutionary classic, Yawar mallku (1969), in which indigenous Indians raise their guns in the air against Yanqui imperialism. Gerber is no Sweetback, but he makes the same journey. His consciousness radicalized by learning Black Pride, he now understands the need for Black Power.

Mark Bould

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THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

E

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For a horror film to be successful in terms of its ability to horrify, it must stand the test of time. Obviously, horror is in the eye of the beholder and this is also dictated by shifting public standards of acceptability. However, from the birth of cinema, film-makers have been aware of the medium’s power to shock: one of the inventors of cinema, Thomas Edison, produced the fact-based The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895) and fictional Frankenstein (1910). As well as inventing the horror film, Edison also invented the snuff movie by not only documenting but also actually performing the deed itself in Electrocuting an Elephant (1903). The horror films made by the American studios in the 1930s are tame by modern standards; the movies which make up the Universal Monster machine include James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), which are now considered suitable for family viewing, although they originally received adult-only certificates. However, there were notable exceptions. Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) was heavily cut and banned in the UK for 30 years after its release. Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) was cut by eight minutes when re-released in 1936, and its studio tried to have it destroyed in the early 1940s. Because of such controversy, and questionable content in other genres, Republican Lawyer Will Hays and the Catholic Church in Los Angeles established a Production Code to reduce the lowering of ‘moral standards’. The so-called Hays Code lasted 34 years, and the Hollywood system adhered to it for a variety of reasons before it was abandoned in 1968. It would be churlish to suggest that no notable American horror films were made from 1934–1968, but they were certainly few and far between. Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943) used evocative lighting and camerawork rather than explicit elements to unsettle the audience, and smuggled discussion of female sexuality past the censors. Alfred Hitchcock was less successful regarding the censors with Psycho (1960), a film that proved controversial during production and led to the director shooting in monochrome. While the classic American horror films of the 1930s were based on the works of British novelists, Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, such as House of Usher (1960), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964 are also considered important additions to the genre; but while they are somewhat lurid in hue and tone, they are still relatively tame in overall shock value. Worldwide cultural and political liberation in the 1960s led to more extreme forms of art becoming acceptable within mainstream media, although there was still the occasional movie that relied on atmosphere for audience chills rather than entrails. For example, Carnival of Souls (1962), the only directorial credit of Herk Harvey, is an eerie psychological chiller that harks back to the more psychological phantasmagoria of Tournier’s films and still raises the hairs on the back of the neck when viewed today. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) combines a politically-charged sensibility with the visceral content of the exploitation output of Herschell Gordon Lewis, such as Blood Feast (1963) and Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964). It also recaptures the unusual atmospherics of Carnival of Souls (a film Romero admired), and replaces Tournier’s voodoo-themed zombies

Left: Halloween, 1978, Falcon International.

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with undead, hard-to-kill cannibals that are more like a force of nature than traditional horror monsters. Although Romero’s later colour zombie movies were trying to be the American zenith of gore and disembowelment at their time of their release, Night of the Living Dead probably reached a larger audience than it might have done by rendering the zombie degustation in monochrome. Also, in an era when news reportage was still recorded in black and white, it made the footage seem somehow more real and relevant. Night of the Living Dead was a film completely in touch with the zeitgeist and, having been shot in 1967, was almost uncanny in its relevance to the events of the following year. Romero’s film casts an African-American as its leading man and dares to offer a downbeat ending that must have been uncomfortable to watch after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968. Also, 1968 saw the most shocking event of the Vietnam War so far: the My Lai massacre on 16 March entered the public consciousness when photographs of up to 500 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians, some of whom had been sexually abused and tortured, were disseminated through the media a year later. While Night of the Living Dead can be discussed in association with civil rights and civil disobedience, Romero’s more extravagant sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978), had softer targets – consumerism and vacuous modern culture – but handles the satire well. This element, combined with the more visceral gore, makes for another film that still disturbs modern audiences. The 1970s was the start of the horror film as franchise: a concept that had flourished a couple of times in the past with the aforementioned Universal Monsters cycle and Romero’s ‘Dead’ saga, which has managed six entries to date and just as many unauthorized sequels. However, the pursuit of the franchise dollar began in earnest in the early 1980s. In many of these cases, the original instalments are excellent examples of the modern horror movie. Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is a genuinely disturbing film accentuated by atypical camera angles and a discordant soundtrack and, like Psycho, uses elements of the Ed Gein story for inspiration. John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is still unnerving, largely due to clever editing, an impressive use of the widescreen frame and a minimalist score by the director. Between them, the films have spawned ten sequels, two remakes, and two sequels to those remakes, none of which have the originality or unsettling quality of the originals. In the 1950s, it was profitable to make B-movies. But, by the 1980s, horror was big business and franchises were all the rage. Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) took the ubiquitous modern bogeyman that is the serial killer, gave him a supernatural twist and, therefore, a reason to come back in numerous reiterations of the original plot. The video-rental market and the notoriety of horror films on the emergent format lead to a whole new industrial avenue for horror. While low-budget gore films of the past were utilized as a means of filling double-bills at drive-in movies and grindhouse cinemas, fans of the genre could now collect their favourite films and buy magazines about them that focused on the splatter make-up effects with relish. Although trends and cycles have always been present in horror, such as the teen horror films of the 1950s which would dominate the market again in the early 2000s, B-movies were now often made purely to fit in with similar titles on the shelves. As the mainstream often looks down the cultural ladder, it should not be surprising that a horror film was finally lauded at the Academy Awards when The Silence of the Lambs (1991), another Ed Gein-inspired movie, picked up all the major trophies, or that directors who kick-started their careers by making low-budget shockers, such as James Cameron and Sam Raimi, would eventually follow the

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likes of The Terminator (1984) with Titanic (1997), and The Evil Dead (1981) with Spider-Man (2002). By the start of the twenty-first century, fans of horror films from the previous decades were remaking films they had enjoyed from their youth. Perhaps because of the recycling of material and Hollywood’s ever-growing eagerness to promote independent directors to the helm of less subversive but more lucrative films and franchises, it makes it increasingly difficult for film-makers operating outside the studio system to carve out a professional reputation by making B-movies of any level of quality. In addition, so called ‘torture porn’ scored at the box office with the Hostel films (2005/2007) and the Saw franchise (2003–present) preferring a series of gore sequences to anything approaching conventional plot. Other independent horror films, such as those distributed by the Miramax offshoot, Dimension, are increasingly tongue-in-cheek and such titles as Scream (1996), From Dusk ‘til Dawn (1996) and Grindhouse (2007) suggest that the horror genre can no longer be approached with a straight face, unless it is in the form of an overly-reverential remake of old American chillers, or movies from further afield, such as Japan and Korea. While occasional flashes of originality, such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), have seen their filmic language also incorporated into the mainstream, the rise of cheap, high quality digital cameras and the possibility of internet distribution give fans of the genre at least some hope that modern masters of horror will still come along, and that the familiarity of recent years will eventually come to a self-referential, meta-textual end.

Alex Fitch

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American Psycho Studio/Distributor:

Lions Gate Films Director:

Mary Harron Producers:

Edward R. Pressman Chris Hanley Christian Halsey Solomon Screenwriters:

Mary Harron Guinevere Turner Cinematographer:

Andrzej Sekula Art Director:

Andrew M. Stearn Editor:

Andrew Marcus Composer:

John Cale Duration:

92 minutes Cast:

Christian Bale Chloë Sevigny Jared Leto Willem Dafoe Year:

2000

66 American Independent

Synopsis Wall Street, 1987. Patrick Bateman works in Mergers and Acquisitions at Pierce & Pierce. Rich and handsome, he lives on the Upper West Side, eats in New York’s finest restaurants and is engaged to society girl Evelyn. He is also utterly insane, killing for pleasure. Unable to sate his bloodlust, he axes to death rival colleague Paul Allen in his apartment. With Allen missing, Bateman carries on as normal, even when a Detective Donald Kimball questions him on their relationship. Meanwhile, Bateman’s anger becomes uncontrollable – killing tramps and prostitutes at will. The only time he is able to resist murder is when his secretary Jean comes to his apartment for dinner. After dumping Evelyn, Bateman’s mind lurches into fantasy: an ATM machine tells him to feed it a stray cat before the police pursue him for shooting dead an old woman. Blowing up several cop cars, he escapes to an office where he calls his lawyer, confessing to all his crimes including the murder of Allen. But when he later bumps into the lawyer in a restaurant, the man admits that he took the confession to be a prank. Claiming he recently dined with Allen in London, it compounds the notion that Bateman is a fantasist.

Critique Based on Brett Easton Ellis’ scandalous 1991 novel, Mary Harron’s adaptation played down its more controversial elements in favour of satirizing 1980s’ consumer culture. Set in the days when getting a table at Dorsia was all that mattered, Harron makes explicit the fine line between making a killing on Wall Street and doing it for real. Smartly splicing the ‘murders and executions’ with isolated elements of the novel – notably Bateman’s hilarious critiques of Huey Lewis and the News, Genesis and Whitney Houston – Harron’s American Psycho remains loyal to the darkly-comic spirit of Ellis’ work. Those looking for the novel’s more grisly moments were left disappointed, as Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner wisely kept the bloodshed off camera. Primarily, the film focuses on the way human beings conceal their true identity. ‘I think my mask of sanity is about to slip’, Bateman tells us, shortly before luring Paul Allen back to his apartment to put an axe in his skull. When the blood splatters Bateman’s face, it hits just one side. Not unlike Bale’s later Batman nemesis, Two-Face, it gives him a schizophrenic profile that from one side looks perfectly normal. Indeed, the joke of the heart of American Psycho, is that it might just all be a case of mistaken identity. ‘I simply am not there,’ Bateman tells us, early on, and it is true. Paul Allen repeatedly mistakes him for a colleague, Marcus Halberstram. When Bateman kills Allen, he then pretends to be his colleague, re-recording his answer-phone message, using his apartment and even announcing himself as Allen to the prostitute he lures into his limo. Even the office doorman refers to him as ‘Mr. Smith’, while the lawyer in the final scene, in the belief that he is someone else, tells him ‘Bateman is such a dork’. Try as he might, Bateman’s protestations that he is utterly insane seem to fall on deaf ears – perhaps because he is living in a hollow world, where envying

American Psycho, Lions Gate, Photographer Kerry Hayes.

your colleagues’ business cards is enough to tip you over the edge. Whether or not he is a killer – and the final third of the film suggests not – it barely matters. Bateman is trapped inside this existence forever. In the final scene, a notice on a door behind him reads: ‘This is not an exit.’ The last words of the novel – and a reference to Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit – Bateman’s own personal hell is here to stay. Certainly Harron wants us to consider what is worse: to be a reallife psycho, a sick fantasist or a self-centred suit? Alongside this, the film works as a sly nostalgia-free look at the 1980s. Everything – from the sickeningly-upbeat soundtrack (‘Walking on Sunshine’, ‘Simply Irresistible’) to Andrzej Sekula’s gleaming cinematography, and to the brilliant Bale’s own perfectly-sculpted ‘hardbody’ – suggest the decade where excess was everything. In the end, while Bateman may say that ‘this confession has meant nothing’, the recession of 2008 and onwards, ensures American Psycho is even more relevant now than when it was released.

James Mottram

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The Blair Witch Project Studio/Distributor:

Haxan Films Artisan Directors:

Daniel Myrick Eduardo Sánchez Producers:

Zev Guber Jeremy Wall Screenwriters:

Daniel Myrick Eduardo Sánchez Cinematographer:

Neal Fredericks Art Director:

Ricardo Moreno Editors:

Daniel Myrick Eduardo Sánchez Duration:

86 minutes Cast:

Heather Donahue Joshua Leonard Michael C. Williams Year:

1999

68 American Independent

Synopsis Three young film students, Heather, Josh and Michael, go missing while making a documentary on the legend of the Blair Witch in October 1994. One year later, film footage is found which details the events leading up to their disappearance. The story is told through the intertwining of black-andwhite and colour film segments. This footage shows the three film students interviewing people in the town of Burkittsville, Maryland, where the Blair Witch is said to live/have lived, before going into the woods to look for evidence of her existence. In the woods, the film-makers become lost and, as they try to find their way out, mysterious things happen, including finding three small piles of stones (cairns) outside their tent one night; the sound of babies crying in the night; their only map disappearing; and strange effigies hung from trees. Josh disappears, and Heather and Michael frantically search for him, ending up in an old barn in which a serial killer called Rustin Parr was rumoured to have killed children. Heather and Michael become separated, with the remaining frames of the film shot from Heather’s first-person perspective.

Critique There can be little doubt of the impact of The Blair Witch Project on independent cinema. With an estimated budget of $60,000, the film has gone on to take almost $250 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time. It won a number of awards, including The Golden Orange, The Florida Film Critics Circle Award, and The Cannes Film Festival, Order of The Youth, although, less auspiciously, Heather Donahue won the Razzie Award for worst actress and the film was nominated in the category of Worst Screenplay in 2000. Much of the film’s success was generated by internet buzz on the Internet Movie Database which preceded its cinematic release, with the leading actors listed as missing and presumed dead. The idea of found footage as a mechanism for selling a film as authentic is not new, and had been used one year earlier in the arguably more effective The Last Broadcast (1998). While, as a cinematic exercise, The Blair Witch Project is interesting, especially in its use of contrast between 16mm black-and-white film and High 8 colour video footage, it is less effective as a piece of horror film-making. The scares are few and far between, and the characters, especially Heather, become irritating as the film goes on. The sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), failed to capitalize on the success of the original and the posited franchise never materialized. Both Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez have struggled to repeat the success of their directorial debut. Myrick has made a number of straight-to-video features including Solstice (2008), while

Directory of World Cinema

Eduardo Sánchez has directed just two films: Altered (2006) and Seventh Moon (2008). However, the use of cinéma-vérité in The Blair Witch Project has been incredibly important in the development of contemporary horror films, as demonstrated by the proliferation of low-budget independent features such as Five Across the Eyes (2006) to the recent studio production Quarantine (2008) – a remake of the 2007 Spanish film, [Rec]. Learning from the multi-media event that was The Blair Witch Project, Quarantine was marketed on the basis of its supposed ‘truth value’ – a film that the US Government did not want viewers to see. While its influence on horror cinema should not be underestimated, The Blair Witch Project is an example of style over substance, and owes much of its continued popularity to the media campaign that preceded its release. As a piece of marketing it excels, but in the final analysis as a horror film, it fails.

Colette Balmain

Carnival of Souls Studio/Distributor:

Herts Lion International Director:

Herk Harvey Producer:

Herk Harvey Screenwriters:

Herk Harvey John Clifford Cinematographer:

Synopsis Mary Henry is enjoying a day out riding in a car with two friends. When challenged to a drag race, the women accept, but their car is forced off a bridge by accident. It appears that all three women have drowned until Mary emerges from the river, apparently unscathed. After recovering from her ordeal, Mary accepts a job in Salt Lake City as a church organist, only to be pursued by a mysterious male phantom, ‘The Man’, that seems to originate from an old run-down pavilion. Mary is gradually made aware of her increasing alienation from the world as her interactions with other people become more and more detached, initially suggested as caused by the trauma of her accident. As appearances of the phantom take on a more frightening frequency, Mary is chased back to the pavilion, where she is forced to confront the final truth about her condition.

Maurice Prather

Critique

Art Director:

Herk Harvey died in 1996 without making another film. Despite his sole contribution to horror, Carnival of Souls is a seminal film. Harvey displays a wide range of influences, such as nods to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) in the tense nocturnal driving sequences and bathroom scenes, and Jean Cocteau in the macabre ballroom dance scenes. Harvey steers horror away from the drive-in creature-features that dominated the genre in the early 1960s and emphasizes atmosphere over special effects and stock monsters. The film proudly flaunts its limitations: it is obvious that the meagre

Dan Fitzgerald Composer:

Gene Moore Editors:

Bill de Jarnette Dan Palmquist Duration:

78 minutes

The American Nightmare 69

Cast:

Candace Hilligoss Francis Feist Sidney Berger Year:

1962

budget was stretched to its limits, Harvey himself even portrays the main spectre, ‘The Man’, and the ghouls are merely extras made up in smudged black eyeliner and white face paint. Whatever Carnival of Souls may lack in the special effects department, it more than compensates in terms of mood and melancholic ambience. The abandoned carnival locale is employed well for unsettling effect, with its rotting rafters and empty buildings. The only drawback of the low-budget production standard is reflected in the cast, who are, at best, amateurish in their roles. However, Candace Hilligoss creates a subtly-layered central performance as her distant, confused facade gives way to growing terror at her predicament. Carnival of Souls is one of the first mainstream low-budget horror films, but it was not the last of its type. This picture would be a profound influence on future independent film directors such as George A. Romero, Sam Raimi and David Lynch. It could be argued that Harvey paved the way for guerrilla filmmaking on a tight budget. The twist-ending device extends to Jacob’s Ladder (1994), The Sixth Sense (1999), The Others (2001) and even anthology television series such as Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959–63).

Eeleen Lee

Halloween Studio/Distributor:

Compass International Pictures Director:

John Carpenter Producers:

Debra Hill John Carpenter Kool Lusby Irwin Yablans Moustapha Akkad Screenwriters:

John Carpenter Debra Hill Cinematographer:

Dean Cundey Art Director:

Tommy Wallace

70 American Independent

Synopsis On Halloween night, 1963, in Haddonfield, Illinois, six-yearold Michael Myers stabs his older sister Judith after she has sex with her boyfriend. He is then discovered by his parents on the front path outside their home, holding the bloody kitchen knife. Fifteen years later, his psychiatrist Sam Loomis is en route to the sanatorium, to supervise Michael’s transfer to court for trial as an adult, when he witnesses his charge escaping. Dr. Loomis tracks Myers, who leaves at least one corpse in his wake, back to Haddonfield. There, Michael has spent Halloween stalking various teenagers, including Laurie Strode and Annie Brackett plus the boy they babysit, Tommy Wallace. Loomis discovers Judith Myers’ tombstone is missing from the local graveyard, while the local Sheriff investigates the robbery of a selection of knives, rope and Halloween masks from a store. Loomis warns the Sheriff that Myers has arrived in town to carry out a killing spree. That night, Michael murders Annie, leaving her body in a Christ-like position below Judith’s headstone on a candlelit bed. After witnessing them having sex, Michael also kills Annie’s friends Lynda and Bob and attempts to murder Laurie. Defending herself, Laurie stabs Michael in the neck with a knitting needle, in the eye with a bent coat hanger and in the

Directory of World Cinema

Composer:

John Carpenter Editors:

Charles Bornstein Tommy Wallace Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Donald Pleasence Jamie Lee Curtis PJ Soles Year:

1978

chest with a knife, before Loomis shoots him several times at point-blank range. Michael falls from a first floor window to the ground, but disappears.

Critique The second entry in a sub-genre that would become known as ‘slasher’ movies, following Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), John Carpenter’s Halloween influenced films for decades to come due to the iconographic nature of its content and the self-assured nature of the direction. Halloween does not have much plot – a psychopath escapes from an asylum and then spends the majority of the film following various characters around small-town America, before killing some of them – but unlike most other examples of the genre Carpenter successfully sustains the suspense for an hour and a half through a variety of techniques. The film’s score is as minimalist as the plot, varying between two main themes: the famous piece of music that accompanies both the opening titles and the threat of Michael Myers’ proximity, and a more general, unnerving theme that keeps the tension going elsewhere. Because these pieces of music contain internal repetition, they become as familiar and relentless as weather, eroding the audience’s comfort the longer the film continues. Although the film is informed by his constant presence or proximity, Myers himself is a phantom, appearing briefly at the corner of the frame, from behind a hedge or sheets flapping in the wind on a clothesline and then disappearing when the character watching him diverts their attention momentarily. As Michael follows various potential victims around Haddonfield by car and on foot, it is our expectation of him to appear somewhere within the cinematic frame that keeps us on the edge of our seats, and Carpenter’s masterful use of three-dimensional space means Michael could appear anywhere, so nowhere becomes safe. If this had not become obvious during the film, the director makes this theme explicit at the end. After the impossibly-alive Myers disappears from the frame one last time before the credits roll, Carpenter shows us various familiar locations from the film again, empty, with the theme music playing, showing that nowhere in Haddonfield is ever going to be safe again. Unfortunately, while this is a brilliantly-rendered idea, the financiers took it too literally and brought Michael back a further eight times in sequels and remakes. However, the original remains undiluted by unnecessary addenda and, while other big screen serial killers in franchises such as Friday the 13th (1980–2009) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984–2003) follow a similar theme of a supernatural killer whose primary choice of victims are teenagers enjoying drink, drugs and sex with abandon, the realization of Michael Myers as an inscrutable, indestructible humanoid remains a potent one. In the end credits, the main actor playing Michael in the

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film is credited as playing ‘The Shape’, as his ‘Schrödinger’ aspect and ability to transform through many forms – boogeyman, psychopathic child, even romantic hero as he carries Annie’s prostrate form back into a house – defies categorization. Early in the film, Laurie attends an English lesson at school about the inability of fictional characters to escape their fate (indeed, the character, as played by Jamie Lee Curtis, would finally be dispatched by Myers in 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection) and Michael’s ubiquitous, silent, hulking figure is like a force of nature that no amount of attrition by his various victims will ever stop.

Alex Fitch

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Studio/Distributor:

Maljack Productions Director:

John McNaughton Producers:

Malik B Ali Waleed B Ali Lisa Dedmond Steven A Jones John McNaughton Screenwriters:

Richard Fire John McNaughton Cinematographer:

Charlie Lieberman Art Director:

Rick Paul Composers:

Ken Hale Steven A Jones Robert McNaughton Editor:

Elena Maganini Duration:

83 minutes

72 American Independent

Synopsis Henry, an unassuming working-class man, is also a prolific serial killer. Henry is the epitome of working-class disaffection, killing indiscriminately both on his own and in partnership with the sleazy Otis, a small-time drug dealer, with whom he shares an apartment. Much of the film concentrates on the relationship that Henry forms with Otis’ sister, Becky, rather than revelling in miniature details of his crimes. The film is broadly based upon the crimes of Henry Lee Lucas, who terrorized America during the early 1980s and, when caught, confessed to over six hundred murders; some of these, such as the Orange Socks murder that the film directly references in the opening montage of murders, were later proved not to be committed by Lucas. And while the real Lucas was eventually caught and executed, there is no such cathartic resolution in this broad fictionalization of his exploits.

Critique Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is an interesting addition to the serial-killer genre in that it neither romanticizes nor rationalizes its subject. John McNaughton succeeds in presenting a stark portrait of American society during the early 1980s. It bears more similarities with the 1992 Belgium film Man Bites Dog than it does the traditional serial-killer film in that it critiques the media’s and, by association, the spectator’s obsession with violence. On the whole, the film shows the aftermath of the violence rather than the violence itself, refusing to pander to viewers’ expectations. There are two exceptions to this: the first is a broadly-comedic scene where Henry and Otis attempt to buy a television from a seller of stolen goods and, on finding out that they cannot afford the latest up-to-date technology, they murder him by first stabbing him and then hitting him on the head with the $50 black-and-white television – the only one they could afford – and plugging the television in. The second

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Cast:

Michael Rooker Tracy Arnold Tom Towles Year: 1991

scene is the home-invasion scene in which they film themselves, using a video camera stolen from the shop, brutally beating and killing a suburban family. The film juxtaposes the black humour of the former with the horror of the latter, which not only functions to heighten the horror of the human invasion sequence but provides a critique of the spectacle of media violence. As such, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer prefigures both Natural Born Killers (1994) and Michael Hanke’s Funny Games (1997/2007). However, although Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is meant to be the very opposite of the serial-killer film, it falls into many of the same clichés, especially as positing an abusive Mother as the causational factor in the killer’s later crimes. In addition, it is difficult to empathize with any of the characters, or indeed their victims, as they are constructed one-dimensionally: metonymic signifiers of class oppression and disaffection. It is no surprise, therefore, that an attempt to turn Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer into a franchise did not work. This may also have had something to with the fact that the 1996 sequel, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: Part 2, directed by Chuck Parello, had Neil Giuntoli taking over the role of Henry from Michael Rooker, whose astonishing performance is one of the original film’s few strengths. It seems significant that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer came out the same year as the more successful – both critically and commercially – The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The stark realism of the former provides a direct contrast to the saturated surfaces and romantic tendencies of Jonathon Demme’s film. Henry is the polar opposite of Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins); his crimes are not glamorized or justified, and the pathos of his relationship with Becky is a powerful adjunct to the romantic liaison of Clarice (Jodie Foster) and Hannibal. However, while Silence of the Lambs is everything that McNaughton is critiquing in his film, it is, somewhat ironically, the more enjoyable viewing experience.

Colette Balmain

The Honeymoon Killers Studio/Distributor:

Roxanne Cinerama Releasing Corporation Director:

Leonard Kastle Producers:

Warren Steibel

Synopsis Based on the true story of the Lonely Hearts Killers, The Honeymoon Killers follows the story of Martha Beck, an overweight nurse who meets Raymond Fernandez through a lonely hearts club. Ray, as Martha calls him, makes his living defrauding the women he meets through the club but his plans for Martha fail after they fall in love. Ray confesses all to Martha but she is too infatuated to care and Ray lets her move in with him. Posing as brother and sister, the couple continue Ray’s work together but Martha’s insane jealousy causes things to spiral out of control until the two are embroiled in the serial killings of several women.

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Screenwriter:

Leonard Kastle Cinematographer:

Oliver Wood Composer:

Gustav Mahler Editors:

Richard Brophy Stan Warnow Duration:

108 minutes Cast:

Shirley Stoler Tony Lo Bianco Dortha Duckworth Year:

1970

Critique The Honeymoon Killers emits a sense of authenticity, despite not being entirely accurate in its representation of the facts of the Lonely Hearts Killers. This is down to the documentary style with which the film is shot – grainy black and white – and the lack of emotional involvement with the characters. Rather than dictating with whom the audience should empathize, director Leonard Kastle (helming his first and only feature film, which he also wrote) allows viewers to make up their own minds as to blame. Kastle delivers very little exposition. All we know of Martha is that she is lonely and bitter; all we know of Ray is that he is a con man who enjoys his sexual power over women. All that matters in Kastle’s film is what happens when these two dysfunctional people collaborate. That the relationship between Martha and Ray is abusive is clear, but who is abusing whom is less obvious. Martha pretends to attempt suicide twice in order to trap Ray, while Ray continues seducing his victims out of their money despite knowing it drives Martha mad with jealousy. Rather than giving a detailed, psychologically-motivated narrative, Kastle delivers a series of snapshots of the lives of the couple, providing events that the audience must decipher. At times, blame lies with Ray, with Martha at others. This lack of clarity does not equate to a lack of coherence. In fact, The Honeymoon Killers is an intelligent film which, despite its exploitation origins, treats its audience as equally intelligent. It would be easy to present Martha as a brainwashed sidekick to Ray but, instead, her complicity and willingness in his crimes is constantly questioned throughout the narrative. Ray might be a duplicitous con man, but Martha is the murderer. Kastle never clarifies whether it is Ray’s influence or her own that drives her to kill, and the film is all the more disturbing for it. Martha’s crimes might be understandable if Kastle led his audience to believe she would be innocent were it not for Ray, but Kastle never provides that luxury. The Honeymoon Killers exudes an intelligence and detachment not often found in biopics of real-life killers, where the temptation is always to horrify and provide vindication for the audience: to show that these are evil people who deserve everything they get. In The Honeymoon Killers, Kastle leaves that for the audience to decide and, on repeat viewings, the decision is often inconsistent.

Sarah Wharton

74 American Independent

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House of 1,000 Corpses Studio/Distributor:

Spectacle Entertainment Group Universal Pictures Lions Gate Films Director:

Rob Zombie Producers:

Synopsis A group of teenagers are travelling cross-country by car, researching roadside attractions and having a vacation. One of the places they stop is a small gift shop and horror museum run by Captain Spaulding, an enigmatic character in clown make-up. He tells them of the tale of the Satan tree, a local, cursed landmark haunted by a serial killer. The kids set off for this attraction, picking up a hitchhiker on the way. Their car breaks down in torrential rain and they take the suggestion of the hitcher that they go back to her family’s place while waiting for a tow truck. Her family turns out to be a collection of serial killers who torture and dispatch the travellers one by one, also massacring the police who come to investigate.

Andy Gould Danielle Shilling Lovett Screenwriter:

Rob Zombie Cinematographers:

Alex Poppas Tom Richmond Art Directors:

Michael Krantz Composer:

Rob Zombie Editors:

Kathryn Himoff Robert K Lambert Sean K Lambert Duration:

89 minutes Cast:

Sid Haig Bill Moseley Sheri Moon Zombie Karen Black Year:

2003

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The Devil’s Rejects, Lion’s Gate Films/Creep Entertainment.

The Devil’s Rejects Studio/Distributor:

Lions Gate Films Director:

Rob Zombie Producers:

Mike Elliott Andy Gould

76 American Independent

Synopsis The Devil’s Rejects – A family of serial killers, joined by local ‘clown’ Captain Spaulding, are caught unawares by a large police visit to their ranch, leading to a bloody shoot-out with casualties on both sides. Three of the family escape, another is elsewhere and the mother of the clan is taken into custody. On the run, Otis and Baby kidnap a couple and their daughter to take with them as hostages and eventually seek refuge with Charlie Altamont, an old friend. However, he betrays them to the police and they narrowly escape again, bloodied and wounded. Fleeing cross country by car, the three killers see an armed roadblock approaching and they accelerate the car, accepting their imminent demise.

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Marco Mehlitz Brent Morris Michael Ohoven Rob Zombie Screenwriter:

Rob Zombie Cinematographer:

Phil Parmet Art Director:

TK Kirkpatrick Composers:

Tyler Bates Terry Reid Rob Zombie Editor:

Glenn Garland Duration:

107 minutes Cast:

Sid Haig Bill Moseley Sheri Moon Zombie William Forsythe Year:

2005

Critique Rob Zombie’s directorial debut and its sequel show a director paying affectionate homage to various genres while trying also to create modernist horror films, which leads to somewhat mixed results. House of 1,000 Corpses certainly displays a scattershot approach to film-making – a lurid, confusing film that lurches from one set piece to the next as the director uses every visual trick he observed in the music videos made for his band White Zombie. Favouring spectacle over coherent storytelling, Zombie’s first film uses flashbacks, flash-forwards, various disorientating visual effects and a relentless score to browbeat the audience into some kind of visceral reaction. As a film which depicts a group of teenagers experiencing a horror ride at a fun fair, first as recreation and then as participants, it is certainly appropriate for the director to give the audience a similar experience – unrealistic splatter, unexpected shocks and over the top visuals. However, these experiences sets the tone for almost the entire movie, even in its quieter moments, and, as even the protagonists are drawn in broad strokes, it is hard for viewers to engage with anything that is going on. The title of the film refers to Herschell Gordon Lewis films, such as 2,000 Maniacs! (1965), but while the lack of structure approaches some of Gordon’s endearing deficiencies as a film-maker, this is not a laudable pursuit for someone making their directorial debut. This attention-deficit-disorder-style of film-making is familiar to anyone who has seen Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) and, indeed, The Devil’s Rejects also apes that film’s plot to a certain extent, but while Stone’s film is watchable, due to Tarantino’s witty script and a great cast, here House of 1,000 Corpses predicts the similar failure of Tarantino’s own Grindhouse (2007): an overblown affection for Z-list movies that may be enjoyable in a kitsch kind of way, but certainly not an ideal to aspire to. Conversely, The Devil’s Rejects is a much tighter, grounded and enjoyable film. While the plot picks up not long after the first film, it turns the antagonists of the original into the eponymous protagonists of the second but, with a clearlydefined scenario from the outset, it means new viewers of the saga can (thankfully) skip its predecessor without worrying that they have missed anything. As the gore and torture scenes of the original were clearly that film’s raison d’être, the different focus of the sequel makes you wonder whether a different approach could have made that film watchable. Certainly, The Devil’s Rejects, whilst not necessarily featuring likeable characters, features human monsters who engage a certain prurient curiosity in the audience. While The Devil’s Rejects is a more accomplished and engaging film than its predecessor, the flaw in making the killers the focus of the film without them having any endearing qualities – unlike the anti-heroes of 1970s’ films such as Badlands (1973) – means

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our sympathies still lie with the family they kidnap and, while there may be tension in scenes where they flee gunfights, it is equally cathartic for the audience knowing they may not escape. Like Natural Born Killers, the film is also hurt by the inclusion of a cop tracking the killers who is as crazy as they are and equally unlikable. Unlike Tommy Lee Jones’ hysterical performance in Natural Born Killers, Bill Forsythe’s Sheriff Wydell is at least a somewhat more three-dimensional character here, but engaging in torture and brutality to catch his prey does not endear him to viewers and there is no attempt to engage with politics, which might have at least given the plot greater resonance. As a pair of modern horror films that look to the past for style and content, the first of the pair is almost unwatchable but the sequel is slick, confident and has enough cinematic qualities to make it work. Fans of the genre can easily dismiss House of 1,000 Corpses as inferior to the films that inspired it, but The Devil’s Rejects at least has a certain charm and gravitas that, while still a fairly disposable film, at least, for better or worse, matches the kind of B-movies that presumably encouraged Rob Zombie to become a film-maker in the first place.

Alex Fitch

A Nightmare on Elm Street Studio/Distributor:

New Line Cinema Director:

Wes Craven Producer:

Robert Shaye Screenwriter:

Wes Craven Cinematographer:

Jacques Haitkin Art Director:

Gregg Fonseca Editors:

Patrick McMahon Rick Shaine

78 American Independent

Synopsis In a small suburban American town, teenagers are having nightmares featuring the same macabre figure. He is hideously scarred and shapeshifts at will. His familiar voice and striped clothing permeate the dreams of those on Elm Street. Before long, children begin dying in their sleep, their bodies bearing the slashes left by his razor fingers. When a friend is brutally murdered while dreaming, sixteen-yearold Nancy and her friends try their best to pull together in light of the tragedy, only to find themselves fighting for their lives against this malevolent force revealed as the sinister Freddy Krueger: a murdered maniac who stalks the children of the angry townsfolk who sentenced him to death years earlier. One teenager at a time, Krueger imaginatively takes his revenge, inhabiting their dreams and delving into their darkest fears. The group have two choices: learn to defeat Krueger in their sleep, or join the rest of their classmates in the cemetery.

Critique Virtually dominating the horror genre in the mid-to-late 1980s, Wes Craven’s inspired creation rightfully holds its

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Composer:

Charles Bernstein Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Robert Englund Heather Langenkamp John Saxon Johnny Depp Year:

1984

position as one of the defining films of its genre, and its grisly antihero remains one of the most iconic film characters of all time. While the film may have dated considerably since 1984, mostly due to the banal snippets of decade-specific incidental music supplementing the chase scenes, there remains an enigmatic and sincerely-frightening quality to it. The basic premise of children being at risk while asleep and, as such, granting the malicious entity immunity from adult intervention, is inventively crafted within a solid horror-genre framework. Previous franchises in the American horror boom of the 1980s featured a faceless, silent killer grounded with some degree of reality, with the threat being ostensibly human albeit in a virtually-unstoppable form. Craven, through placing the clear danger within the realm of the unconscious, opens up a world of inventive terror where unknowing teens are sucked into their own beds to be ejected as an eruption of gore, or chased through never-ending streets by an unavoidable killer. This notion is particularly chilling when one such sequence is experienced from the perspective of a male character in the conscious world, as his bloodied girlfriend is lifted from her bed and dragged across the ceiling by an invisible force. Craven plays deceptively, littering the piece with red herrings and utilizing dream sequences sparingly. One of the key faults in the later sequels was the embellishment of such scenes, focusing on grisly set pieces and special effects over atmosphere and omnipresent menace. There is great strength in the multifaceted nature of the narrative, particularly the tension between the adolescent and adult worlds. The teenagers of Elm Street are paying for the actions of their (importantly middle-class) parents who took the law into their own hands against the ruling of the State, those parents who are now alcoholics and apathetic to the concerns of their offspring. This neglect could be seen as the primary reason for such nightmares. Complementing the overt scares are also the more familiar pains of adolescence – typified in a scene where Nancy awakes screaming in class following an encounter with Freddy, and suffering the embarrassment of having done so in front of her peers. Furthermore, the film diverts attention to the inner strength of the characters: the killer is harmed through the suppression of fear and anxiety as opposed to bodily impairment through brute force, aligning itself with the disaffected youth audience, who may lack physical strength yet harbour intellectual and emotional awareness. Throughout the following twenty-five years, Freddy Kreuger himself has transformed into a brand as much as an iconic figure: with action figures, t-shirts, music videos, a short-lived TV series, six sequels, a crossover with Friday the 13th and an inevitable remake. Craven has wisely distanced himself, aside from co-writing A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), and returning to write and direct Wes Craven’s New

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Nightmare (1994) that brilliantly executed the idea of Freddy stalking the cast and crew of another Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. This not only hinted at the director’s disdain at franchise progression, but also paved the way for his referential, genreredefining Scream (1996) which followed just two years later.

James Merchant

Night of the Living Dead Studio/Distributor:

Laurel Group Market Square Productions Director:

George A Romero Producers:

Karl Hardman Russell Streiner Screenwriters:

John A Russo George A Romero Cinematographer:

George A Romero Art Director:

Charles O’Dato Editors:

John A Russo George A Romero Duration:

96 minutes Cast:

Duane Jones Judith O’Dea Keith Wayne Year:

1968

80 American Independent

Synopsis A young woman’s brother is violently killed by a strange man during an annual visit to their father’s grave in a cemetery in Pennsylvania. Rendered almost catatonic, Barbra flees from the cemetery and takes refuge in a farmhouse where six other people are hiding, including Ben, Harry Cooper, his wife, Helen, and their daughter, Karen. Power struggles ensue between Ben, an African-American, and Harry, eventually allowing the living dead to invade the farmhouse.

Critique There can be little doubt about Night of the Living Dead’s importance in the history of horror cinema, or for American independent cinema more generally. In 1999, the Library of Congress added Night of the Living Dead to its film registry, which is dedicated to preserving culturally-, historically- or aesthetically-important films. In terms of horror cinema, not only did it introduce a new type of zombie to the lexicon of movie monsters and generate a new sub-genre – the zombie apocalypse genre –it was also the first American horror film to have an African-American as the protagonist. While the use of black-and-white 35mm film was enforced by monetary considerations, it imbues the film with an almost documentary sensibility at a time when an atomic war seemed inevitable. While Romero’s zombies have been interpreted as indictments of consumer capitalism – which is made clear in the second film, Dawn of the Dead (1978) – in their first outing it is issues of race that are prominent, shown through the struggle for power between Harry and Ben. On more than occasion, Harry insists it is ‘his right’ to take care. And it is Harry’s refusal to listen to Ben that leads directly to the death of his wife and child. This theme is crystallized in the closing credits, with the montage of still images of the dead body of Ben. As such, Night of the Living Dead provides a commentary and critique on America’s turbulent past in which the colour of one’s skin enabled centuries of discrimination against not just AfricanAmericans but also anyone of colour. By graphically depicting onscreen gory and grotesque sequences, such as Karen gnawing on her father’s body and a female zombie eating a live cockroach, through the

Directory of World Cinema

innovative use of special effects, Night of the Living Dead broke the unwritten rule of horror that such events should happen off screen and not on camera. At the same time, the film broke with the tradition of the cinematic zombie dating back to White Zombie (1932) by constructing zombies as self-determining rather than being under the control of another. While Night of the Living Dead’s sequel Dawn of the Dead is arguably Romero’s opus, and Day of the Dead the least favoured of the original zombie trilogy, the simplicity of Night of the Living Dead and its radical nature make it one of the most influential horror films of all time. Romero’s recent zombie films, Land of the Dead (2005) and Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead (2009), continue with similar themes around commodity fetishization and consumerism. Influenced by the fast-moving zombies of 28 Days Later (2002), the zombies of Romero’s more recent films are seen gaining consciousness as the division between the living and the dead is gradually effaced. Although all the films in the original trilogy have been remade, the remakes cannot capture the energy and passion of Romero’s original zombie trilogy, and Night of the Living Dead remains one of the key films in cinematic horror, both culturally and aesthetically.

Colette Balmain

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Studio/Distributor:

Vortex Director:

Tobe Hooper Producers:

Tobe Hooper Lou Peraino Screenwriters:

Kim Henkel Tobe Hooper Cinematographer:

Daniel Pearl Art Director:

Robert A Burns Editors:

J. Larry Carroll Sallye Richardson

Synopsis A deadly-serious narrator informs us that the film we are about to see is completely true in its account of a group of teenagers who found themselves the main characters in the titular tragedy. We then meet a group of teenagers who are driving in search of an old gravesite, where the grandfather of Sally and her obese wheelchair-bound brother Franklin is buried. They stop at a cemetery, but Sally is unable to find the grave and they drive on. They pick up a hitchhiker sporting a large birthmark on his face, who delights in telling the teens how the nearby slaughterhouses earn their trade. Everyone except Franklin is horrified by the hitchhiker’s stories, especially the grisly details. But the hitchhiker wears out his welcome when he cuts his own palm and then Franklin’s hand with a knife. The teens kick the hitchhiker out of the van and drive on. Eventually they come to the homestead of Sally and Franklin’s grandfather. The place is sadly dilapidated and two of the teens wander off, hoping to find some gasoline. They stumble across a large house nearby and meet their fates. Sally’s boyfriend Jerry goes in search of his friends and discovers the awful truth. Night falls and Sally and her brother go in search of everyone else. Things go from bad to worse. Sally is chased by a large chainsaw-wielding maniac wearing a mask of human skin. It gets worse.

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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Vortex-Henkel-Hooper/Bryanston.

Composers:

Wayne Bell Tobe Hooper Duration:

84 minutes Cast:

Marilyn Burns Gunnar Hansen Edwin Neal Year:

1974

82 American Independent

Critique Despite its lurid grindhouse title and the reputation it immediately acquired upon its theatrical release, Tobe Hooper’s infernal fairy tale is actually not graphically violent. In comparison to The Last House on the Left (1972), released two years earlier, and countless horror films released in its wake that upped body counts in glorious blood-soaked detail, Hooper’s film is rather restrained in terms of what is actually seen within the frame. But in terms of the film’s palpable malevolent mood, gritty low-budget style, and the relentless nature of its visual and aural power, there are no other contenders. It offers 84 minutes of extended nightmare and is still one of the true

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landmarks of the American horror film from that era. That it manages to be ‘enjoyable’ despite the severity of its nihilistic atmosphere, unlikeable characters (particularly with regard to the invalid Franklin), and offers nothing resembling consolation to the viewer, is a true testament to Hooper’s skill as a film-maker. He never again remotely approached the masterfulness of this film, but he did not really have to. Hooper had made a classic and his legacy is secure, regardless of his disappointing track record, the lacklustre sequels and glossy, faux-dirty Hollywood remake. While it will never attain the respect of more prestigious horror films, such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968) or The Exorcist (1973), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is as effective on a tension/suspense level as either of those films and just as wellmade, even though it lacks the strong character development or high budget of the films of Roman Polanski and William Friedkin. Much of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s visceral power is stylistic: the cinematography is deceptively simple in its framing, yet much of the film’s ominous black energy derives from its creeping pans and unflinching gaze. But the film’s macabre, detailed art direction and its discordant, abrasive sound design ratchet up the psychic brutality like few horror films before or since. Hooper and his cohorts may have been unapologetically disreputable, but they were brilliant craftsmen nevertheless. Even 35 years later, the bruises are still showing and the film is a fantastic example of how to artfully construct a savage horror film on a miniscule budget. Too bad so many aspiring horror film-makers have flunked the lesson.

Derek Hill

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HEMICAL ORLD

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One factor that has commonly fed into definitions of American independent cinema is the representation of alternative and/or minority voices: groups existing on the margins of society, who feel alienated by social norms and who often define themselves against such norms. Drug users have been a particularly notable example of ‘outsider’ characters, largely because of the illegal status of the stimulants that they ingest. It is not surprising that a mode of cinematic production that has been defined against the ‘mainstream’ should therefore be more firmly engaged in depicting drug use, often linking stimulants to broader ideological concerns. While drug use has certainly not been totally absent from the mainstream, it is a less frequent staple. It is also the case that mainstream films will more commonly adopt a moral viewpoint towards substance abuse, warning of its dangers. These factors are understandable because of the need for largerscale productions to find broader audiences and to avoid excessive controversy, whereas smaller, independent productions can afford to take more risks in a bid to target a more specific demographic. However, while such distinctions are true in a general sense, there will be exceptions, which should alert us to the complexities in making any universal judgments regarding this issue. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) was a Universal Pictures production that featured excessive drug consumption, frequent depictions of subjective hallucinations, and an avoidance of explicit moralizing. Requiem for a Dream (2000), on the other hand, is an independent film that, though radical on a formal level, adopts an extremely heavy-handed moral tone. Prior to the demise of the Hays Production Code in 1968, drug use tended to be absent from studio productions. It was left to smallscale, independent ‘exploitation’ outfits to depict such activities. Alongside other taboo topics such as sex, blasphemy and brutality, drugs could be used by small independent producers as sensational audience attractions. Nevertheless, while drug use could be depicted in extremely controversial ways it was still encased within moral frameworks. Films such as Narcotic (1933) or Tell Your Children (aka Reefer Madness, 1936) masqueraded as moral tracts by hysterically demonstrating the negative consequences of taking drugs. Such moralizing was necessary in order to provide these films with a patina of respectability and avoid legal actions, yet such films continued to be despised by the mainstream film industry and upright moral organizations. A major change in the dramatization of stimulant consumption occurred in the 1960s with the emergence of a growing counterculture. Drugs became a widely-used and positively-valued component of many Americans who believed that drugs – particularly psychedelics and cannabis – could aid personal development and contribute to social change. While many films featuring drugs were still exploitation pictures, they nevertheless adopted a more sympathetic line towards drug use in order to target countercultural audiences. A key film is The Trip (1967), a radical attempt to delve into a mind under the influence of LSD. Starring Peter Fonda as a disillusioned advertising director, the film presents LSD as a ritual experience that can aid personal development and allow the mind to ‘deprogramme’ habits and prejudices fed to it by ‘straight’ society. The influence of Timothy Leary is evident

Left: Drugstore Cowboy, Avenue.

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throughout the film: Leary himself had advocated the use of LSD as a psychological tool that, used in controlled settings, would enable people to detach themselves from internalized social conventions. The film, therefore, shows Paul (Fonda) taking his first trip under the careful supervision of Leary-figure John (Bruce Dern), and portrays his subsequent subjective experiences. These include some abstract, psychedelic sequences as well as more symbolic, dream-like passages dramatizing Paul’s inner-conflicts and his attempts to break free from them. While the film did not downplay some of the more disorienting effects of LSD it nevertheless presented drug use in an overly positive light for its producers, AIP, who demanded that a cracked pattern should be overlaid on Paul’s face at the end of the film to indicate that he had been damaged by the drug. In the 1970s drugs did not tend to connote spiritual freedom within independent productions. A number of films focused upon drug-dealing as a criminal business, which was particularly frequent within a number of ‘Blaxploitation’ films. These could view drug dealing as negative in a morally-simplistic manner, as in Foxy Brown (1974), or take a more complex view, as in Super Fly (1972) which, though not condemning Priest’s dealing, does show him as wanting to get out of the ‘game’. Whatever the moral tone adopted in such films, they nevertheless presented drugs as part of a cut-throat business that mirrored more legitimate business rather than a symbol of spiritual enrichment. In contrast to these pictures were films that focused more on drug addicts, often heroin users. These films often portrayed heroin abuse as a desperate cycle of increasing need, as in Panic in Needle Park (1971). One of the most radical films portraying heroin addiction was Paul Morrissey’s Trash (1970), which was bereft of utopian sensibilities. Joe (Joe Dallesandro), the heroin junkie, is depicted in a dispassionate manner: a listless presence who virtually sleep-walks through the movie. The film was even intended as a riposte to the utopianism inherent in the hippy drug films of the 1960s, a nihilist rebuke that stripped away the ideological embellishments that such movies adorned themselves with. The 1980s saw the emergence of a new wave of independent cinema and a move into more diverse portrayals of stimulant use. In the early 1980s, the stillburgeoning midnight-movie scene led to cult followings for films such as Liquid Sky (1982) and Repo Man (1984), both of which shared a certain ‘punk’ sensibility and thus continued the move away from hippy idealism. Liquid Sky concerns addicts within the New York underground and merges this with the story of alien parasites and their addiction to a substance released by human brains at the point of orgasm. Repo Man is less concerned with addiction, but does feature drug use as a symbolic component of its warped universe. Whereas the parents of Otto (Emilio Estevetz) are seen to smoke marijuana, watch television and buy into religious evangelism, the Repo men that Otto eventually hangs out with are fuelled by speed and live an active, exciting life: as Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) says at one point, ‘a Repo man is always intense’. Amphetamines here are thus positively imbued with a punk sensibility in contrast to marijuana and its links with lethargic passivity. American independent cinema became a more frequently applied term in relation to a body of films from around the mid-1980s onwards, and many of these films continued to portray drug use in a variety of different ways. Some films attempted to redress the general cinematic representation of heroin, which films had tended to depict as a ‘bad’ drug. Particularly notable here was Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy (1989), which portrays a group of heroin addicts as romantic outlaw figures. Though the film is not devoid of negative moments – including death from an overdose – and also portrays its leading character Bob

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as ultimately quitting the junkie lifestyle, it refrains from adopting a strictly moral viewpoint. Bob’s decision to quit, for instance, is not due to health reasons or a desire to go straight but stems from a superstitious fear following Nadine’s death after she had put a hat on a bed (which Bob believes has placed a hex on him). Also, unlike most films featuring heroin use, there are scenes which attempt to create a subjective impression of the heroin experience and, therefore, communicate the pleasures of the drug. Drugstore Cowboy represents the junkie lifestyle as an ‘us’ against ‘them’ narrative, in which the junkie has opted out of social conventions but must perpetually struggle to avoid the wrath of the law. There is also a spiritual dimension to the movie, with its rituals and superstitions, and this is an element that was extended in the later, lesser known Jesus’ Son (1989), which concerns the odyssey-like journey of ‘Fuckhead’ (Billy Crudup). Although Fuckhead ultimately quits his junkie lifestyle and moves towards a kind of redemption, the film nevertheless refrains from condemning him, or heroin use, in any straightforward manner. Addiction and spirituality are also core themes that run through a number of Abel Ferrara films, though the rather elegiac spiritualism of Jesus’ Son is replaced by a more desperate, almost psychotic tone very much fuelled by Ferrara’s own Catholic leanings and punk/nihilist sensibility. Bad Lieutenant (1992) is possibly his crowning achievement: a gritty, brutal account of the eponymous lieutenant who has slipped into a hellish spiral of drug and gambling addiction. His prodigious drug consumption involves crack and heroin, which fuel his totally depraved and corrupt lifestyle. The chance of redemption appears when he investigates the rape of a nun, an incident which forces him to confront morality and his own destitute condition. Ferrara revisited the theme of addiction in The Addiction (1995), which links heroin junkies to vampires and frames this within a rather overcooked context of philosophical enquiry. He also made The Blackout (1997), which concerns a heavy cocaine user’s attempts to regain memories of a blackout during which he may have committed a murder. If Ferrara incorporates drugs within a neo-Dostoyevskian filmic universe, other independent films have featured drug use more routinely, as an integral part of particular social formations. Such ‘mundane’ drug use is featured, for example, in the rites-of-passage movie Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993), in which marijuana is smoked frequently by a number of characters, though this is presented as a routine part of their daily lives. Once again, overt moralizing is avoided; instead soft drugs are merely presented as something that many young people indulge in at this stage in their lives. A more controversial film featuring ‘mundane’ drug use was Kids (Clarke, 1995), which centred on young teenagers indulging in sex, drink and drugs. While it was the former aspect which created the greater controversy around the film, the drugs added to a conservative backlash against it. Kids’ distributor Miramax, at the time owned by Disney, even had to create a one-off company to distribute the film because of Disney’s reluctance to release films with an NC-17 rating. Over the past decade, the demarcations dividing the mainstream and the independent spheres have become complicated by the increasing existence of a number of specialist divisions of major studios – a phenomenon that has been referred to as ‘Indiewood’. Correspondingly, there has been an increased willingness by major studios – or at least divisions belonging to them – to make films portraying drug use in a much more explicit manner than previously. Films such as Traffic (2000) and Blow (2001) tackle the nature of drugs in a way that studio-affiliated companies would have shied away from in previous generations, but they were not free from the moralizing that has often plagued studio

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productions depicting drug use and/or the drug trade. Moral viewpoints towards drug addiction are certainly not always absent from independent pictures – Half Nelson (2006) being a recent example – and neither is it necessarily questionable to adopt a moral perspective. However, drugs have so often been posited as a problem to be overcome that it is difficult to present them in any other manner: a representational convention that skews the more complex realities of drug use in favour of ideological doxa. Independent film-makers have importantly taken the risks to incorporate drug use within their pictures. Though initially incorporated within a blend of exploitation and pseudo-educational moralism, such portrayals paved the way for others to build upon. Eventually, independent film-makers, as this short overview has indicated, have managed to portray drug taking in a variety of different ways, pushing against social restrictions in order to depict such activities within alternative frameworks.

Jamie Sexton

88 American Independent

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Barfly, Cannon.

Barfly Studio/Distributor:

Cannon Director:

Barbet Schroeder Producers:

Fred Roos Tom Luddy Barbet Schroeder Screenwriter:

Charles Bukowski

Synopsis Henry Chinaski is a penniless writer who spends most of his time propping up seedy bars in Los Angeles – in particular The Golden Horn, where he frequently brawls with the bartender Eddie. His life takes a turn when he meets Wanda Wilcox, a fellow drunk who is able to procure money for alcohol through an unseen benefactor named Wilbur. Henry soon moves into her apartment and, together, they make half-hearted concessions at normality. First, Henry tries to get a job – only to find out, much to his disgust, that Wanda has spent the night with Eddie. After an argument, a fight and another bloodsoaked bender, Henry comes to and Wanda returns, apologetic. It is her turn to seek employment. But while she is out, Henry receives a visitor who has been tracking him – Tully Sorenson, owner of the Contemporary Review of Art and Literature. She wants to publish Henry’s story and pays $500 for the privilege. After drinking at Tully’s

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Cinematographer:

Robby Müller Art Director:

Bob Ziembicki Editor:

Éva Gárdos Composer:

Jack Baran Duration:

96 minutes Cast:

Mickey Rourke Faye Dunaway Alice Krige Year:

1987

house, Henry returns to Wanda with his newfound wealth. They head to a bar to celebrate. Tully arrives and Wanda turns on her. Henry then fights with Eddie one more time.

Critique ‘Anybody can be a non-drunk’, says Henry Chinaski. ‘It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.’ It is with maxims like this that Henry Chinaski remains one of the noblest alcoholics ever to stumble across the screen. Scripted by Charles Bukowski, whose novels – including Post Office and Factotum – had first introduced his autobiographical antihero Chinaski, Barfly finds poetry in the bottom of the bottle. Like Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I (1986), the film reeks of booze – and is unapologetic about it. There is no moralizing here (and while death never seems far away, it is never suggested it will be from liver failure). Even when Tully asks Henry why he drinks, it is she, living in her sterile home in the Hills, who seems lonely. Barfly is an unashamed celebration of alcohol. ‘What do you do?’ Henry asks Wanda when they first meet. ‘I drink’, she replies. There is no such thing as AA in Bukowski’s world, just a temporary cure – AlkaSeltzer – advertised on the side of a bus. Nevertheless, arriving in the same era as popular sitcom Cheers (1982–93), there is no suggestion by Bukowski and director Barbet Schroeder that Henry’s hangout, The Golden Horn (despite a sign telling us it’s ‘a friendly place’), is where everybody knows your name. Drink is all that matters – whatever the cost (note the old-timer who must tie a scarf around his wrist to help lift his shot-glass towards his mouth) and Henry spends most of his time fighting bartender Eddie, a man whose gruff machismo ‘symbolizes everything that disgusts me’. Not that Henry’s existence, living in a dank pit of an apartment with peeling walls and a bloodstained mattress, is any better than that of his peers. ‘Nobody suffers like the poor’, he says, and you get the distinct impression his writing is better for living on the breadline. Still, Barfly is no slice of social realism but a squalid fairy tale. If Wanda emerges as Henry’s Princess, both characters have their own fairy godmothers (the unseen Wilbur, who bankrolls Wanda’s drinking habit, and Tully, who bestows Henry with some respectability). Ultimately, Barfly will be best remembered for Mickey Rourke as Chinaski. Shot in the same period as Angel Heart (1987), it arguably represents the actor’s finest hour. From the very early scenes, with his lank hair, shambling gait and unkempt beard, Rourke is fully in control of his character, grabbing him by the collar and refusing to let him go. In one of her last great roles, Dunaway makes for an admirable foil – and, somehow, they stop the film from simply becoming an indulgent piss-up. Rather, what emerges is a touching tale about finding love amongst the empties.

James Mottram 90 American Independent

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The Blackout Studio/Distributor:

Les Films Number One CIPA Director:

Abel Ferrara Producers:

Edward R. Pressman Clayton Townsend Screenwriters:

Abel Ferrara Marla Hanson Christ Zois Cinematographer:

Ken Kelsch Art Director:

Ren Blanco Composer:

Joe Delia Editors:

Jim Mol Anthony Redman Duration:

98 minutes Cast:

Matthew Modine Dennis Hopper Béatrice Dalle Claudia Schiffer Year:

1997

Synopsis At his Miami-beach getaway, Hollywood star Matty proposes to his European girlfriend, Annie. Put off by his drugged-up lifestyle, Annie rejects the offer. Furthermore, it is revealed that she has had a pregnancy terminated. Matty is enraged and attacks Annie. She plays him a recording of a conversation revealing that Matty was not only party to the abortion but that he forced it on her. Meeting up with Mickey Wayne, a pornographer at work on a new film, Matty engages in a bender of sex and drugs. They meet a young waitress, also named Annie, who joins them at Wayne’s film set. Matty blacks out. Eighteen months later, Matty is now living in New York with his new art-dealer girlfriend Susan. But his sober lifestyle is threatened when Susan leaves him for the weekend and Matty decides to travel back to Miami to find out what happened that night.

Critique ‘This is it man’, says Dennis Hopper in maniacal mode pornographer Mickey Wayne, ‘24 frames a minute’: a suitably Godardian misquote for a film that exists as a sort of coked-up Le Mepris (1963). The movie Wayne is making is a hardcore re-imagining of Zola’s Nana, but the work in progress looks more like a shapeless orgy. Matthew Modine plays precious film star Matty, one of the most repulsive characters ever to grace Ferrara’s cinema: a vain, self-obsessed, shrill, self-pitying waste of space. As we watch Wayne seemingly manipulate Matty into an act of murder, gamely filming a proto-Paris Hilton sex tape, any hope for a glimmer of human compassion slowly dies. Nobody in The Blackout comes off particularly well, even Claudia Schiffer as Susan, the homely partner of the sober Matty, is shown to be more interested in her own economic situation than Matty’s artistic integrity. On top of this, she is an art dealer, and a quick look at The Driller Killer (1979) will give you an idea of Ferrara’s opinion of them. Béatrice Dalle is at first sympathetic as the long-suffering and abused Annie, but even she comes across as finally callous (though few would blame her). Ferrara also exhibits little sympathy for his audience, peppering his film with formal aggression, rapid dissolves and obtrusive camera movements. However unflattering to its subjects, The Blackout’s apparent function as self-portrait (here the object of identification is split between prima donna Matty and pornographer Mickey) turns misanthropy into a peculiar form of self-harm. Following Dangerous Game (1993), and pre-empting Mary (2005), Ferrara presents his director-surrogate as a profoundly-flawed, probably bi-polar individual, void of any real redeeming qualities. Mining his own crazed persona as some sort of latter-day Peckinpah, Ferrara paints an uncomfortably-dark picture of his

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own self image. The Blackout is a work of multiple dichotomies: between film and video, sobriety and inebriation, reality and fiction, pornography and art. It is among Ferrara’s most uncompromising works and, after an initially lukewarm reception, has become a key text in the director’s canon.

Rob Dennis

Boogie Nights Studio/Distributor:

New Line Cinema Director:

Paul Thomas Anderson Producers:

Paul Thomas Anderson Lloyd Levin John Lyons Joanne Sellar Screenwriter:

Paul Thomas Anderson Cinematographer:

Robert Elswitt Art Director:

Synopsis San Fernando Valley, 1977. Eddie Adams is a 17-year-old dishwasher in the Hot Traxx nightclub. One night he meets legendary porn director Jack Horner, who spots him as a potential star. After Eddie’s mother throws him out, he heads to Jack’s house just as a party is in full swing, with porn actors Reed Rothchild, Buck Swope, Rollergirl and Jack’s wife Amber Waves all present. After Eddie impresses Jack’s financier, The Colonel, he renames himself Dirk Diggler and is soon making his first porno. Swiftly becoming a success, garnering both awards and critical acclaim, Dirk suggests that he and Reed star in a new series of James Bond-style porn films, under the names Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell – an idea that ultimately collects him further awards. At a party on New Year’s Eve, 1979, things begin to sour, culminating with the suicide of Jack’s assistant director, Little Bill. As the 1980s begin, Dirk becomes addicted to cocaine, before splitting from Jack and hustling on the streets. After a drug deal ends fatally, Dirk returns to Jack a broken man.

Ted Berner

Critique

Editor:

After his problems on Hard Eight (1997) – when financiers Rysher Entertainment re-edited the film and changed the title from Sydney without his consent – Paul Thomas Anderson’s sophomore film starts as it means to go on. Opening with the camera trained on the neon-lit words ‘Boogie Nights’, the beginning of an intricate (and impossible to cut) tracking shot that introduces all the main players of this dazzling drama, the message from Anderson was clear: nobody was going to mess with this film (or its title). It is this gutsy attitude that typifies Boogie Nights – made by a director, just 27 at the time, let off the leash. Highly influenced by the work of Robert Altman, this ensemble set in the adult-entertainment industry crackles with all the explosive energy of the firecrackers flung about in the fatal finale. With its whip-pans and fast zooms helping recreate the head-spinning hedonistic chaos of the late 1970s’ porn scene, Anderson moves the camera like his life depended on it. Running at two and a half hours, it may be indulgent – but it is exuberant, exhilarating film-making. Like Jack Horner – who, however misguided,

Dylan Tichenor Composer:

Michael Penn Duration:

155 minutes Cast:

Mark Wahlberg Burt Reynolds Julianne Moore John C Reilly Robert Ridgely Philip Baker Hall Year:

1997

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wants to craft story-driven porn – Anderson truly cares about his medium. Like Hard Eight before it, the primary theme is that of the surrogate family. While that focused on the relationship between Philip Baker Hall’s veteran gambler and John C Reilly’s rookie, the idea is examined on a much grander scale here, with Jack Horner’s pad a halfway house for the waifs and strays of the porno industry. In particular Amber, who loses her own son in a custody battle in one of the film’s more touching scenes, acts as a mother to all. While Rollergirl asks to call her ‘mom’ at one point, Dirk returns to the fold in the final scene, crying in her lap like a baby. Appropriately enough, Anderson gathered a surrogate family around him that would make a significant impact on the American independent scene in years to come. Although they had all acted on screen before, Boogie Nights became a defining moments in the careers of Moore, Hoffman, Macy, Reilly, Guzmán and Cheadle, who would all become ‘indiewood’ staples after this. Likewise, Hard Eight veterans Baker Hall and Ridgely lent the film a family feel (note that Anderson dedicates the picture not only to his late father Ernie but also Ridgely, who died shortly after production was completed). At its heart, though, is Wahlberg, who plays the naïve ‘lonely boy’ (to quote Andrew Gold’s song that accompanies him in one scene) to perfection. He even gets his own Raging Bull (1980) moment when he faces the mirror in the final scene. Recalling Robert De Niro’s Jake La Motta when he echoes Marlon Brando’s ‘I coulda been a contender’ speech, it precedes Dirk whipping out his 13-inch (prosthetic) penis – his ‘big, bright shining star’. While just about every character has gasped in awe at its size, Anderson has teased us by keeping it off-camera until now. As money-shots go, it is timed to perfection.

James Mottram

Drugstore Cowboy Studio/Distributor:

Avenue Pictures Director:

Gus Van Sant Producers:

Karen Murphy Nick Weschler

Synopsis Bob Hughes and his gang of junkie thieves roam the rainy streets of Portland, Oregon, scrounging for the next hustle to cop more dope (they rob drugstores), hoping to fix for as long they can before the police nail them. Dianne, Bob’s wife, grooves on the same rush of crime and getting loaded, but she grows ever-more frustrated about Bob’s impotence. As long as the scores keep coming, though, everyone is relatively happy. But the gang’s run of success starts to grow thin when a tenacious Portland police detective named Gentry gets closer to nabbing Bob after a string of clumsy robberies. Things crash for Bob when a teenage member of his gang dies of an overdose. The gang go their separate

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Screenwriters:

Gus Van Sant Daniel Yost Cinematographer:

Robert Yeoman Art Direction:

Eve Cauley Composer:

Elliot Goldenthal Editors:

Mary Bauer Curtiss Clayton Duration:

102 minutes Cast:

Matt Dillon Kelly Lynch James Le Gross Heather Graham Year:

1989

ways – including Dianne – and Bob decides to finally try kicking dope. He goes straight, gets a job, moves into a low-rent downtown hotel, and becomes friends with Tom the Priest, an old junkie with a gift for astute observations and dime-novel dope wisdom.

Critique Gus Van Sant’s second film was a breakout for the then-independent director, accurately chronicling the sleazy highs and lows of his vagabond dreamer Bob, who is awash on tides of opiates and always in search of the next fix. Like his earlier Mala Noche (1985), Van Sant knows the city he calls home well and is able to show a gritty side of Portland that many never see – the itinerant hotels of downtown, the isolated industrial sections on the fringe of the Northwest neighbourhood, the clockwork routine of junkies on the make, the neon-lit economy motels of North Portland which the gang frequently call home. On paper, it could read like a depressing affair. But what Van Sant brings to the material – based on the then-unpublished autobiographical novel by recovering junkie/ex-con James Fogle – is a strong element of deadpan humour and sympathy for his maladjusted characters. Van Sant has a real feeling for Bob and his partners-in-crime, and he thankfully never judges them or enforces a trite and wrong-headed morality lesson onto the proceedings. But neither does he romanticize his low-rent outlaws either. There is simply a refreshing matter-of-factness about their lives and an unexpected buzz of tenderness toward Bob in the late stages of the film, when he attempts to clean up and is befriended by Tom the Priest, portrayed by real-life junkie and author William S Burroughs. Van Sant’s lyricism – the ebb and flow of the editing capturing Bob’s opiate numbness – is nicely handled, as is the depiction of the slipshod routine of trying to score drugs and the excruciating boredom in between fixes. After years of slow decline in the spotlight, former teen idol Matt Dillon gave one of his best performances and showed that he has more than a sullen look and puffed-up youthful bravado. While his next film, My Own Private Idaho (1991), would solidify Van Sant’s standing as one of the most significant and distinctive independent film-makers of the early 1990s, his first three films sadly did not portend greater artistic growth. Hollywood beckoned as the decade dragged on and, though he gained more mainstream success, Van Sant’s importance dimmed as the mediocrity settled in. An unexpected return to independent creative experimentation would blossom with Gerry (2002), the Palme d’Or-winning Elephant (2003), Last Days (2005), and Paranoid Park (2007), reminding those who had written Van Sant off that Hollywood acceptance had not entirely tamed the iconoclast within.

Derek Hill 94 American Independent

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Gridlock’d Studio/Distributor:

Def Pictures Polygram Filmed Entertainment Gramercy Director:

Vondie Curtis-Hall Producers:

Erica Huggins Duncan Jones Paul Webster Screenwriter:

Vondie Curtis-Hall Cinematographer:

Synopsis Downtown New York. Spoon and Stretch are junkie musicians who form two-thirds of a modern jazz/trip-hop group alongside Cookie, a sultry female singer who shares an apartment with the two men, but does not partake in their drug habit. After a gig, they are given a stash of dope as a ‘gift’ from a record producer and Cookie dabbles for the first time; this results in an overdose and a delayed trip to the emergency ward because taxi drivers do not want to stop in their neighbourhood. Contemplating his past and his future, Spoon decides to ‘get clean’, with Stretch agreeing to do the same, although this is more out of not wanting to lose his friendship with Spoon than it is a genuine desire to ‘kick’. As the pair go from one medical office to another, encountering unexpected red tape and indifferent healthcare workers, they are pursued by D-Reper, a gangster who Spoon and Stretched ripped off for drug money.

Bill Pope

Critique

Composer:

‘I just feel like my luck is about to run out’, muses free-form musician and lifelong junkie Spoon (Tupac Shakur) in one of the more reflective moments of the otherwise hecticallypaced buddy picture Gridlock’d. Rapper and actor Shakur would, of course, be shot dead in Las Vegas, leaving behind both unreleased recordings and unseen feature film performances. Along with the inferior Gang Related (1997), in which he portrayed a corrupt cop with a gambling problem, Gridlock’d was released posthumously, and showcased a charismatic leading man with a world-weary presence beyond his years. His streetwise swagger in Gridlock’d is ably matched by Tim Roth’s method twitchiness, with the actors making for superb sparring partners: Shakur’s Spoon is understated and patient under pressure, while Roth’s Stretch is jittery, needy, and irritates both drug dealers and health service professionals. As drug addicts, Spoon and Stretch represent two sides of the same coin, something that becomes clear through the subtlety of the performances and the sharp exchanges that Vondie Curtis-Hall’s screenplay allows them, effectively sketching their shared history without derailing the narrative momentum. Aside from the chemistry between the central pairing, Curtis-Hall’s film holds up to repeat viewings because it goes beyond its ‘day in the life of addicts’ set-up to satirize the bureaucracy that is inherent in the US health-care system; Spoon and Stretch go from office to office, being given contradictory information and discovering that they need to obtain Medicaid cards before they can get into a rehabilitation programme, and that application will take thirty days. Although not straining for a social-political statement,

Stewart Copeland Art Director:

Scott Plauche Editor:

Christopher Koefoed Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Tupac Shakur Tim Roth Thandie Newton Vondie Curtis-Hall Year:

1997

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Curtis-Hall suggests that it is such red tape which stops junkies like Spoon and Stretch from getting off the needle; the decision to ‘get clean’ often comes from an intense reaction to a recent event (such as Cookie’s overdose) and is a positive impulse that will only lead to a serious attempt to ‘kick’ if acted on immediately. Waiting a month to receive the relevant medical identification and filling out form after form of miscellaneous personal detail and social security information also does not agree with long-term addicts, who can focus for only so long before needing their next ‘fix’. Curtis-Hall effectively contrasts the pace of life on the streets (where Spoon and Stretch must outmanoeuvre D-Reper and his henchmen) and the tedium of the never-ending wait to be seen by healthcare professionals. Ultimately, they can only get off the streets by ‘faking’ an assault and stabbing each other; the system will help those who are victims of violent crime, but not victims of chemical dependency. The film strikes a few false notes; Spoon and Stretch live in the kind of spacious New York loft apartment that only movie junkies can afford, one that may be low on furnishings but has enough room and natural light for cinematographer Bill Pope to capture the ‘designer squalor’ of their dope-induced lifestyle. Curtis-Hall offers a stereotypical bad guy in D-Reper, a gangster who seems to have wandered out of a 1970s Blaxploitation flick and, unfortunately, is portrayed by the writer-director himself. Spoon and Stretch are pretty energetic for drug users and heavy smokers, outrunning D-Reper and his crew on several occasions. Thandie Newton is suitably alluring as Cookie, especially when performing on stage, but although she is supposed to be the member of the band who never touches drugs, the manner in which she stumbles around the apartment demanding to know who has eaten her quorn burger makes her seem more like a junkie than Spoon and Stretch, who are comparatively composed throughout. Minor quibbles aside, Gridlock’d is frank and funny, functioning as both a briskly-paced buddy movie, and an indictment of the incompatibility of the welfare system with those it is supposed to help.

John Berra

96 American Independent

Half Nelson, Journeyman Pictures.

Half Nelson Studio/Distributor:

Hunting Lane Films Silverwood Films Director:

Ryan Fleck Producer:

Anna Boden Screenwriters:

Ryan Fleck Anna Boden Cinematographer:

Andrij Parekh Art Director:

Inbal Weinberg

Synopsis As an alarm beeps, Dan Dunne sits in a shirt and underwear, slumped over his glass coffee table in the early-morning light. A history teacher and basketball coach at a Brooklyn junior high school, Dan is also a crack addict. Despite his disenchantment with the world, he is determined to make a difference, trying to inspire his students by teaching them about civil rights using Hegelian dialectics: change as the push and pull of opposites. One of his 13-year-old students is Drey, who has a deadbeat dad, a brother in jail on drug charges, and a mother who works night shifts. When Drey finds Dan off his face in the girl’s bathroom after a game, she helps him get cleaned up. That encounter sparks a tentative friendship, and Dan soon realizes the need to protect her from Frank, the neighbourhood drug dealer who is responsible for getting her brother locked up.

Critique While the ideas behind Half Nelson may not seem all that original – we have seen the inner city schools, idealistic

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Composer:

Broken Social Scene Editor:

Anna Boden Duration:

106 minutes Cast:

Ryan Gosling Shareeka Epps Anthony Mackie Year:

2006

teachers and the drugs before – the film-makers successfully subvert the usual inspirational clichés that litter the genre, creating a film that feels fresh, honest and at times deeply moving, with terrific performances by its three leads. Ryan Gosling, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, delivers a perfectly-tuned performance as the conflicted teacher, whose ideals are buried by his addiction. Gosling excels at quietly turning the charm on and off, boyishly vulnerable one minute and callous the next. Epps, a non-professional actor who was discovered by director Ryan Fleck and his co-writer Anna Boden after a tour of Brooklyn schools, is remarkably impressive as the smart, wary tomboy, whose face is transformed by an amazing smile when she lets her guard down. She is forced to choose between Dan and Frank and, even though she is more responsible than most of the adults around her, she is still not quite tough enough to deal with Dan’s breakdown. She knows what she is getting with Frank, who is played with an equal amount of charm by Mackie; he may be a drug dealer, but he is a known quantity, unlike Dan – something Frank proves to Drey in one of the film’s most heartbreaking scenes. Finely written, Half Nelson’s nuanced perspective also owes a lot to its talented actors; rather than relying on heavyhanded dialogue, some of the best scenes – Drey finding Dan on the bathroom floor, her delivering drugs – are played out almost wordlessly. And while the film is undeniably political, issues like race and war – the film was written in the run-up to the conflict in Iraq – are handled discreetly. Andrij Parekh’s cinéma-vérité-influenced camerawork and a terrific soundtrack from Broken Social Scene give the film its sense of style. The result is a movie that is spontaneous, intelligent, but never preachy. Fleck and Boden’s follow-up, Sugar, about a young Puerto Rican baseball player trying to make it in the US, was also released in 2008 to critical acclaim; the pair seem to have a gift for turning arguably-banal subject matter into something beautiful.

Sarah Cronin

The Panic in Needle Park Studio/Distributor:

Didion-Dunne Inc. Director:

Jerry Schatzberg

98 American Independent

Synopsis Sherman Square, New York, otherwise known as Needle Park. Bobby, a small time drug supplier, becomes involved with Helen, a young woman he runs into one day while doing business. As both Bobby and Helen become more and more addicted, their lives spiral out of control and Helen ends up prostituting herself while Bobby attempts to become a major player in the drug business. Redemption is not possible for either Bobby or Helen, as Bobby accepts his life for what it is, and Helen is constrained by her love for Bobby.

Directory of World Cinema

Producer:

Dominick Dunne Screenwriters:

Joan Didion John Gregory Dunne Cinematographer:

Adam Holender Art Director:

Murray P. Stern Editor:

Evan Lottman Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Al Pacino Kitty Winn Richard Bright Raul Julia Year:

1971

Critique The Panic in Needle Park is a frank exposé of 1970s’ drug culture and both Al Pacino and Kitty Winn are excellent, bringing the desperation and pathos of the lives of drug addicts to the foreground. Fundamentally a love story between Helen and Bobby, its tragedy lies in the fact that love cannot overcome drug addiction. Winn brings poignancy to the role of Helen, who desires a better life for herself and Bobby but cannot compete with Bobby’s drug addiction, and won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, although she would then concentrate on the stage. Pacino’s performance, one year before the career-defining role in The Godfather (1972), is carefully judged and exudes charisma. Unlike Helen, Bobby accepts his lot in life and shows little desire to leave Needle Park. One of the most affecting scenes in the film is when Bobby and Helen buy a dog – which acts as a metaphor for a life away from drugs and from Needle Park – and allow the dog to die because neither is able to put the needs of another before the all-encompassing desire for the next fix. This short scene on the ferry perfectly encapsulates the impossibility of escape for either Bobby or Helen. The Panic in Needle Park is one of the earliest examples of a new style of cinéma-vérité that came to the fore in America in the early 1970s. The use of hand-held cameras, real-life sounds and the eschewing of the traditional soundtrack, urban locations and social themes marked this new type of realistic film-making. Drug addiction was the perfect social issue for this new type of film-making, and Jerry Schatzberg ‘documents’ not just the life of drug addicts but the very mechanics of drug use: on more than one occasion, Schatzberg cuts away from characters in order to focus on drug paraphernalia and drug use in a manner which, although not unheard of, was still revolutionary at the time. Such scenes are skilfully used to foreground how drug taking becomes the very essence of the lives of those it infects. The fact that drug addiction was becoming a pressing social issue in the 1970s is shown by the fact that two other films were released in 1971 dealing with the issue: Born to Win and Dusty and Sweets McGee. While there have been many films on drug culture since, none has quite captured the milieu so graphically as The Panic in Needle Park, which refuses to adopt a moralistic tone towards characters whose lives have been reduced to the basic need for the next fix.

Colette Balmain

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Requiem for a Dream Studio/Distributor:

Artisan Entertainment Director:

Darren Aronofsky Producers:

Beau Flynn Eric Watson Palmer West Screenwriters:

Hubert Selby Jr Darren Aronofsky Cinematographer:

Matthew Libatique Art Director:

Judy Rhee Composer:

Clint Mansell Editor:

Jay Rabinowitz Duration:

125 minutes Cast:

Jared Leto Jennifer Connelly Ellen Burstyn Marlon Wayans Year:

2000

Synopsis Four interrelated individuals hanker for a better life and realize, all too late, that the short-term highs of drug addiction come at a terrible personal cost. Harry Goldfarb pawns his mother’s television set for dope money and dabbles in heroin with his girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone. The trio plan for the ultimate drug sale so that they can be set up for life and finally go straight. Meanwhile, Harry’s lonely widowed mother, Sarah, embarks on a course of weight-loss drugs that proves fatal after she falls for a fraudulent phone call that promises her a chance to be on television.

Critique After his striking debut Pi (1998), Darren Aronofsky turned to adapting the 1978 novel Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr. Relentless and overwhelming, Aronofsky’s film is not a mere cautionary tale about the perils of drug addiction, as the director takes the viewer on an unapologetic tour of each character’s personal hell and offers little in terms of redemption for the main characters. Like Harry’s recurring dream of meeting Marion on a pier, hope is fleeting and always maddeningly out of reach. The film is cinematically inventive in its use of techniques, such as montage, odd camera angles, time-lapse photography and split-screen. These multiple devices may distract from the narrative and appear slick and superficial, recalling music videos, but they succeed in evoking the attendant disorientation and highs of addiction, and the numbing effects of repetitive abuse. Clint Mansell’s orchestral score only serves to reinforce the bleak tone of the film. Requiem for a Dream benefits from an excellent cast: Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly are faultless as the beautiful young tragic lovers whose relationship is based on, and ultimately destroyed by, addiction. Comedian Marlon Wayans proves his dramatic abilities, while comedy staple Christopher McDonald turns in a deft cameo as smarmy self-help television guru, Tappy Tibbons, the high priest of quick-fix results. He is a perverse Greek-choral figure who has no direct dramatic participation, except in a harrowing sequence where Sarah hallucinates that her apartment has turned into a television studio. Ellen Burstyn stands out in her Oscar-nominated role, imparting Sarah Goldfarb with a poignant humanity and never coming across as pathetic, even when at her most selfdestructive.

Eeleen Lee

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The Trip Studio/Distributor:

American International Pictures Director:

Roger Corman Producer:

Roger Corman Screenwriter:

Jack Nicholson Cinematographer:

Arch Dalzell Art Director:

Leon Ericksen Editor:

Ronald Sinclair Composer:

The American Music Band (Electric Flag) Duration:

85 minutes Cast:

Peter Fonda Susan Strasberg Bruce Dern Dennis Hopper Year:

1967

Synopsis Television commercial director Paul Groves has a personalidentity crisis after his adulterous wife Sally files for divorce. Enlisting help from his friend John, he scores some LSD from his dealer friend Max to ‘find himself’ on his first acid trip. He meets several hippy characters, including Glenn, a woman interested in watching people take LSD. Paul and John go to John’s beach house where Paul takes the drug and enters an altered world of LSD-induced hallucination and revelation. Paul has several visions, including the feeling of the ‘life’ of an orange pass through his body, a medieval torture chamber, and a hallucination of John’s death. Following this, Paul panics and leaves John’s house, heading for the streets of LA. Thinking that the police are after him for John’s murder, several encounters ensue: he enters a house to watch some television; he goes into a freaky nightclub; and he has an odd conversation with a lone woman in a laundrette. After finding his way back to Max’s house, he is found by Glenn, who drives him to her house on the beach. When Glenn asks Paul if he found what he was looking for, he just replies that he’ll think about that ‘tomorrow’.

Critique From the mondo opening (complete with the claim that the film is a social commentary, of concern to all viewers – presumably an attempt to pass the censor) to the Truffautinspired freeze-frame/zoom ending (with animation of a crack superimposed on Fonda’s head – representing the ‘cracked mind’ of the LSD-user), The Trip is a confused snapshot of the mid-to-late 1960s’ California alternative scene. Falling between two other iconic Fonda movies, the Roger Cormanhelmed The Wild Angels (1966) and his own countercultural project Easy Rider (1969), The Trip is often overlooked by orthodox histories of independent cinema, but has acquired cult status among aficionados of the scene in question. The Trip is at its best when not trying to be profound – Bruce Dern’s Timothy Leary-esque acid guru is at times annoying, but his appearance in the film is a hip nod to the ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ ethos of Leary’s efforts to educate and free minds through advocating LSD use at just the moment when the hippy scene seeped into the consciousness of WASP America in late 1966/early 1967. Hopper’s simple hippy vibe is somehow frank and sympathetic, but his is very much a bit-part here, echoing his then-existence as a jobbing actor and only hinting at his future status as a cult figure and the more menacing performances that would later define his career. Just when it seems that Fonda is once again relying on style over substance – never having the most engaging of deliveries, Fonda nevertheless looked great in all of his

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movies of this period – he manages to pull out a brilliant performance in the middle of the film. Just as his trip starts to turn bad, Paul’s paranoia and LSD-innocence has an aura of authenticity about it, as if Fonda were familiar with the feeling of experiencing one’s own death. This follows an unmistakably-Corman moment, reminiscent of his Mask of the Red Death (1964), where Paul imagines himself dying from torture wounds in a medieval castle. Ultimately, The Trip is an interesting folly, featuring Corman’s signature visual and narrative economy. Even when the film requires such reliance on visual flair and psychedelic special effects, Corman does not venture far from the lowbudget appearance and makes the most of dizzying editing, ‘found’ footage, and straightforward fantasy scenes showing literal, rather than abstract, representations of LSD hallucination. The brilliance of Fonda’s panicked flight from John’s house, accompanied by the frantic psychedelic blues of the Mike Bloomfield-led Electric Flag, and intercut with visions of Sunset Strip is, unfortunately, preceded by the sight of Fonda running through Griffith Park and around Big Sur dressed in faux-medieval clothing, flanked by two hooded riders on horseback and a number of naked women in body paint. It seems that Corman took liberties with Jack Nicholson’s original screenplay in order to stay within budget. Not as extreme as, say, Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), but certainly groovier than Easy Rider, and less commercially-biased than Nicholson’s next writing project, Head (1968), The Trip is an interesting addition to the sub-genre.

Greg Singh

A Woman Under the Influence Studio/Distributor:

Faces International Films Director:

John Cassavetes Producer:

Sam Shaw Screenwriter:

John Cassavetes Cinematographers:

Mitch Breit Al Ruban

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Synopsis Preparing for a date with her absentee husband, Mabel Longhetti sends her kids off with their Grandmother for the night. The husband, Nick, never arrives. Eventually he calls to apologize: unavoidable work, he will make it up to her, he promises. Mabel, already drunk, hits the local bar where she finds a man to spend the night with. In the morning, hung over and confused, Mabel at first seems to mistake the man for her husband. She looks for the kids, forgetting that she sent them away. Finally, Nick arrives home, but with him is a truckfull of hungry co-workers. Mabel serves them dinner, but soon her mental frailty becomes apparent.

Critique Mabel Longhetti, hearing a familiar Tchaikovsky ditty come on the radio at an impromptu children’s party, presses an anxious-looking guest ‘Hey, you hear that? – you don’t

Directory of World Cinema

Art Director:

Phedon Papamichael Composer:

Bo Harwood Editor:

David Armstrong Duration:

155 minutes Cast:

Gena Rowlands Peter Falk Year:

1974

believe in miracles? – that’s Swan Lake ... that’s perfect.’ She rushes over to instruct the children ‘Die for Mr. Jenson, kids’, getting them to flail impressively. It is not hard to see why the music would rouse her so much. Conspicuously beautiful but physically and mentally exposed, Mabel is very much a dying swan. The scene, like most scenes in John Cassavetes’ masterpiece A Woman Under the Influence, descends into chaos, shouting and eventual violence. Mabel is under the influence; she drinks too much but clearly this is a symptom not the root. Her family suffocate her emotionally, and so do her friends. At a spaghetti-fuelled dinner for her husband and his construction-worker colleagues, Mabel struggles to hold it together – their obvious embarrassment only exacerbating the situation. Again and again, Mabel’s instability is met with a toxic mix of love and anger. Although Gena Rowlands rightly receives effusive praise for her fearless portrayal of Mabel, Peter Falk’s performance as Nick, a husband torn between affection and despair and seemingly incapable of doing anything except make matters worse, is often overlooked. Indeed, the scenes in which Mabel is safely out of sight at a mental institution and Nick must look after the kids in his own inept fashion are among the most affecting in the film. Mabel’s precarious temperament may align her with a certain type of cracked female psyche associated with Tennessee Williams but, otherwise, the characterization is all Cassavetes’. Along with Opening Night (1977), A Woman Under the Influence displays his variety of car-crash vérité at its very best. Duration is endurance, as the scenes build up their depressing momentum. The film is damning in its depiction of blue-collar-family life, but there is time for laughter (albeit mostly nervous) and genuine warmth. However, the final picture is inevitably desperate and sad. The film’s influence can be felt to this day in the work of film-makers as diverse as Harmony Korine, Lars von Trier and, especially, Pedro Almodovar.

Rob Dennis

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One could argue that the American crime film has been independent in spirit throughout most of its history. On the level of representation, gangsters, molls, private eyes, femme fatales, corrupt cops, and serial killers have played a major role in what we think of as the American cinematic experience, and part of the thrill of American cinema has been the ways in which all these characters have deviated from the cultural norms of twentieth and twenty-first century America. If we look at the crime films in this volume it is clear that many of them contain narratives, characters and images which digress from what we might consider to be orthodox Hollywood cinema. Perhaps the most important affect of the independent American crime film has not been on the level of representation but in its construction of certain feelings which have defined modern America throughout its various incarnations. Even taking the famous Warner Brothers’ cycle of the 1930s as an arbitrary starting point, it was clear that the crime film contained many of the complexities associated with the construction of modern American culture, and it is the classic gangster film which is one of the primary influences on many of the movies we might recognize as Independent American crime films. This may seem surprising, given the shortness of the cycle. The ‘classic’ gangster film of the 1930s really only lasted for one production season (1930–31) and consisted of fewer than 30 films, of which Scarface (1932), The Public Enemy (1931) and Little Caesar (1931) probably show us all we need to know about aesthetics, narratives and production values of the genre. Nevertheless, these films were both symptomatic of and helped develop the characteristics that defined the cinematic (for many the only) experience of contemporary American culture. Modernity, the city, the relationship between individual and milieu, ethnicity and that peculiarly-American affective structure of the American Dream were all played out in one form or another in the gangster film. In comparison to its Classical Hollywood action-film counterpart, the Western, the gangster film revelled in its modernity. Geography is important in this comparison. Where the western might be considered to be a genre of the rural South and West, the classic gangster film was firmly rooted in the industrialized urban North and East, in the cities of Chicago and New York. The wide streets of the rationalized modern city, with its cars, trams and stylishly-dressed citizens, epitomized the desirable epicentre of modern, Western capitalism. To a large extent the figure of the gangster fitted right in with this milieu, with their stylized dress code, quickfire, often incomprehensible (to the uninitiated) dialogue, dependence on the new(ish) technologies of the machine gun and the automobile, and the increased mobility and speed of twentieth-century urban life. In structural terms, there is very little difference between the anti-hero gangster and the cowboy, or the romantic or

Reservoir Dogs, Live Entertainment.

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historical hero of other genres. In the gangster film the individual action-taker is still central, and his relations with his world are still concrete in the sense that his actions are able to modify or change the milieu in which he is situated, and events that take place within that milieu are seen to have an effect on him. For the duration of the film, the milieu of the underworld is also experienced as a kind of totality for the audience, with the one exception being that the milieu of the gangster is ultimately shown to be a false one, overtaken by the official and ‘real’ forces of law and order. But the neon sign in Scarface that reads ‘The World is Yours’, and by which Tony Camonte sets so much store, provides an apt motto for the action-image and its viewers. The fact that the underworld is presented as an ultimately-precarious milieu does not undermine the American Dream as affective structure in any fundamental sense; nor does it threaten the action-image as the cinema of that Dream. It is perhaps the later film noir that provides a more telling influence on latter day crime films. Noir is of course a notoriously difficult category of film to define, cutting as it does across traditional genres. Nevertheless, a quick checklist of the characteristics often attributed to noir reveals much in common with many of the more contemporary films: a striking visual style; convoluted narratives of individuals trapped within a violent threatening world; the city as a dystopian space; troubled gender relations between weak males and femme fatales; the dissolution of boundaries between private and public space; and bending the rules of classical Hollywood – all easily recognizable in the films reviewed in this volume. It is interesting that noir has exerted such an influence on independent and cult film-makers over the years. If we are to believe psychoanalytic critic Slavoj Zizek, it is because noir excites an inexorable nostalgia over contemporary audiences and, presumably, film-makers. This looking back is not a desire for the world and situations of noir itself (which, as he rightly points out, is often laughed at rather than desired by contemporary audiences), rather, the fascination is to do with nostalgia for audiences who could take noir seriously. While this argument is compelling on some levels, it does not entirely engage with the question of why the independent American crime film was so fixated with noir universes to the point of virtual recreation in the stunning black and white of The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). It is, maybe, the thoughts of Gilles Deleuze that can provide some clues to this fascination. For Deleuze, there is a philosophical crisis in American cinema after the Second World War which is implicitly connected to a crisis of the American Dream. The atrocities of the concentration camp and bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made it impossible to believe that individual action could change global worlds and situations. Classical Hollywood cinema depends on this belief – it needs audiences to be convinced that an individual like Tony Camonte can rule the (under)world of Chicago through his actions – at least for the film’s running time. On one level, noir still possesses this relationship between individual and milieu. Although Deleuze points to noir as the genre of realism where the relationship of action between individual and milieu are most fragile, the hero/ anti-hero still retains the cultural and social knowledge to deal with the everyday and act decisively upon it. Yet, by the time we reach the end of the classic cycle of noir and a film like Kiss Me Deadly (1955), even this ability of the individual appears to have ended. Ralph Meeker’s Mike Hammer is the ultimate in action-image protagonists. His whole being is directed towards achieving his goals through violent verbal or physical action, and to changing the film’s milieu through that action. But Meeker’s Marlowe becomes an oafish clown because

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of the intrusion into the noir totality of the unsymbolizable and uncontrollable violence of nuclear holocaust. Noir as violent global situation is not viable because it is no longer possible to believe that an individual – no matter how disposed to action – can credibly alter a milieu. Nor can we believe that Hammer’s actions can force the situation to reveal itself – until it is too late and ‘Pandora’s box’ is opened at the end of the film. The fraying of links between individual protagonists and their milieu and their inability to modify or alter that milieu is also prevalent within the 1970s’ films of Martin Scorsese. In some ways, films like Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976) have come to be seen almost as a genre in their own right, but we can see many of the tendencies associated with crime cinema of the 1970s in these movies: the breakdown of the narrative as driving force and centre of realism; the seemingly-more realistic mise-en-scène of cities full of urban decay and violence; and perhaps most importantly, a greater emphasis on the power of the cinematic image itself to create the drama. Mean Streets and Taxi-Driver mark a particular moment when the symptoms of white racial rage could no longer be contained and repressed within the totalizing narratives of Hollywood. Many of the moments of dramatic intensity that replace the linear narrative and well-defined relations between protagonist and milieu in Scorsese’s cinema of the crisis of the action-image are caused by the self-reflexive unfolding of scenes where there is conflict between boundaries of race and the accompanying aspects of fear, desire and the loss of the old certainties of action. The powerlessness of white American culture is given a different spin in the 1990s’ films of Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino’s movies, like those of Scorsese, have almost become a subgenre in their own right, and this is not the only point of comparison. There is a preoccupation with race in Reservoir Dogs (1991), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1999) which is not solely or even predominantly at the level of representation of black characters. There is a dynamic of mimesis at the heart of Tarantino’s films which seeks to re-animate the affective power of the Hollywood crime film by both situating AfricanAmerican culture in a position of authority and authenticity and miming the aesthetics of powerlessness present within ‘hood’ films such as Juice (1992) and Menace II Society (1993). It can be argued – as Spike Lee famously did – that such mimesis is in one sense an appropriation and cannibalization of the perceived authenticity of African-American culture, and without the politics. While accepting the validity of some this thinking, it can be argued that the dynamics of mimesis necessarily entail a shifting of culture and cultural authority. Tarantino’s films also revealed the impossibility of producing the certainties of action and authority of structures of action between white individuals and white milieus which dominated the cinema of the action-image. By the time we get to Jackie Brown, it is clear that something has happened to the clearlydemarcated links of action between protagonist and cinematic worlds. Ethnicity and nationality are fragmented and dissolved – not into the melting pot of the American Dream and its cinema but into a world of difference and tension which cannot be governed by globalizing forces on individualized actions and communities. This ‘localism’ and fragmentation in the aesthetic structures of the American crime film had one of its most recent manifestations in Crash (2004). The powerlessness of the old American cinematic hero and his Dream is explicit in the various narrative strands of the film and its moments of attempted cinematic affect. The film opens with a dreamlike sequence where an African-American

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detective Graham Walters (Don Cheadle), in the aftermath of a car crash, muses on the disconnected and alienated experience of contemporary Los Angeles. He notes that in New York City you can walk around the city and brush into people, but in Los Angeles you just drive around and nobody touches you – until you crash into them. This statement underlies the various plotlines of the film, where a multitude of characters with different ethnicities and classes come into violent conflict with each other in various life-changing ways. All these characters accept a localized, negotiated and contingent degree of power in the city. Crash, though, also demonstrates one of the problems facing the Independent American crime film of the future. It is debatable whether we can call Crash a crime film proper – though ‘crime’ certainly features heavily in its narrative arcs. If, as I noted at the start of this essay, the crime film has always had a symptomatic relationship with the idea of what it is to be a modern American, then, as the complexity of that state is increasingly visible, the complexity of the form and aesthetic structures of its visualization also needs to develop. It is perhaps telling that perhaps the most sophisticated recent engagement with these questions has taken the almost novelist format of the television show The Wire (2002–08).

Paul Gormley

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The Big Lebowski, Polygram/Working Title.

The Big Lebowski Studio/Distributor:

Polygram Filmed Entertainment Working Title Gramercy Director:

Joel Coen Producer:

Synopsis Jeffrey Lebowski – aka ‘The Dude’ – is an ex-countercultural activist who currently slacks away his life by going bowling, drinking White Russians and smoking joints. His low-key lifestyle is interrupted when two men break into his apartment, pee on his rug, and threaten him in order to reclaim money he supposedly owes. After it transpires that they have got the wrong person, the Dude tracks down the other Jeffrey Lebowski (the ‘Big Lebowski’) – a disabled millionaire – so that he can be compensated for his soiled rug. This eventually leads to the Dude becoming caught up in a complex kidnapping plot, which he undertakes with his bowling buddy Walter: the Big Lebowski offers him a cash deal if he can help track down his kidnapped wife, Bunny. However, everything is not as it seems and the pursuit of Bunny leads

Ethan Coen Crime

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Screenwriters:

Joel Coen Ethan Coen Cinematographer:

Roger Deakins Art Director:

John Dexter Editors:

Joel Coen Ethan Coen Tricia Cook Composer:

Carter Burwell Duration:

117 minutes Cast:

Jeff Bridges John Goodman Steve Buscemi John Turturro Year:

1998

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to a number of confrontations and revelations. As this crime saga unfolds, the Dude and his friends Donny and Walter are eagerly engaged in a bowling tournament, which brings its own dramatic twists and turns.

Critique A commercial disappointment which met with lukewarm critical reviews, The Big Lebowski has gone on to attain true cult status through subsequent embrace by an ardent fanbase, leading to a series of ‘Lebowski Fests’. The film’s numerous quotable lines, clever integration of film references, and its assortment of oddball characters took time to be fully appreciated: at the time of its release it was dismissed as a rather light comedy following the Coen’s acclaimed Fargo (1996). One of the pleasures of the film is how it merges the slacker comedy with the film noir – two seemingly-incompatible genres – in a fluent, seamless manner. The Dude’s simple ambitions of bowling and relaxing are continually thwarted by plot events, and a best friend (Walter) aggravating him at every moment. Mirroring the contrasting generic mould of the film, the Dude and Walter make an odd couple: one is a dope-smoking, ex-protesting pacifist who wants peace and quiet, the other a gun-toting, right-wing Vietnam veteran who will take the slightest opportunity to vent his aggression. Tagging along with the pair is Donny, an almost silent presence who, when he does make an utterance, invariably gets told to ‘shut the fuck up’ by Walter. Evidently, these characters are not your typical noir-ish protagonists, so it comes as no surprise that their unwilling participation in a labyrinthine kidnap plot creates a number of absurd situations. Yet, while The Big Lebowski is framed by oppositions, its richness derives from the multiple nuances that exist in between these oppositions. The Coen’s are renowned for their intertextual references and this film is no exception, including as it does references to Busby Berkeley’s elaborate musical set-pieces, pornographic film-making (the film-within-a film, Logjammin’), Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), to name a few examples. It also features a range of colourful characters, including John Turturro’s outrageous turn as Latino pederast Jesus, Julianne Moore’s modern-art feminist Maude, and Sam Elliott’s incongruously-camp cowboy narrator ‘The Stranger’. And then there are the Nihilists: a German trio also caught up in the kidnap plot, who perform as a Kraftwerk-esque musical act Nagelbett, and who threaten to cut off The Dude’s ‘Johnson’ (but ultimately end up causing Donnie to die of a heart attack). The Coen brothers have often been accused in their films of being stylistic and clever, but ultimately shallow. This was certainly the manner in which The Big Lebowski was often received on its initial release. Yet repeated viewings refute

Directory of World Cinema

this accusation, instead revealing a film that manages to keep entertaining and generating laughs. Yet it is not just a clever, detailed and funny film. It is also a film about friendship, about managing to stay true to one’s self in a deceptive, convoluted and complex world. It is for this reason that the Dude has become a modern icon for fans of the movie, spawning his own quasi-religion: ‘Dudeism’.

Jamie Sexton

The Funeral Studio/Distributor:

October Films Director:

Abel Ferrara Producer:

Mary Kane Screenwriter:

Nicholas St. John Cinematographer:

Ken Kelsch Art Director:

Beth Curtis Editors:

Bill Pankow Mayin Lo Jim Mol Composer:

Joe Delia Duration:

99 minutes Cast:

Christopher Walken Chris Penn Vincent Gallo Isabella Rossellini Year:

1996

Synopsis New York, the 1930s. The Tempios are an Italian-American family of racketeers, led by eldest brother Ray, volatile middle son Chez and youngest offspring Johnny. All three have women in their lives: Ray is married to the outspoken Jeanette; Chez to the long-suffering Clara, while Johnny is engaged to Helen. At the outset, it becomes clear that Johnny has been murdered and, as the family mourn, Ray and Chez set about finding out who killed their brother. Flashbacks introduce the chief suspect, Gaspare, a rival racketeer who tries to broker a deal between the brothers and an industrialist willing to pay $1,000 for their influence over the unions. As it transpires, not only was Johnny enjoying a blatant affair with Gaspare’s wife but his left-wing tendencies had led him to support the workers. While Gaspare’s guilt proves to be false, the real killer is found – a young man who claims Johnny raped his girlfriend. Ray, whose determination to avenge his brother’s death has caused consternation among the family, takes him for a drive and shoots him dead. In response, Chez enters the family home, shooting at Johnny’s coffin, killing Ray and then turning the gun on himself.

Critique Of the nine feature-length screenplays, two shorts and one pornographic feature penned across a career where he exclusively worked for Abel Ferrara, screenwriter Nicholas St. John’s finest hour came – rather aptly – with his final film for his boyhood friend, The Funeral. A classy, classical gangster film, the script is far removed from his previous Ferrara-mob collaborations, China Girl (1987) and King of New York (1990), painting a much broader canvas as it unites underworld preoccupations with death, religion, politics and commerce. Likewise, the frequently erratic Ferrara is at the top of his game here, marrying St. John’s emotionally resonant tale to a maverick cast. If nothing else, The Funeral offers the unique spectacle of watching Christopher Walken, Vincent Gallo, Chris Penn and Benicio Del Toro act together. One can

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only imagine how Ferrara – arguably more unstable than any of the aforementioned – kept control of such a potentiallyvolatile set. Maybe he had help from his women; lending the film much needed depth, Annabella Sciorra, Gretchen Mol and Isabella Rossellini are more than a match for their male counterparts. The film is crucially aware of its heritage. In the opening scene, the soon-to-be-killed 22-year-old Communist Johnny Tempio (his murder outside the cinema later recalling the demise of gangster John Dillinger) sits alone watching Archie Mayo’s The Petrified Forest (1936). While he may aspire to be Bogart’s grizzled Duke Manti, his brother Ray would more than likely identify with Leslie Howard’s existential Squire. But as Johnny himself says, accused of reading too many books, ‘That’s the American tragedy. We need something to distract us – the radio or the movies.’ Gaspare is a slick amalgam of Cagney, Robinson and Muni, but Ferrara goes beyond the Warner Brothers’ era, creating strong female characters that provide an oblique commentary on mob life. Practical and level-headed, these women refuse to sentimentalize their partners’ deadly profession. As Ray’s wife Jeanette says to Johnny’s girlfriend Helen, ‘They’re criminals because they’ve never risen above their heartless, illiterate upbringing. Nothing – absolutely nothing – romantic about it.’ Meanwhile, Ray rather fancifully believes people of his ilk should be running the Ford Motor Company: ‘We’re just a bunch of street punks, nobody’s watching us. What is it – greed, pride, stupidity – that takes over us?’ He concludes that the ‘flaw in the criminal character’ is a sense of the untrustworthy. All that can be managed, though, is a switch from terrorizing union strike-scabs to hooking up with the employer of such breakaways, compromising Johnny’s ideals in the process. While Ray becomes obsessed with gaining a primitive form of justice for Johnny’s death, Chez is simply hell-bent on destroying everything around him – as seen when he rapes a young girl in an alley. Disgusted with her when she offers to sell her body, he screams ‘Don’t fuck with the Devil’ – seemingly aware his own appointment with Beelzebub is impending. Likewise, Ray, a devout Catholic, is assured he will ‘roast in hell’. As he searches for the truth, wrestling with his conscience – ‘the way God sees it’ – he knows his eternal damnation is secure.

James Mottram

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The Killing of a Chinese Bookie Studio/Distributor:

Faces Distribution Director:

John Cassavetes Producer:

Al Ruban Screenwriter:

John Cassavetes Cinematographers:

Mitch Breit Al Ruban Art Director:

Phedon Papamichael Composer:

Bo Harwood Editor:

Tom Cornwell Duration:

135 minutes Cast:

Ben Gazzara Seymore Cassel Timothy Carey Donna Gordon Year:

1976

Synopsis Life has never really worked out for Cosmo Vitelli; a likeable guy by nature, Cosmo spends all of his days trying to keep his California Gentleman’s Club open for business. While The Crazy Horse West, Cosmo’s club, is not exactly setting the strip on fire, it is actually the least of his worries, as a lifelong gambling problem has finally caught up with him. After blowing over $20,000 in a careless late-night bet, Cosmo is given two choices: pay immediately or check out permanently. Seeing that Cosmo is beyond desperate, the bookie he owes offers him a third option: to kill a local Chinese Bookie he wants erased. A serious moral crisis then enters Cosmo’s dayto-day activities at the club as he tries to figure out whose life is more valuable: his own or this certain Chinese Bookie he has never met.

Critique If there is one name that towers above all the others in the history of American independent film then it is indeed John Cassavetes. One of the true fathers of American indies had hit an artistic and commercial high in 1974 with the AcademyAward-nominated A Woman Under the Influence, a film that seemed to signal a major breakthrough with the American film-going public who had previously ignored most of his work. His next feature, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, was a pivotal one for the much-missed actor, writer and director but, instead of continuing the winning streak Cassavetes had hit upon in the mid-1970s, it proved a polarizing experience for critics, Cassavetes himself and prospective audience members who largely stayed away. Ironically, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie had a chance to be the most commercial film John Cassavetes had written and directed up to that point; after all, the storyline sounds like a wonderfully-tense neonoir. But Cassavetes was anything but predictable and this potentially marketable mystery would turn out to be the most intense and, at times, problematic character study he had ever assembled. It is easy to see why The Killing of a Chinese Bookie failed to catch on with the critics and public as it is an admittedly flawed film. Overlong at more than two hours (the director would cut out thirty minutes of footage), uneven and more than a little muddled, the film still remains one of Cassavetes’ most fascinating works. Ben Gazzara’s performance as Cosmo Vitelli keeps the film compulsively watchable despite its missteps; Gazzara had worked with Cassavetes before, in the terrific Husbands (1970), and already established himself as a solid character actor, but with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie he would deliver a distinctive turn that would have cemented his reputation as one of America’s great actors had more

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people seen it. Gazzara is simply astonishing as Cosmo and he does not so much play him as possess him completely. The supporting cast, including Timothy Carey and Seymore Cassel, is strong but this is Ben Gazzara’s show all the way. The film failed initially in both versions Cassavetes released, but has steadily built up a reputation as one of the director’s most haunting works. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie lingers more than thirty years after its release, in much the same way that the gigantic shadow of the brilliant John Cassavetes stretches over all of the best independent film-making.

Jeremy Richey

Killing Zoe Studio/Distributor:

Davis Films, October Director:

Roger Avary Producer:

Samuel Hadida Screenwriter:

Roger Avary

In Paris on business, Zed feels somewhat out of the loop until he spends the evening with Zoe. When his psychotic acquaintance Eric arrives on the scene later that night, however, Zed’s real intentions are revealed: he is a safe breaker, part of Eric’s misfit crew, about to hit one of the city’s biggest banks. The job is due to take place the following morning, but only after a night on the town involving dangerous cocktails of drink and drugs. When the heist consequently disintegrates into brutal and bloody chaos, and Zoe is revealed to be one of the bank’s employees, there is more than just professional ethos at stake.

Cinematographer:

Critique

Tom Richmond

For a man whose career has been inextricably, and often uncomfortably, bound up with his more famous Pulp Fiction (1994) screenwriting partner, Roger Avary’s Killing Zoe remains distinctive enough to stand on its own terms, even if Quentin Tarantino’s name is rather ludicrously plastered all over the film’s promotional material. Putting it crudely, Killing Zoe is akin to Trainspotting (1996) meets Reservoir Dogs (1992) with, appropriately, a sprinkling of respect to the French New Wave (nouvelle vague) cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. The key is how well these two sides dovetail. Perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be the French social cinema of the mid-nineties like La Haine (1995) that shattered notions of oh-la-la French romanticism and addressed the real problems of Paris’ inhabitants, namely the violent inner-city slum riots. From the off, the famed city of love is presented as one of two halves, with the ‘real’ Paris having a mouthpiece in both Zoe and Eric. The unhinged Eric gets the lion’s share in representing the ‘real’ city, taking Zed on a frenetic and murky journey through its underbelly in the film’s first half. Arriving in a dimly-lit jazz bar, the disaffected, bored, pill-popping criminal clearly finds

Composer:

Tomand Andy Art Director:

David Wasco Editor:

Kathryn Himoff Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Eric Stoltz Julie Delpy Jean-Hughes Anglade Year:

1994

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Directory of World Cinema

this an escape from the tourist-oriented upper strata of Paris – something he dismisses with vitriolic contempt. Given his lack of focus, it is hardly surprising that the robbery to follow should disintegrate so quickly, with several innocent people being casually executed. Zed, meanwhile, seems to be striving for the romanticism that Eric wants to dispel, seeing through his druggy haze animated crotchets arising from the music of the Dixieland jazz band (nowhere else in the film is the nouvelle vague influence so explicit). It is this disturbing grasp of human nature that elevates the relatively-conventional robbery sequence and makes it such a gripping watch. The comparisons to Reservoir Dogs are apt (and inevitable) but whereas the irony there lay in the lack of individual criminal identities, here the opposite is true. Here, the clearly inexperienced, drugtaking criminals are a far cry from the detached professionals of Tarantino’s film, their own disaffection being their downfall. Throwing off their masks (because the sweat ‘stings their eyes’) and letting their guard down so one of their number can tell a crude joke, it is a damning indictment of French youth culture gone to hell (again, a comparison with La Haine’s aimless inner city hooligans raises its head). Ultimately, Zed’s chance at redemption through Zoe strikes a somewhat corny note but is important in fleshing out the film’s thematic constructs. With both Eric and Zoe’s beliefs in the ‘real’ Paris vying for attention (Zoe’s being the one that concludes the film), it is left up to the viewer to decide which one is more apposite.

Sean Wilson

The Limey Studio/Distributor:

Artisan Entertainment Director:

Steven Soderbergh Producers:

John Hardy Scott Kramer Screenwriter:

Lem Dobbs Cinematographer:

Ed Lachman Editor:

Sarah Flack

Synopsis Wilson is a British career-criminal who has just been released from a nine-year prison stretch. He arrives in Los Angeles to investigate the untimely death of his daughter Jenny. After hooking up with Jenny’s former actor-friends, Ed and Elaine, he discovers that she was mixed up with wealthy record producer Terry Valentine. Initially heading to a warehouse where Jenny witnessed a deal go down between Valentine and some dangerous men, after taking a beating, Wilson returns to kill all but one of them. With Ed, he later heads to Valentine’s house on the day he is hosting a party. Causing a disruption, they narrowly escape after being pursued by Valentine’s security advisor Jim Avery. Avery then hires Stacy the Hitman and Uncle John to see off Wilson, only for the latter to be saved by two DEA agents, who take him to see their boss. After this encounter, Wilson heads out to Valentine’s beach house, where he takes out Valentine’s heavies and confronts their employer about Jenny’s death.

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The Limey, Artisan Pics.

Composer:

Cliff Martinez Duration:

89 minutes Cast:

Terence Stamp Peter Fonda Lesley Ann Warren Luis Guzmán Year:

1999

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Critique After returning from the cinematic wilderness with Out of Sight (1998), Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey arrived hot on its heels as a more radical and unruly cousin and was his last film before his back-to-back trio of $100 million hits, Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000) and Ocean’s Eleven (2001), turned him into one of the hottest directors on the planet. In retrospect, The Limey was a crucial film in his evolution as a film-maker; uniting the narrative and linguistic stunts of Schizopolis (1996) with the genre-oriented vibe of Out of Sight, it laid the groundwork for his more mainstream narrative experiments – in particular on Traffic. Written by Lem Dobbs, who previously penned Soderbergh’s sophomore film Kafka (1991), the film has been rightly described by Soderbergh as ‘Alain Resnais meets Get Carter’. It certainly mixes the vengeance plot of Mike Hodges’ seminal 1972 British gangster film with the narrative anarchy of Resnais’ Last Year At Marienbad (1961), creating a disorientating experience as queasy as the Cliff Martinez score that plays across the film. Yet it also plays out like John Boorman’s dream-like

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revenge fantasy Point Blank (1967), simply swapping San Francisco for Los Angeles as the anachronistic Wilson, armed with an arsenal of cockney rhyming slang, arrives in a city to which he does not belong. Editor Sarah Flack (who also cut Schizopolis) gives a performance as tour-de-force as anything offered by Stamp or Fonda. Take the film’s opening ten minutes, which must rank among the most baffling in modern US independent cinema; cut to the sound of The Who’s ‘The Seeker’ while Wilson is shuffled through a variety of scenes – in a cab, on a plane, in his motel – which seem to boast a narrative logic all of their own. If anything, it hints that this is as much a journey of the mind as a literal one through Los Angeles. At one point reduced to even stealing a photograph of Jenny from Valentine’s house, Wilson is seen desperately trying to cling to his memories of his daughter, which are fading as fast as the battered Super 8mm clips of her childhood that we glimpse. If this suggests that Wilson’s mind plays out a rose-tinted view of his time with Jenny, he is not the only one. Valentine refers to the Sixties as ‘a place that maybe only exists in your imagination’ – suggesting that the mind has a way of shading memories with a nostalgic hue. A story of counter-culture gone awry, The Limey is really a loss-of-innocence story, as embodied by the corrupt Valentine, who ‘took the whole ‘60s Southern California zeitgeist and ran with it’ but is now reduced to laundering money for the mob. No wonder Soderbergh attributes him The Hollies’ ‘King Midas in Reverse’ as a signature tune. Meanwhile, using clips from Ken Loach’s Poor Cow (1967), in which Stamp played a loser destined for prison, the suggestion is clear that this is a film about reckoning much more with the past than with the present.

James Mottram

The Man Who Wasn’t There Studio/Distributor:

Working Title Films USA Films Director:

Joel Coen Producer:

Ethan Coen

Synopsis In 1949, Ed Crane is working in a barber shop when he hears of an investment opportunity in the pioneering field of dry cleaning. He correctly suspects that his wife Doris is having an affair with her department-store boss, Big Dave Brewster, and so he blackmails Big Dave for $10,000, the amount required to invest in the new business. However, Big Dave has also been approached by the businessman in the barber shop requesting an identical amount of capital, the deduction of which leads to a confrontation between himself and Ed. Following this meeting, Ed and his laconic lifestyle tumble out of control: his wife is arrested, his life savings are spent on a lawyer, and a dead body is discovered. Ed then finds himself also placed in jail, but not before he attempts to help Birdy, a teenage daughter of a friend, develop her piano-playing

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Screenwriters:

Ethan Coen Joel Coen Cinematographer:

Roger Deakins Art Director:

Chris Gorak Editors:

Ethan Coen Joel Coen Tricia Cooke Composer:

Carter Burwell Duration:

116 minutes Cast:

Billy Bob Thornton Frances McDormand James Gandolfini Scarlett Johansson Year:

2001

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skills. Birdy, in trying to express her gratitude with sexual favours, causes a car crash and a trip to the hospital for them both.

Critique Sandwiched between the irreverence of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and the Hollywood romance of Intolerable Cruelty (2003), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) is an altogether-darker Coen-brother experience. Presented in black and white (although it was shot in colour), this is another take on film noir that builds upon their earlier flirtations with the genre, such as Blood Simple (1984) and The Big Lebowski (1998). In the inimitable Coen style, their neo-noir also incorporates numerous other influences as the narrative unfolds – not least, trial films and the B-movie sci-fi of the 1950s – and packages them all within an expertly-rendered image of the era that actually looks as though it were shot then. Ed Crane the protagonist, superbly played by Billy Bob Thornton, is never without a cigarette dangling from his lips, his head surrounded by wisps of smoke and his face lit starkly to convey every emotion without him having to speak or move, which of course suits the noir styling of the film. Ed has things happen to him, and at no point does he have any semblance of control over the mechanisms of his life and his narrative trajectory. At times, this lackadaisical approach can be frustrating to watch but Thornton’s withdrawn style, occasionally supported by mumbling voice-over narration, allows the supporting actors to develop characters with large, memorable personalities within the highly-stylized mise-enscène, while Francis McDormand and James Gandolfini, playing the extra-marital couple, ably generate the friction in the first part of the film as the story flip-flops between tales of bribery and adultery, greed and lust. Big Dave is set up in opposition to Ed: he is an army hero with prospects and social grace, whilst Ed was not eligible to join the military due to ‘flat feet’, and he daydreams about fanciful dry-cleaning enterprises, with only his rambling, pontificating brother for company. Gandolfini is once more typecast as a variation of his Tony Soprano, and Francis McDormand plays a callous version of her unhappy adulterous wife from Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys (2000). As the film moves from betrayal and extortion through to the court room scenes and piano lessons, the film loses some of its edge. The intimate piano subplot counterbalances the impersonal judiciary scenes but, apart from the entrance of top defence attorney Freddy Riedenschneider and the automobile fellatio incident, the downward spiral of the Crane family is fairly miserable. Nevertheless, Tony Shalhoub threatens to steal the movie as Riedenschneider with his hyper-agitated double-think logic and philosophical discussions on the Uncertainty Principle and Modern Man. Referring to Freddy’s

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court speech, Ed says, ‘He told them to look, not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech.’ This description can also be used to define the Coen brothers’ absurdist ethos, where actions are impregnated with the suggestion of significance, such as the flying saucer appearing or Tolliver’s pass at Ed, but what the things in themselves signify is not given further elaboration. In The Man Who Wasn’t There, we find no sweeping deus ex machina, such as the cleansing flood in O Brother Where art Thou?, and the underdog does not get to realize his dreams, as Norville Barnes does in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994). The Man Who Wasn’t There is bleak because noir films are characteristically bleak and, if you can still find dark humour in that, then you are thinking like a Coen brother.

Carl Wilson

Mean Streets Studio/Distributor:

Warner Bros. Director:

Martin Scorsese Producer:

Jonathan T Taplin Screenwriter:

Martin Scorsese Cinematographer:

Kent Wakeford Editor:

Sidney Levin Duration:

105 minutes Cast:

Harvey Keitel Robert De Niro Amy Robinson Year:

1973

Synopsis Charlie is from the ‘mean streets’ of Little Italy, New York. Working minor criminal rackets for his uncle, his desire to make a name for himself is undercut by the chaos that ensues out of his friendship with Johnny Boy. Attempting to keep the volatile Johnny on the straight and narrow is not easy, especially when Charlie is continuing an affair with his epileptic cousin Teresa, and Johnny himself is in debt to loan shark Michael. Small-time hood Charlie must decide whether redemption will materialize through embracing his Catholic convictions or through his actions on the streets.

Critique Although not his debut feature, Martin Scorsese’s autobiographical Mean Streets was the first to hone what has become his signature: blistering style. Quick pans, contrasted with slow tracking shots, lurid lighting, a sense of New York’s gritty urban milieu, a superb pop soundtrack and, of course, vital performances from his actors all combine to make it a trulyvisceral experience. This was Scorsese’s first collaboration with Robert De Niro, although De Niro’s Johnny Boy is not the central character. That falls to Keitel’s Charlie, a likeable enough wannabe wise guy, experiencing a deep crisis of faith and conscience. Charlie believes that, ‘You don’t make up for your sins in the church, you do it on the streets’, suggesting the raw themes of Catholicism, religious anxiety and spiritual desertion that underline the rest of the film and indeed much of Scorsese’s future work. It is here in Mean Streets, though, that such themes feel at their freshest and most urgent. The director’s keen sense of

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New York at its least glamorous (although the film was largely shot in Los Angeles), at the low end of the mob scale, is quite stunningly potent. This clearly stems from the fact that Scorsese had lived this life, had experienced these crises, even deliberating entering the church, before making (for us) the right decision and chronicling the mean streets cinematically for our delectation. Charlie, therefore, is a perfect stand-in, an audience’s ideal entryway into minor mobster life. Hanging around his friends’ seedy bar, watching over the patrons drinking, while bathed in garish red light, and all scored by hits like The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ or ‘Tell Me’ by the Stones, Charlie is in many ways a typical young man. The rub comes with his family connections: his uncle is a well-connected mob boss and he sees great potential in climbing the social ladder, the reward being a stake in his uncle’s restaurant. The destructive threat to Charlie’s straight-and-narrow attempts (of sorts) is Johnny Boy, who thinks nothing of bombing mail boxes, starting random fights and firing guns from rooftops in the middle of the night. A constant anarchic presence, Johnny is a typically extraordinary performance from De Niro, his exuberant exterior barely concealing a volcanic core, and a striking contrast with the straight-laced Charlie who fetishistically dresses smartly while going about his business on the grubby streets. It is this flipside and duality between violence and respectability that underlines the danger of the gangster world in this and other Scorsese classics (the conflicting use of opera versus popular songs also rams this home). In the end, it seems that if you commit to this life, you run the risk with your own life. The film’s bloody conclusion horrifies more on a visceral level than The Godfather (1972) because it says that even if these characters have nothing much to lose, one can still lose – violently if necessary.

Sean Wilson

Pulp Fiction Studio/Distributor:

A Band Apart Jersey Films Miramax Director:

Quentin Tarantino Producer:

Lawrence Bender

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Synopsis A contemporary portrayal of criminal LA sees three intersecting stories overlap and interlock: two hit-men asked to recover stolen property for their mobster boss find events taking increasingly unexpected turns; one of said hit-men finds himself attracted to his boss’s alluring wife; and, after being paid to throw a fight, a boxer chooses to do the opposite and abscond with the money, only to face a tough decision.

Critique Royale with cheese … $5 shakes … Black briefcases. All unremarkable elements on their own terms, until Quentin

Directory of World Cinema

Screenwriters:

Quentin Tarantino Roger Avary Cinematographer:

Andrzej Sekula Art Directors:

David Wasco Charles Collum Editor:

Sally Menke Duration:

155 minutes Cast:

John Travolta Samuel L Jackson Bruce Willis Uma Thurman Tim Roth Year:

1994

Tarantino’s blistering Pulp Fiction came along in 1994 and gave them all a darkly-comic, pop-culture shakedown, grabbing Hollywood by the scruff of the neck in the process. Tarantino is a magpie at heart, having accumulated a vast knowledge of cinema and regurgitating it onscreen in his own inimitable way. The triumphant interlocking narrative, that brings deceased characters back to life and presents different ones in the foreground at different times, ostensibly is a dime-store-novel portrayal of contemporary Los Angeles. John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson’s bickering hit-men Vincent and Jules have no qualms about executing cold-blooded murder in the employ of crime-lord Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) while Bruce Willis’ amoral boxer Butch shows no remorse for a man he has accidentally killed in the ring after failing to throw a fight. Certain scenes gained an instant, grotesque notoriety, from an adrenaline shot to the heart of Marsellus’ OD-ing wife Mia (Uma Thurman) to the bizarre bondage/rape sequence involving ‘the Gimp’. Tarantino administered his own adrenaline shot to the heart of Hollywood in the process, awakening execs to the commercial possibilities inherent in independent cinema. However, digging beneath the excess unveils genuine pathos. The immediate friendship between Mia and ‘Elvis Man’ Vincent remains unconsummated over friendly banter at movie-themed restaurant Jack-Rabbit Slims, where the importance of ‘sharing a comfortable silence’ reveals a mutual respect between the two. And yet a simple kiss blown in Mia’s direction after Vincent has saved her from near-death simply burns with longing. Likewise, in perhaps the most poignant moment, Jackson’s hit-man Jules chooses to repent and leave criminal life. Although the catalyst is again played for dark comedy (narrowly avoiding an assassination down the barrel of a ‘hand cannon’), his Bible-bashing, tub-thumping hard nut reveals genuine regret at a life of violence, and looks with quiet optimism toward an open future where he will wander ‘like Kane in Kung Fu’; his final act of redemption is to let two petty criminals, Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) walk away after holding up a restaurant. Jackson’s terrific performance maintains a fierce dignity throughout. There are surprises around every corner and landmark images that work simply because of their sheer audacity (Travolta and Jackson sauntering out of the restaurant in shorts and t-shirts to the sound of The Lively Ones’ ‘Surf Rider’ somehow became the epitome of cool). Bolstered by a one of the finest ensemble casts of the 1990s, from Eric Stoltz to Christopher Walken and a hilarious Harvey Keitel, it truly is a film whose flavour continues to resonate, much like the tastiest of tasty burgers.

Sean Wilson

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Reservoir Dogs Studio/Distributor:

Live Entertainment Dog Eat Dog Productions Director:

Quentin Tarantino Producer:

Lawrence Bender Screenwriter:

Quentin Tarantino Cinematographer:

Andrzej Sekula Editor:

Sally Menke Duration:

99 minutes Cast:

Harvey Keitel Tim Roth Michael Madsen Chris Penn Steve Buscemi Year:

1992

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Synopsis Six strangers, who all happen to be thieves, are gathered together by aging criminal Joe Cabot to pull off what seems to be a fairly routine heist. Each is referred to by a colour (Mr White, Mr Orange, Mr Blonde, Mr Pink, Mr Blue, Mr Brown) to protect their true identities from the others, although the audience is properly introduced to the main players via a number of flashbacks. The heist goes horribly wrong as the cops show up early, causing a very bloody and deadly shootout. The surviving members reconvene in an abandoned warehouse awaiting Cabot, with the knowledge that one of them has to be an undercover police informant.

Critique Easily one of the most important and undeniably-influential films of the past 25 years, Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature as a writer, director and actor, remains a much more resonant and enduring crime picture than any of the many knock-off films that followed in its wake. Reservoir Dogs has become such a part of America’s popular cultural landscape that it is a bit hard now to view it as what it was in reality: a low-budget independent feature that few felt had a legitimate shot at success, from a very hungry and extremely-talented young artist. It is also important to note that Reservoir Dogs is not a perfect film, as one of the most enduring traits about Quentin Tarantino as a film-maker is that he has continued to grow and develop as a visual stylist with each new work. In essence, it took a little time for Quentin Tarantino the director to catch up with Quentin Tarantino the screenwriter. It is indeed the script and dialogue that continues to make Reservoir Dogs such a transcendent experience. If his direction is slightly flat at times, Tarantino’s unbelievably-original and startling dialogue makes up for his slight directorial missteps. The astonishing opening sequence, featuring an unforgettable conversation on Madonna, would have been enough in itself to announce that a truly-authentic and original new voice in American Cinema had arrived, but Tarantino manages to make the whole film as fresh and invigorating as that justifiably-acclaimed opening. Of course, Tarantino’s script for Reservoir Dogs would not have been what it finally became onscreen had the wrong actors been chosen, but Tarantino and casting director Ronnie Yeskel chose the absolutely-perfect person for each part. From Michael Madsen’s superlative turn as the witty, vicious and possibly insane Mr. Blonde to the iconic turn given by legendary film-noir tough guy Lawrence Tierney as the ruthless Joe Cabot, Reservoir Dogs is overflowing with great actors obviously relishing the opportunity to work with such superb dialogue. After some success at various festivals,

Directory of World Cinema

including Sundance, Reservoir Dogs was greeted by mixed reviews and unspectacular box-office results in its initial run, not catching fire until its video release. Some controversy has plagued Reservoir Dogs since its release due to plot similarities between Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (1987), but the essence of Tarantino’s film is not found in the plot. This is a work where the substance, beauty and originality can be found in the words. Despite some lingering naysayers, Quentin Tarantino is the ‘real deal’ and he was the hard kick in the head that American Cinema needed so badly in 1992.

Jeremy Richey

Sin City Studio/Distributor:

Troublemaker Studios Dimension Films Directors:

Frank Miller Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino Producers:

Elizabeth Avellan Frank Miller Robert Rodriguez Screenwriter:

Frank Miller Cinematographer:

Robert Rodriguez Art Directors:

Steve Joyner Jeanette Scott Editor:

Robert Rodriguez Composers:

John Debney Graeme Revell Robert Rodriguez Duration:

124 minutes

Synopsis Ruled over by the Roark family, Basin City is a hive of urban squalor, political and moral corruption, and lawlessness. Retiring cop Hartigan metes out justice by shooting off the genitals of sadistic paedophile Roark Jr. Hartigan gets framed for the abduction and rape of Nancy, and sentenced to prison. He eventually confesses to the rape and is let out, but it is a trap to lead Jr to Nancy, so that he may take out terrible revenge for his disfigurement. After being framed for a hooker’s murder, superhuman hoodlum Marv sets out to avenge her murder, leading him to Cardinal Roarke and his cannibal protégé, Kevin. After killing Shellie’s violent exboyfriend Jackie Boy in the prostitute-run Old Town, Dwight discovers that Jackie Boy is a cop, and that he has broken an uneasy truce between the Ladies, the police, and the Mob. It leads to all-out war in which the Ladies have to fight for their right to autonomy. The three main stories are bookended by a sequence featuring a hitman known as The Man, whose interior monologue attempts to justify his contract killings as somehow resetting the moral balance of this awful city of sin.

Critique One way of thinking about Sin City is that it is a cartoon: its sadism redolent of Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner animations, the violence is so over-the-top that you wonder where the spectacle lies. Is it in the fact that the actors are shot entirely against a stylized CGI backdrop? Or, rather, is the violence so extreme as to be rendered spectacular? Furthermore, Sin City is described in academic circles as not only a violent film, but that the violence therein reflects a kind of ‘homosexual panic’: sexuality is reduced to spectacular, caricatured and repeated assaults on male genitalia, both verbal and physical, throughout. It is, perhaps, unfair to judge Sin City on the standards of cinema in this way, as it adheres so well to its origins as a

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Sin City, Dimension Films.

Cast:

Benicio Del Toro Josh Hartnett Clive Owen Mickey Rourke Bruce Willis Year:

2005

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hyper-violent dystopian comic-book vision of urban America, and the corruption that exists at all levels of a deeply-disturbed and alienated society. Sure enough, the homophobia and misogyny underlying much of the story-world here is troublesome, and not untypical of the graphic novel as a narrative form. The episodic nature of the narrative, for example, betrays that kind of loosely-linked storytelling that gives comic books their charm and strength, even as some of the content can be described as morally-suspect. In addition, the large ensemble cast, loosely-related narrative strands, and stylized graphics make it difficult to critique according to the conventions of film study, but Sin City does replicate some of the excesses of the violent action-thriller, and takes its narrative and visual cues from the rich library of film noir, nonetheless. Quentin Tarantino’s involvement as ‘guest director’ is slight (he contributes the Jackie Boy corpse sequence), but works as a marketing ploy to draw a mainstream audience into Frank Miller’s rather dark storyworld. What Rodriguez himself

Directory of World Cinema

has managed here is a strange hybrid of his twin careers as director: Tarantino-esque violent thrillers, such as El Mariachi (1992) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), and children’s fantasy-adventures, such as his Spy Kids series (2001, 2002 & 2003). There are, therefore, some standout sequences in the film that enable the viewer to engage the characters with some sympathy. The damaged and ogre-like Marv, despite inflicting horrific carnage upon several peripheral characters in the film, nevertheless adheres to a grey moral code, and, in a role that Mickey Rourke was seemingly born to play, he gives one of the performances of his career. He manages to elicit pathos through the strange, almost autobiographical backstory: what we are witnessing in Marv’s rejection is a mirror of Rourke’s return to mainstream film-making after years in the wilderness and the loss of the good looks of his youth.

Greg Singh

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OCUMENTARY

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The popularity of the documentary film in the last few decades can be seen in the box-office success of Errol Morris, Michael Moore, and Morgan Spurlok and even in the massmarket explosion of reality shows. Documentaries range from biographies to political exposés and to cultural time capsules. The best ones illustrate universal themes through regionallyfocused pieces, demonstrating a mastery of social-political observation and matter-of-fact storytelling in addition to a detailed understanding of the film-making process. Due to the recent increase in quality, not to mention a significant decrease in price, of cameras and post-production technology, many American independent film-makers have started in the documentary field. The main problem that independent film-makers face within their industrial sector can be summed up in one word: money. Without financial support from one of the Hollywood majors, independent film-makers are forced to alter their creative process in order to be allocated the necessary budget to realize their projects. However, documentary film-making has proved to be an inexpensive outlet, for directors and journalists alike, to craft thought-provoking and socially-inspiring work. Although some are large commercial ventures, such as the fast-food exposé Super Size Me (2004) and the healthcare critique Sicko (2007), the majority of documentaries are created on shoestring budgets by small groups of dedicated film-makers, often lacking prior experience. This was the case with Titan (2009), a documentary produced by four film students from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington film school. The success of any documentary hinges upon its subject matter: a strong topic will have a better chance of keeping the audience engaged, regardless of production value. Titan is concerned with the proposed half-billion dollar Titan Cement plant and operation in New Hanover County, North Carolina, and the large group of people trying to stop it from coming there. The grass-roots organization, StopTitan, was formed as an opposition to this plant, and is not simply a group of raging environmentalists but comprises professors, businessmen, and concerned citizens from Wilmington, as well as other areas around the state. ‘We reached out to StopTitan as well as the environmental group on campus to research what was going on here’, explains Jayson Barber, one of the students working on the film. ‘In the beginning I was hesitant about jumping on board with the anti-Titan sentiment the rest of my team held, but the more people I talked to about it, the more I realized that this was not a good idea for the community.’ The film makes the argument that, although we do need cement plants, Wilmington is the wrong place to establish one. Titan wants to locate their new plant, which will be the fourth largest in the country, in Castle Hayne, a small town on the outskirts of the city. The area is a prime location for

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the business because of its easy access to the railroad and shipyard for exportation. Also, the area is rich in limestone, which is a key ingredient that makes the cement particles stick together. One of the concerns for the townspeople is that the cement operation will be located right next to the Cape Fear River. In order to acquire the limestone, Titan will be strip-mining the wetlands around the river with explosives that contain bio-diesel and other harmful contaminants. There is a high possibility that this will pollute the river and the water tables that the residents of the city use for drinking water. Another environmental and health concern is that the plant will be powered by coal-burning stacks, which the cement companies concede cause the release of carbon dioxide, mercury, and hexavalent chromium among other harmful pollutants, into the air and water. The health risk is scary for the town’s inhabitants, including the over eight hundred schoolchildren whose schools are located within a five-mile radius of the site. Already more than one hundred and seventy local doctors have signed a petition asking for the halting of this plant. The documentary includes an interview with Bill Caster, one of the county commissioners who offered Titan $4.2 million in tax incentives to come to the area. He argues that the huge plant will bring 160 well-paying jobs and boost the local economy. Craig Galbraith, an economics professor at UNCW, refutes this idea and explains that locations of heavy industry often have negative economic impacts. Wilmington’s economy is based heavily on tourism. Located on the beach, and hosting events including the Azalea Festival, Wilmington is not the right place for a dirty industry such as Titan. Galbraith also points out that Titan is a nationally-owned company and that cement is a globally-traded commodity, so all profits generated from the operation will flow out of the state instead of staying local. Titan is a story about communal identity. Wilmington is home to EUE Screen Gems and the setting of the long-running television series One Tree Hill (2003–present), along with a slew of past films, and is losing a lot of potential film-production to places like Georgia and New Orleans because they offer better tax incentives. As stated, the choices behind film-making are shaped by money, and even the Hollywood majors would rather shoot in a location that will be slightly cheaper. The commissioners made the choice to offer Titan Cement $4.2 million in tax incentives when they could have induced clean industries, such as the film industry, instead. The political battle has progressed past New Hanover County and is now being debated at the state level. Senator Julia Boseman has proposed a bill that would place a moratorium on all cement plants in North Carolina for two years. The legislation is aimed directly at Titan and, although it has raised concerns about discrimination towards this company, it has received ‘a favorable report from the Senate Committee on Agriculture/Environment/Natural Resources’ (Stop Titan Action Alert #33). Titan has hired nine lobbyists to try to kill the bill before a vote, but bipartisan support from both the house and senate insist that the ‘legislative angle is still very much in play’ (Stop Titan Action Alert #33). It would have been nice to have some closure at the end of the film, but the political struggle is expected to continue for quite some time. Documentarians face many creative and technical problems, including the timeline for production. Another problem is avoiding bias. Michael Moore came under heavy criticism from corporate attorneys and Republican representatives for his films Roger and Me (1989) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2002) for their manipulation of the facts. In an effort to illustrate both sides of the argument, the makers of Titan sought out representatives from Titan for an interview: ‘Although we

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knew the angle we were taking with this film was anti-Titan, we wanted to include all arguments and viewpoints to increase our credibility’, states Alex Elfner, another student working on the film. As with the clichéd villain in most feature films, representatives of Titan refused the invitation. The film-makers were, however, able to incorporate footage from the state-senate hearing. Marino Papazaglou, Titan’s Head of Operations on the Castle Hayne project, was one of the few people who spoke on their behalf: ‘In regards to the comment that Mr. Giles made that cement plants pollute. This is true of many cement plants that use old production technologies, but not our plants.’ The film concludes that the Titan operation will be detrimental to not only the environment, but also the health of residents, and even the local economy. The only people benefitting from the plant are Titan Cement and the county commissioners, who will earn over $2 million per year in property tax. The central dynamic of the film gradually shifts from a study of the power struggle between a small town and big business to a warning regarding a forthcoming threat to the community. With luck it will serve to enlighten the Wilmington residents about what is going on in their own backyard, and may even provoke action. Foreign audiences will see the film and make connections to what is possibly happening in their own communities. Like narrative films, documentaries can entertain, evoke emotion, and leave audiences wanting more. They can change the way in which we look at a particular topic, whether it be food, healthcare, or political struggles on the international stage. Documentaries shine a light on issues that need illumination. They meld journalism with visual artistry and illustrate people or problems that are important in our society but may have been neglected or misunderstood. They are fresh, relevant, and enlightening films in an industry that constantly relies on remakes and sequels to maintain its economic dominance on the popular conscious. By utilizing small crews, tight budgets, and guerilla film-making techniques, the documentary embodies the original ethos of American independent cinema.

Matt Delman

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Capturing the Friedmans Studio/Distributor:

HBO Films Director:

Andrew Jarecki Producers:

Andrew Jarecki Marc Smerling Cinematographer:

Adolfo Doring Art Director:

Nava Lubelski Composer:

Andrea Morricone Editor:

Richard Hankin Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

Arnold Friedman Elaine Friedman Seth Friedman David Friedman Year:

2003

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American Independent

Synopsis Arnold Friedman, a respected award-winning teacher, and his family are an educated middle-class family living in the Long Island area. They chronicled their family life on Super 8, videotape and audio cassette, as many families have over the years. Film-maker Andrew Jarecki is working on a project focusing on eldest son David’s career as New York’s premier birthday clown. As time passes, Jarecki begins to realize that there is another, altogether-more compelling and disturbing story involving David’s family life. The initially-reticent David begins to open up to Jarecki and the project takes on a whole new angle. It emerges that Arnold Friedman and David’s brother Jesse had been arrested on suspicion of possession of child pornography and acts of child abuse some years earlier. In keeping with the family’s obsession with recording themselves, this whole chapter in their lives has been documented along with the more humdrum everyday aspects of their existence. Jarecki is given access to the material and secures interviews with a multitude of figures involved in the allegations and the subsequent trials. What unfolds is a haunting tale of family dysfunction and a disturbing meditation on memory and truth.

Critique Andrew Jarecki’s startling documentary garnered critical acclaim for its frank and unsettling portrait of a family disintegrating under the spotlight of their local community, the media and their own home movies. Utilizing a combination of documentary styles (off-camera questioning, talking-head interviews, pre-recorded footage), mixed with the countless hours of the Friedmans’ archival footage, Jarecki has constructed one of the most compelling and bizarre documentaries of recent years. The seemingly-respectable all-American Friedman family is laid bare as a depressingly-dysfunctional clan that implodes under the weight of the allegations against Arnold and Jesse, the middle of the three sons. As Buck Owens’ ‘Act Naturally’ with its refrain of ‘they’re gonna put me in the movies’ plays over the opening credits of happy family photos and Super 8 footage of the Friedmans, we enter into a disturbing and contradictory world of denial, memory and accusation. A portrait of a family being torn apart by criminal investigations emerges, and deeper family secrets are uncovered through present-day interviews. After Arnold is charged with possession of child pornography the police begin to suspect that the after-school computer classes he runs with Jesse for the local kids may be the scene of a hidden world of child abuse. Capturing the Friedmans is so unsettling because of the contradictory stories that are relayed both by the family and the other interviewees. The confusing accounts given by Arnold and Jesse and some of the alleged victims, coupled with the somewhat unreliable recollections of the police officers involved in the case, fail to paint a clear picture of what may or may not have occurred. Alongside the feeling of voyeurism inherent in watching other people’s home movies, especially when they contain full-blown arguments, tears and accusatory

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finger-pointing, the film throws up other ideas about the nature of memory, personal and collective truth, and public and private appearances. The footage shown of the family is mixed in with interviews and news footage from the time of the court trials, as a collage of scenes not so much lays bare the facts but sketches out an idea of the overall picture as seen from a multitude of angles and opinions. The style used by Jarecki comes close to resembling the fractured narratives employed by many of the successful TV shows and movies of the present day era, and has a novelistic feel as ‘characters’ are introduced and back stories are filled out with archival and present-day footage. With the proliferation of technology available for the recording of everyday life, the idea of ‘truth’ is thrown into sharp relief, with the films tag line summing it up neatly – ‘who will you believe’?

Neil Mitchell

DiG! Studio/Distributor:

Interloper Films Palm Pictures Director:

Ondi Timoner Producer:

Ondi Timoner Screenwriter:

Ondi Timoner Cinematographers:

Vasco Nunes David Timoner Ondi Timoner Editor:

Ondi Timoner Duration:

107 minutes Cast:

Anton Newcombe Courtney Taylor-Taylor Year:

2004

Synopsis DiG! follows the shifting fortunes of two alternative rock bands, The Dandy Warhols, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, over the course of seven years. This documentary is told predominantly from the viewpoint of Courtney Taylor-Taylor, lead singer of The Dandy Warhols, who narrates, and features the gradual breakdown of his personal friendship with Anton Newcombe, leader of Jonestown. DiG! takes footage from concerts, video shoots, interviews and fly-on-thewall observation to compile the story of The Dandies’ acceptance of major-label money, the realities of big-business involvement in music, and the Jonestown’s rejection of the same values, and their subsequent implosion.

Critique On its DVD sleeve notes, DiG! is described as ‘the perfect parable of the 1990s music industry’ and, viewing this documentary, it is easy to see the aptness of this statement. We witness The Dandy Warhols cross over from their status as touring indie alt-rockers to mainstream darlings of MTV (they found particular success in the UK, thanks largely to massive coverage in the music press and radio play). Simultaneously, Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre succumbs to a breakdown of such proportions that we feel we are witnessing the death of rock ‘n’ roll itself: Newcombe rejects the corporate mainstream in favour of an anarchic and self-destructive series of stunts, intended to sabotage any chance his band had to find an international market. The first of the two acts to garner major-label interest, Jonestown’s eclectic mix of psychedelia, Americana and alt-rock showcased Newcombe’s precociously-affective songwriting talents, as well as reflecting the destructive, self-absorbed side of his drug-dependent personality. Whereas The Dandies are also shown to have talent, this is not the same raw, unkempt kind of skill that Newcombe possesses but is a talent that seems to be etched out of

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hard work, relentless touring and song-craft, and an attitude that comes to accept the high-end production values associated with major-label recording. It is not so much that Timoner is attempting to glorify one band leader (Taylor), and demonize the other; in fact, Newcombe does an excellent job of this himself in the course of his disturbing behaviour, and his sometimes violent attitude towards his band, fiancée and friends. Witness the scene in which Taylor plays the finished version of ‘Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth’ for Newcombe, en route to Capitol Records. As the song plays on the car stereo, Newcombe’s face is a blank and, in subsequent scenes, he lambasts Taylor for ‘selling out’ to the majors, or somehow otherwise betraying their friendship. Through a series of confessional rants, pranks and violent episodes, he is seen to sabotage what was once a happy and productive friendship, opting instead for creative antagonism. What is clear here (although Taylor’s voiceover only ever hints at this) is the profound professional jealousy that Newcombe feels towards Taylor and co – and the artistic tragedy in the way that Newcombe squanders his natural talent, succumbing to heroin abuse and selfabsorption.

Greg Singh

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Dogtown and Z-Boys Studio/Distributor:

Agi Orsi Productions Vans Off the Wall Sony Pictures Classics Director:

Stacy Peralta Producer:

Agi Orsi Screenwriters:

Stacy Peralta Craig Stecyk Cinematographers:

Sebastien Jungwirth Peter Pilafian Editor:

Paul Crowder Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Jay Adams Tony Alva Skip Engblom Year:

1991

Synopsis In the early 1970s, Dogtown was an economically-underprivileged area in West LA, a seaside slum suffering from terminal decline. It was home to a young community of outcasts who cut their teeth surfing at the ‘Cove’, a hidden spot in a derelict theme park where pilings and roller-coaster railings stuck straight out of the sea. Some of these kids hung out at the nearby Zephyr surf shop, run by the pioneering board-maker Jeff Ho and his partners Skip Engblom and the artist Craig Stecyk, who soon surrounded themselves with a competitive, talented team known as the Z-Boys (which included one girl, Peggy Oki). When the kids were not surfing, they skated, stealing moves from surfers like Larry Bertelman, performing tricks that were totally unique in their drive to outclass everyone else. When the worst drought on record hit California in the mid-seventies, the Zephyr team scoured LA for empty swimming pools, pioneering pool-riding and introducing the first vertical moves to the sport. At the same time, Stecyk, also a writer and photographer, published a wildly-influential series for SkateBoarder magazine known as the ‘Dogtown’ articles, launching the careers of some of the biggest names in the 1970s, notably Jay Adams, Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta.

Critique Co-written with Craig Stecyk, Dogtown and Z-Boys is a fascinating documentary chronicling not only the early years of the Zephyr team but also the evolution of skateboarding, which was revived in the early seventies by companies like Cadillac Wheels, makers of the modern polyurethane wheel, and skaters like the Z-Boys. Interviews with nearly all the members of the team, including Peralta, as well as Ho, Engblom and the photographer Glen E. Friedman, are cut together with terrific photographs and absolutely-amazing super-8 footage of them skating: from their early days on banked asphalt (the closest thing to a perfect wave) to the 1975 Del Mar Nationals, where their surf-inspired style helped revolutionize the sport. But, as well as the skateboarding, Dogtown and Z-Boys also captures the huge importance of the style and culture that grew up around the sport, making the documentary an exciting look at the rise of skating, the punk aesthetic (Ian MacKaye from Fugazi and Henry Rollins both put in appearances) and the DIY ethos. While several of the Z-Boys had successful careers, others more or less faded into obscurity. One of the more intriguing characters in the film is Adams, one of the most naturallygifted skaters that anyone on the Zephyr team had ever seen. The photographs and early film of him are inspirational; with his long blonde hair and effortless style the teenager looks like the epitome of a West-Coast golden boy. But in the

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interviews he is a rougher, beat-up version of his former self: a kid who ruined his career by hitting the party circuit after he started making some money as a skater (many of them signed up for lucrative endorsement deals after a new wave of companies got involved in the sport, in the process also hastening the demise of Zephyr). Stacy Peralta claims to have decided to make the documentary after a 1999 Spin article about Dogtown generated worrying interest in Hollywood circles; he eventually also wrote the mediocre fictional film Lords of Dogtown (2005). And while some critics have seen Dogtown and Z-Boys as Peralta and Stecyk’s vanity project, that view underestimates the impact that the Zephyr skate team had on the sport, as well as the influence that Peralta’s Bones Brigade films had on a generation of kids across the States. Whether or not the documentary overstates the importance of the Z-Boys, this is a dynamic, well-crafted film that pays tribute to some of the people who helped shape contemporary culture.

Sarah Cronin

Fahrenheit 9/11 Studio/Distributor:

Dog Eat Dog Films Lionsgate Director:

Michael Moore Writer:

Michael Moore Producer:

Jim Czarnecki Art direction:

Dina Varano Composer:

Jeff Gibbs Editors:

Kurt Engfehr T Woody Richman Christopher Seward Duration:

122 minutess

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Synopsis In a ten-minute pre-credit sequence Moore revisits the shock and chaos that surrounded the presidential election of 2000. Al Gore, having seemingly wrapped up the victory, had the presidency snatched away from him at the death by George W Bush, with the state of Florida being called controversially in favour of the Republicans. Having entered the White House, Bush is faced with the horrors of 9/11. For the first hour Moore concentrates on exposing and highlighting the catalogue of incriminating business links and personal inadequacies of the new president, his family and close political allies. A barrage of news footage, interviews and statistics creates a damning indictment of the Bush cabinet as they, first, begin operations in Afghanistan and eventually focus on the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The remainder of the documentary deals with the war, highlighting both the political and personal costs reaped by the neo-cons’ desire to remove Saddam Hussein from power, using the illusory WMDs and supposed links to the 9/11 bombers as justification.

Review Fahrenheit 9/11 largely eschews a balanced, objective approach to its subject matter: Michael Moore is well known for his polemical approach, and this one burns with righteous anger from the start. The almost-comical disbelief in Moore’s voice as he recounts the election debacle of 2000 gives voice to the frustrations felt by liberals the World over, and his dis-

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Cast:

Michael Moore George W Bush Year:

2004

dain for George W Bush is evident in the portrayal of him as a barely-literate redneck who, by hook or by crook, secured the presidency. Employing a subjective style, including his welldocumented prankster inclinations like reading the Patriot act over loudspeakers outside Congress to try, fruitlessly, to get its members to enlist their own children, Moore is in his element here. Winning the Palme d’Or and the Academy Award for Best Documentary brought the documentary movement as a whole back into the mainstream of media attention and undoubtedly proved a thorn in the side of the Bush regime, while failing to galvanize enough support to stop Bush winning a second term in office – something Moore and many others were hoping for. Its two-hour running time is split into two distinct segments: pre-invasion and post invasion Iraq. As always, Moore is heavily present, both in voiceover narration and onscreen antics, and utilizes many techniques in the process. Archive news footage, present-day talking-head interviews, TV and film clips, rock and pop music and montage sequences form a mosaic of damning evidence, theories and provocations about the behaviour and machinations of Bush and his cronies. A damning portrait of the Bush family’s business links to the Saudi Royal family emerges and an equally-inflammatory exposition of American foreign policy pre- and post-9/11 leads the viewer to believe that war with Iraq was always likely under a Bush presidency, and that all they needed was an excuse, however tenuous or even non-existent the links between the 9/11 bombers and Saddam’s regime. Moore’s lazy use of Britney Spears pledging her trust in the President, and his overt, emotional manipulation of Lila Lipscomb, a small-town mum from a Military family whose son’s death in Iraq caused her to change her views of the president and the legitimacy of the invasion, are grist to the mill of his detractors. There is always a danger with documentaries that take such an incendiary position that they will preach to the converted and provide ammunition for those of an opposing viewpoint. Regardless of that, there is no doubt that, at times, there is a need to fight fire with fire – the Bush regime being a sitting duck, ripe for attack, and the graphic war footage and interviews with the soldiers involved in the invasion paint a picture of an aggressive Republican Government that led the United States and its motley collection of allies on the road to a war, the ramifications of which will be felt for years. And for that, Moore should be applauded.

Neil Mitchell

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The King of Kong, Largelab.

The King of Kong Studio/Distributor:

Large Lab Picturehouse Director:

Seth Gordon Producer:

Ed Cunningham Cinematographer:

Seth Gordon Editor:

Seth Gordon Duration:

79 minutes Cast:

Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell Year:

2007 136

American Independent

Synopsis Steve Wiebe, a teacher and family man who just happens to be great at Donkey Kong, practices all the time in his garage and eventually breaks the world record. Billy Mitchell is the wonder kid of classic gaming, and the record holder that Wiebe has been challenging. He was featured in Life magazine in the 1980s for being one of the top players in the world. As the story unfolds, we see that he is arrogant, pompous, and deviously wicked. Mitchell and a group of nerdy cohorts dismiss Wiebe’s record score and steal part of his gaming system in order to test it for bugs. Due to a connection with Mitchell’s arch nemesis, they suspect him of cheating, although he is clearly innocent. Wiebe travels to Florida to play at Fun Spot, a famous gamer hangout, to attempt to beat Mitchell’s record in person. He does so, but Mitchell quickly steals his thunder by submitting a tape from home with an even-higher score and further competition ensues.

Critique The narrative of The King of Kong hinges upon the likeability and despicability of two characters. We admire Wiebe for being a great father and husband, and we love to root for the underdog. We empathize with his long list of shortcomings and close-calls. Talented and bright, we hope that Wiebe can achieve the level of greatness that he always aspired to.

Directory of World Cinema

Mitchell, on the other hand, rubs the audience up the wrong way from the start. He makes many claims to his greatness but, when faced with a challenge, he lurks in the shadows. He is so blatantly rude to Wiebe in an irritatingly passive-aggressive way. Everything from his mullet down to his hot-sauce business is infuriating. Once in a while, a true-life villain will come along in a documentary who is far more despicable than anything imagined on a screenwriter’s laptop, and director Seth Gordon has found that here in Billy Mitchell. Throughout the film, comparisons are made between videogames and sports. Wiebe and Mitchell cultivate a rivalry more fierce and spiteful than the Red Sox and the Yankees. The music helps convey the tension between the two, even if they are not in the same room. Montages of gaming are accompanied by powerful classical music or Wiebe’s own drum and piano playing. The King of Kong may explore a narrow subject, but it is filled with emotion. There is no persuasive argument, no distortion of the facts, or presence of the hand of the film-maker. Although this world of gaming is very strange, the personal problems, failures, and victories of the main characters are not, and they are related here in an unconventional but very amusing way.

Matt Delman

Overnight

Synopsis

Composers:

As its title would suggest, this follows the seemingly-overnight success of film-maker Troy Duffy and his much more protracted fall from grace. The film begins with Duffy just after he has received a deal from Miramax for his script The Boondock Saints (1999) which, apart from giving his band The Brood the chance to provide the soundtrack, will present him with the opportunity to direct his first feature film. He also gives colleagues Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana (themselves managers of The Brood) unparalleled access to make a documentary that will show the world how a blue-collar guy could wind up being a Hollywood player. Instead, we see Duffy as he alienates almost everyone in the industry and beyond. From Harvey Weinstein to his own brother, Duffy manages to burn innumerable bridges, thanks to a spectacular show of arrogance that is considered too much even by the standards of the film industry

Jack Livesey Peter Nashel

Critique

Studio/Distributor:

THINKFilm Directors:

Tony Montana Mark Brian Smith Producers:

Tony Montana Mark Brian Smith Cinematographer:

Mark Brian Smith

Editor:

Tony Montana Duration:

82 minutes

In some ways, the message of Overnight would seem to be rather obvious – after all, the fact that the film industry is a magnet for overblown, obnoxious bastards is a revelation that rates alongside that of the Pope being a Catholic. But Troy Duffy’s impressive display of hubris remains a particularlycautionary tale for those inspired by the American independent boom of the 1990s. Duffy has everything that he could possibly

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Cast:

Troy Duffy Taylor Duffy Year:

2003

want and throws it all away for his refusal to compromise (a telling scene has him sneering at the work of Michael Bay) or believe in anything but his own brilliance. Duffy undoubtedly brings much of what happens upon himself, yet the film is also a critique of the snobbery and insecurity of the Hollywood system. Agents lie through their teeth, executives refuse to take phone calls and there is a suggestion that Weinstein – after ultimately passing on The Boondock Saints – helped doom Duffy simply because he was seen as a Miramax project gone sour. Crucially, the film does not make any judgements about Duffy’s actual talent as a film-maker, trying to make the point that any talent is dwarfed by his behaviour and a system that has taken against him. There are also questions to be asked about the impartiality of Montana and Smith – after all, this was meant to be a documentary they were making about the success of a project that would earn them all kudos (and, of course, money). After an onscreen argument with Duffy about their status within the band, relationships become much more strained and some of the more major events (such as the fact that Duffy eventually manages to get The Boondock Saints made with Willem Dafoe taking a leading role) given seemingly short shrift. A scene at a cast-and-crew party, where Duffy and others are at the height of their obnoxiousness, seems particularly unfair, given that it juxtaposes the drunken behaviour with their more sober time: of course people are going to be more indiscreet and foolish when they are drunk. Despite such flaws, Overnight is a particularly enlightening snapshot of the modern studio system.

Laurence Boyce

Sex: The Annabel Chong Story Studio/Distributor:

Coffee House Films Strand Releasing Director:

Grace Quek is a 22-year-old Masters student in Gender Studies at the University of California. She is also a porn star, and features in adult films under the alias Annabel Chong. On 19 January, 1995, she makes porn history by starring in the biggest gang-bang of all time – having sex with 251 men in 10 hours. Quek subscribes to a fiercely-feminist rhetoric, but struggles to maintain her stance when she is exploited by the porn industry, and discovers how much distress her ‘alter-ego’ has caused her mother.

Gough Lewis

Critique

Producer:

Whilst visiting the part of London where she was once raped, Grace Quek comments that the city has ‘an undercurrent of sadness, loneliness and desperation to it’. Quek could easily be describing herself, because whatever Gough Lewis films her doing in his uncomfortable and vaguely-exploitative documentary, Quek seems lost. At once seeking atten-

Gough Lewis Cinematographer:

Gough Lewis

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Composer:

Peter Mundinger Editor:

Kelly Morris Duration:

86 minutes Cast:

Grace Quek John T Bone Year:

1999

tion and struggling with it once she finds herself under the spotlight; failing to find acceptance and reconcile her dual identities of an intelligent student from a traditional family background, and the porn star that slept with 251 men in 10 hours. At one point, Quek admits, ‘I don’t even know who Annabel Chong is’, and the viewer is likely to be similarly confused. She reportedly embarked on a relationship with Gough Lewis during the making of the documentary and, although this extremely-personal form of access to his subject may have enabled Lewis to capture the quietly haunting footage of Quek wandering around her messy apartment in the deep depths of depression, committing acts of self-harm, it does mean that the film is not entirely objective or as inquisitive as it should be. Lewis is so captivated by this contradictory hybrid of feminist academic and slave to the sex industry that he is content to indulge her various personas without fully examining the trauma that obviously lies behind them. Although the behind-the-scenes footage of the shooting of the ‘gang bang’ video is unpleasant to watch, it is perhaps more devastating to watch the bright, yet naïve, Quek be constantly let down by those around her: producers who do not pay up; fellow students who doubt her motivations; former classmates and teachers whose memories of Grace of have been eradicated by her pornographic image. Whether Quek entered the porn industry for social-political or financial reasons also remains unclear: she states that she wanted to, ‘shake people up from all those stereotypes of women as sex objects’, but she is later seen demanding the money that she is entitled to for starring in a best-selling adult DVD and, in a closing sequence that is reminiscent of Paul Thomas Anderson’s largely fictional Boogie Nights (1997), she returns to work for another sleazy producer, having been left broke due to the freeloaders who attached themselves following her notoriety. Although Quek would eventually turn her back on the porn industry, her contradictory nature remains: on her website, she declares that ‘Annabel is dead’ and explains that she has moved on to a comparatively-boring but well-paid career as a web developer; she also offers fans the opportunity to order an autographed DVD of Sex: The Annabel Chong Story.

John Berra

Super Size Me Studio/Distributor:

Samuel Goldwyn Films Roadside Attractions Director:

Morgan Spurlock

Synopsis Intrigued by the burgeoning waistlines of the average American and a lawsuit brought against McDonald’s by two overweight girls, film-maker Morgan Spurlock decides to try only eating food from McDonald’s, three times a day for a month, to experience the effect on his own physiognomy. As well as his diet regime, Spurlock also reduces his regular exercise so that it is the same as that of the ‘average’ American

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Producer:

Morgan Spurlock Screenwriter:

Morgan Spurlock Cinematographer:

Scott Ambrozy Art Director:

‘Joe the Artist’ Composers:

Jim Black Folkfoot Editors:

Stela Georgieva Julie Bob Lombardi Duration:

100 minutes Cast:

Morgan Spurlock Daryl M Isaacs MD Lisa Ganjhu Steven Siegel MD Year:

2004

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and, when offered ‘Super Size’ meals at the counter, he decides to always eat these (nine in total) when they are suggested. During the experiment, Spurlock has his health monitored by various doctors about the effect it is having on his body, and he also interviews a variety of pundits and laypeople about various issues such as the advertising of junk food, the nutrition of school children and whether junk food is addictive. The physiological effects on Spurlock are varied and extreme, from vomiting on the second day of the experiment to heart palpitations, lethargy and depression. During the making of the film, the court case taken by the overweight girls is thrown out and the centre where Spurlock has been taking nutritional advice closes down. At the end of the experiment, Spurlock has gained 24.5 lbs and his liver is exhibiting signs of abuse similar to those found in the body of an alcoholic.

Critique Part of the mini-wave of stunt-laden documentaries that came out in the early 2000s, accompanied by Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Super Size Me takes a relatively-serious issue and plays it for shock-comedy effect. Like Michael Moore, director Morgan Spurlock is manipulative and populist but, as he abuses his own body in the making of the film, it does lead to footage that is riveting, if prurient, to watch. While Spurlock gives his experiment the veneer of respectability by having doctors monitor his condition, the experience is intended to make the audience sympathize with his plight, as it is being done for the common good. Spurlock says he must eat every item from the McDonald’s menu but the lion’s share of his consumption is shown to be burgers when he could choose to alternate between their salad range and their fried food. That said, the documentary does show that the salads are as calorific as the burgers, however, and whether Spurlock’s reliance on burgers is meant to be indicative of the average visitor’s buying habits, we do not know. Spurlock is unable to find nutritional information in many of the McDonald’s branches he visits in Manhattan and this is perhaps more unsettling than the revelation that McDonald’s food is bad for you. Certainly the advertising figures quoted in the film are sobering, as is the proliferation of junk food in American schools, but for every animated sequence that gets simple ideas across, greater depth to the connection intimated between lack of intelligence and poor diet would have been appreciated. At least there is a shorter edit (presumably without the swearing, vomiting and gastric-bypass footage designed to appeal to the ‘gross out’ crowd) that is being distributed to schools but, in terms of cinematic spectacle, this is a film more akin to a Farrelly Brothers’ film than a documentary like Black Gold (2006), which looked at the proliferation of Starbucks and the impoverishment of coffee farmers. Occasionally there are great sequences that speak for

Directory of World Cinema

themselves, like the girl who has been brainwashed by rhetoric and advertising to believe that eating at Subway will help her lose weight, but scenes that let you think for yourself are few and far between. Spurlock is to be commended for bringing the issue to greater attention – certainly McDonald’s dropped the Super Size option after the documentary came out and were so concerned about the effects of the film they launched a counter-argumentative website in the UK during the cinema release – but it is his broad and unsubtle American huckster style that makes the viewer feel as queasy watching the film as Spurlock himself undoubtedly did eating the products.

Alex Fitch

Tarnation Studio/Distributor:

Wellspring Media Director:

Jonathan Caouette Producers:

Stephen Winter Jonathan Caouette Cinematographer:

Jonathan Caouette Editor:

Jonathan Caouette Composer:

Synopsis Fusing together home-movie clips, archive photos, video confessions and a stunning musical landscape, Tarnation presents an autobiographical portrait like no other. The film encapsulates the life of director Jonathan Caouette and the relationship he shares with his mother Renee, a former child celebrity who, having suffered a fall from a window, received electroshock therapy throughout most of her life, resulting in a personality change so drastic that she became unrecognizable from her former self. This tragic nature is reinforced as it becomes known that there was never anything psychologically wrong with her. Through documenting his mother’s condition, the rest of his family, and his own rites of passage, Caouette demonstrates how he transcended the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his youth.

Max Avery Lichtenstein

Critique

Duration:

Opening with Renee’s birth and subsequent accident, Tarnation follows Jonathan’s troubled youth, dealing with neglect and drug experimentation, combined with his mother’s declining condition, through to his discovery of alternative culture and his move to New York, where he finds solace in the gay scene. While his social life begins making sense, his family’s reaction to Renee’s condition evokes a sense of uncertainty in his life, while the love he shares with his mother is never doubted. Through a sensory assault of captured experiences, Caouette pours his soul into a documentary that defies description; all the more impressive considering the film was made on a budget of $218, using the basic Apple iMovie software, over a period of twenty years. While the marketing campaigns of many films claim that the piece in hand redefines the nature of cinema, few defy convention like Tarnation, as raw home-video footage is manipulated in such a stylized and inventive way that it shares more

91 minutes Cast:

Renee LeBlanc Jonathan Caouette Year:

2004

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with avant-garde cinema than a typical no-budget documentary. That is not to say, however, that the film has no clear direction, more that the evocative nature of the images; the frenetic pace of editing and emotional impact of its subjects propel the film to its fitting and humbling conclusion. The therapeutic nature of cinema is typified here as the troubling, and at times traumatic, experiences were channelled through Caouette’s camera, thus creating a sense of separation from the events between him and his subjects. Though the true greatness of the film lies in his ability to translate the footage into an understandable cinematic language, at times it feels like a Lynchian nightmare (ironically the film’s funniest moment comes through an adolescent Jonathan directing and performing in a musical-theatre production of Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) with the actors lipsynching to Marianne Faithful songs). He also demonstrates the multi-faceted nature of his own character, as exemplified by a powerful monologue recorded at age eleven where he adopts the persona of a Texas housewife vividly describing incidents of domestic violence before pulling a gun on her husband – reinforcing the ways in which Caouette was able to deal with his own personal traumas. The scenes featuring Renee herself, while frequently uncomfortable, are never used for exploitation purposes, and offer a genuine insight into mental illness and how families cope with such occurrences. While the film’s content is understandably dark, Caouette injects an urgent sense of hope and euphoria, as shown through his emancipation in New York and the counterculture companions he forms relationships with. This range of emotion is perfectly complemented by Max Avery Lichtenstein’s hauntingly-beautiful score, which echoes artists such as Nick Drake, and continued by a wealth of Caouette’s carefullychosen pre-recorded tracks from the likes of Low, the Cocteau Twins, Iron and Wine, Glen Campbell, and The Magnetic Fields. The experimental and highly-personal nature of the project may not resonate with everyone, though those who are open to its visual and emotional assault will find a heartbreaking yet exhilarating masterpiece.

James Merchant

The Thin Blue Line Studio/Distributor:

American Playhouse Director:

Errol Morris

142

American Independent

Synopsis In 1976, Dallas police officer Robert Wood was murdered during a routine stop and search. 16-year-old David Ray Harris found himself arrested for the crime and, after leading police to the car driven from the crime and the alleged murder weapon, Harris places the responsibility of the crime firmly on the shoulders of drifter Randall Adams. Adams claims that he ran out of petrol, asked Harris for a lift and – after drinking beer and taking drugs – returned to the motel he was staying

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Producer:

Cinematographers:

in. But Harris claims it was Adams who shot Wood after their car was stopped. With interviews with Harris, Adams, witnesses and the Dallas Police and re-enactments of the crime, the film shows a police force under pressure to close a case, shaky circumstantial evidence and the very-real possibility that an innocent man has been put behind bars.

Robert Chappell Stefan Czapsky

Critique

Mark Lipson Screenwriter:

Errol Morris

Composer:

Philip Glass Editor:

Paul Barnes Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

Randall Adams David Harris Year:

1988

Errol Morris has always been something of an innovator when it comes to the documentary form, with many of his later films utilizing the self-invented ‘Interrotron’, a camera which allows him and his interviewee to look directly at each other, no matter where the camera is placed. But it was his mid-eighties’ film that had the most impact, with its use of re-enactments as well as interviews posing questions about authenticity (the film was denied an Oscar nomination by the Academy as it was promoted as ‘non-fiction’ as opposed to documentary) and the role of the documentary-maker in influencing real-life proceedings. Certainly, this is no mere observational piece of work in the style of the likes of Wiseman, with the use of re-enactments (from a number of points of view) showing the viewer just what may have happened – and the increasing number of contradictory statements. Whilst the use of re-enactment is nothing new – especially to today’s audience – Morris’ method of staging them still remains striking. With cinematic flourishes such as slow motion and repetition (to which you can add the insistent and hugelyoperatic score from Philip Glass) these almost live in the realm of extreme melodrama which, if they were to appear in a fiction film, would probably be derided for their sheer pomposity. Yet, when juxtaposed with some of the remarkable interviews which quietly reveal gross misconduct, perjury and a system that is skewed towards revenge as opposed to justice, the melodrama seems more appropriate. After all, we are not dealing with some fictional narrative here: we are examining the situation of someone’s ‘real-life’ death and a subsequent miscarriage of justice. Shots such as a milkshake hitting the floor from various angles may seem over the top, but Morris seems to be emphasizing how these little things – and people’s perceptions of them – will have enormous repercussions. Rather than become a crusader in the vein of Michael Moore, Morris uses film-making to show the audience the fluidity of the truth that we get, even in our real lives. Ultimately, the film had enormous repercussions of its own, with Adams released – with the new evidence presented in the film largely cited as a having a key role in these developments. Even though the documentary form has evolved over the decades since the film was released, the story and the importance the film has had in telling it makes this remain a powerful and compelling piece of work.

Laurence Boyce Documentary 143

EXPLOITATION USA

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One of the most difficult genres to pin down is undoubtedly the one most commonly referred to as exploitation. The term ‘exploitation’ is quite maddening as a serious case could be made that film in general is exploitive, and what we know of as exploitation cinema is as old as film itself. Certainly, as far as American cinema goes, the pre-code era is filled with films that had nearly everything modern audiences consider trademarks of exploitation. With this in mind, it is perhaps easier to look at the exploitation genre by focusing on its most extreme and trend-setting period: a twenty-five-year reign that stretched from the early 1960s up into the mid-1980s. It is no coincidence that exploitation cinema’s golden period occurred when there was finally a relaxation on the rigid censorship that had plagued American films since the thirties. Also, the trailblazing artists associated with exploitation films were a step ahead as far as coming to terms with the social revolutions of the 1960s and the 1970s. While they are often demonized, the works of several exploitation auteurs are just as important as their more acclaimed Hollywood peers. After a decade of biker and juvenile shock films, which were cinematic attempts to come to terms with the exploding rock ‘n’ roll generation, the exploitation genre found arguably its first king in 1959 when former photographer Russ Meyer released his first feature film, The Immortal Mr Teas (1959), a landmark work that would kick-start one of exploitation cinemas most discussed sub-genres – sexploitation. The Immortal Mr Teas set in motion an entire generation of film-makers looking to give the audience more sex and nudity than they had ever seen. A masterful editor and a savage satirist, Meyer was one of the most important film-makers to emerge from the period, and films like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and Supervixens (1975) have a ferocious energy and spirit that few American films can match. Unfortunately, his waves of imitators were usually lacking his skills as both provocateur and film-maker. One of Meyer’s peers who came close to equalling his talent was distributor and director Radley Metzger, a man whose stylish skin odysseys were a serious compliment to Meyer’s rural productions. Metzger’s best films, such as Camille 2000 (1969) and The Lickerish Quartet (1970), successfully bridged the gap between the European art films of the 1960s and American sexploitation in a way that no others had managed before or since. Sex was not the only topic to be approached in a frank manner throughout the 1960s, as violence in both action and horror films was becoming increasingly explicit. Often referred to as ‘The Godfather of Gore’, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ influence cannot be denied. While his films are admittedly cheap and schlocky affairs, Lewis’ attitude was a refreshing change from the rather stilted and neutered genre that horror had become. While Lewis was reintroducing the colour red into American Horror with films like Blood Feast (1963) and Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), Roger Corman was attempting to

Blood Feast, Friedman-Lewis.

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catch up with America’s exploding youth culture with films like The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967). An accomplished director and producer, Corman would distribute dozens upon dozens of exploitation films throughout the 1960s and 1970s, upping the quotient of skin and violence with each passing year, while often commenting on collision between American popular culture and social issues. While many of the exploitation films of the 1960s look more than a little quaint and silly today, there is nothing dated about 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, the ferocious break-out production from George A Romero. The director’s multi-layered commentary on the Vietnam War, racism, and America’s fascination with violence would be as important to the 1970s as Meyer’s first film had been to the 1960s. Night of the Living Dead remains a groundbreaking reminder that not every film labelled ‘exploitation’ is hollow at its core. As the modern ratings system went into effect just before the 1960s exploded into the 1970s, exploitation cinema began to reach its peak. With mainstream Hollywood becoming more explicit in its cinematic dealings with sex, violence and social issues, and the once-underground hardcore-pornography film becoming partially legalized, the world of exploitation had to adopt an even harder approach than it had taken previously. Fittingly, it is excess that marks many of the exploitation films from the 1970s and the field became so crowded that the genre splintered into a number of sub-genres to go along with the already highly-populated sexploitation field. Everything from Blaxploitation to nunsploitation was eventually lumped together under the provocative banner grindhouse, named fittingly for the many theatres that were known exclusively for playing exploitation films. There are a few key film-makers whose work within this period serves as a clear introduction to the genre. Directors like Jack Hill, Larry Cohen, Wes Craven, Abel Ferrara and William Lustig were not only skilled and innovative, but their work has also proven to be more influential and memorable than most of their peers. Jack Hill had been making films since the 1960s, but his career really took off in the early 1970s with a series he made for American International Pictures with Blaxploitation superstar Pam Grier; Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), were ingenious action films and Hill would prove a terrific provocateur with witty and exciting works like The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974) and Switchblade Sisters (1975). Larry Cohen was another director often associated with Blaxploitation films, with films like the exciting Fred Williamson vehicles Black Caesar (1973) and Hell Up in Harlem (1974) proving both popular with both grindhouse and more mainstream moviegoers. Cohen was versatile, though, and he also excelled with low-budget shockers like It’s Alive (1974) and God Told Me To (1975). The works of both Hill and Cohen, while containing all the elements of classic exploitation, definitely had a lighter touch to them than the more intense films of Craven, Ferrara and Lustig, who, it is important to note, all had experience in the adult-film industry; the correlation between the exploitation films of the seventies and ‘The Golden Age of Porn’ is a strong, if often-overlooked one. Even Radley Metzger had turned almost exclusively to adult films by the mid1970s, and his work under the alias of Henry Paris, including the legendary The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), was marked by the same ingenuity and skill of his more mainstream 1960s’ productions. Years before he became a horror legend with A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), Wes Craven had worked briefly in the adult field (mostly as producer) on Sean S Cunningham’s Together (1972) and Peter Locke’s The Fireworks Woman (1975). He then gained notoriety as the writer and director of two of the most influential exploitation films: Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977).

146

American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

Abel Ferrara’s first credited feature length film as a director was Driller Killer (1979), but he cut his teeth as a film-maker on an adult feature in 1976. Working with the no-limits ideal prevalent in the adult industry, Ferrara’s films are uncompromising affairs. Ferrara has maintained the wild and extreme vision of his early exploitation films throughout his career, while most of his peers have sanitized their sensibilities to cater to mainstream tastes. Another film-maker dealing with urban paranoia was William Lustig. Under the pseudonym of Billy Bagg he directed the adult features The Violation of Claudia (1977) and Hot Honey (1978) but when he unleashed the unbelievably-intense and incredibly-graphic Maniac in 1980, Lustig’s work gained the sort of mainstream notoriety few exploitation films achieve and, for a brief period, it looked like grindhouse cinema had a shot at legitimacy. But the 1980s turned out to be a very different decade from the 1970s. Exploitation films continued to be made throughout the 1980s. However, by the middle of the decade, the Home Video Market and the increasingly conservative mind-set of middle-America had all but destroyed the genre as a major creative force. Many of the grindhouse theatres closed as the freewheeling 1970s collapsed into the corporate 1980s. With these factors in place, the end of the decade saw many of exploitation’s finest directors either giving up or turning to the bland straight-to-video market. While the glory years of exploitation film may be decades behind us now, their influence can be felt all over the world. Modern American film-makers like Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth and Craig Brewer continue to champion the works of the exploitation films they grew up with, while international directors as diverse as Takashi Miike and Lars Von Trier are delivering extreme visions that owe more than a little debt to the gloriouslyindependent world of the American exploitation genre.

Jeremy Richey

Exploitation USA 147

Directory of World Cinema

Alligator, Alligator Inc.

Alligator Studio/Distributor:

Alligator Inc. Group 1 International Distribution Organization Ltd Director:

Lewis Teague Producer:

Robert S Bremson

148

American Independent

Synopsis A young girl’s baby alligator is unceremoniously flushed down the toilet and into the Chicago sewer system by her father. Many years later, the alligator is a 36-feet-long monster, having survived on a diet of dog corpses infected with a growth hormone, courtesy of a local pharmaceutical firm. David, a homicide detective, is investigating a series of grisly findings in which body parts have been washed out of the sewers when he stumbles across the giant alligator. Barely escaping with his life, David points the finger at Slade, the head of the pharmaceutical firm. Slade uses his influence with the mayor to have David removed from the force but, when the alligator escapes the sewers, David is the only one who can stop it.

Directory of World Cinema

Screenwriter:

John Sayles Cinematographer:

Joseph Mangine Art Director:

Michael Erler Composer:

Craig Hundley Editors:

Larry Bock Ron Medico Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Robert Forster Robin Riker Michael Gazzo Year:

1980

Critique Mention John Sayles and American independent cinema and one automatically thinks of his directorial debut, Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980). Less often considered is Sayles’s contribution to independent horror in his writing of Piranha (1978), The Howling (1981), and Alligator. Interestingly, without Alligator, we might never have had The Return of the Secaucus Seven, since Sayles used his screenwriting fee for Alligator to help finance his magnum opus. For this reason alone, Alligator can be considered of some importance to the history of American independent cinema. Alligator is a fair way from being a masterpiece of the genre. It is at times too preachy – hammering home its message of the little guy versus the big corporation a bit too aggressively – and it contains too many tongue-in-cheek moments for it to be fully effective as a straight horror film. While it is easy to dismiss the film as an attempt to combine Jaws (1975) with the slasher-film conventions of Halloween (1978), Alligator distinguishes itself from the barrage of early 1980s’ schlock through some innovative camerawork and editing. Particularly worthy of note is the scene in which a sleazy tabloid journalist is devoured. He ventures into the sewers, camera in hand, in order to get the scoop on the giant-alligator story. As he is inevitably attacked, he lights the scene using only the flash bulb from his camera – revealing his attacker while concealing the somewhat lacklustre special effects. This represents a novel way in which a low-budget independent horror film can creatively disguise its low-production values in order to suspend the audience’s disbelief. In another scene, a young boy is forced to ‘walk the plank’ by his elder brother and friends by being pushed off a swimming pool’s diving board. In a particularly harrowing few moments, the boy notices the alligator beneath the surface and screams in terror. His brother merely thinks he is pretending and shoves him into the pool where the water turns red. Although killing a child is nothing new in the horror genre, the scene is surprising in its lack of restraint. In most horror films, the death of a child is generally off screen and lacking any visual violence. While the boy’s death is not explicitly seen, the violence of it is. As he disappears beneath the pool’s surface, the water bubbles fiercely and rapidly turns scarlet. Director Lewis Teague presents just enough to force the audience to imagine the death of the boy in the way he wants them to. The scene treads the line between subtle and explicit and gets the balance just right, and these occasional moments enable Alligator to transcend its status as exploitation fare.

Sarah Wharton

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Directory of World Cinema

Angel of Vengeance Studio/Distributor:

Navaron Films Rochelle Films Director:

Abel Ferrara Producers:

Richard Howorth Mary Kane Rochelle Weisberg Screenwriter:

Nicholas St. John Cinematographer:

James Mornel Art Director:

Ruben Masters Composer:

Joe Delia Editor:

Christopher Andrews Duration:

80 minutes Cast:

Zoë Tamerlis Albert Sinkys Editta Sherman Year:

1981

150

American Independent

Synopsis Thana, a mute young woman who works in the Manhattan garment district, is dragged into an alleyway and raped at gunpoint. When she gets back to her apartment, she interrupts a burglar in her apartment, who also then rapes her at gunpoint. She beats in his brains with a paperweight and an iron, and dismembers his body. On one of her trips around the city to dispose of the parts, she is pursued by a street-corner Romeo who tries to return the bag she has dropped. She shoots him in the head. After killing a sleazy photographer who hits on her, she starts to prowl the city, shooting male sexual predators, including a pimp, four street gang members, and a wealthy Arab who assumes she is a prostitute. Cajoled into attending a Halloween party by her boss, who relentlessly patronizes her and plans to take sexual advantage, she dresses as a sexy nun – but takes her gun with her to continue her mission.

Critique While its rape-revenge narrative allies Angel of Vengeance with other exploitation films about female rage, such as the less-well-made I Spit on Your Grave (1978), it is arguably rather closer, at least potentially, to a feminist movie. Thana’s lack of voice, perhaps inspired by the protagonists of The Spiral Staircase (1945) and Thriller – en grym film (1974), positions her alongside the silenced women of La noire de... (1966) and De stilte rond Christine M. (1982) and the unspeaking black alien of John Sayles’ The Brother from Another Planet (1984) inasmuch as her muteness is related to an explicit critique of power. The men she encounters typically take her lack of response as an appropriate attentiveness or willing complicity. This is not merely male arrogance but an articulation of a broader patriarchal system whose attitudes imbue a sense of entitlement, enabling males to project their own desires onto all women, not merely those who cannot verbally refuse such interpellations. Angel of Vengeance also maps the transition from secondwave to post-feminism. The latter often caricatures the former as ‘victim feminism’, and celebrates strong, sexy women as if the existence of such a notion somehow defeats patriarchy. Thana certainly moves from being victimized – not just by rapists, but by numerous men she encounters – to a position of violent strength, accompanied by a sartorial transition to black and red clothing, leather jeans and boots, more heavily-applied make-up (including a thick red lipstick which transforms her mute mouth into a mocking vaginal image), and ultimately a .45 in her stocking-top. However, when she is killed, literally stabbed in the back by one of her female co-workers, she finds a voice. Screaming, she turns to face

Directory of World Cinema

her attacker but, when she realizes that it is a woman, she refuses to shoot, crying out instead, ‘Sister’ – a word from the second-wave’s lexicon. Angel of Vengeance also notes the problematic gender politics of two prominent New York film-makers: Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. Not only does Thana mimic Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, posing with her gun in front of a mirror, but in a sequence recalling Scorsese’s cameo in that film, a man in a bar tells Thana a meandering story about how he discovered that his wife was having an affair with a woman and strangled her cat in revenge. Partway through the tale, the film cuts to Thana and the man sitting on a bench by the East River, offering a nocturnal reconstruction of the iconic image of the Queensboro bridge from Manhattan (1979) – only the man takes Thana’s gun and shoots himself in the head. The ambivalence of Ferrara’s own gender politics is best captured in the final sequence, in which a dog that Thana has supposedly killed returns home to its mistress. Presumably intended to evoke sympathy for Thana by emphasizing that she only killed men, coming after her cry of ‘Sister’, it risks equating women with dogs.

Mark Bould

Assault on Precinct 13 Studio/Distributor:

CKK Corporation Overseas FilmGroup Director:

John Carpenter Producer:

J. Stein Kaplan Screenwriter:

John Carpenter Cinematographer:

Douglas Knapp Art Director:

Tommy Lee Wallace Composer:

John Carpenter Editor:

Synopsis Newly-promoted Los Angeles Police Lieutenant Ethan Bishop gets an unexpected call on his first night of duty when he is commanded go to Precinct 9, located in District 13, to oversee their final night of operation. Shortly after Bishop arrives at the gutted station a transport bus from another district, carrying convicted murderer Napoleon Wilson, is forced to stop for the night. Around the same time, local gang members savagely gun down a little girl nearby and her father pursues them. After killing one of the thugs, the confused and frightened man arrives at the Precinct looking for help. Looking to take revenge, the gang, numbering in the dozens, goes on a siege against the station. The assault, that makes Bishop and Wilson unlikely allies, lasts throughout the night and into the morning hours.

Critique While Halloween (1978) is typically looked upon as John Carpenter’s breakthrough film, it was the earlier Assault on Precinct 13 which really indicated that he was a major talent to watch. In fact, even though the films are thematically very different, Assault on Precinct 13 can in many ways be looked upon as a stylistic run-through for the legendary slasher that followed, as Carpenter’s skills with framing and composition

John Carpenter Exploitation USA 151

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Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Austin Stoker Darwin Joston Laurie Zimmer Tony Burton Year:

1976

can be found in what was initially considered to be just another low-budget action film. Carpenter was still just in his twenties when he shot Assault on Precinct 13 on location in Los Angeles and had just one feature-length film under his belt: the intriguing science-fiction satire Dark Star (1974). The director has often referred to his second feature as an urban take on Howard Hawks’ western Rio Bravo (1959) but, inspiration aside, Assault on Precinct 13 is much more than just a modern update. Like George A Romero’s unsettling and multi-layered low-budget horror masterpiece Night of the Living Dead (1968), Assault on Precinct 13 is a genre-busting and taboobreaking film that works as an entertaining action piece, as well as being an absolute model for how to shoot a small-scale, independently-financed production. Assault on Precinct 13 is the kind of work that can be easily overlooked as ‘just’ a well-executed genre piece, and not great art, but it is an important film made by an incrediblyskilled director. Like Romero’s subtext-rich zombie classic, Assault on Precinct 13 features an African-American as the undeniably-heroic lead, a still daring and significant move in 1976 and, as Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, Austin Stoker gives an intelligent, dignified and distinguished performance. Stoker is joined by the marvellous Darwin Johnston as the mysterious prisoner Wilson, Laurie Zimmer as the precinct’s tough receptionist, and future Halloween co-stars Nancy Loomis and Charles Cyphers. While Assault on Precinct 13 is often remembered for its taut and effective action sequences, the film really excels in the more subtle character moments, often successfully underscored by Carpenter’s brooding electronic score, and it is here that Carpenter really shows himself to be an intelligent and often surprising film-maker. While it is a major cult favourite today, Assault on Precinct 13 was not a critical or commercial success in America upon its release; it went over big in Europe, though, where both the public and critics justly hailed it as a groundbreaking action film from a very talented young film-maker.

Jeremy Richey

Blood Feast Studio/Distributor:

Friedman-Lewis Productions Box Office Spectaculars Director:

Herschell Gordon Lewis

152

American Independent

Synopsis A series of grisly female murders are being committed in Miami and are being investigated by Detective Pete Thornton. Meanwhile, Dorothy Fremont visits an ‘exotic caterer’ to order something special for her daughter’s birthday party. Unknown to her, the caterer Fuad Ramses has been murdering women and collecting their body parts so that he can use them to resurrect Ishtar, the ancient Goddess of good and evil. He plans to use Suzan as the final sacrifice when he prepares her Egyptian feast.

Directory of World Cinema

Producer:

David F Friedman Screenwriter:

Alison Louise Down Cinematographer:

Herschell Gordon Lewis Editors:

Frank Romolo Robert L Sinise Composer:

Herschell Gordon Lewis Duration:

67 minutes Cast:

Mal Arnold Conny Francis Lyn Bolton William Kerwin Year:

1963

Critique Herschell Gordon Lewis, along with his producer David F. Friedman, had previously made low-budget, nudist films for the exploitation market. While they had been successful, the market was becoming increasingly competitive, which led to Lewis and Friedman changing direction. Lewis came up with the idea of a new exploitation gimmick: gore, which led to the creation of Blood Feast, often referred to as the first gore film. The film revolves around a series of set-pieces; its main attractions are its murder scenes, in which Fuad Ramses inflicts grisly violence upon a series of victims. These scenes involved real animal parts and the creation of a vivid red liquid to represent blood which was specially mixed by Lewis and Friedman after consulting with cosmetics laboratories. These elements gave the film a vivid, shocking, visual aesthetic that pushed the boundaries of acceptable representation at the time. Perhaps the most notorious scene involves Ramses pulling out the tongue of a female victim in a motel room: this involved a real sheep tongue, lashings of fake blood, as well as cranberry juice and gelatine. After the tongue has been removed, the camera lingers first on the tongue in his hand, and then on the woman’s blood-drenched visage, revelling in the spectacle of obscene violence. The film was both damned and championed for its depictions of violence, and has continued to gain notoriety over subsequent years. However, its standing as a seminal text is often offset by its reputation as an inept piece of film-making. Shot in only four days without rehearsals or a substantial budget, the film has been criticized for bad acting, sloppy camera set-ups, out-of-tune music (scored by Lewis himself) and a weak script. This dual identity of the film is even acknowledged by Lewis, who has commented: ‘It’s not good, but it’s the first of its type and therefore it deserves a certain position.’ While Blood Feast is certainly rather slapdash in places, there are nevertheless aspects of the film – beside its plentiful gore – which are of interest. Particularly noteworthy is the tone of the film, which is captivatingly strange and offkilter. Certainly, achieving this mood may have been a happy accident rather than a deliberate construction, but this does not detract from its power. The soundtrack may be wanting in terms of conventional musicality, but it undoubtedly imbues the film with a dread-soaked atmosphere. Likewise, Max Arnold’s central performance as Ramses seems appropriately otherworldly and eerie for the film within which it functions.

Jamie Sexton

Exploitation USA 153

Directory of World Cinema

The Driller Killer Studio/Distributor:

Navaron Productions Rochelle Films Director:

Abel Ferrara Producer:

Rochelle Weisberg Screenwriter:

Nicholas St John Cinematographers:

Ken Kelsch James Lemmo Composer:

Joseph Delia Editors:

Bonnie Constant Michael Constant Abel Ferrara Orlando Gallini Duration:

96 minutes Cast:

Abel Ferrara Carolyn Marz Baybi Day Year:

1979

154

American Independent

Synopsis Reno Miller, a painter with some past success, shares his Lower East side apartment with his girlfriend Carol, and Pamela, her sometime lover. With bills mounting, Carol encourages Reno to finish his latest painting. His dealer refuses to give him an advance. Upstairs, The Roosters, a new-wave punk band of arguable talent, rehearse at full volume. During the day, Reno visits churches and makes sketches of the local homeless. At night, his poverty keeps him at home watching TV. Plagued by numerous forces, including the evil eye of the large-scale painting of a buffalo he struggles to finish, Reno begins a killing rampage, targeting the handy canon-fodder of New York’s plentiful vagrants. At first, these attacks appear to be unconscious, somnambulist acts of random violence. But before long, Reno turns his attention (and his drill) towards those around him.

Critique Midway through his somewhat unhinged director’s commentary for The Driller Killer DVD, Abel Ferrara anecdotally recalls his friendly neighbour, Andy Warhol, leaning out of his Factory window to wave at the cast and crew shooting in the surrounding streets. ‘Hi boys, how’s it going?’ he would ask Ferrara’s rag-tag ensemble, giving his papal blessing to the next generation of ‘underground’. By 1977, the year in which The Driller Killer began its lengthy production, the slightly fey, knowing art of Warhol, Lichtenstein and their Pop-Art followers, had been replaced on the New York scene with a more macho aesthetic of decisive brushstrokes and neo-expressionistic fervour. Painters like Julian Schnabel and Chuck Connelly made their name reviving more old-school notions of painters suffering for their art, rather than simply acting a touch aloof and hanging out with Jackie Onassis. With The Driller Killer, Ferrara expertly satirized this new cocksure bravado. Reno Miller (Ferrara, billed as Jimmy Laine) is ‘all mouth and no trousers’. His sexual potency (as well as his artistic worth) is constantly undermined; his hipster swagger cannot hide the fact that the two women with whom he co-habits are clearly more interested in each other than in their male keeper. Money may be the primary, conscious cause of his ultimately-murderous frustration, but a sexual inadequacy lies at its root. As if mocking this lack of virility, his painting of a buffalo glares out at him, accusingly. Inspired by a TV commercial, he arms himself with a new cordless phallus, and takes his penetrative revenge on the world. First and foremost, The Driller Killer is a comedy: an aggressive lampoon of the faux nihilism prevalent in the punk rock/art scene of the time, of which Ferrara was clearly a part. The film also serves as a none-too-subtle political broadside to a government seen as neglecting its most vulnerable, with

Directory of World Cinema

Reno’s tramp-slaying portrayed as an act of perverse benevolence, ending a miserable existence. The violence is not especially graphic, with only one scene of real bloody horror, exploited by the film’s distributor for all its worth. Viewers of an auteurist bent will be happy to discover many of Ferrara’s obsessions clearly present in such an embryonic work: from Catholic guilt, through to bloody violence, lesbian sex and the unhappy union of art and commerce.

Rob Dennis

God Told Me To Studio/Distributor:

New World Pictures Director:

Larry Cohen Producer:

Larry Cohen Screenwriter:

Larry Cohen Cinematographer:

Paul Glickman Composer:

Frank Cordell

Synopsis One bright sunny day, a sniper, using a low-quality rifle with incredible accuracy, starts picking off pedestrians at a busy Manhattan intersection. Police detective Peter Nicholas, a Catholic and an orphan, unsuccessfully attempts to talk him down, but before committing suicide, the sniper explains his actions: ‘God told me to’. A spate of spree-killings hits New York, each killer calmly offering the same explanation. Even when the police are tipped off that a cop is going to kill five at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, they can do nothing to prevent it. Nicholas’ investigation leads him to accounts of alien abductions – and impregnation – of a pair of young women in 1939 and 1951. The former turns out to be his mother, the latter the mother of Bernard Phillips, who has been instructing – and somehow compelling – the killers. Both are human-alien hybrids: Nicholas dominated by his human genes, Bernard by his alien ones. Can Nicholas stop Bernard’s reign of terror?

Editors:

Critique

Mike Corey Arthur Mandelberg William J Waters

God Told Me To is dedicated to Bernard Herrmann, who composed the score for Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974). The attack on Nicholas by a knife-wielding woman on a staircase alludes to one of the murders in Psycho (Hitchcock 1960), the score for which Herrmann is probably best known. Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, for which Herrmann conducted the CBS orchestra, is also evoked as the exemplar of media-produced hysteria. However, God Told Me To is perhaps best understood in relation to Cohen’s film about mutant babies and those Herrmann scored either side of it: Brian De Palma’s film about a murderous twin, Sisters (1973), and Martin Scorsese’s anatomy of post-countercultural urban violence, Taxi Driver (1976). Tapping into the concurrent cycles of satanic movies and hippy terror, as well as the popular fascination with such pseudoscientific and religious hokum, God Told Me To plays like the distaff version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Both films concern the dissolution of the counterculture, but while Spielberg

Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Tony Lo Bianco Deborah Raffin Sylvia Sidney Richard Lynch Year:

1976

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embraces the flight from responsibility into infantilism, Cohen exposes the violence at the core of American society that put paid to aspirations for radical change. As in Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968), the opening sequence articulates the peculiarly-American anxiety about snipers, spree-killers and random shootings – which first became pronounced with the preceding decade’s political assassinations, the Kent State massacre and the University of Texas shootings – but Cohen refuses to allow such events to remain isolated or exceptional. Instead, the film depicts such violent actions as epiphenomena of a culture whose very nature is violent, from the Judaeo-Christian mythology and traditions upon which it is built to the institutions (the police, the media, corporations) and patriarchal structures which dominate it. Bernard Philips, whose unclear but obviously-apocalyptic goals are served by a consortium of telepathically-compelled wealthy, white male executives, was born neither male nor female to a virgin mother. In his final confrontation with Nicholas, Bernard even offers to bear his child so as to begin a new species. This conflation of the human-alien hybrid with a sexless angel or hermaphrodite Christ, capable of incestuous, ‘homosexual’ reproduction, is not merely coolly blasphemous. It draws together conservative anxieties about shifting sexual norms, reproductive rights and technologies, secularization and generational difference, and, by returning all this repressed material to the run-down streets of contemporary New York, God Told Me To demonstrates just how far America falls short of the utopian aspirations of the 1939 World’s Fair (from which Nicholas’s mother was abducted by aliens), let alone the more radical hopes and aims of the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Mark Bould

It’s Alive Studio/Distributor:

Larco Productions Warner Bros. Director:

Larry Cohen Producers:

Larry Cohen Janelle Cohen Screenwriter:

Larry Cohen

156

American Independent

Synopsis Eleven years after the birth of their son Chris, Frank and Lenore Davies are expecting another baby. The first hint that something might be amiss in their seemingly-perfect suburban life comes with Lenore’s painful contractions. At the hospital, while Frank waits with other expectant fathers, the baby emerges, attacks and kills the delivery room doctors and nurses, and then escapes into the night. As Lenore recovers, and Frank loses his job in PR because of the unwanted media attention he is attracting, the baby kills its way across the city, feasting on its victims. University scientists approach Frank for access to the baby’s corpse once the police have dealt with it, while the head of a pharmaceutical corporation, fearing litigation over the contraceptive pills that Lenore had been taking for years, attempts to bribe the police captain in

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Fenton Hamilton Composer:

Bernard Herrmann

charge of the case into completely destroying the baby. Frank eventually realizes that Lenore has been sheltering the baby and, when it flees into the LA storm drains, he joins the police hunt. However, he discovers he cannot kill it, and must try to get it through the hostile lines.

Editor:

Peter Honess

Critique

Duration:

Despite an apparently idyllic opening – Frank and Lenore are tender and caring, Chris is a well-behaved child, anxious about his mother’s well-being – Cohen uses his killer mutant baby to open up the stresses of bourgeois heterosexual life. Frank and Lenore, it is revealed, nearly split up when Chris was born because Frank felt trapped. While he seems delighted at the prospect of another child, once it is born he is anxious to deny that it could have been the killer and then to deny his paternity. He becomes so keen to demonstrate that it is not his fault that he fails to notice how distraught his wife is – or how much milk and meat she is keeping in the fridge. While Frank’s behaviour could be seen as part of a critique of contemporary gender politics, Cohen’s liberalism has never succeeded in embracing feminism as fully as issues of race, as explored in Bone (1972) and Black Caesar (1973), or corporate malfeasance, as satirized by The Stuff (1985). Indeed, to the extent that the film becomes about Frank’s anxious paternity, and the mutant baby becomes associated with Lenore, it could be interpreted as expressing conservative anxieties about female sexuality and miscegenation, about the kind of world sexually-liberated women, not bound to hearth and home by childbirth, might create. However, such a reading is partially contradicted by the care with which the opening minutes of the film expose the suburban nuclear family to ridicule through an excessively idyllic representation. As with other revenge-of-nature films of the period, Cohen’s more overt concern is with environmental issues – one of the expectant fathers talks about the mutation of insecticideresistant cockroaches; other conversations hint at the adverse effects of pesticides and pharmaceuticals on people – and the ability of corporations to sidestep accountability (the bribed police captain is killed by the baby, while the corporation remains unscathed). In this respect, It’s Alive – whose use of the LA storm drains alludes to Them! (1954) – provides a clear model for John Sayles’ screenplays for Piranha (1978) and Alligator (1980), which articulate such themes with far less circumspection. It’s Alive flopped on its initial release, but proved a surprise hit when re-released in 1977, leading to a pair of sequels. It Lives Again (1978) and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987), both written and directed by Cohen, elaborate upon these issues and related topics, such as Reagan’s heating up of the Cold War, the erosion of civil liberties by the state, reproductive rights and AIDS hysteria.

91 minutes Cast:

John Ryan Sharon Farrell James Dixon Year:

1974

Mark Bould Exploitation USA 157

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King of the Zombies Studio/Distributor:

Monogram Pictures Director:

Jean Yarbrough Producer:

Synopsis Pilot James ‘Mac’ McCarthy and his passengers, Bill Summers and his black servant Jeff Jackson, crash-land on a mysterious West Indian island. They are taken in by the supposedlyexiled Austrian, Doctor Sangre, his catatonic wife and his niece, Barbara. But all is not as it seems. Jeff soon encounters voodoo zombies around the Sangre estate, zombies that Doctor Sangre – apparently a Nazi spy – wants no one to find out about. Mac, Bill, Jeff and Barbara investigate but as, one by one, they fall victim to the undead, it soon becomes a race against time to stop Doctor Sangre’s nefarious plans.

Lindsley Parsons Screenwriter:

Edmond Kelso Cinematographer:

Mack Stengler Art Director:

Charles Clague Composer:

Edward J. Kay Editor:

Richard Currier Duration:

67 minutes Cast:

Dick Purcell Joan Woodbury Mantan Moreland Year:

1941

Critique King of the Zombies does nothing to diminish Monogram Pictures’ reputation as the King of Poverty Row. The low budget is painfully apparent at several points and the script, while interesting, is seriously under-developed. Designed to cash in on the success of Paramount’s Bob Hope-starring horror-comedy The Ghost Breakers (1940), King of the Zombies fails to be in any way horrific and, instead, plays out as a comedy – albeit a very funny one. The comedy is handled almost entirely by Mantan Moreland as Jeff, who is given all the best gags. Moreland delivers the stereotypical scared-black-servant shtick which would more than likely be offensive to modern audiences were it not for Moreland’s self-aware, referential style of delivery. Moreland manages the feat of appearing scared without ever appearing dim-witted, pulling off lines like ‘If it were in me, I sure would be pale now’, with a flair that ensures the audience is laughing with, rather than at, him. The poorly-developed script also guarantees that Moreland’s Jeff is the only true point of identification for audiences (white or black). Dick Purcell’s Mac is off screen too much to be considered the star (despite his top-billing), and John Archer’s Bill, while likeable, is too bland. Indeed, Bill appears to be there only to save the day and get the girl in the finale. One gets the distinct impression that, were it not for the colour of his skin, Jeff would be fulfilling that role. Indeed, Jeff is the only character who is in any way developed and his flirtation with Sangre’s maid, Samantha, is fleshed out so much that it could be described as the film’s principal romance rather than the suggested affair between Bill and Barbara. Despite the muddled script, King of the Zombies is one of the superior Poverty Row horror films, although its lowbudget production values are unlikely to appeal to those not au fait with American trash cinema of the period.

Sarah Wharton

158

American Independent

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The Last House on the Left Studio/Distributor:

Sean S Cunningham Films Ltd. Director:

Wes Craven Producer:

Sean S Cunningham Screenwriter:

Wes Craven Cinematographer:

Victor Hurwitz Composer:

David Hess Editor:

Wes Craven Duration:

84 minutes Cast:

David Hess Lucy Grantham Sandra Cassel Year:

1972

Synopsis Mari Collingwood plans to attend a concert by the band Bloodlust with her party-loving friend Phyllis Stone to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. A gang of dangerous criminals led by the domineering Krug Stillo are also in the area, hiding out from the law. After trying to score some weed from Krug’s son, the two girls are kidnapped and tortured by the gang. The local police are alerted to the fact that the gang may be in the area, while Mari’s blissfully-unaware parents arrange birthday treats for their daughter on her return. The film’s climax centres on the gang’s arrival at Mari’s home, ostensibly seeking refuge for the night after the breakdown of their car. As both Mari’s parents and the gang become aware of whose company they are in, the tension escalates and explodes into violence.

Critique Wes Craven’s debut feature The Last House on the Left was a watershed moment for the horror genre, its brutal realism and casual sadism proving too much for censors, critics and audiences alike. A resolutely-independent feature shot for a measly $90,000 by a combination of friends and acquaintances of Craven and producer Sean S Cunningham, The Last House on the Left is an unsettling experience, mixing as it does extreme violence with what some would say is a wildly-misplaced strain of slapstick comedy, apparent in the actions of the bumbling police officers and the jaunty ‘theme’ tune of the gang. In an age of ‘torture porn’, YouTube and 24-hour rolling news, the modern viewer may find the movie somewhat amateurish and graphically tame compared to the many ‘delights’ readily available today but, in 1972, The Last House on the Left smashed the boundaries in its the portrayal of violence and its effects on both victim and perpetrator. Released the year before Tobe Hooper’s equally controversial The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973), the film has a prolonged torture, rape and murder sequence that stretches over 20 minutes which, for a film that barely lasts 84 minutes, is agonizingly long. The combination of sexual violence and meaningless abuse meted out to Mari and Phyllis is still a tough watch, even in its censored form, as the acts are carried out in an offhand, casually-cruel manner. Craven has explained that the movie was his expression of the malaise running through American life at the time: brutal images from Vietnam on the television, the anti-war and race riots of the era and the death of the hippy dream with the Manson murders. It is impossible not to watch the performance of David Hess as Krug and his domination of the gang of misfits without being reminded of Manson and the shocking crimes of the family. The films dénouement was another troubling matter for cinema audiences and critics: Mari’s parents taking bloody brutal revenge on the gang and sinking to the levels of depravity shown by the killers. The Last

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House on the Left may well be crass and unevenly acted, with the ‘comic’ interludes of the police officers jarring with the sadism and violence of both the gang and, eventually, the parents, but the movie is a milestone in the evolution of the horror genre and deserves its place in the ranks of important independent films due to the brazenly anti-mainstream nature of its subject matter and conception.

Neil Mitchell

White Zombie Studio/Distributor:

United Artists Director:

Victor Halperin Producer:

Edward Halperin Screenwriter:

Garnett Weston Cinematographer:

Arthur Martinelli Composer:

Guy Bevier Art Director:

Ralph Berger Editor:

Harold McLernon Duration:

67 minutes Cast:

Bela Lugosi Robert Frazer Madge Bellamy Year:

1932

160

American Independent

Synopsis A young couple, Neil Parker and Madeline Short, visit a plantation on Haiti owned by Charles Beaumont. Beaumont has arranged the couple’s marriage, but is secretly in love with Madeline and is hoping to persuade her not to marry Parker. However, when they arrive at his house, it is clear that the couple are in love and intent on going ahead with their nuptials. In desperation, Beaumont turns to a voodoo master and mill owner, Legendre, who persuades Beaumont to let him turn Madeline into a zombie. Beaumont concedes and, hours after her wedding, Madeline becomes a ‘white zombie’. Parker falls into a depression, haunted by visions of Madeline as she was on her wedding day, and is unable to accept her death. Parker visits the missionary Dr. Bruner who tells Parker that he thinks Legendre has turned Madeline into a zombie – an unthinking, walking body with no soul. In the nick of time Parker and Dr. Bruner return to the mansion to defeat Legendre and to return Madeline to her living self.

Critique The 1930s were a good decade for horror cinema, with Universal Studios ‘horror cycle’, which saw outings for Frankenstein, Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde amongst other literary monsters. White Zombie introduced a new monster into the lexicon of cinematic horror mythology which had its origins in voodoo and Haitian medicine practices, transforming the living into mindless slaves through the use of zombie powder. While later films would emphasize the racial component of the zombie, White Zombie is concerned with class and gender oppression. This is visualized through striking set-pieces, including the scene when Beaumont visits Legendre’s sugar mill and, despite one falling into the mill, the zombies continue mindlessly to push the millstone around. Not only is the scene visually powerful but sound is also used as an aural signifier of oppression, which draws an analogy between the workers and Madeline. For example, the sound of the mill can be heard in a later scene when Beaumont meets Legendre to talk about Madeline. In another visually-arresting scene, aural cues are used to emphasize Parker’s horror when, haunted by a vision of

White Zombie, United Artists.

Madeline, he follows her to her grave. The camera cuts away and Parker’s anguished scream is as haunting as the images that precede it. In many ways, White Zombie is more evocative of the silent film than the sound film in that it relies on visual stylization, images and sound rather than dialogue to generate meaning. The meaning of the scene in the sugar-mill is evident, dialogue or explanation here would be superfluous. Visual shorthand is also evident in the play between black and white that Halperin uses effectively throughout. Legendre is always seen wearing black, while both Parker and Madeline are dressed in white. This contrast gives the film an almost expressionistic sensibility. In addition, the zombies here have much in common with the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920). This is emphasized through frequent close-ups of Legendre’s hypnotizing eyes, which provide a visual counterpoint to the blind gazes of the zombies that he controls. But as much as this is a horror film, White Zombie is also a love-storycum-fairy tale. Like a fairy tale, Madeline is the virgin bride captured by the evil villain – Legendre – and needing saving by the hero/prince: Parker. It has to be said that most of the performances are perfunctory, with the exception of Bela Lugosi’s mesmerizing performance as Legendre. While the general level of acting prowess may be relatively poor in White Zombie, its cinematography and innovative use of sound mark it out as one of the formative horror films of all time.

Colette Balmain

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FAMILY

Directory of World Cinema

The progeny of the New Hollywood insurgency of the 1960s and 1970s has proved to be remarkably industrious of late, with Sophia and Roman Coppola joining Jennifer Lynch, Nick, Xan and Zoe Cassavetes and, most recently, Azazel Jacobs, son of Ken, in signing up to the family business. Jacobs’ Momma’s Man (2008), a comedy-drama concerning the ties that bind, shows Mikey, a professional well into what would be considered adult life, finding himself back in the New York home of his bohemian parents. Mom and Dad, unassuming and attentive to their child’s needs, appear to be a picture of harmony. Eventually, however, it becomes apparent that Mikey is not going to leave. He has a wife and young child back in LA, but a strange mix of agoraphobia, wallowing and fear of responsibility keeps him trapped in suspended animation in the Lower East side loft. The very notion of independence is reliant on the severing of ties, familial or otherwise. From its inception, independent cinema has capitalized on generational disharmony, performing numerous parricides for the budding Oedipus in everyone. Indeed, it is tempting to view the whole of American independent cinema’s relationship to Hollywood in simple hereditary, domestic terms, with ‘indiewood’ as the errant offspring: a terminally moody adolescent, full of righteous anger for a world that just does not understand. After all, Easy Rider (1969), a film often marked as the originator of the American independent scene, was the product of Peter Fonda, son of Hollywood star Henry Fonda. Whilst this overall analogy is clearly a little problematic (despite being all grownup, Hollywood undeniably has all the better toys), such a view is clearly coveted by marginal film-makers, sensing a constructive (and marketable) paradigm. Throughout its short history, the American independent sector has lovingly exploited the family as, variably, a handicap, a crutch, a disease and a salvation. Recent years have seen a wealth of indie products featuring families of differing functionality; sibling rivalries, incestuous allegiances and all manner of bickering can be found in Spanking the Monkey (1994), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Igby Goes Down (2002), The Squid and the Whale (2005) and The Savages (2007). So, if the ‘dysfunctional family film’ now exists as its own vendible sub-genre, with its own particular genealogy, can we mark its morphing allegiances down to generational shift? The late 1960s may have seen the underground scene of Jacobs and co catapulted fleetingly into mainstream consciousness, but the roots of rebellion went far deeper. Any notion of the Hollywood old guard being simple propagators of a conservative family ethos was fallacy. In the mid-1950s, director Nicolas Ray provided a damning diptych of domestic life with Rebel without a Cause (1955) and Bigger Than Life (1956). In the former, James Dean played Jim Stark as the embodiment of 17-year-old existential torment, railing against a thoughtless world. A year later, Bigger than Life

Left: The Royal Tenenbaums, Touchstone Pictures, Photographed by James Hamilton

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(1956) would present James Mason as Ed Avery, a school teacher and loving father, transformed (through addiction to the hormone cortisone) into a maniacal patriarch with murderous intent. The new ‘independents’ were keen to build on this tradition of dissent. Underground auteurs like Jack Smith and amateurs like George and Mike Kuchar began to pay homage to family melodrama. By the early 1970s, John Waters made his name by producing high camp appropriations of Hollywood lore, with familial dysfunction at the core of Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). In the 1970s, the very term ‘family’ had unfortunate echoes of Charles Manson’s self-styled group, who had made their own dubious mark on film history by murdering the actress Sharon Tate. In that decade, films like A Woman Under the Influence (1974) provided all-out attacks on the family unit and the pernicious psychological damage it invariably inflicted. In wider society, thinkers such as the ‘anti-psychiatrist’ R D Laing placed the ‘family nexus’ as the root cause of mental illnesses – from psychosis to schizophrenia. Riding the zeitgeist, exploitation director Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) found traditional family groups subjected to seemingly-endless barrages of rape and bloody violence. Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) displayed one of cinema’s most deranged family units, with an all-male family, from Grandpa downwards, dishing out cruel punishment to free-spirited youngsters. It would take some time for the fallout of this 1960/1970s family debasement to become visible. Two figures that are integral to our conception of ‘indie dysfunction’ are Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, who were born a few months apart in 1969. Anderson made The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and produced Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (2005). The two films, stylistically divergent but otherwise very much aligned, offer conjoined portraits of familial disharmony. Anderson and Baumbach, both children of middle-class divorcees, explored a very specific milieu. The Royal Tenenbaums is the more formally playful of the pair, owing much to the literary world of J D Salinger, and is structured around the titular family: father Royal, mother Etheline and kids Chas, Margot and Ritchie (along with ‘family friend’ Eli Cash). Here, the parents are long divorced and the offspring well dispersed, but Royal’s announcement of his looming death brings the clan back together to rake over their troubled emotional histories. The Squid and the Whale, with its clear time specificity and more downto-earth mise-en-scène, is, on paper, the more autobiographical of the two. Although Baumbach would reject any literal reading of the film as memoir, the director’s personal history (his parents, both writers, his mother a sometime critic for the Village Voice, divorced when Noah was a teenager) is mirrored in the film’s narrative in which Bernard Berkman, a novelist with some past success, separates from his wife Joan, who has just begun to publish. Their two sons, preteen Frank and the slightly older Walt, struggle to adjust to this new, confused reality, while their parents battle for their affections. Anderson and Baumbach, exposing the eccentric but potentially psychologically-scarring realities of the liberal ‘post-family’ set-up, perhaps unwittingly gave credence to a new-found social conservatism. With George W Bush in the White House, a return to the ‘family values’ of the previous Bush regime (who famously wanted to make American families more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons) was inevitable. With their depictions of domestic warfare following divorce, and the psychological complications that result from home schooling and single parenthood, these films went some way

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in showing the adverse effects of the ‘permissive society‘, and of any lingering Laingian anti-psychiatry. One would struggle, however, to see these films as anything other than loving critiques of flawed parenting. Another film-maker, a decade older than Anderson and Baumbach, offered a corrosive counterpoint to these satires of the liberal elite. In Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Todd Solondz introduced Dawn Weiner, a young junior high school student of immense awkwardness. Either ignored or castigated by her commanding mother and ineffectual father, Dawn is very much in the shadow of her older brother Mark and her (not-so) angelic, tutu-wearing little sister, Missy. The Weiner’s suburban middle-class facade is shown by Solondz to be a veneer for psychological terror, familial bullying and low-level paedophilia. These facets would be later explored in Solondz’s follow-ups: Happiness (1998) and Storytelling (2001). Later still, Palindromes (2004) would begin with Dawn’s funeral, her eventual suicide little surprise to her family. Her cousin Aviva, of a similar age to Dawn in the earlier film, gets herself pregnant before finally escaping her family after they force an abortion on her. So perhaps an axis between the benign and the malignant can be seen as a dividing trait in the contemporary dysfunctional family film. On one side being the cinema of Baumbach and Anderson, joined by popular indie comedies like Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Flirting With Disaster (1996), in which the family is most often seen as an embarrassing, cumbersome, but ultimately positive social unit; with Solondz’s cancerous outlook on the other side, supported by films like Tom Karlin’s Savage Grace (2007) in which an incestuous mother son relationship leads to murder, Harmony Korine’s Julian Donkey Boy (1999) where Werner Herzog’s psychopathic patriarch domineers over a terrified group of offspring, and a pair of 2003 documentaries: Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation and Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans, the first of which looking at Caouette’s own damaged upbringing at the hands of a mentally ill mother, and the latter exploring the troubling case of multi-generational sexual abuse in the quiet suburb of Great Neck, New York. Which brings us back to Azezel Jacobs’s Momma’s Man, in which the strange calm of the family home – no raised voices, tantrums or passive hostility – cannot entirely screen some deep-seated, unspoken, emotional trauma. Here, no neat family classification can be made. It is difficult to say if it is malignant or benign. Rather than a study in commonplace dysfunction, the film paints a complex picture of anxiety and mutual dependency. Further confusing the issue, Azazel’s actual parents appear in the film as Mikey’s folks. We are presented with Ken and Flo Jacobs, luminary figures of the New York avant-garde, as caring but ultimately befuddled elders. The generation that attempted to revolutionize cinema, as well as antiquated family values, is finally outed as being as inept as their forbears.

Rob Dennis

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Buffalo ‘66, Cinepix Film.

Buffalo ‘66 Studio/Distributor:

Cinepix Film Properties Lions Gate Films Muse Productions Director:

Vincent Gallo Producer:

Chris Hanley

166

American Independent

Synopsis Life has never given Billy Brown anything but bad luck. Born and raised in Buffalo, NY by two of the coldest and most uncaring parents in the world, Billy’s life really takes a turn for the worse when he is forced to go to prison (for a crime he did not commit) by a bookie to whom he owes a large amount of money. After getting out of prison, Billy, desperate to impress his parents, kidnaps a young dance student and forces her to pretend that she is his wife. Lonely, confused and bent on vengeance against the guy he blames for his incarceration, Billy and his ‘new bride’ have what will be a life-altering night in both their lives.

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Screenwriters:

Vincent Gallo Alison Bagnall Cinematographer:

Lance Acord Art Director:

James Chinlund Composer:

Vincent Gallo Editor:

Curtiss Clayton Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Vincent Gallo Christina Ricci Ben Gazzara Mickey Rourke Year:

1998

Critique A triumphant debut from first-time film-maker Vincent Gallo, Buffalo ‘66 is one of the most haunting and distinctive films of the 1990s. Multi-tasking as director, writer, composer and star, Gallo marks himself immediately as a major figure in modern American cinema, although sadly his personal reputation has made him, for many, an easy artist to overlook. Gallo was already fairly well-known as a model and actor when Buffalo ‘66 appeared in 1998, but even his most ardent fans might have been surprised by the audacious talent he displayed in his first film as a director. Wonderfully poetic throughout, Gallo’s debut feature is quite unlike anything else made before or since, and it is one of the few independent films of the decade that does not seem like a direct response to works that had come before. Unlike his peers, ranging from Wes Anderson to David O Russell, whose films often focus on the dysfunctional dynamics between people, Gallo is, instead, fascinated by isolation and loneliness. While it is true that Buffalo ‘66 contains a number of sometimes funny, and often sad, moments involving the damaged relationships between Gallo’s Billy Brown and everyone in his life, the film is really about the overwhelming feeling of solitude that haunts the main character. While it is true that Buffalo ‘66 is very much a work about loneliness, the film takes a remarkable turn at the halfway point and, shockingly, becomes a unique and incredibly enduring love story. The most surprising aspect of Buffalo ‘66 is that it is a very optimistic and even, at times, a very sweet film driven by the wonderful chemistry between Gallo and his female lead Christina Ricci, who delivers a career-best performance here. Gallo as an artist might be fascinated with isolation, but what ultimately distinguishes Buffalo ‘66 is his underlying message of hope. It is hard when dealing with Buffalo ‘66 not to almost exclusively focus on Vincent Gallo’s stirring work in front of and behind the camera, but the other players all turn in notable efforts. Behind the scenes, the wonderfully grainy and faded photography of Lance Acord makes the film feel like a very distinctive, if slightly hazy, memory. In terms of casting, Gallo allows once-outcast actors like Mickey Rourke (Buffalo ‘66 was arguably the beginning of his remarkable comeback) and Jan-Michael Vincent strong, if brief, opportunities to once again show their considerable talents. Buffalo ‘66 received mostly positive notices, but Gallo’s controversial reputation sadly kept many viewers away. The Brown Bunny (2003), a brave work already in need of major critical reconsideration, followed Buffalo ‘66 and would solidify Gallo as one of modern cinema’s most uncompromising, if often ignored, artists. Only time will tell if Vincent Gallo chooses to write and direct again, but even if he does not, both Buffalo ‘66 and The Brown Bunny will resonate long after many other films from the era have long since faded from memory.

Jeremy Richey

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Flirting With Disaster Studio/Distributor:

Miramax Director:

David O Russell Producer:

Dean Silvers Screenwriter:

David O Russell Cinematographer:

Eric Edwards Art Director:

Judy Rhee Composer:

Stephen Endelman

Synopsis Mel Coplin, a neurotic first-time father, dithers over the naming of his baby boy. Raised by adoptive New York parents, Mel’s predicament inspires a search for his biological family. He enlists the help of an agency, whose agent Tina – herself a somewhat highly-strung character of childbearing age – tracks down Mel’s mother in San Diego. Mel’s wife Nancy, struggling for his attention in and out of the bedroom, accompanies Mel and Tina on the trip. The San Diego mother turns out to be a busty red herring, and the trio hastily rearrange plans. Heading to Michigan in search of an elusive (and ultimately false) father named Fritz Boudreau, Mel and Tina’s flirtatious relationship threatens to develop into full-blown adultery. Here, through a string of convoluted events, the increasingly-fractious threesome is joined by two male Federal agents, Tony and Paul, whose own dysfunctional sexual relationship merely adds fuel to the fire. As the group finally reaches the New Mexico home of Mel’s true parents, the foundations are in place for a truly memorable welcoming dinner.

Critique Flirting With Disaster, David O Russell’s follow up to oedipal black comedy Spanking the Monkey (1994), is a further

Flirting With Disaster, Miramax, Photographed by Barry Wetcher.

Directory of World Cinema

Editor:

Christopher Tellefsen Duration:

92 minutes Cast:

Ben Stiller Patricia Arquette Téa Leoni Lily Tomlin Alan Alda Year:

1997

neurosis-laden study in parent-child dysfunction, this time in more of a screwball mode. Ben Stiller’s Mel, in many ways anticipating the more broadly-written Gaylord Focker character from Meet the Parents (2000), confronts his nebbish New York identity in a cross-country road trip, discovering himself to be of an altogether different stock. Conceived in a mid-1960s’ milieu of Hells Angels and LSD factories, a lineage very much at odds with his straight-edged moral compass, Mel struggles to accept his new-found pedigree. The film has plenty of fun unpicking various generational, as well as regional, stereotypes. Russell’s transgressive predilections occasionally come to the fore, most notably in a recurrent joke concerning Mel’s aversion to oral sex, and a brief conversation on the merits of sodomy; but the guiding presence here is more Preston Sturges than George Bataille. That said, in what we must imagine to be a reflection of the main character’s arrested development, the film does seem somewhat unnaturally concerned with displaying Patricia Arquette’s lavatory functions (as well as her generous cleavage.) Téa Leoni plays Tina, (whose Cyd-Charisse legs almost tempt Mel out of his mammary haze), her sexual foil filling out a matchless ensemble cast that includes the pairing of Mary Tyler Moore and George Segal, alongside Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda as Mel’s opposing parental units, and Josh Brolin and Richard Jenkins as the bickering gay cops. Very much an indie road-trip comedy in line with Greg Mottola’s Daytrippers (1996) and, latterly, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Flirting with Disaster does little to deviate from formula. But Russell’s faith in his welldrawn characters and snappy script pays dividends. Several of the comic set pieces involving Mel and his potential parents, including the peerless Celia Weston as a very unlikely Reaganworshipping matriarch, achieve a hard-to-match screwball intensity that holds up well to the greats of the genre.

Rob Dennis

Harold and Maude Studio/Distributor:

Mildred Lewis and Colin Higgins Productions Paramount Director:

Hal Ashby

Synopsis Harold is bored with life as the privileged young son of a wealthy family. In fact, he much prefers to think about death. When he is not staging elaborate mock-suicides in an attempt to shock his self-obsessed mother into recognizing his existence, he likes to drive around in a hearse and to attend funerals. Maude, who also likes to go to funerals, is a free spirit: an artist, an occasional nude model and habitual car-thief in her late seventies. She and Harold become firm friends as she begins to show him that life is worth living. Meanwhile, his mother, who has decided that it is time for Harold to marry, recruits a number of candidates from a computer-dating agency, all of whom he scares off with his

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Producers:

Colin Higgins Charles Mulvehill Screenwriter:

Colin Higgins

morbid antics. She replaces his hearse with a Jaguar, which he customizes as a hearse, and he avoids her efforts to get him drafted by posing as psychotically murderous. Through these and other adventures, Harold falls in love with Maude, not realizing that on her eightieth birthday – the night on which he is going to propose – she intends to commit suicide.

Cinematographer:

John A Alonzo

Critique

Art Director:

Musing about bird cages, zoos and prisons, Maude concludes, ‘How the world loves a cage!’ Her bemused incomprehension at this human tendency, combined with her refusal to condemn us for it, perfectly captures the tone of Ashby’s satirical, absurd and moving film. It opens with the wrought-iron banister of the dark heavy staircase down which Harold descends, his brown shoes and suit almost making him disappear into the brownhued weight of leaden tradition that surrounds him. As he moves to the window, the bright daylight outside fails to relieve the scene, as if the heavy drapes, even when open, still work as a barrier. Finally, his pallid features – those of some strangelyalien child, an orphan from the Addams’ family – appear at the edge of the screen. Like a burrowing creature who rarely comes above ground, when he does emerge from the tomb-like edifice of his home it is only to return to subterranean quietus, whether staging his own death (to the bored and brittle indifference of his mother), becoming the mirror image of his psychoanalyst, driving a hearse or participating in the funerals of people he did not know. Ashby’s strategy of reframing and revelation elaborates upon the many interrelated cages in which Harold finds himself. For example, there are several glimpses of a large, smoothly-turned sculpture in Maude’s converted railwaycarriage home before she invites Harold to feel, stroke and caress it; as he runs his hands over it, reframing shows it to be a sculpture of female genitals. Away from his mother, Harold is able to encounter the female body as something other than stifling maternity and all the social forces that Ashby crystallizes in her. Later, when Harold says he would like to be a daisy because they are all alike, Maude responds by showing him how they are all different; and Ashby cuts from the field of daisies to a slow zooming-out long shot of a military cemetery, in which the rows and rows of white headstones obscure the individuality of those they commemorate. Ashby makes several such juxtapositions – as in the many shots of postindustrial wastelands, or when Harold’s uncle, a general, talks about the glories of war, while in the background maimed veterans struggle to perform simple tasks – to emphasize the ubiquity of man-made cages, the dangers of which are driven home by the half-glimpsed shot of the concentration camp ID number tattooed on Maude’s forearm. If the film has a fault it is the countercultural one of consigning collective politics of liberation to the past in favour of individual self-expression. This does not, however, keep it from being

Michael Haller Composer:

Cat Stevens Editors:

William A Sawyer Edward Warschilka Duration:

91 minutes Cast:

Ruth Gordon Bud Cort Vivian Pickles Year:

1971

170

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one of the very best of all American romantic comedies. Its tenderness and thoughtfulness recall the screenplays Gordon co-wrote (with her husband, Garson Kanin) for Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, while its sense of history and contemporary urgency, of the human and the absurd, make Woody Allen’s more celebrated 1970s’ romantic comedies look self-indulgent and shallow.

Mark Bould

Human Nature Studio/Distributor Prod:

Fine Line Features Studio Canal Good Machine Director:

Michel Gondry Producers:

Anthony Bergman Ted Hope Spike Jonze Charlie Kaufman Julie Fong Screenwriter:

Charlie Kaufman Cinematographer:

Tim Maurice-Jones Art Director:

Peter Andrus Composer:

Graeme Revell Editor:

Russell Icke Duration:

96 minutes Cast:

Patricia Arquette Rhys Ifans Tim Robbins Miranda Otto Year:

2001

Synopsis Lila is confessing to the police about a crime that has been committed; Nathan appears to be in a white-wall painted purgatory; and Puff is addressing a panel of his peers. Lila suffers from a condition that leaves her body entirely covered in hair. After a period living in the woods, thriving on animalistic selfsufficiency and publishing a well-received book on the subject, she eventually returns to civilization to undergo electrolysis so that she can get shed her hirsutic ways and get herself a man with whom she can indulge her previously-denied carnal desires. The man that Lila finds is Nathan Bronfman, a scientist who, due to a strict upbringing where social decorum was paramount, has become an animal behaviourist, firmly intent on teaching table manners to mice. Nathan spends much of his time in his laboratory with his latest project, Puff, and discovers himself being seduced by his faux-French assistant, Gabrielle. Puff was raised as a pygmy ape by his father in the woods, but Nathan and Lila discover him whilst hitchhiking and attempt to ‘rehabilitate’ him by teaching outmoded forms of social etiquette, adorning him with cravat and smoking-pipe garnishes. Meanwhile, Puff engages in his lustier inclinations, spending his ‘mad money’ cavorting with prostitutes, having electric-collarincited sex with Lila, and craving Gabrielle. Affected by the greed, guilt and desires he has encountered, Puff testifies to Congress about the waywardness of Humanity before appearing to return back to nature, sans clothing.

Critique This is the film that should have launched the directorial career of Michel Gondry and built upon the developing reputation of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, but it is not; for that, Kaufman would have to wait one more year for Adaptation (2002), directed by Spike Jonze, and only then was Gondry allowed to helm another Kaufman script: the superior Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Human Nature premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, but this is the only prestige the film has ever really enjoyed. Compared to the other films directed by Gondry or written by Kaufman, this film is the least-heaped with awards, positive reviews, and box-office receipts. This is

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the film that people watch for the sake of fandom completion, cinephilic curiosity, or by accident; yet, the film is not terrible, it is just too complicated and too simple at the same time to be coherent in its aims and attraction. The structure of the film suggests a bawdy sex comedy in which love trysts and secret agendas dominate the characters’ motivation. However, the film strives to embrace the lightness that this type of film fundamentally requires by filtering the plot through references to scientific and philosophical landmarks and figures that exist in the hinterlands of our social consciousness. Human Nature is a funny film, but whereas Kaufman’s earlier film, Being John Malkovich (1999) provided absurdist moments of genius that fitted within the flow of the film, Human Nature strives too hard to present its cleverness as something to be admired or laughed at. The few scenes in which Rhys Ifans is given room to provide a short series of physical comedy sketches, as his character is learning to become civilized, are easily the most entertaining – ranging from slap-stick pratfalls through to musical numbers recreated within the confines of his cage. Consequently, whilst Human Nature does not represent the cohesive partnership of ideas between screenwriter and director, it is certainly an interesting minor film that allowed Gondry to further develop his directorial skills from the music promo world, and give Kaufman the opportunity to experiment and have fun with the balance between formulaic genres and posing intellectual challenges to his audience.

Carl Wilson

My Big Fat Greek Wedding Studio/Distributor:

Playtone IFC Films Director:

Joel Zwick Producers:

Paul Brooks Steve Shareshian Norm Waitt Screenwriter:

Nia Vardalos

172

American Independent

Synopsis Toula Portokalos is stuck in a rut. Thirty, single, introverted and frumpy, her family want nothing more than to see her marry a nice Greek man and have children. Toula, on the other hand, wants more. Tricking her father into letting her take an IT course at college, Toula begins to emerge from her shell. Taking a job in her aunt’s travel agency she meets Ian Miller. It is love at first sight and he soon proposes. But Ian is not Greek and now Toula must tread the line between getting the life she wants for herself and pleasing her family.

Critique The title of My Big Fat Greek Wedding is somewhat misleading. While the film is indeed about a wedding taking place within a Greek family, the wedding is merely an endnote – the brief conclusion to wrap up the narrative – and Toula’s romance with Ian is perfunctory at best. The fact that the family is Greek is also incidental. The problems of traditional

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Jeffrey Jur Art Director:

Kei Ng Composers:

Alexander Janko Chris Wilson Editor:

Mia Goldman Duration:

95 minutes Cast:

Nia Vardalos Michael Constantine John Corbett Year:

2002

values versus modern life could be adapted to suit any family of almost any ethnicity or religion living in contemporary America. Indeed, the ‘Greekness’ of My Big Fat Greek Wedding simply serves to differentiate the film from the milieu of family comedies. What My Big Fat Greek Wedding really hinges on is its female characters, emphasized by Toula being told by her mother that the man may be the head of the family, ‘but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.’ The focus on women is specific to the idea of women evolving over generations, with each generation taking the best bits from the one before and adding new knowledge and qualities to make it unique. This is best illustrated in the scene in which Toula’s mother and grandmother come to her to pass on some family wedding heirlooms. The three women sit on the bed framed in the bedroom mirror, each representing a stage in the evolution of the Portokalos women: Yiayia wears her traditional black clothes; Maria, Toula’s mother, is the stereotypical Greek-American mother, all big hair and loud colours; while Toula in her pyjamas and Yiayia’s wedding crown represents something new, something where tradition and modernity meet. It is Toula’s own acceptance of this vision of herself – as a point in the evolution of Portokalos women – about which the narrative pivots, rather than her family’s acceptance of Ian. As such, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is much more than a simple jumble of stereotypes and a clichéd plot. It is not a film about a woman being ‘saved’ by a man, instead it is a film about women learning from women and saving themselves.

Sarah Wharton

Roger Dodger Studio/Distributor:

Holedigger Films Artisan Director:

Dylan Kidd Producer:

Anne Chaisson Screenwriter:

Dylan Kidd Cinematographer:

Joaquín Baca-Asay

Synopsis Roger Swanson is a cold and cynical Manhattan advertising executive, recently given the elbow by his boss-cum-lover. Soon, his teenage nephew, Nick, appears on the pretext of seeing his uncle whilst attending an interview for a potential college. But it quickly becomes apparent that Nick wants more than to catch up: he needs Roger’s advice on the best ways to seduce women. Roger takes the boy under his wing, and takes him for a night out where they meet two beautiful women. But when things do not go according to plan, it becomes apparent that Roger still has much to learn about the opposite sex and the role that men should play in life.

Critique In dealing with the misogyny, insecurity and hypocrisy that typifies some members of the male sex, Dylan Kidd’s debut feature

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Composer:

Craig Wedren Editor:

Andy Keir Duration:

106 minutes Cast:

Campbell Scott Jesse Eisenberg Isabella Rossellini Jennifer Beals Year:

2002

is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Neil LaBute. With a central character that has a brilliant line of patter (revelling in his apparent skill at being able to ‘read’ women) and few moral values, the film is an example of masculinity in crisis, with the desire to be ‘uber’-macho a reaction to the fear that the male gender will soon be obsolete (something discussed in a quite brilliant opening scene). As the central character, Scott is brilliant; carrying the entire movie with his brand of cynical smoothtalking hiding a frightened man scared of intimacy. Despite the fact that his views – and actions – are often reprehensible, Roger’s supreme confidence means that we often cannot help to warm to him, making us understand the attraction that he undoubtedly has for some members of the opposite sex. As Nick, Jesse Eisenberg makes a good foil for the titular character: naïve but with a warmth and kindness that Roger lacks. Kidd’s script is sharp and witty with some fine monologues and two-handers. Whilst this does sometimes mean the film is in danger of tipping into theatricality, Kidd’s direction tries to keep things energetic and interesting. With the backdrop of the city of Manhattan being as cold as Roger’s manipulative techniques, Kidd shoots as if he were sneaking up on our main characters with shots from across the street, or looking over from restaurant tables. This sense of eavesdropping emphasizes much of the seemingly-illicit nature of what the film is expressing: that men are often leering at women, they are just getting a lot better at hiding it. Still, the female characters are far from marginalized, proving – on the whole – to be more than a match for Roger’s patter. Whilst this patter is sometimes in danger of unbalancing the film, the performances save proceedings, resulting in a film that avoids the didactic (the end certainly makes you wonder about the lessons that the characters have learned) to create an intriguing portrait of masculinity at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Laurence Boyce

The Royal Tenenbaums Studio/Distributor:

American Empirical Pictures Mordecai Films Touchstone Pictures Director:

Wes Anderson

174

American Independent

Synopsis The Tenenbaum children were once precociously overachieving. Adopted daughter Margot was an award-winning playwright, Chas a real-estate prodigy, and Richie a threetime-national-tennis champion. Yet, for all their success, each appears to have lost their genius at some point after their archaeologist-mother Etheline told bad-apple father Royal to leave. Royal has since fallen into disgrace, having been disbarred for malpractice, and now lives permanently in a hotel. When Royal finally runs out of credit, he hears of Etheline’s plans to marry accountant Henry Sherman, and contrives to get back into the family home by pretending to have terminal cancer. Having spent a year on a merchant ship after suffering a public breakdown as a result of his infatuation with Margot,

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

Wes Anderson Barry Mendel Scott Rudin Screenwriters:

Wes Anderson Owen Wilson Cinematographer:

Robert Yeoman Art Director:

Carl Sprague Editor:

Dylan Tichenor Composer:

Mark Mothersbaugh Duration:

109 minutes Cast:

Gene Hackman Angelica Huston Ben Stiller Gwyneth Paltrow Luke Wilson Year:

2001

Richie returns home to be reunited with Royal. Chas also returns home with his own two sons – not through concern for Royal, but as a result of grief for his wife, who died a year previously in a plane crash. Margot has run into marital difficulties with her much older husband Raleigh and elects to move back to the family home, continuing an affair with a childhood neighbour: Richie’s best friend Eli Cash. When Raleigh asks Richie for help in reconciling with Margot, they find out about the affair, which prompts Richie into a dramatic reaction, and a course of events that will ultimately lead to Royal’s genuine rehabilitation.

Critique The Royal Tenenbaums is a quirky, hilarious, yet sensitive film, from an idiosyncratic writer-director who manages to hit the middle of the target on themes such as family, grief and vulnerability; themes that he had only danced around on previous outing, Rushmore (1998), and upon which, he has subsequently elaborated in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007). The manner in which the main characters engage with one another suggests that there is not a single genuine emotion among them. And yet, in tackling some of modern life’s pressing issues, Anderson and Wilson have written characters with such inability to articulate emotion that they wind up as honest representations of authentically-rounded, flawed human beings: people subject to alienation sometimes of their own making. However, in the Tenenbaum household, Royal, an archetypal cad whose inability to relate to or even understand his gifted children has initiated this state of affairs. Like all good black comedies, this film depicts many tragic events and, yet, these tragedies are the main sources of humour; coupled with Anderson’s relentless attention to kitschy detail, they reveal the lengths to which people sometimes go in order to hide their insecurities, especially from the people closest to them. For example, Richie’s unacknowledged and unrequited love for adopted sister Margot manifests in an absurd on-court protest at her marriage to Raleigh, in which he removes his shoes and one sock, to throw the national tennis championships. Richie’s comical adherence to retro 1970s’ sportswear, in the manner of Bjorn Borg, and Margot’s own retro fashion nod to kohl-eyed models such as Twiggy, lend the film a quirky patina that seems out of time, as if cobbled together from childhood memories. This is, of course, partly how Anderson achieves the look of the film: Sprague’s art direction is impeccable, layering elements upon other elements in a patchwork of novel ideas, but the details such as Angelica Huston wearing Anderson’s real mother’s glasses (she is also an archaeologist) lends the film its real individuality. Similarly, this occurs in characterization: the way Chas transfers his childhood habit of wearing identical changes of clothing, day after day, to his children is typical of the film. Each sports an identikit Brady Bunch afro haircut and the same red Adidas track-

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suit. The faint ridiculousness of this scenario is emphasized not only through Chas’ visible grief (and Ben Stiller’s performance, of uncharacteristically subtle torment) but also through the flashbacks to the Tenenbaums’ childhood. If there is an underlying strength of representation in this film, it is surely the vulnerability exposed through the way the characters cling onto the past. The callousness with which Royal unapologetically singles out Richie as a favourite is projected through the various characters’ interaction towards the final confrontation between Chas and Eli and, ultimately, in letting go of the past: redemption.

Greg Singh

sex, lies and videotape Studio/Distributor:

Outlaw Productions Miramax Director:

Stephen Soderbergh Producers:

John Hardy Robert Newmayer Screenwriter:

Stephen Soderbergh Cinematographer:

Walt Lloyd Art Director:

Joanne Schmidt Composer:

Cliff Martinez Editor:

Stephen Soderbergh Duration:

100 minutes Cast:

James Spader Andie MacDowell Peter Gallagher Laura San Giacomo Year:

1989 176

American Independent

Synopsis A road disappears between the wheels of an old beat-up car, while off screen a lilting voice with a soft Southern twang frets about garbage. The car belongs to Graham, who is returning to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after a mysterious absence of nine years; the voice belongs to Ann Bishop Mullanay, a bored, unhappy housewife whose husband John is too preoccupied with his career as a lawyer and his lurid affair with her sister Cynthia to pay much attention to her own needs and latent desires. With John distracted, Ann is left to look after Graham, an old frat brother of her husband’s. Now seemingly John’s opposite – i.e. sensitive and truthful – Ann uses him to fill an emotional void in her life, but she is repulsed when she discovers that he can only find sexual fulfilment by watching interviews he has videotaped with women about their sex lives. It is only after she learns that he has filmed one with Cynthia, as well the truth about her husband’s affair, that she decides to confront Graham about the tapes, literally turning the camera on him in an attempt to untangle a web of lies.

Critique Stephen Soderbergh’s debut feature is an intriguing film about desire, deception and voyeurism, mixing melodrama and subtle comedy to create an intimate picture that zeroes in on the damaged lives of its four suburban inhabitants. Written in eight days and shot in five weeks, the film is in some ways Soderbergh’s simplest and least-ambitious picture, but it also remains one of his most successful and critically-acclaimed. While there is plenty of sex in the film – John and Cynthia’s relationship is based on little else, although she is motivated by rivalry with her sister as much as desire – sex is not the point of the story. It is never sensationalized, while the grainy footage from some of Graham’s interviews, scattered throughout the film, is certainly more erotic than anything that happens in bed. And although Graham uses the tapes to fulfil his sexual needs, he appears more tortured than turned-on when he watches them, wrapped like a child in

Directory of World Cinema

his blanket. Soderbergh is, instead, far more interested in probing the relationships between his characters, with Graham acting as a catalyst to expose their longings, weaknesses and deceit – not only the lies they tell each other, but crucially the lies they tell themselves. The dialogue-heavy film works largely because of the strong ensemble cast: Andie MacDowell delivers an excellent performance as the Southern belle who is sexually and emotionally unfulfilled by her husband, while his arrogance and insincerity are perfectly captured by Peter Gallagher. James Spader, who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his role, possesses an appealing vulnerability, in spite of his character’s arguably perverse but almost clinical penchant for voyeurism. Laura San Giacomo’s brashness is the perfect foil for her character’s insecurities, and in some ways the dysfunctional relationship between Cynthia and Ann feels like the most honest in the film. While the film is hardly perfect (the happy ending certainly seems somewhat contrived), sex, lies and videotape remains a provocative and compelling film.

Sarah Cronin

Spanking the Monkey Studio/Distributor:

Buckeye Films Swelter Films Fine Line Director:

David O Russell Producer:

Dean Silvers Screenwriter:

David O Russell Cinematographer:

Michael Mayers Editor:

Pamela Martin Duration:

100 minutes

Synopsis Ray Aibelli is about to start a medical internship in Washington when he has to abruptly change his plans and return home to look after his mother, who has become bed-bound after having a depression-induced ‘fall’. His father is not present because he is a travelling salesman, and his excursions allow for a series of adulterous episodes. Between washing and therapeuticallymassaging his mother (in the shower and in the bedroom), meeting a girl (who thinks he is ‘holding back’), hanging with his friends (who mock his cowardice), and having intimate moments of masturbation punctuated and deflated by the inquisitiveness of his pet dog, Ray finds his sexual frustration erupting into unwieldy, Vodka-fuelled Oedipal realms that only exacerbate the tensions within his life.

Critique The central conceit of David O Russell’s debut feature that will stay with you after watching the film is that it is about incest, specifically the unnatural love shared between a mother and her son when housebound-sexual frustration becomes a force that will demolish taboos for the sake of gratification. Whilst the uniqueness of this theme within cinema ensures that Spanking the Monkey will always be seen as a titillating pre-Farelly brothers gross-out comedy, the film actually follows a rise-and-fall narrative that provides cringing suspense rather than visceral imagery, and then stalls with little to offer the viewer, once the act has occurred, other than flirtations with suicide, a lost dog and the token Oedipal gambit: ‘Don’t start acting like your father.’ Family Dysfunction 177

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Cast:

Jeremy Davies Alberta Watson Benjamin Hendrickson Year:

1994

Whereas the audience should feel awkward and shocked for being present during and after the act taking place, a true dilemma occurs when one begins to wish that the seduction had been more protracted. Soap gets dropped in the shower, massages creep up the thighs, and phrases such as ‘some girls don’t know what they want’ and ‘you’ve got to be gentle Raymond, you know how to be gentle’ are purred forth onto a sexually-volatile teenage tabula-rasa. The darkly-humorous tensions within the first half of the film significantly outweigh the coming-toterms misery that dictates the second half. In the latter part, Ray’s father emerges as a more prominent figure through which the infractions of the mother and son can be made accountable, but then he himself is shown to be having numerous extra-marital relationships, and so the familial misdeeds appear to be almost vindicated. Furthermore, the sub-plot, in which Ray’s relationship with a girl, who is younger than himself, develops from innocent conversations, through to accusations of rape, and then reconciliation (only to be interrupted by the mother), is a well-conceived foil to the main actions, but one that feels overly complicated in an attempt to inject further drama into the film. Spanking the Monkey won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994 and then the Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay in 1995. An incremental line of complication can be drawn through this film, then Russell’s Flirting with Disaster (1996), then his I Heart Huckabees (2004), where all three films examine how one can attempt to know oneself without every truly finding a concrete answer; in Three Kings (1999) this question is expanded to consider national identity. But whereas Russell’s later films present this question in an overtly self-conscious, existential fashion to draw comedy from it, in Spanking the Monkey the ‘serious’ subtext is present but relegated in favour of sensationalism. By the end of the film, all that Ray seems to have learnt from his myriad of failed sexual tests is that it is easier to just walk away and start life again than it is to address the motivations for his troubling actions; but, then, after the ordeal he has just survived, perhaps that is not a bad thing.

Carl Wilson

A Wedding Studio/Distributor:

20th Century Fox Director:

Robert Altman

178

American Independent

Synopsis Breathing her last in an upstairs bedroom, ancient matriarch Nettie Sloan fails to hold out long enough to witness the arrival of her grandson’s wedding party. At a nearby church, a confused bishop stumbles over the ceremony, bringing together misfits Muffin and Dino. Back at the house, a decision is made to conceal the death from the arriving guests. Bride and groom, and their respective families, congregate for the reception dinner, over which various inter-family

Directory of World Cinema

Producer:

Robert Altman Screenwriters:

John Considine Allan F Nicholls Patricia Resnick Robert Altman Cinematographer:

Charles Rosher Jr Art Director:

Dennis J Parrish Editor:

Tony Lombardo Duration:

125 minutes Cast:

Desi Arnaz Jr Carol Burnett Geraldine Chaplin Mia Farrow Lillian Gish Year:

1978

relationships both fracture and blossom. A large painting of Muffin in the nude is unveiled as a gift from an avant-garde aunt, to everyone else’s obvious distress. Numerous wedding personnel, including over-zealous security patrols and short-measuring barmen, struggle to keep control in a micromanaged comedy of errors. Unwanted arrivals and news of an unexpected family development threaten to tip proceedings over into mayhem. Outside, disinterested youngsters smoke dope and sing along to Leonard Cohen songs.

Critique Hounded into sarcasm by an irritating journalist on the troubled set of 3 Women (1977), Robert Altman, needing a hit after the disastrous reception of his Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976), insisted that the next thing he filmed would be ‘a wedding’. Inspired by his own witticism, he began work on A Wedding: a patchwork portrait of one of civilisations more bizarre rituals. Lillian Gish, who would have been party to her fair share of cinematic nuptials in the D W Griffiths days, is the grand old lady of a Great-Gatsbyesque dynasty, crumbling before her eyes. The Sloan bloodline, already tarnished by her daughter Regina’s marriage to an Italian waiter, must now suffer the further insult of a union with the new money (or no money) Brenners. The not-so-happy couple are, it transpires, little more than peripheral characters in what must be Altman’s most audaciously character-heavy work – 48 speaking parts, compared to 24 in Nashville (1975) – truly stretching the definition of ensemble. Geraldine Chaplin plays Rita Billingsley, the continually-harassed wedding planner, attempting to balance convention and anarchy, and struggling manfully to find order in chaos. She is clearly a character close to the director’s heart. Even by Altman’s sardonic standards, A Wedding is a savagely-cynical film. Mia Farrow sets the tone as Buffy Brenner, the bride’s sister, numbed into silence by a curious combination of knowing apathy and straightforward stupidity – her apparently-wilful wantonness more an emblem of her own self-hatred than of any joyful sense of sexual exploration. The countryhouse setting, which Altman would return to for his later Gosford Park (2001), owes something to Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), but without the French director’s overarching humanism. The gathering offers a handy microcosm of American society, with all its attendant frictions in race, immigration and sexuality. There is infidelity, promiscuity, heedless drug taking and unscheduled pregnancies. But perhaps the nub of the film is its survey of class, or at the least the lack of classlessness: the real divider, Altman posits, in American life. In 2004, composer William Bolcom was inspired to adapt the film into an opera, which Altman himself directed for the stage.

Rob Dennis

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From the films of John Cassavetes to those of John Sayles and Paul Thomas Anderson, there is a rich tradition of alternative approaches to narrative in independent cinema. If mainstream cinema can be seen to rely heavily on what is often referred to as the ‘classical Hollywood narrative’, that of the set up, the quest and the resolution, then independent cinema has become the breeding ground for more challenging and experimental approaches to cinematic storytelling. It can be argued that there are three distinct forms of narrative manipulation that are prevalent in independent cinema. It is important to remember that these styles and techniques are not hard-and-fast rules; indeed many films across the genres from mainstream Hollywood to the borderline avant-garde film-makers (of which the modern independents sit roughly in the centre) happily employ any manner or combination of stylistic approaches. The loosely identified forms are: (1) The multiple-storyline movie, (2) the puzzle movie and (3) freeform/collage style. The multiple-storyline movie generally utilizes an ensemble cast, made up of established character actors, sometimes with a smattering of ‘A-list’ talent, while the movies are reminiscent of the novel – chapter divisions and more rounded ancillary characters – also of episodic television, soap operas and long-running series, for example. Character-driven scripts dominate; they are less concerned with an overarching plot or with special effects and thrills-per-second moviemaking. Characters in these films are as likely to be driven by internal emotions as external influences. An intensely-human desire for communication and connection with others propels many of the characters in these films; they establish what David Bordwell has termed ‘network narratives’, in that they point to greater awareness of and interest in differing points of view whilst eliciting a wider spectrum of themes and emotions than the mainstream movie. The ‘puzzle movie’ plays with our perceptions of character, time, narrative and emotions. Something of a catch-all description, the ‘puzzle’ movie straddles many genres: crime, horror, thriller and sci-fi. Generally focusing on a smaller group of characters than multiple-narrative films, and having a more-explicitly plot-driven story, these films actively manipulate the audience’s expectations by operating a magnified non-linear approach to narrative. It is a world of flashbacks, flash forwards, repeated scenes from different points of view, oblique information, or misleading dialogue and, in the case of David Lynch, a habit of leading the viewer into a blind alley via a black hole and then leaving you there. Think of the backwards narrative in Memento (2000), which leaves the audience as baffled as Leonard (Guy Pearce) as to whom he can trust, and this is the territory of the ‘puzzle’ movie. The final form may inhabit a more recognizably ‘indie’ space (low budget, lesser known cast, script-driven) but it is equally manipulative in regards to its approach to narrative. Plot is suppressed in these movies to the point of being almost absent; they invite the audience to view snapshots of their characters’ lives, a series of vignettes that may or may not end up at any formal conclusion. Seemingly-unrelated scenes, inaudible conversations, of which many will be improvised or semi-improvised, long static shots, scenes of domestic banality and workplace tedium form a layering of emotion and character portraits. This style of movie is less concerned with narrative momentum and more interested in verisimilitude: the day-to-day existence of ordinary folk. These films in the main eschew conventional plot points and lean towards the poetic, preferring to paint a more ambiguous picture, leaving the viewer to fill in many of the blanks. The vignette movie also crosses genres and forms: from the multicharacter comedy of Slacker (1991) and Dazed and Confused (1993) through

Left: Memento, Summit Entertainment, Photographed by Danny Rothenberg.

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to grittier films such as Larry Clark’s Kids (1995) and Harmony Korine’s Gummo (1997). These movies meander their way across the screen, with petty incidents and mundane interactions connecting to give an overall flavour of themes and ideas. Even the more brutal or cruel incidents in the films of Clark and Korine are shot through with a pathos and melancholy that is removed from mainstream Hollywood. A multitude of directors have experimented with narrative: John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley and the Coen brothers. Robert Altman is widely seen as a major influence on contemporary independent directors, and one cannot watch Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) without being reminded of Altman’s work, especially Nashville (1975) and Short Cuts (1993). These sprawling, multistranded narratives which focus on an array of characters are resolutely mature works by directors interested in people, their lives, emotions and interactions with others, as well as the dramatic potential of random incidents of chance and fate. The denouements of Short Cuts and Magnolia hinge on elemental, or even Biblical, events, with an earthquake and a downpour of frogs, respectively, linking many of the characters. Similar themes are explored in recent films such as John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006) and Karen Moncrieff’s The Dead Girl (2006) – the underground salon in Mitchell’s film being the place that brings the disparate characters into contact with each other, and the titular character linking the different narrative strands in Moncrieff’s work. Crossover hits have also emerged, with both Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000) and Paul Haggis’ Crash (2004) gaining Oscar recognition and commercial success, indicating that there is a wider audience for more complex and ambiguous movies. As Hollywood increasingly becomes synonymous with generic entertainment, the independent sector becomes more of a sanctuary for creative freedom and artistic expression, and a beacon for more demanding viewers. Audiences today have been raised on a diet of TV, graphic novels, videogames and the internet, and are much more culturally-aware than those of previous decades. As television series such as Lost (2004–), and The Wire (2002–08) increasingly employ complex narrative structures, independent movies assimilate, reflect and influence the cultural mores of the times. Film-makers can only benefit from incorporating and utilizing a variety of narrative styles to engage with an audience and to distinguish them from an increasingly homogenized mainstream.

Neil Mitchell

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Adaptation Studio/Distributor:

Sony Pictures Director:

Spike Jonze Producers:

Jonathan Demme Vincent Landay Edward Saxon Screenwriters:

Charlie Kaufman Donald Kaufman Cinematographer:

Lance Acord Art Director:

Peter Andrus Editor:

Eric Zumbrunnen Composer:

Carter Burwell Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Nicolas Cage Meryl Streep Chris Cooper Tilda Swinton Year:

2002

Synopsis Charlie Kaufman is an anxiety-riddled screenwriter living with his twin brother Donald in Los Angeles. Accepting a commission to adapt Susan Orlean’s book, The Orchid Thief, Charlie hopes to honour the work – based around a maverick Florida orchid hunter named John Laroche. Meanwhile, Donald – much to Charlie’s annoyance – starts work on a script of his own: a serial-killer story called The 3. As Charlie ploughs further into The Orchid Thief, we are introduced to ‘scenes’ from the book as New Yorker journalist Orlean (Meryl Streep) meets with Laroche and their relationship develops. Struggling with the adaptation, Charlie suddenly hits on the idea of including himself at the heart of the screenplay. Unable to find a way of ending the script, he decides to go to New York to meet with Orlean, but is too afraid to make contact. Calling upon Donald, who poses as Charlie to meet with Orlean, the twins follow her to Florida, where its becomes clear that – some three years after her book was published – she is still embroiled in an affair with Laroche. After they are discovered spying upon the couple at Laroche’s swampbound hideaway, a chase ensues that leaves both Donald and Laroche dead. Charlie returns to Los Angeles, finally able to finish his screenplay.

Critique Spike Jonze’s second collaboration with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman begins on the set of their first film, Being John Malkovich (1999). Real-life crewmembers, including cinematographer Lance Acord, can be glimpsed as Malkovich instructs the crew to be brisk in their tasks. In the background is a neurotic-looking Kaufman – only it is not the real screenwriter but a wig-wearing Nicolas Cage. So begins one of the most brilliant films about writing a film. Like the Ouroboros, the symbolic snake that eats its own tail, which Charlie invokes when he hears about a plot-point in Donald’s script, Adaptation is a head-spinning work of self-reflexivity. Begun after the real-life Kaufman struggled to adapt Orlean’s nonfiction work, he solved the dilemma by dramatizing these difficulties – via an onscreen alter ego – and splicing them with extracts from the book. Invariably, in the film, Charlie reaches the same conclusion: that he can only crack Orlean’s work by including himself. It means that the plot of Adaptation is actually the script ultimately written by Charlie. Various events on screen – such as Charlie dictating into his recorder – are echoed as Charlie plots out his screenplay, one he hopes not to sully by using conventional Hollywood staples. ‘I don’t want to cram in sex or guns or car chases or characters learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other,’ he says. The

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irony is that he is unable to end his screenplay – essentially the third act of Adaptation itself – any other way. As we see, a sex scene between Orlean and Laroche is followed by a shoot-out in the swamp, when Charlie is discovered spying on them, and a subsequent car-chase. Meanwhile, Charlie learns: ‘You are what you love, not what loves you.’ It is in these moments that Adaptation transcends its structural tricks. From Charlie and Donald’s tender final exchanges to Charlie’s love confession to Amelia, the girl he has mooned over for most of the film, the conclusion falls in line with another sage piece of advice given to Charlie: ‘Your characters must change but the change must come from them.’ As this hints, evolution (or adaptation, if you prefer) is the central theme of the film. From the bravura ‘evolutionary scale’ sequence at the outset to a flashback to Charles Darwin later on, Kaufman never lets us forget that in order to survive, we must adapt. Laroche, who even carries Darwin tapes in his van, has switched his attentions from tropical fish to orchids to the Internet in his time. By the end, Charlie has learnt to adapt, too – both in life and on the page. ‘I like this’, he concludes. ‘This is good.’ That the film does not feel, as Charlie puts it, ‘self-indulgent’, ‘narcissistic’ and ‘solipsistic’, is due in part to the performances. Cage’s bravura twin-turn draws sympathy for both the neurotic Charlie and over-confident Donald; the Oscar-winning Cooper vibrantly pays tribute to Laroche, while Streep – particularly when high on orchid extract – is delicious to watch. That we have got this far without mentioning Jonze is testament to how to graciously he allows the complex rhythms of Kaufman’s script to play out without ever intruding.

James Mottram

Being John Malkovich Studio/Distributor:

Gramercy Pictures Propaganda Films Single Cell Films Director:

Spike Jonze

184

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Synposis A frustrated puppeteer, Craig Shwartz, decides to earn some money by getting a job as a filing clerk in an office located on the vertically-challenged ‘floor 7½’ of a building. He falls for fellow-worker Maxine, who offers an exotic alternative to his animal-loving wife Lotte, though she does not reciprocate his interest. While at work, Craig fortuitously discovers a portal that enables a person to ‘become’ John Malkovich for fifteen minutes (hearing, seeing and feeling what he experiences), before they are dumped by the side of an expressway. After informing Maxine of his discovery, she helps him turn it into a moneyspinner by charging people to enter the portal. Maxine discovers that she is desirous of Lotte, but only when she is inside Malkovich’s head, which makes Craig jealous. Meanwhile, Malkovich discovers that people are entering his head and tries to put a stop to it, which is complicated by Craig’s own plans to boost his success as a puppeteer and his closeness to Maxine.

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Producers:

Steve Golin Vincent Landay Sandy Stern Michael Stipe Charlie Kaufman Michael Kuhn Screenwriter:

Charlie Kaufman Cinematographer:

Lance Acord Art Director:

Peter Andrus Editor:

Eric Zumbrunnen Composer:

Carter Burwell Duration:

112 minutes Cast:

John Cusack Cameron Diaz Catherine Keener John Malkovich Year:

1999

Critique Being John Malkovich was the film which announced two particularly important talents to independent film-making: director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman. While Jonze was already recognized as a music-video director, having shot inspired shorts for the likes of Beastie Boys, Daft Punk and Fatboy Slim, Kaufman was relatively unknown, having written for television comedy shows including The Dana Carvey Show (1996). The demented imagination of Being John Malkovich has since led to him becoming one of the most-lauded screenwriters of his time. The concept of his breakthrough work captured the imagination of cinemagoers, revolving as it did around such a bizarre concept. For the majority of critics, it was also a film that managed to live up to its conceptual promise. Jonze, who was known for his stylish approach to music videos, presented the material in a rather straightforward, conventional manner. This was in contrast to the eccentric script, which not only slotted into an ‘offbeat’ tendency common in American independent cinema but pushed such tendencies into new, idiosyncratic directions. The film also managed to touch on a number of emotional and more philosophical issues, working as it did as a love story, a tale of success and failure, as well as a reflection upon celebrity and the nature of self. The desire in the film to be someone else is realized, of course, through experiencing the subjectivity not of a huge star but of a respected – but not widely recognized – actor. John Malkovich, with a reputation for seriousness, pulled off the self-deprecating comic role with aplomb, humorously riffing on his rather pompous reputation but never slipping into farcical mode. Malkovich and the rest of the cast manage to act as though these absurd events are actually happening, thus creating an absorbing filmic world that is both ridiculous and believable. Being John Malkovich can be considered postmodern to the extent that it mixes the world of fact and fiction, occasionally mixing them up in rather humorous ways, as with the appearance of Charlie Sheen as Malkovich’s best friend (something which Malkovich had to remind interviewers was not actually a reflection of ‘real life’). This is something that Kaufman has extended in his subsequent work, particularly in Adaptation (2001) and his directorial debut Synecdoche New York (2009). Yet, whereas those films tended to extend Kaufman’s philosophical, introspective tendencies in increasingly melancholy directions, Being John Malkovich contains these more ‘serious’ threads within a predominantly comic framework. The weighty themes are there to ponder upon if you so wish, but the film does not linger on them. Instead, it can be considered a particularly ingenious and entertaining piece of pop surrealism.

Jamie Sexton

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Choose Me Studio/Distributor:

Tartan Productions Director:

Alan Rudolph Producers:

Carolyn Pfeiffer David Blocker Screenwriter:

Alan Rudolph Cinematographer:

Jan Kiesser Composer:

Teddy Pendergrass

Mickey Bolton, a fantasist with occasional violent tendencies, is released from a psychiatric hospital. He heads to Eve’s Lounge: a silky jazz gin joint, and home to various romantic strays. Here he meets Pearl, an aspiring bar-room poet with an uncaring, philandering husband named Zack, and Eve, a former prostitute, now landlady (who also happens to be sexually entangled with Zack.) Mickey charms them both with his tales of a mysterious professional past, encompassing military intelligence, trans-border espionage, auto repairing and literary academia. Eve’s advert for a flat mate is answered by Dr Nancy Love, host of Loveline, a nightly radio phone-in concerning matters of the heart (on which Eve is a regular, anonymous, guest.) Thwarted in his attempts to leave for Las Vegas, Mickey remains in town and becomes linked to all three ladies, unbeknownst to each other. He lets it be known that he was once involved with the original proprietor of Eve’s, a love affair that ended with her eventual suicide.

Editor:

Critique

Mia Goldman

From its choreographed, neon-washed credit sequence of smooth dancing prostitutes and johns milling around outside the film’s principle location, Eve’s Lounge, it is clear that Choose Me is going to take place in a very particular universe. Mise-en-scène has always been paramount in the cinema of Alan Rudolph, but perhaps never more so than here, where every object, advertising hording, item of clothing and character tic is weighed with multifaceted significance. From the art prints that garnish the walls of Eve’s airy apartment (mostly by Quebecan artist Susan G. Scott, with one prominent print carrying the portent text, ‘A recurring image: I often thought of killing him’) to the sunglasses that seem to pass ownership from one character to another, every hidden emotion or psychological scar finds its place on the screen. In Rudolph’s world, character growth is signalled physically, with characters literally changing before our eyes. The dialogue is arch but always sincere. Sex and loneliness, normally combined, often inseparable, are the overriding themes. Eve’s (Lesley Ann Warren) lifestyle of loveless one-night stands and fruitless affairs (‘I like men’ she states, but we sense something else) leaves her cynical to the point of ending it all. Pearl’s (Rae Dawn Chong) confused headlong romanticism finds her in an abusive relationship she cannot escape (‘At least he cares enough to do it’ she says, referring to her black eye.) Dr Nancy Love (Geneviève Bujold) talks the talk but won’t walk the walk, until her untapped sexual reserve starts to spill over. And Mickey’s (Keith Carradine) doomed search for a lost love leads him to propose to every woman he kisses. In Choose Me everyone is involved with the wrong person and, worse, they seem to know it.

Duration:

106 minutes Cast:

Lesley Ann Warren Geneviève Bujold Keith Carradine Rae Dawn Chong Year:

1984

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Rudolph plays on the inherent sexiness of late twentiethcentury telecommunication: the disembodied voice, the pale receiver held up to a lipsticked mouth, the finger twirling in the tightly-ravelled telephone cord – all now strangely dated. The atmosphere of stylized melancholy would eventually find itself reprocessed in many of Hal Hartley’s films and the merry-go-round of loveless despair mirrored in Paul Thomas Anderson’s less succinct Magnolia (1999). Well-judged performances from Rudolph-regulars Carradine and Bujold manage to find a fair amount of humour in the pathos. Intriguingly, celebrated pop-artist Ed Ruscha appears as Nancy’s sexed-up radio boss.

Rob Dennis

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Studio/Distributor:

Focus Features Director:

Michel Gondry Producer:

Steve Golin Screenwriter:

Charlie Kaufman Cinematographer:

Ellen Kuras Art Director:

David Stein Composer:

Jon Brion Editors:

Valis Óskarsdóttir James Haygood Duration:

108 minutes

Synopsis A world that looks like ours, but cannot possibly be. Joel Barish, an introvert thirty-something hobbyist cartoonist meets Clementine Kruczynski, a more assertive paperback fanatic ostensibly looking, as she puts it, ‘for her own piece of mind’. In the ‘first’ story (the two run parallel), which is recounted through Joel’s receding memories, the two meet, fall in love, fall out of love, part – and then have their memories of one another surgically removed (putting the ‘own’ in own piece of mind). In the ‘second’, occurring in the present, they meet again, fall in love once more – and, perhaps, will fall out of it all the same.

Critique Looking back, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind now seems to have been, at once, ahead of its time and adjacent to it. It shares with such contemporaries as The Brown Bunny (2003) and the overrated Memento (2000) a successful negotiation of the commercial demands of its financiers with the critical requirements of its perceived audience (which raises questions, of course, about what constitutes ‘independent’); it solves itself, if not as a puzzle, than at least as a riddle – rather than a linear piece of prose; and it reviews and revises medium- and generic conventions (such as, for one, the ‘happy ending’). One could, moreover, say that it draws extensively on a visual style and rhythm commonly associated with music videos, but then one would overlook the fact that much of that aesthetic was, in turn, itself inspired by director Michel Gondry’s music videos. Yet the film also clearly anticipates a later trend in ‘indiewood’ cinema, perhaps best known as ‘quirky’. Indeed, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind focuses, like many ‘quirky’ films, on a slightly-untypical romantic pairing (let us call them the geek and the girl-with-the-looming-eyes). It has

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Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Focus Features, Photographed by David Lee.

Cast:

Jim Carrey Kate Winslet Tom Wilkinson Mark Ruffalo Kirsten Dunst Year:

2004

188

American Independent

a tone which remains relatively light despite the potential gravity of the topic. It observes its protagonists from up-close, with mostly hand-held camera, and with a sympathetic eye (whereas many of its contemporaries and predecessors take a more distant, ‘objective’ approach). And, most importantly, it has a somewhat ‘childish’ aesthetic – not least in the scene in which Joel is actually transported into a world in which he is a child, surrounded by playful adults twice his size, navigating his way through colourful furniture that is too big for him. Gondry, of course, would perfect this aesthetic is in his later, somewhat disappointing, The Science of Sleep (2006). First and foremost, however, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an extraordinary cinematic achievement in its own right. Gondry’s cut-and-paste vision, juxtaposing long shots with close-ups, and high angles with low angles, and blues with pinks, seems designed for Kaufman’s poetry of haphazard plot-turns and idiosyncratic dialogues – and that ending, oh that ending. And Jim Carrey is perhaps just that bit more convincing as the shy, withdrawn Joel because one can sense so well the extent to which he has to restrain himself – and is, at times, so clearly frustrated about it. Indeed, Eternal

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Sunshine of the Spotless Mind might just be that rare feat: a film that is as well crafted as it is conceived; and that is as quick paced as it is contemplative.

Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen

Lost Highway Studio/Distributor:

CIBY 2000 Director:

David Lynch Producers:

Deepak Nayar Tom Sternberg Mary Sweeny Screenwriters:

David Lynch Barry Gifford Cinematography:

Peter Deming Art Director:

Russell J Smith Editor:

Mary Sweeny Duration:

135 minutes Cast:

Bill Pullman Patricia Arquette Balthazar Getty Robert Loggia Year:

1997

Synopsis Jazz saxophonist Fred Madison receives a cryptic message over his intercom one morning, informing him that ‘Dick Laurent is dead’. Fred peers out of the front window overlooking the street below and finds no one there. The next morning Fred’s sultry wife Renee finds a mysterious package at the front door. Enclosed is a videotape showing grainy black-and-white scenes of the front of their house. The next day another video arrives, but this one is even more disturbing, as it appears to have been shot inside the house. Fred grows more paranoid and suspects Renee of infidelity. As a creeping dread permeates Fred’s thoughts, he begins to experience states of dissociation, culminating in his being framed for the murder of his wife. Even though Fred is found at the crime scene covered in Renee’s blood, he insists that he did not commit the crime. Nevertheless, he is found guilty and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, he suffers a severe aneurysm and somehow metamorphoses into the body of young Pete Dayton, who is found in the cell the next morning by the prison guards. Fred is nowhere to be seen. Pete is released from prison into the custody of his confused parents and suffers from his own headaches and a sense that he is losing his identity. One day at the garage, where he works as a mechanic, Pete spots a curvaceous blonde named Alice in the passenger seat of big-time gangster Mr Eddie’s Cadillac. Mr Eddie takes a liking to Pete and wants him to take care of his wheels. But Pete stupidly starts to take care of Mr Eddie’s squeeze as well, and soon finds himself down the long, dangerous lost highway just like Fred before him.

Critique Described by director Lynch as a ‘21st-century noir horror film,’ Lost Highway was, at the time of its release, the pop surrealist’s most cryptic, hypnotic, and maddening work. Most critics loathed the film and audiences stayed away. The later Mulholland Dr. (2001) would entice viewers down a more approachable twisty path of narrative and stylistic weirdness and Inland Empire (2006) would supersede this film in the enigma department, but neither reflects Lynch’s obsessions with the erotic image, violent obsession, and the oblivion of self with such a perverse aggression as Lost Highway. Lynch and co-screenwriter Barry Gifford craft an immaculatelytextured world of film-noir character tropes mashed into a

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suitably-creepy horror-film atmosphere of dark corridors, split personalities and demons from other realms beyond our imagining in the guise of humans. Although Lynch would never dare offer any of these genre clichés without turning them inside out, the supernatural unease permeating the film within its first hour is ecstatically charged and more haunting than any straightforward horror film from the 1990s. Lynch has always been a master of sinister mood. But here he embraces the macabre like never before, plunging his average-guy-losers Pullman and Getty down into the dark drain of post-noir LA, but without alienating us with the camp excessiveness that marred Gifford and Lynch’s previous collaboration. Highway is arguably as grotesque as Wild at Heart (1990), though much of it is far more muted and subdued as it cruises along its Möbius-Strip plotline, making the jarring moments (Mr Eddie and the tailgater; the Mystery Man appearances) even more so when they intrude into the narrative. Sadly, the major criticism of this potently-oversexed and unapologetic sleazefest is the lack of likeable, Lynchian protagonists. Patricia Arquette, while lusciously overripe, is unable to wiggle her way out of the femme fatale corset she has been strapped into, and both Bill Pullman and Balthazar Getty are too passive and bled of personality to muster much sympathy or concern, unlike Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet (1986) or Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr. It is not Lynch’s most accessible film, but its languid pacing and fetishistic indulgences are potently enticing. It is a road worth travelling down for adventurous souls and the closest Lynch has come to capturing a true nightmare since Eraserhead (1977).

Derek Hill

Magnolia Studio/Distributor:

Ghoulardi Film Company New Line Cinema Director:

Paul Thomas Anderson Producers:

Paul Thomas Anderson Michael De Luca Lynn Harris Daniel Lupi JoAnne Sellar Dylan Tichenor

190

American Independent

Synopsis Los Angeles, mid-1990s. After an introduction concerning the ideas of fate and coincidence we are introduced to the long-time host of a popular kids’ game show named Jimmy Gator, an alcoholic and spiritually-defeated man recently diagnosed with cancer. A regretful Jimmy wants to reconnect with his daughter, a lonely addict named Claudia. Claudia in the meantime has met a decent cop named Jim, and they both hope that a relationship might save them from their isolated and meaningless lives. Meanwhile, one of Jimmy’s old contestants, ‘Quiz Kid’ Donnie Smith, is experiencing his own particular life-crisis: a crisis that began after his childhood was stripped away after appearing on Jimmy’s show, a sad fate that is now happening to a brilliant young boy named Stanley. Across town, an old man named Earl has a dying wish to see, one more time, his son: a man who now goes by the name Frank, a popular misogynistic self-help guru. A strange series of coincidences, and perhaps fate, brings these characters,

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Screenwriter:

Paul Thomas Anderson Cinematographer:

Robert Elswit Composers:

Jon Brion Aimee Mann Editor:

Dylan Tichenor Duration:

188 minutes Cast:

Tom Cruise Philip Seymour Hoffman William H. Macy Julianne Moore John C. Reilly Year:

1999

among others, together in one bizarre act of nature that will change all their lives forever.

Critique While words like ‘sprawling’, ‘epic’ and ‘complex’ have often been used to describe writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, the film is, in fact, a much more intimate and penetrating character study than perhaps most have given it credit for. The fact that the film’s complex storylines and mammoth running time of over three hours have indeed scared away many viewers is a shame, as Magnolia is one of the greatest works of a pivotal decade in American cinema, and continuing confirmation that Anderson is one of the most important directors of his generation. Anderson had originally conceived Magnolia as a small-scale film. Looking to follow up Boogie Nights (1997) was no easy task on the part of the talented, not-yet 30-year-old, but Magnolia would turn out to be Anderson’s most ambitious work yet. Taking a thematic cue from a startling group of unreleased songs his friend Aimee Mann had shared with him, Anderson wrote Magnolia as a visual answer of sorts to her music. The final product is indeed unimaginable without Mann’s intense soundtrack, a work so integral to the story that it sometimes even drowns out Anderson’s pitch-perfect dialogue. Pushing past the many layers of storytelling and personality that fuel Magnolia, it is in fact a film, much like Boogie Nights and his first feature Hard Eight (1996), dealing with the idea of family: specifically the disconnection that can occur between a father and his child. While Anderson is often looked upon as someone focusing more on the fractured relations of fathers and sons (and indeed the film deals with some of those), Magnolia’s most haunting storyline concerns the damage done by a father to his daughter – here the case of Philip Baker Hall’s doomed TV-host Jimmy Gator and the daughter he sexually abused and spiritually destroyed: Claudia (played brilliantly by the sadly undervalued Melora Walters). It is a shame that Magnolia’s running time and adult themes scared so many prospective fans off in 1999, as it is actually one of the most relatable films of the decade. After all, a film that hinges on the line, ‘We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us’ is, more than anything else, an extremely sensitive and human work. Magnolia won a great deal of acclaim when it was released in 1999, but it also came under some heavy fire from some viewers, critics and, surprisingly, some of Anderson’s peers. It grossed just over half of its original production cost, but did receive three Oscar nominations (including the well-deserved nod to Mann, as well to Tom Cruise, and for Anderson’s script). Time will tell where Magnolia stands, but ten years on and it is already ensconced in many minds as one of the great modern American films.

Jeremy Richey Narrative Disorder 191

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Nashville Studio/Distributor:

Paramount Director:

Robert Altman Producer:

Robert Altman Screenwriter:

Joan Tewkesbury Cinematographer:

Paul Lohmann Editors:

Sidney Levin Dennis Hill Duration:

161 minutes Cast:

Ned Beatty Karen Black Keith Carradine Geraldine Chaplin Shelly Duvall Henry Gibson Scott Glenn Michael Murphy Lily Tomlin Year:

1975

192

American Independent

Synopsis Over twenty characters, ranging from members of the countrymusic establishment, aspiring stars, hangers-on, politicians and groupies, intermingle for five days in Music City, USA, leading up to the presidential election. The city, adorned with flags and other patriotic paraphernalia, becomes a nexus point for Altman’s omniscient camera to observe a wide spectrum of Americans on the burn-out. There are some, like music maven and possible political candidate Haven Hamilton, who will always rise above it all, while others such as Barbara Jean, a fragile country-music princess recovering from an accident and too many years on the road, may have used up her nine lives. Still others, striving to hang on to their dreams, cling to the chance that they may connect with another person, if only for a night. But dreams are manufactured big in Nashville. And there are always new people to fill them.

Critique Coming off the back-to-back financial disappointments of the Depression-era crime drama Thieves Like Us (1974) and the gambling study California Split (1974), director Robert Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury teamed up to chronicle America in the mid-1970s. Altman had long been fascinated with working with large casts of characters, juggling multiple storylines, observing people at their most morally-questionable, desperate, and down-shifting, but never had he juggled so much and so successfully. With a keen eye for the brutal detail, Altman’s lens searches and pokes for a character’s fatal flaw, but never holding too long on the cracks for fear of losing the meandering buzz that is an Altman trademark. Nashville is Altman at his most ambitious and loose, although there is always a sense of forward narrative movement even when it is initially unclear where he is leading us. Where we end up is one of the crowning moments in American film of the 1970s: a brilliantly-edited and staged nexus point for the film’s main characters at the political rally for an invisible ‘peoples’ candidate’, who offers everything and nothing with his snappy sloganeering. Although set in the capitol of country music, this is Altman at his most jazzy and intuitive, allowing his favoured overlapping dialogue and the actors’ improvisatory experimentations to take centre stage in a manner that his previous films had always kept in check. The film rarely feels at odds with its narrative expectations because Altman and Tewkesbury (who spent much of her prep time before writing the script in Nashville, soaking up the atmosphere) never enforce the boundaries at the beginning, anyway. Unlike many of the characters in the film, who are struggling with their own identities or social standings, there is nothing for Altman to rebel against since he has rigged the game from the very beginning. Nashville is

Directory of World Cinema

all about segues, roundabouts, and getting lost in the details. And though Altman, of course, never flinches from the painful, uncomfortable truths confronting the characters, the film is exhilarating to behold with so many actors working at the top of their craft (all of the songs were written by the actors), especially Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin, and taking so many chances. Altman’s early-1970s’ output is formidable, but rarely has such a talent hit it so right in one fell swoop.

Derek Hill

Pi Studio/Distributor:

Artisan Entertainment Director:

Darren Aronofsky Producer:

Eric Watson Screenwriters:

Darren Aronofsky Sean Gullette Eric Watson Cinematographer:

Matthew Libatique Art Director:

Eileen Butler Composer:

Clint Mansell Editor:

Oren Sarch Duration:

84 minutes Cast:

Sean Gullette Mark Margolis Ben Shenkman Pamela Hart Year:

1998

Synopsis Max Cohen lives alone in his apartment in the middle of Chinatown and believes that the world can be understood through numbers. Indeed, he believes that numbers can provide order by identifying patterns within chaos. Using his home computer, Euclid, Cohen starts by searching for patterns within the fluctuations of the stock exchange, and comes across a 216-digit number that he discards before he realizes that some of the numbers are the same as those of companies whose share prices have plunged overnight. Seeking to recover the numbers, Cohen is pursued by Marcy Dawson (an employee of a Wall Street firm played by Pamela Hart) and Lenny Meyer, a Hasidic Jew, both of whom are desperate to get their hands on the numbers. While Marcy’s motivations are purely financial, the Hasidic Jews want the numbers as they symbolize the true and unspeakable name of God. Plagued by constant migraines and increasing paranoia, Cohen finds chaos in the place of order, and descends into insanity as the boundaries between reality and hallucination are transgressed. While he achieves peace at the end of the film, it is a peace achieved only through the very effacement of self.

Critique The first film by Darren Aronofsky clearly demonstrates the director’s skill and inventiveness. Shot on black-and-white reverse stock film with hip-hop montage, with the use of vibra-cam and multi-layered music and sound effects, the film draws the viewer into the strange world, composed of technology, mathematics and mysticism, inhabited by Max Cohen. Sean Gullette puts in a powerful and mesmerizing performance as the tormented Max, while Ben Shenkman gives an understated and nuanced performance as the Hasidic Jew who befriends and then betrays Cohen, and Pamela Hart is suitably menacing as one of the film’s main villains. The use of black-and-white film stock in various tonalities and textures heightens the symbolic contrast of light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, sight and blindness, order and disorder that motivates the narrative trajectory. Cohen’s desire for

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order out of chaos is mirrored by the formal qualities of the film, in which repetitions of shots and sequences add order to the underlying chaos of the narrative. While Aronofsky has acknowledged the influence of Terry Gilliam on Pi, particular with regards to the mixture of old and new technology in Cohen’s room, the cyberpunk aesthetics of it bring to mind the early work of both David Lynch and David Cronenberg. While stylistically and aesthetically Pi is outstanding, the narrative is overly complex. The esoteric references to Pythagoras, Hasidic Judaism, Van Gogh and the Chinese game of Go make the narrative overtly complex and difficult to follow in places. In addition, it is difficult to empathize with such an alienated character as Cohen, who appears to be borderline autistic. Given the repeated scenes of Cohen taking drugs, and the nightmare sequences that follow, it is no surprise that Aronofsky’s follow-up, Requiem for a Dream (2000), would deal with drug addiction. Overall, however, Pi is the debut of a clearly-talented director. While not altogether successful, Pi is both an interesting and innovative film, which paved the way for Aronofsky’s recent success with The Wrestler (2008), which received three Oscar nominations.

Colette Balmain

Primer Studio/Distributor:

THINKfilm Director:

Shane Carruth Producer:

Shane Carruth Screenwriter:

Shane Carruth Art Director:

Shane Carruth Composer:

Shane Carruth Editor:

Shane Carruth Duration:

77 minutes

194

American Independent

Synopsis In a Dallas garage, four friends devote their spare time to devising patentable tweaks to existing technology in the hope of getting rich quick. While experimenting with superconductors, Aaron and Abe produce a system which puts out more energy than they put into it. They shut out their friends while working out its implications, ultimately realizing that it is a kind of time machine: if you switch it on at time A and enter it at time B, you travel back to time A (but this also means that between times A and B, two of you exist). This enables them to take advantage of the stock market, carefully accruing wealth but without having a discernible impact on the world. Abe is anxious to avoid messing around with causality, but Aaron begins to harbour revenge fantasies. Things go awry. Aarons and Abes proliferate, attacking different versions of themselves. Disagreements escalate. One Abe sets about sabotaging the machine while another Abe (or possibly the same one, but earlier) is building it. While one Aaron settles down with his family, another finds mysterious corporate-military backers for a much larger machine somewhere overseas.

Critique Shane Carruth’s Primer, like David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), requires multiple viewings to figure out its deliberately-

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Shane Carruth David Sullivan Year:

2004

oblique narrative, aspects of which remain impossible to pin down. In this, it is unique among American time-travel movies. Unlike the Terminator (1984–2001) and Back to the Future (1985–90) trilogies, it is not easily reducible to oedipal primalscene narrative, but is committed to a more thoroughgoing destabilization of temporality, duration, narrative, memory and identity. This contingency of meaning and self-conscious ambiguity is more akin to such European modernist time-travel fantasies as L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961), La Jetée (1962) and Je T’aime, Je T’aime (1968) and, like them, it is also a meditation on cinema itself. Early in Primer, when the garage door rolls shut, the inventors remain visible through the four windows in it; the image looks like four frames of film unspooled across a black background. In several scenes, footage overlaps, repeats from the same and different angles, the action apparently stuttering, disrupting the illusion of continuous time and space constructed by more conventional editing. Elsewhere, jump cuts compress time, to similar effect. Reality becomes subject to multiple takes, events can be revised and erased; a key incident is ‘reverse-engineered into a perfect moment’. The film contrives to hold the viewer at a distance from the world its unsympathetic characters inhabit. Shot in 16mm and blown up to 35 mm via a digital intermediary, the film is dominated by sickly greens and yellows; ambient sound and the post-synchronized dialogue, some of it digitally distorted to match lip movements, often sound just not quite right. This is an unhomely world in which the logic of capital has spread into every corner. Aaron and Abe work 30 hours a week on top of their day jobs, but derive no pleasure from tinkering with things in their garage. Alienated from their own creative being, they have instrumentalized their own skills and desires: all they want to do is produce the tweak that will make them rich. They transform time-travel into just another form of labour – subordinating themselves to rigid schedules, tracking stocks and shares, tying themselves further into capital’s annexation of our future – and even the extra hours they produce in their lives, extending their subjective experience by hours every day, are just dead times in which they must disconnect even further from the world. They are so woven into the fabric of late-capital that they can only imagine using this fabulous technology to leave everything – apart from their bank balances – exactly the way it was. But causality is complex, not linear: consequences come not in chains but in webs that reach in all directions. Ultimately, this is where Primer differs from nouvelle vague time-travel fantasies. They are primarily backward-looking, concerned with memory and the props which secure bourgeois identity. Primer looks to the future, but instead finds a complex, dynamic, contradictory present already out of control.

Mark Bould

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Short Cuts

Editors:

The lives of Los Angeles residents intersect over the course of several days. These include Gene Shepard, a cop cheating on his wife Sherri with single mother Betty, who has split from her jealous partner Stormy. Sherri is sister to artist Marian, who is married to Ralph, a conservative doctor. At a concert, Marian and Ralph encounter Claire Kane, a professional clown, and her unemployed husband Stuart and reluctantly invite them to dinner. Meanwhile, at the wheel of her car, waitress Doreen, whose marriage to chauffeur Earl is on the rocks, accidentally hits Casey, the young son of TV newsreader Howard Finnigan and his wife Ann. As Casey is taken to the hospital where Ralph works, Howard’s estranged father Paul turns up unexpectedly. The Finnigans live next door to the alcoholic nightclub singer Tess Trainer and her suicidal cellist-daughter Zoe. Both families get their pool serviced by Jerry Kaiser, whose wife Lois is a phone-sex operator. Jerry and Lois are friends with special effects make-up artist Bill and his wife Honey, the daughter of Doreen, who detests Earl … As all these stories unfold, an earthquake tremor hits the city, leaving everyone shaken.

Suzy Elmiger Geraldine Peroni

Critique

Studio/Distributor:

Fine Line Features Director:

Robert Altman Producers:

Cary Brokaw Screenwriters:

Robert Altman Frank Barhydt Cinematographer:

Walt Lloyd Art Director:

Jerry Fleming

Composer:

Mark Isham Duration:

187 minutes Cast:

Jennifer Jason Leigh Matthew Modine Julianne Moore Chris Penn Tim Robbins Tom Waits Year:

1993

196

Synopsis

American Independent

As the above synopsis shows, attempting to summarize Robert Altman’s masterful adaptation of the short stories of Raymond Carver is a fruitless exercise. With a plot as sprawling as the city it takes place in, Short Cuts is a dense, deft and yet delicate work that wisely boasts none of the operatic grandeur of Magnolia (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson’s tribute of sorts to Altman’s film. Following his well-received Hollywood satire The Player (1992), it was this film that truly confirmed the Altman of old was back. While Short Cuts is frequently compared to Altman’s Nashville (1975), which similarly spun a series of interlocking stories around one geographical location, the film could also be held up alongside his earlier film, The Long Goodbye (1973). Not only was that a similarly-loose adaptation of an iconic American author – Raymond Chandler – it also painted the inhabitants of Los Angeles with unerring accuracy, just as Altman and co-writer Frank Barhydt do here. Indeed, transposing Carver’s characters from the blue-collar Pacific North West to the City of Angels is just the first of many smart moves. Allowing the stories to glide past each other, occasionally causing friction as they do, the film begins with a potent metaphor as Los Angeles is sprayed by a series of helicopters attempting to combat the Medfly pest. The notion that the city’s inhabitants are like insects – and the camera a microscope for us to study them with – hovers in the air like one of the bug-spraying choppers. What impresses most is the sheer juggling act Altman performs with his 22 characters. Primarily, it is an act of distillation, as he boils

Short Cuts, Spelling/Fine Line.

down the essence of each story to its very core. Just consider Stuart and his two fishing buddies, who discover the naked body of a woman in a river near where they pitch up and do nothing about it. Australian director Ray Lawrence spun a whole film, Jindabyne (2006), out of this event. Altman simply takes us to the heart of it, and the horror Stuart’s wife Claire feels at his actions. Like the earthquake that hits the city in the finale, emotions erupt in these characters only when they reach crisis point. Take Jerry the pool cleaner, in the moment that he and Billy meet two girls in the park: evidently bruised by his wife Lois talking dirty to customers down the phone, Jerry explodes when his clumsy advances are rebuffed, beating the girl to death. Credit to Chris Penn for essaying his character with such subtlety – though he is not the only one. This is arguably one of the best assembled casts in living memory. That the stories gel so well with each other, without ever feeling contrived, is partly down to the casual energy Altman invests in the film. Gradually themes become apparent. Absent fathers/husbands (Paul, Stormy and Gene) and male jealousy (Earl, Jerry and Ralph) are two prominent concerns, but Altman never lets one idea dominate this panoramic view of the human condition. That the film was entirely overlooked at the 1994 Oscars – bar Altman losing Best Director to Steven Spielberg for Schindler’s List – is just one of the many crimes the Academy has to answer for.

James Mottram

Narrative Disorder 197

ON THE

Directory of World Cinema

The American narrative tradition is built on the legends of the frontiersmen and the pioneering spirit that they exuded and practised. This is a land that is synonymous with exploration and expansion into untamed regions, of heading into the unknown to seek better and prosperous lives. The road-movie genre is both homage and a critique of the traits that made America what it is today. The movies that sprung from the new Hollywood scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as Easy Rider (1969), Vanishing Point (1971) and Two Lane Blacktop (1971), came to define the road movie as a genre and form an important part of the canon of American independent cinema. In order to establish why these movies are so intrinsic to America’s cultural legacy, they have to be seen in context with a tradition of diverse works and cultural events that preceded them, taking in earlier movies, literature, art and music. The Western genre is an obvious example as a precursor to the genre, with many of its narratives centring on that of the lone wanderer or small group of pioneers, as seen in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956), as well as the expansion of the rail network. In addition, film noir also threw up antecedents to the genre, such as Detour (1947), They Live by Night (1948) and Gun Crazy (1950), with their low budgets and more-confrontational subject matters being an important influence on later independent directors. American literature is peppered with novels and factual accounts depicting life travelling across the States, both before and after the advent of the Interstate Highway system that emerged in 1956. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) portrays a young man’s adventures along the Mississippi river, and ties into the spirit of exploration and the unknown. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which tells the story of the Joad family as they cross the country to California in search of jobs and a new life away from the poverty that was brought on by the Great Depression, is a towering influence on American culture to this day. The movies that inhabit the independent canon can be seen to be more inspired by later literary works, such as Jack Kerouac’s seminal beat-generation ode On the Road (1951), with its drifting central characters and air of alienation; the reportage journalism of Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson; the juvenile delinquent and biker movies of the late 1950s and 1960s; the Hells Angels; the emergence of rock’n’roll; a desire to enlighten the American people. As the new generations began to turn away from the cultural values of their parents and the country struggled with massive shifts in the political landscape with the civil rights movement, student riots and the unpopular Vietnam war, the time was ripe for the emergence of young, enterprising film-makers, who sought to connect with new audiences and challenge the status quo maintained by the Hollywood system. Whilst there were many films that fell into the bracket of the road-movie genre in the late 1960s and the early 1970s,

Left: Five Easy Pieces, Columbia.

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Easy Rider, Vanishing Point and Two Lane Blacktop form something of a Holy trinity that explores the differing faces of the American psyche at that time. While Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) are noteworthy examples, the aforementioned movies utilize more of the tropes that have come to be indicative of the independent movie. Easy Rider was nothing short of a cultural sensation on its release. Budgeted at a mere $375,000, it grossed over $50 million worldwide, becoming one of the most commercially-successful independent productions of all time, and bagged a Best New Director award for Dennis Hopper at the 1969 Cannes film festival. To say that Easy Rider captured the Zeitgeist of the times is an understatement; a first time director, hip cast including Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in his breakout role, the soundtrack featuring modern rock music (Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild), the drug use and representation of counter culture and its divergence from mainstream Hollywood movies, all served to grab audience attention around the world. Fonda’s Wyatt and Hopper’s Billy were not conventional movie heroes; they were flawed, alienated, displaced and disaffected. As the film’s tag line states, ‘A man went looking for America, and couldn’t find it anywhere.’ Hopper’s direction employs jump cuts, flash forwards, montage sequences and lens flares (courtesy of Director of Photography, Laszlo Kovacs), while the loose plot revolves around getting to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras. This allows for an exploration of attitudes towards lifestyle, prejudice and cultural values in America via various encounters with the diverse range of characters that they meet as they travel through the South-Western landscape. At times, Wyatt and Billy appear to be as at odds with the counter-culture that they supposedly represent as they are with mainstream society. Richard Sarafian’s Vanishing Point is an altogether different beast from Easy Rider, although it employs similar techniques, such as the modern soundtrack (incorporating rock and soul) and narrative jumps. Whereas Wyatt and Billy were searching for a better America, or at least a way out of mainstream society, Kowalski (Barry Newman) has a one-way ticket to nowhere. Driving a 1970 white dodge challenger to Frisco for delivery, Kowalski bets his drug dealer that he can make it way ahead of schedule. Through a series of flashbacks, we see that Kowalski’s life has been full of events that have left him scarred and alienated. Local radio-DJ Super Soul (Cleavon Little) relays details of the attempts that the police make to stop him as he speeds his way across country, while the characters he meets help him to evade capture. Vanishing Point is a low-budget existential trip that was presented and marketed as a chase movie; the viewer is aware that Kowalski is doomed from the start of the movie, which begins at the end of the journey as he powers his way towards an impenetrable road block before flashing back to the beginning of the trip. Kowalski’s nihilistic attitude towards life is summed up by Super Soul’s statement: ‘the question isn’t when he’s gonna stop, but who’s gonna stop him.’ Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop was a commercial flop on its release, with audiences, expecting something more akin to Easy Rider’s freewheeling, questioning spirit, or Vanishing Point’s ramped-up adrenalin, being thrown by Hellman’s slow, drifting and essentially non-politicized road movie. Nothing is really questioned or addressed here, as the lead characters, the driver (James Taylor) and the mechanic (Dennis Wilson, of Beach Boy fame), drift from place to place, hustling money by challenging other cars to strip races. They meet the girl (Laurie Bird), another drifter who tags along with them and, in the film’s only real hint of plot, agree to race with another equally-adrift character, GTO

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(Warren Oates), to New York, with the winner taking the other’s car as the prize. All the stylistic tropes associated with the other road movies mentioned are largely eschewed here: landscape is practically irrelevant, as we see a large amount of the driving from inside the vehicles; the music used is usually on the car radio, with the driver preferring silence to aid concentration. The direction by Hellman is simple, as is the editing, and the dialogue often leads nowhere and focuses on the trivial. Even the car races themselves are devoid of any real excitement; the characters exist in a void, disaffected to the point of ennui. There are no heroes here, only aimless, lost, anti-heroes. Buoyed by the commercial success of Easy Rider and the critical praise of other similar movies, the major production companies of the time took more risks with low-budget, non-mainstream movies and maverick directors, laying the foundations for what we know as American independent cinema in its modern guise. Within this realm, the road movie has continued to crop up, regularly taking in many different genres and exploring many different themes. Directors as diverse as Sam Peckinpah with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Wim Wenders with Paris, Texas (1984) and Gregg Araki with The Doom Generation (1998) show how the genre can be bastardized to fit wildly-differing themes and styles of representation, from the crime thriller via the existential to the nihilistic. The recent crossover success of the black comedy Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road (2009) show that the genre is continuing to be tackled into the twenty-first century as independent directors still strive to portray the ever-changing physical and social-political landscape of the nation.

Neil Mitchell

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Bottle Rocket Studio/Distributor:

Columbia Pictures Director:

Wes Anderson Producers:

Cynthia Hargrave Polly Platt Screenwriters:

Wes Anderson Owen Wilson Cinematographer:

Robert Yeoman Composer:

Mark Mothersbaugh Art Director:

Jerry Fleming Editor:

David Moritz Duration:

92 minutes Cast:

Luke Wilson Owen Wilson Robert Musgrave James Caan Year:

1996

202

American Independent

Synopsis After releasing himself from a psychiatric hospital, Anthony reteams with his old buddies Dignan and Bob and tries to ease back into his life of upper-middle-class drifting. But while Anthony would like nothing more than to drift, fall in love, and drift some more, the hyper-enthusiastic Dignan, who has a 75-year plan for his life, thinks that the best way to succeed is to start committing crimes. After robbing a bookstore and stealing a small amount of cash, the three friends check into a motel until the heat simmers down. Being on the lam sits well with Anthony; he meets a Paraguayan maid named Inez and, despite their language difficulties, they fall in love. But when Bob hears that his bone-headed brother has been arrested, he leaves to go and bail him out. Tensions grow between Dignan and Anthony due to Inez and eventually Anthony reluctantly leaves her. On the way back to town, Anthony and Dignan have a fight after their car breaks down. After spending some time apart, Anthony receives a letter from Dignan and is informed that the big heist is still under way. Anthony reunites with his friend and begins training for the mission.

Critique Scripted by Wes Anderson and his leading actor Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket was a refreshing change of pace for the American film landscape in the mid-1990s. Theatres and video shelves were crammed with Quentin Tarantino wannabes who filled their crime films with plenty of attitude, bullets, brawn, and brainless action while completely abandoning the wit and narrative adventurousness that made Tarantino such a formidable new talent in the first place. Bottle Rocket did not forsake the wit. It also supplied enough heart and laidback charm to announce an equally-formidable new talent, though one less interested in genre deconstruction and macho posturing. Martin Scorsese famously praised Anderson as his cinematic heir because of this film and his very-different second effort Rushmore (1998), acknowledging the assured style and strong visual sense that are the hallmarks of a true auteur. While Anderson would go on to embellish his mannered yet lively style and knack for droll comedy in subsequent films, the sparseness and openness of Bottle Rocket is something to cherish. Not until The Darjeeling Limited (2007) would Anderson give his actors so much space to thrive within the frame, to find their own equilibrium within the confines of a narrative. In many ways, Bottle Rocket is Anderson’s slightest film. Until you reach the end, of course, and the low-key charm sloughs off to reveal a significant and unexpected tenderness hiding beneath the considerable silliness. All of the performances are excellent, especially from the-then newcomers Owen and Luke Wilson as Dignan and Anthony, as well as a growly

Directory of World Cinema

bit-part for veteran tough guy James Caan, who has sadly been underutilized for years. Although ignored by audiences when Columbia dumped the film into a few theatres for its 1996 release, Bottle Rocket would find a more appreciative audience via DVD. It is arguable whether this is Anderson’s finest film to date, but there is no question that it is one of the finest debuts of the 1990s, a decade that had plenty of memorable firsts.

Derek Hill

Broken Flowers Studio/Distributor:

Focus Features Director:

Jim Jarmusch Producers:

Jon Kilik Stacey Smith Screenwriter:

Jim Jarmusch Cinematographer:

Synopsis When Don Johnston, a retired computer entrepreneur, receives an anonymous pink, typewritten letter stating that he conceived a child, a son, about twenty years ago, his friend, neighbour and amateur detective Winston convinces him to try and find out who sent the letter, and whether he indeed has a son. Thus a part detective story, part road movie, part understated slapstick comedy, commences, reluctantly, including a magnifying glass, invisible ink, pink flowers, four desperate women, boys who might or might not be his son, a black eye, a Taurus and lots of funky Ethiopian road music. As Don’s investigation-cum-journey-of-self-discovery takes him from vixen to villa and tinkerer to trailer, both suspect and destination become increasingly elusive and unclear.

Frederick Elmes

Critique

Art Director:

For a film often cited as one of Jarmusch’s more upbeat and accessible films, Broken Flowers is nevertheless typified by a remarkably lacklustre rhythm (let alone protagonist) and an increasingly unsolvable plot (and, indeed, ever blanker protagonist). Indeed, it has been this unlikely ‘unison’ – between opportunism and irony, between engagement and disinterest, between flimsiness and contemplation – that has been the focal point for much of the film’s criticism. Jonathan Rosenbaum called it ‘forced’; Carina Chocano accused it of being too much a result of its time, and too little a product of its author (she went as far as calling it ‘hipster’, a derogatory term for capitalism posing as either poverty or integrity – especially popular in some of New York and London’s eastern boroughs – and about the worst swearword of the metropolitan twenty-first century). Yet the film’s unison of the two is deceptive. It does not so much strike a balance between empathy and emptiness, reservation and repression, but rather explores the relationship between them. The static shots of Murray’s minimalistic performance hint at a barely-concealed melancholia, a sense of loss for something undefined and perhaps forever indefinable. The blank contours

Sarah Frank Composer:

Mulatu Astatke Editor:

Jay Rabinowitz Duration:

105 minutes Cast:

Bill Murray Jeffrey Wright Sharon Stone Jessica Lange Year:

2005

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Broken Flowers, Meredith Bac Films, Focus Features, Photographed by David Lee.

and pale colours of his former lover Dora’s McMansion home and, indeed, of Dora herself, imply the restraint and inhibition that suffocate her former, free-spirited self. The carefully-botoxed face of ex-girlfriend Carmen cannot hide her vulnerability and anxiety, the obverse of a passion she has long tried to suppress. It is exactly the sluggish pace, minimalist mise-en-scène and seemingly-simplistic narrative which bestow upon each gesture and each sentence, every object, every bit of American landscape we pass, such potential value and such subtle yet immediately sensible sentiment. Indeed, if the film is to be criticized for anything, it is that its minimalism is not always forceful enough in outlining the incompleteness of its image of a character. The contours of the four women – sex kitten, frigid homemaker, lesbian new-ager and angry biker – are not always so much suggestive of gaps and hiatuses in their presentation as that they are caricatures; and the innocence and childlike naïvety with which Winston’s detective work is presented is as amiable as it is implausible. Yet perhaps it is this thin and porous line, between the grotesque and the genuine (and then, especially, the genuinely tragic), that Broken Flowers intends to walk. It is a line, it reveals, that sketches a generation (the baby boomers) and outlines a country (The US of A) looking for something they find increasingly hard to discover: an origin, a legacy.

Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen

204

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Directory of World Cinema

The Brown Bunny Studio/Distributor:

Vincent Gallo Productions Wild Bunch Wellspring Media Director:

Vincent Gallo Producer:

Vincent Gallo Screenwriter:

Vincent Gallo Cinematographer:

Vincent Gallo Art Director:

Vincent Gallo Editor:

Vincent Gallo Duration:

92 minutes Cast:

Vincent Gallo Chloë Sevigny Cheryl Tiegs Year:

2003

Synopsis Bud Clay is a professional motorcycle racer. After competing in New Hampshire, he sets out to drive cross-country to Los Angeles to race again. Before leaving, he meets gas-station cashier Violet, pleading with her to come to California, only to then leave her behind. Early in his journey he visits the elderly parents of Daisy, a former flame he has known since childhood. Daisy’s mother professes not to remember Bud, but he claims he is heading back to the West Coast to hook up with her daughter. During his trip, he meets Lily, a lonely diner that he kisses unexpectedly. Later, in Los Angeles, he meets Rose, a streetwalker he briefly shares lunch with. Bud then drives to Daisy’s house, only to find nobody home. He leaves a note, detailing his whereabouts and, shortly after returning to his motel, Daisy turns up. Despite secretly smoking crack in the bathroom, she is attentive to Bud and, before long, they become amorous. In flashback, we then discover that, after taking drugs at a party, Daisy was raped by two men before choking to death. The girl in the motel is just a figment of Bud’s imagination. He is alone.

Critique It is almost impossible to review Vincent Gallo’s sophomore film The Brown Bunny without considering its tortured history. Roundly derided on its debut at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Gallo slunk off and cut out around thirty minutes – one-quarter of its running time – to attempt damagelimitation. Gone were chunks of the film’s endless driving sequences (for when Gallo says he is going to make a road movie, he really means it). Also removed was the risible ending: when Bud Clay crashes his vehicle and the titular rabbit is seen hopping about by the accident site. No question, the edits improved the film – one that can arguably make a claim for being the most truly-independent movie reviewed in this volume. As the opening title card memorably states: ‘Written, directed, edited and produced by Vincent Gallo.’ He forgot to add ‘Director of Photography’ and ‘Art Director’ – or perhaps he could not squeeze it all in. But that is the problem with the singularly-unique Vincent Gallo: that anyone can almost single-handedly produce a movie is remarkable; that they would want to put it on the opening credits is testament to their huge ego. Still, if one came across the cut-down version of The Brown Bunny unawares, what could be made of it? The very antithesis to Easy Rider (1969), Gallo’s film attempts to deconstruct the myth of the American road movie, capturing the tedium of traversing the country’s highways. With many of the ‘road’ sequences shot in exceedingly long takes, there are times when it feels like a Warholian joke (Bud even says at one point, ‘I’m just driving around’, something we are made all

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too aware of). But as the camera points out of Bud’s increasingly bug-splattered window, eyeing the landscape as various folk-rock tracks gently fill the air, some of these hypnotic scenes are quite beautiful in their own way. A convincing study in loneliness – not only Bud, but others he meets, such as Lily – Gallo has constructed a film that is almost dialoguefree. When words are spoken – Bud’s pleading with Violet; his awkward conversation with Daisy’s mother – the results are often excruciating. Gone is the brash verve of his directorial debut Buffalo ’66 (1998). Bud is a vulnerable, pathetic, guiltridden creature, emotionally crippled after he left a druggedout Daisy at the party to be raped. Gallo’s performance is like few others. Can you imagine a Hollywood star ever wanting to play a man so whiny? Of course, as needy as Bud is, Gallo does ensure his character scores legions of women along the way. All named after flowers, Bud’s casual conquests are meant to highlight the emptiness of his existence, now Daisy is no longer alive. Well, that is one way of looking at it. Another is that it is simply another element of the Gallo ego trip. Confirmed by the sequence where Sevigny performs real fellatio on her director, it is not hard to imagine Gallo believes we should all do the same. To be fair, there is tenderness in that concluding love scene – one that turns tragic when the twist is revealed. It is just that it is often hard to believe Gallo’s sincerity.

James Mottram

The Darjeeling Limited Studio/Distributor:

Fox Searchlight Pictures Director:

Wes Anderson Producers:

Wes Anderson Roman Coppola Lydia Dean Pilcher Scott Rudin Screenwriters:

Wes Anderson Roman Coppola Jason Schwartzman

206

American Independent

Synopsis Three estranged brothers – micro-managing Francis, soonto-be-new-father Peter, lovesick writer Jack – reunite for a train trip through India, ostensibly for a spiritual journey. Not having seen one another since the funeral of their father, the brothers are happy to be together again. But it does not take long before the old tensions and resentments reappear, especially when Francis informs the others that the real reason they are on the trip is to visit their mother, who is now a nun living in an abbey in the shadow of the Himalayas. Along the journey the brothers run into several comic miscalculations, painful recriminations, and unexpected tragedy. Their search for enlightenment may have been revealed as the sham that it was, but wisdom comes to each of the brothers in unexpected ways. Now if only these bumbling yet likable spoiled brats could grow up.

Critique Wes Anderson’s fifth feature is a refreshingly stripped-down affair after the grandiose, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

The Darjeeling Limited, Fox Searchlight.

Cinematographer:

Robert Yeoman Art Directors:

Aradhana Seth Adam Stockhausen Editor:

Andrew Wiseblum Duration:

89 minutes Cast:

Owen Wilson Adrien Brody Jason Schwartzman Anjelica Huston Year:

2007

(2004), harking back to the laidback comedy of Bottle Rocket (1996) while still elaborating on the distinctive miniaturist style that the director has made his own. It is still an ornamented, hyper-stylized world, but one where Anderson allows his actors a little more room to settle down in, unlike the previous three films. It feels like a transitional work, though one rich in emotional and comedic nuances. And like all of Anderson’s films, the absence of a real father-figure complicates matters, sending these errant, spoiled rich kids into having to finally confront their own inability to grow up. At times, the proceedings play like a madcap modern variation of the screwball comedy genre – not new for Anderson – but the direct presence of loss and, ultimately, tragedy, due to the death of an Indian boy, weighs the film down in unexpected ways. Anderson has never shied away from dealing with characters in states of pain and mourning, but never has he confronted it as head-on as he does here. The death of the boy seems, at first, too pat a catalyst for redemption. But realizing that none of the characters are actually ‘saved’ by what occurs, just given an opportunity for change, reaffirms that the non-resolution finale is an encouraging harbinger of things to come.

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Despite what Anderson’s critics would have you believe – citing the film as further evidence that he is a director in indulgent decline – The Darjeeling Limited displays an artist in flux, one taking tentative steps toward growth and maturity though without radically altering who he is. New adventures can be difficult embarkations for a film-maker with such a commanding visual imprint as Anderson. But the journey is a necessary function for creative survival, just the same. Without branching out, the artist wilts, starts to play it safe, and becomes complacent. The Darjeeling Limited may not be a huge departure from Anderson’s previous work, but it does give us a glimpse of what kind of artist he is maturing into – a humanist director in the tradition of Renoir and Truffaut.

Derek Hill

Easy Rider Studio/Distributor:

BBS Productions Columbia Pictures Director:

Dennis Hopper Producer:

Peter Fonda Screenwriters:

Dennis Hopper Peter Fonda Terry Southern Cinematographer:

Laszlo Kovacs Art Director:

Jerry Kay Editor:

Donn Cambern Duration:

95 minutes Cast:

Dennis Hopper Peter Fonda Jack Nicholson Year:

1969 208

American Independent

Synopsis After scoring big on a drug deal with their connection, two hippy bikers named Billy and Wyatt opt to ride their choppers across the American South to New Orleans and the pleasures of Mardi Gras. Whilst on the road, Billy and Wyatt encounter various characters and scenarios that seem to embody the contradictory opposites of late-sixties’ American cultural politics. Among these, a hippy commune, full of destitute city kids, struggles to make a living from the desert land; an alcoholic lawyer bails the pair out of prison, before joining them on their trip; small-town bigotry gets the better of the three when they turn up at a diner in their hip biker-wear; and a wild combination of hookers and LSD in New Orleans sets the scene for Billy and Wyatt’s final exchange, where Wyatt announces that they ‘blew it’.

Critique Possibly one of the most important touchstones of late1960s’ American counterculture, Easy Rider draws from beat literature (Kerouac’s On the Road), European art cinema (Godard, Truffaut, Antonioni) and then-popular psychedelia (the rock soundtrack, drug references, nonconformist politics, hippy slang, and kaleidoscopic cinematography). Reflecting the cultural after-effects of the mainstream’s dalliance with countercultural values and 1967s’ ‘Summer of Love’, this film encompasses the excesses of the movement, prescient in synthesizing its far-out utopian dreams (à la Woodstock) and nightmarish perversion and failure (Berkley, Altamont, Manson). Tied together through the kind of cross-cutting and unorthodox editing reminiscent of art cinema, Easy Rider is a counter-cultural adventure told in a series of episodes, and set to an iconic hippy soundtrack that includes Hendrix, McGuinn, Steppenwolf and The Band.

Directory of World Cinema

Billy and Wyatt are latter-day folk heroes, drawing their names and look from the mythos of the Frontier (Billy The kid and Wyatt Earp being two prominent figures of the Wild West), reflecting American cinema’s fascination with the Frontier, as well as the American nation’s maturity, in tandem with mythic representations of the Frontier in its cinema. The two characters represent a species of the American Dream, but somewhat in reverse. They are travelling from West to East, into the Old South – in homage to, and parody of, their pioneering forebears on the wagon trail out West. Their clothes, heavily-laden with symbolism, resonate twin concerns of nation in the US. Wyatt, clearly enough, displays the Star-Spangled Banner on his jacket, and on his chopper – a tribute to the young Republic. Yet, aside from the money he has stashed in his gas tank, Wyatt holds no obvious loyalty to the trappings of meritocracy, so beloved of American culture. In fact, in another symbolic gesture, when we witness our heroes fixing a flat tyre juxtaposed with a rancher repairing a horse’s shoe, Wyatt’s persona and attributes are clearly linked to some Heideggerian, rustic, ‘authentic’ American past, when men were able to raise a family through homesteading, and living off the land. Conversely, Billy wears his hair long, and wears buffalo-skin clothing and homemade jewellery reminiscent of First Nation cultures, yet contradictorily, Billy is by far the more materialistic of the two. His self-absorbed behaviour throughout is summed up by his final statement that ‘We’re rich, man. This is what it’s all about … You go for the big money.’ Although they may not explicitly state it, through their actions and attitudes, the two characters are seeking the ‘Real America’ in an effort to escape the conformism and judgemental attitudes of conservative America. Dennis Hopper’s direction appears haphazard and, at times, pretentious, but the overall effect is sometimes startling. Actively encouraging the use of sun flare in the cinematography, what might in other contexts be seen as amateurish or faulty camerawork gives the film its dreamlike quality, whilst simultaneously lending it the documentary feel of some of the nouvelle vague cinema Hopper emulates. The location shots in New Orleans are particularly grainy, shot on 16mm in naturally-lit conditions and edited together with a disturbing sound montage to represent the altered state of being that infamously accompanies an LSD trip. The result of all of this is that Easy Rider is a slice of unique time. When we watch this film, we are essentially witnessing a representation of the destruction in the wake of Hunter S Thompson’s ‘high and beautiful wave’ of counterculture: it is a haunting, nostalgic viewpoint of American culture that is no longer there.

Greg Singh

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Five Easy Pieces Studio/Distributor:

BBS Productions Columbia Pictures Director:

Bob Rafelson Producers:

Bob Rafelson Richard Weschler Screenwriters:

Bob Rafelson Adrien Joyce Cinematographer:

Laszlo Kovacs Editors:

Christopher Holmes Gerald Shephard Duration:

95 minutes Cast:

Jack Nicholson Karen Black Susan Anspach Year:

1970

210

American Independent

Synopsis Robert Dupea is a bored drifter and womanizer who has fled his wealthy family. Although educated in the piano, his present work finds him in an oil field with a witless girlfriend, Rayette, and trailer-park friends. Caught between his own carefree attitude and a sense of dissatisfaction at a wasted life, Dupea finds himself summoned back to his home in Washington, and his father’s deathbed. The scene is set for a dramatic display of repressed feelings and anger as Dupea is reminded of what he has left behind, what could save him (a relationship with a woman pianist) and the undeniable lure of an open future.

Critique Riding the crest of the late 1960s’/early 1970s’ counterculture cinema was Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, with the creator of The Monkees tapping into a particular brand of existential angst. With anguish over Vietnam still looming large, cinemagoers found their perfect outlet in Jack Nicholson’s tormented everyman, Robert Dupea. Scenes from the film have entered popular consciousness: most famously Dupea’s frustration at not being able to get a side order of toast, a fabulous example of socio-political cinematic anger. More vital, however, is the feeling of emptiness and loneliness the film engenders: rarely until then could young audiences in particular have resonated as strongly with a central character, one who takes on a dangerous, thankless job at a drilling station in order to escape his privileged background only to find that rebellion itself is a mere utopian state of mind. Reality comes snapping back at Dupea all the time in Five Easy Pieces and, consequently, the film proposes some tough questions: Is one’s future planned? Is the here and now more important? Does your background determine who you are? The film’s decision to not draw a line under any of these, in accordance with the ‘New Hollywood’ realist aesthetic of the early 1970s (jagged edits, on-location photography, pop soundtrack) only continues to grant the film more potency as the years march on. The choice of Nicholson as lead was a sage decision: the actor still early enough in his career not to let his charisma overtake the film itself, but with enough expression of the deranged anger that has marked his best performances. Rafelson’s masterstroke, and one that underlines the complex ethos of the film as a counter-culture piece, is that it never judges Dupea’s actions. For a man who rampantly cheats on his sweet-but-dim girlfriend, and later rejects his work friends for being the trailer trash he is supposed to despise, he remains a potent, volcanic human centre, vacillating from one job, and one woman, to the next. The complexity increases in the second act, with Dupea being forced to make some serious life decisions when he visits his dying father at the family

Directory of World Cinema

home in Washington. Rafelson has been prepping us for this shift-change in an earlier scene where the musically-educated loner hijacks a piano on the back of a truck and plays on in spite of the traffic noise. With his snide brother incarcerated in a neck brace, Dupea’s greatest temptation is his pianist-fiancée, Catherine: forbidden fruit of the first order. However, with the nagging presence of Rayette constantly on the horizon, plus his unwillingness to settle down in his wealthy roots, means Robert’s sole proactive moment is to movingly confess his doubts to his paralysed father, who cannot even speak in response. His final act of selfishness speaks volumes about both callous, youthful impetuousness and how the young cannot be held wholly accountable for their actions. It is an ethical dilemma that reverberates like so much anguish in a troubled mind.

Sean Wilson

Sideways

Synopsis

Kevin Tent

Unpublished novelist, wine enthusiast, and Eighth-Grade English teacher, Miles takes his old college roommate, Jack, a TV actor, on a pre-wedding road trip around California. As Jack’s best man, Miles plans to treat him to a week of wine-tasting and golf before he gets married, but Jack has other ideas when they meet up with waitress Maya and winemerchant Stephanie. Jack embarks on a passionate sexual relationship with Stephanie, airing, to Miles, second thoughts about his wedding. A recent divorcé, Miles is having a crisis of confidence, and therefore pursues Maya tentatively. As Jack pressurizes Miles into keeping his impending marriage a secret from both women, Miles seeks solace in the soulful Maya. When Miles finally lets it slip to Maya that Jack is to be married, she informs Stephanie, and both men are dumped. Rather than considering it a lucky escape, Jacks turns to his next conquest, a waitress in a steakhouse, but gets rumbled when her husband returns home. Jack escapes, but leaves his wallet and wedding rings in the house. When Jack breaks down and begs Miles to retrieve the rings, Miles acquiesces, thinking that he has lost his chance of happiness with Maya simply for his association with his misogynistic friend.

Composer:

Critique

Studio/Distributor:

Michael London Productions Fox Searchlight Director:

Alexander Payne Producer:

Michael London Screenwriters:

Alexander Payne Jim Taylor Cinematographer:

Phedon Papamichael Art Director:

T K Kirkpatrick Editor:

Rolfe Kent Duration:

126 minutes

As road trip movies go, this one is more sensitive than most, eschewing obvious gags and clichés for a more considered approach that encompasses a genuine romantic edge, as well as some of the most subtly-constructed comedy in recent American cinema. Set to Rolfe Kent’s cool West Coast jazz soundtrack, with unobtrusive editing, and featuring an

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Cast:

Paul Giamatti Thomas Haden Church Virginia Madsen Sandra Oh Year:

2004

occasional split-screen visual to punctuate the contrast in the two male leads, Sideways is full of cinematic treats, brilliant scriptwriting and excellent performances. Paul Giamatti’s performance as Miles is stunning, and allows us to feel the full force of a frustrated personality whose life has never really kick-started, and whose own sense of mortality is now snapping at his heels. In conjunction with the sex-obsessed Jack, Miles represents a contemporary masculinity that groans at the seams with neuroses and insecurities – something that even Jack, although seemingly ebullient throughout, betrays when he discovers that his behaviour may have cost him his impending marriage. Indeed, his breakdown and confession is one of the most effective scenes in the film. Virginia Madsen has never looked better, or more sensual, despite the fact that she has played more-overtly sexualized roles throughout her career. Here, however, her performance as the soulful Maya is at times captivating. The scene in which she describes her love of wine, as a response to Miles’ own ode to the joys of pinot noir, shimmer with a humanity and maturity that is only complemented by Giamatti’s sympathetic performance. The scene is a show-stopper for another, more subtle, reason: as it moves from Giamatti’s description to Madsen’s, the music changes from diegetic to non-diegetic, with Giamatti’s facial response as touching as any expression in cinema. This shift is just one of a number of effective technical subtleties that give Sideways its cinematic gravitas throughout, and allows the quality of the performances and the Oscar-winning screenplay to shine through.

Greg Singh

The Straight Story Studio/Distributor:

Studio Canale Picture Factory Director:

David Lynch Producers:

Neal Edelstein Mary Sweeney Screenwriters:

John Roach Mary Sweeney

212

American Independent

Synopsis Alvin Straight is an elderly man in failing health. Living a quiet existence in Iowa with his handicapped daughter Rose, a phone call informs him that his long estranged brother Lyle has had a stroke. Unable to drive a car the 300-plus miles to Wisconsin, Alvin instead decides to use his lawnmower and, with a trailer hitched to the back, begins the arduous journey across the state towards reconciliation with Lyle. As his trip progresses, details of Alvin’s long life are unwoven via interaction with the individuals he meets along the way.

Critique From the opening strains of Angelo Badalamenti’s beautiful, hypnotic score to Freddie Francis’ swooping gliding camerawork drinking in the rhythms of rural American life (all corn fields and combine harvesters), The Straight Story marks David Lynch’s most delicate, humane and uplifting work

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographer:

Freddie Francis Composer:

Angelo Badalamenti Art Director:

Jack Fisk Editor:

Mary Sweeney Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Richard Farnsworth Sissy Spacek Harry Dean Stanton Year:

1999

to date. A far cry from the depravity present in Blue Velvet (1986) and similar efforts, it hearkens back to his poignant The Elephant Man (1980) but where, there, the humanity was tempered by a sense of the grotesque, here Lynch goes straight for the heart. The material would in fact seem like prototypical Lynch fare: a deconstruction of small-town America (in this case Laurens, Iowa and others along the way) and the eccentrics that populate it. But there is a tangible human principle lying at the centre of the story of Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) who decides to visit his dying brother by travelling 300 miles by lawnmower. The deeply moving and personal themes of reconciliation and redemption at the film’s heart lend it a richer, more satisfying edge than previous Lynch entries. Even the portrayal of the troubled Rose (Sissy Spacek) refuses to fall into tastelessness, with both Spacek and Lynch favouring instead the human emotions lying behind the character’s difficult speech. In The Straight Story, for once, Lynch’s characters are not merely ciphers but flesh-and-blood beings with emotions and histories that have shaped the course of their lives. Chief among these, of course, is Alvin Straight himself, powerfully portrayed by former stuntman Farnsworth. With craggy features and piercing eyes that speak of a full and active life, Farnsworth is utterly convincing as the old timer making one last push to redeem a great pain in his life. Playing out almost as a modern-day fable, with Alvin on his own personal lawnmower-led odyssey, the film begins appropriately with a shot of the star-filled heavens: a recurring image throughout the film that lends Alvin’s story a sense of classical scope and wonder. Leaving Rose behind, travelling the endless, truck-filled highways towards his fateful meeting with Lyle, this elderly Odysseus starts to unravel like an onion (or should that be uncorked like fine vintage?) Among the several other lost souls he meets are a young pregnant girl ostracized by her family and a WWII veteran to whom Alvin spills his darkest secret in one of the film’s most haunting moments. In the end, though, these moments are incidental to the bigger picture: Alvin’s reunion with Lyle and what it might bring. Despite all the talk and anecdotes shared by Alvin throughout the course of the film, in the end it is the silent, starward-gazing shared by two brothers that resonates most strongly. And to think it is based on a true story.

Sean Wilson

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Stranger Than Paradise Studio/Distributor:

Grokenberger Film Produktion Island-Alive Director:

Jim Jarmusch Producers:

Sara Driver Otto Grokenberger Screenwriter:

Jim Jarmusch Cinematographer:

The film is a story told in three acts: a series of moments in the lives of Willie, a disaffected ‘hipster’ in New York City, ashamed of his Hungarian roots; his cousin Eva, a new transport to the States; and Willie’s friend Eddie, a sidekick in every sense of the word. Eva is travelling from Hungary to visit her aunt Lottie in Cleveland, Ohio, by way of New York, where she bunks with a nonplussed Willie for about ten days. While there, the cousins do little except play cards, smoke, and watch television. Eddie, who takes a genuine shine to Eva, comes by often to hang out or to go to the dog races with Willie, to which Eva is never invited. She leaves for Cleveland and, a year later, Willie and Eddie decide to hit the road to visit her, which turns into a road trip for all three when the boys decide to take her to Florida in an attempt to chase paradise, but where everything ends up looking just the same.

Tom DiCillo

Critique

Composer:

Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise is at once a road movie and a movie about stasis; a homage to the cinemas of Japan and Italy, yet quintessentially American. The director’s roots were in the punk-music sub-culture of New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Stranger Than Paradise is as nihilistic as that sub-scene, with such impulses tempered by his deft handling of human dynamics, as well as his formalism and obvious homage to Yasujiro Ozu. The film is structured in three acts, each introduced by intertitles: ‘The New World’, ‘One Year Later’, and ‘Paradise’. However, the film is even more episodic than these three parts: the plot is a series of moments, in Willie’s apartment, or in Aunt Lottie’s house, or in a crummy motel in Florida. Each scene is a kind of vignette; they may not have resolutions, but neither does the film as a whole, and they can all stand on their own as ruminations on relationships, the words under the words, the silences between friends and family. Each scene is one long take, framed by a few seconds of black leader between each, yet bridged by sound. The sound bridges and sound effects in the film are as affecting as the dialogue, or the lack of it. Jarmusch uses synchronous sound and the soundtrack, therefore, is a catch-all of not only the sounds the characters make but the silences between them: their feet shuffle on the wood floor in Willie’s apartment; their cards snap from the deck to the table; the wind whips by them at a snow-covered Lake Erie; their car roars along the road. The sound-design echoes the matter at hand: it is not the things Willie, Eddie, and Eva do, or the words they say, it is what they do not do and do not say. Thematically, this suppression of words and desires, their stuttering to each other,

John Lurie Editors:

Jim Jarmusch Melody London Duration:

89 minutes Cast:

John Lurie Richard Edson Eszter Balint Year:

1984

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Synopsis

American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

Stranger Than Paradise, Cinethesia-Grokenberger/Zdf.

Willie’s inability to tell a joke, Eva’s thick accent, the inability to communicate with each other, has much in common with Jarmusch’s Japanese model than with any American director. There is a sequence in the middle of the film where Willie, slow to warm to Eva, comes home with a package for her. He shoves it towards her without ceremony, and she opens it without any real interest. It is a dress. He tells her that she should start dressing like an American, but she does not like the gift. He presses it on her, and she wears it begrudgingly. She leaves in the dress, and they say goodbye at his door. He opens the door for her, and he says, ‘So, Eva, maybe I’ll see you around sometime.’ She responds, ‘Yeah, maybe,’ and leaves. He stands for a moment in front of the closed door before the screen cuts to black. The next scene opens on the street, starkly lit, lending sumptuous high-contrast silhouettes,

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where Eva is taking off the dress and stuffing it in the trash. Eddie catches her and she tells him, ‘This dress bugs me,’ but never explains or asks him to keep her secret. When Eddie arrives at Willie’s, he asks if Eddie had seen Eva in the dress when he ran into her on the street. They both agree the dress was beautiful. Eddie never says a word about it, instead the men drink beer, in silence. This scene acts as a kind of synecdoche for the film: it encapsulates the missed opportunities between the characters, the silences that speak louder than words.

Emily Caulfield

Two-Lane Blacktop Studio/Distributor:

Universal Pictures Director:

Monte Hellman Producer:

Michael Laughlin Screenwriters:

Rudolph Wurlitzer Will Corry

Two men, the driver and the mechanic, cruise the highways of California in their customized, primer-grey ’55 Chevy, hunting out prospective marks bold or stupid enough to race them for money. Winner takes all. But when the driver and mechanic encounter a middle-aged boozehound along the way, driving a candy-yellow Pontiac GTO, the stakes are raised. ‘GTO’ wants to race them to Washington D.C. Winner takes the loser’s car title. And so it begins. The three men race across America searching for whatever. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Only problem is ... the girl: the hitchhiker who is now getting between these gearheads and their cars. It is never a good thing when a girl gets between a guy and his engine. Never.

Cinematographer:

Critique

Jack Deerson

Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop was Universal Pictures’ attempt to jump on the Easy Rider (1969) bandwagon in order to capitalize on the booming counter-culture market that Dennis Hopper’s film had made possible. Rolling Stone magazine wrote about the making of the film a year before its release, and a now-infamous Esquire piece (April 1971) proclaimed Hellman’s existential road trip to be the ‘movie of the year’ right on its cover. Great hype if you can get it, especially considering the film starred a brilliant though far-from-starmaterial character actor (Warren Oates), two musicians as leads who do not have a lot of dialogue (James Taylor and Dennis Wilson), and an awkward yet oddly-entrancing non-actor (Laurie Bird) who looked like she was dissolving a little more in each scene. Score it with a number of great tunes by The Doors and Kris Kristofferson and the film’s low-key chronicle of youth going anywhere, yet nowhere, seemed a sure thing. But Two-Lane flopped at the box office, even though it had reportedly cost less than a million dollars to make, and it received tepid critical notices. Two-Lane Blacktop’s commercial

Art Directors:

H. Alan Deglin William Kincheloe Richard Ruth Editor:

Monte Hellman Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

James Taylor Warren Oates Laurie Bird Dennis Wilson Year:

1971

216

Synopsis

American Independent

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failure is understandable and was perhaps the best thing for its legacy. The film went underground, did not appear on video until 1999, and was, upon its resurrection, allowed finally to be viewed away from the ballyhoo that had turned so many off in 1971. It could be seen for what it was: a true American classic of the mythic New Hollywood and the best thing Monte Hellman ever directed. For many, the film is the great road movie. Unlike Easy Rider, Two-Lane Blacktop is not interested in making overt social statements, although the US is viewed with an observant, critical eye. The country as seen from these metal machines seems exhausted, on the down-shift, tired. But the ailment is cosmic not political. Words would only get in the way expressing something like that. Hellman loves the hush, and characters that seem ready to bail from the narrative itself for fear of talking too much, as in Ride in the Whirlwind (1965) and Cockfighter (1974). The two leads’ taciturn ways seem just right, as if knowing that anything they could spout would only be meaningless before the roar of the engines. Oates, on the other hand, gets the plum words and delivers a great performance in a long career of brilliant moments. He seems appropriately lost and fidgety, playing off the film’s Bressonian leads, but he is also a much-needed shot of braggart and fool to their awkwardness. And has there ever been a more fitting cinematic finale for a film so distrustful of language? I think not.

Derek Hill

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UEER CINEMA

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In 1989, the ‘How do I Look? Queer Film and Video Conference’ was staged in New York City. Why did such a homophobic term of abuse enter into such an academic setting? It had been eight years since the earliest cases of what would be named AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) had been diagnosed: a swiftly-fatal disease largely targeting urban gay men, spread (via unprotected sexual contact, and bodily-fluid exchange) by what was to be named HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). Not only had thousands already contracted and died from the ‘gay plague’ by the end of the decade, but the American federal government was slow to offer any legal, moral, emotional or medical support to those directly affected by what was fast becoming a pandemic. A social, political and media-orchestrated homophobic backlash ensued, resulting in homosexuals (including lesbians, despite their being lower-risk) being marginalized and victimized as a consequence of the ‘gay plague’, with cases of homophobic violence increasing globally; AIDS even remained relatively absent from Hollywood films until 1993. Gay and lesbian communities (that had remained resolutely separate for over a decade) across North America, Europe and Australia responded by developing support networks, Gay Pride marches, activist groups (such as Queer Nation and ACT UP), AIDS charities, film festivals, and a newfound political and theoretical position with which to counter their socially-enforced outcast status, and media portrayals as pathological. All sought to raise awareness through social visibility, to demand medical intervention for HIV and AIDS sufferers (especially those made unemployed and homeless through their condition), and to raise funds for medical testing. AIDS activists utilized queer, alongside The ‘How do I Look’ conference, to mirror their righteous anger; as a means of differentiating themselves from the Stonewall-era of gay liberation and equality, which arguably ignored lesbians and people of colour; as an umbrella term to incorporate all nonstraight sexualities, including bisexuals and transgendered people alongside lesbians and gays. The term also simultaneously entered into critical theory as well as activist politics and referred to the undermining of notions of so-called fixed categories such as ‘straight’ and ‘gay’. Further tactics included the video-documenting of such events, the making of AIDS/safe-sex-related short films/ experimental works by either members of the direct action groups themselves, or by lesbian and gay/AIDS video collectives. Both Chris Straayer (1996) and Alexandra Juhasz (1995) similarly observe that the film-making and demonstration activities of such action groups and film collectives contributed towards ‘reinventing a community’, one already divided between assimilating into straight society or becoming proactive and visible through taking part in political demonstration. Several film-makers from such groups graduated from

Shortbus, Fortissimo Films/Process Prods.

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making experimental shorts to independently-financed features, which include John Greyson’s Urinal (1988), The Making of Monsters (1990), and Zero Patience (1993), Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991), Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston (1989), and Tom Kalin and Gran Fury’s Swoon (1992). Works by these film-makers had the benefit of being screened at international film festivals, alongside those by other openly-lesbian/gay film-makers such as Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992), Totally Fucked Up (1994) and The Doom Generation (1995); Sadie Benning’s It Wasn’t Love (1992); Cheryl Dunne’s She Don’t Fade (1990) and The Watermelon Woman (1996); Todd Haynes’ Poison (1991), Dottie Gets Spanked (1994) and Safe (1995); Bruce LaBruce’s No Skin off My Ass (1991) and Super 8½ (1993); Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning (1990); Pratibha Parmar’s Khush (1991); Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied (1989); Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Rose Troche’s Go Fish (1994). In 1992, critic, academic and film-festival panellist, B Ruby Rich, wrote the Village Voice article ‘Queer Sensation: New Gay Film’, in which she remarked upon the unprecedented number of exciting new gay and lesbian films and videos in circulation at many of the annual global film festivals she attended; a phenomenon first apparent the previous year in Toronto, and which she heralded and identified under the label, New Queer Cinema. What they collectively lacked in terms of cinematic stylistics or thematics, Rich recognized in them a common ideology in their energetic, defiant attitudes, critiquing the stereotypical ‘desexualized’ gay characters in films, whilst referencing classical Hollywood and utilizing underground film-making practices. As Monica Pearl observes, with the activist/experimental shorts, these films allowed global communities to speak in a cinematic language often informed by AIDS-activist politics. Through them, the film-makers exposed, challenged and railed against their social invisibility and status as victims, but also rejected an earlier politics of identification and assimilation, associated with Stonewall-era gay and lesbian liberation. In a similar article for Premiere in October 1992, Hoberman wrote of the proud assertiveness of the typical New Queer protagonist, an extension of the attitude and objectives associated with queer activists. Later articles on New Queer cinema privilege other key elements, such as the films’ metaphorical references to and connection with AIDS (Arroyo 1993; Pearl 2004), their specific uses of camp (Davis, in Aaron 2004), their experimental nature (Pidduck, in Aaron 2004), their positioning of lesbian-themed films within the cycle (Pick; Smelik, in Aaron 2004) as well as some of the films’ addressing issues of queer ethnicity (Contreras; Leung; Wallenberg, all in Aaron 2004). Importantly, Aaron notes that New Queer cinema, unlike previous lesbian and gay films which typically concentrated on glamorous, white, middle-class protagonists, frequently focused on alternative subsections of the lesbian and gay community, such as gay and transgendered Latino and Hispanic attendees of New York’s drag balls in Paris is Burning (1990), black gay male desire and experiences in Tongues Untied (1989), or teenage dyke emotional angst (Sadie Benning’s experimental shorts). Arroyo (1993), Pearl (2004) and others deduce AIDS to be the reason for New Queer cinema’s heralding, despite many of the films being set in a pre-AIDS world: Jarman’s Edward II reworks Marlowe’s play, yet features Stonewall demonstrators, while Kalin’s Swoon focuses on the relationship between Leopold and Loeb, the subjects of Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), two young Jewish men infamous in the 1920s for murdering a young boy. Yet it is their sexuality which the film explores, and which is also on trial; Julien’s Looking for Langston is an atmospheric mediation on Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes). Pearl contends that the various biological disruptions caused by the virus upon the body are echoed

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within the films’ narratives, themselves often defying conventional cinematic practices (Labruce’s Super 8½ for instance, consists of a bewilderingly-cluttered, patchwork effect of films-within-films, documentary and porno excerpts, ‘talking head’ interviews, as well as avant-garde stylistics, whilst the protagonist obsesses over the number of celebrities who had so far died of AIDS). In spite of its earlier, award-winning promise, New Queer cinema seemingly failed to capitalize on this successful, creative spurt, with Rich later observing in 2000 that it ‘was a more successful term for a moment than a movement’, with its ‘climb from radical impulse to niche market’. Although an upsurge of independently-made, queerly-themed films continued to be produced, audiences were occasionally divided about the cycle. Some more traditional gay and lesbian audiences found these new films too ‘academically dry’, downbeat, or balked at the frequent inclusion of violent/murderous gay and lesbian protagonists (Swoon; Poison; The Living End; Sister My Sister), preferring their films to be more uplifting, and their characters more ‘positive’. Others found this bizarrely at odds with those ACT UP campaigners who had demonstrated outside screenings of Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Basic Instinct (1992), both of which feature murderous queers. The initial success of New Queer cinema did inspire Hollywood to experiment with queer subjects (Philadelphia (1993), To Wong Foo (1994), The Birdcage (1995), In and Out (1996), Bound (1995), I Shot Andy Warhol (1995), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)); although, as Benshoff and Griffin (2006) note, it is questionable whether the stylistics and concerns of the ‘queer wave’ were also being incorporated and, inevitably, they often relied upon stereotyped depictions of gay and lesbian characters. Questions about whether the cycle still existed were reignited when independently-produced Boys Don’t Cry (1999) picked up an Academy Award for Hilary Swank for her portrayal of Brandon Teena: a Nebraskan teenage boy raped and killed for being a pre-operative transsexual, and for daring to date teenage girls. Plus the films of John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001); Shortbus (2004)) suggest there is still room for radical, independent queer films alongside mainstream equivalents. Others associated with New Queer cinema (directors Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant, producer Christine Vachon) continue making films with larger budgets within Hollywood, on the backs of their earlier independent successes. Arguably, Hollywood still balks at producing queer characters, falling back on stereotyped shorthand such as the camp queen; however it is impossible to ignore the lasting influence of New Queer cinema – whether a movement or a moment, it has decidedly changed the way lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender audiences and film-makers chose to represent themselves, thanks to the many brave activists and film-makers who refused to be ignored.

Matthew Motyka

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The Doom Generation Studio/Distributor:

Why Not Productions Trimark Director:

Gregg Araki Producers:

Gregg Araki Yves Marmion Andrea Sperling Screenwriter:

Gregg Araki Cinematographer:

Jim Fealy Art Director:

Michael Krantz Composer:

Dan Gatto Editors:

Gregg Araki Kate McGowan Duration:

85 minutes Cast:

James Duval Rose McGowan Johnathon Schaech Year:

1995

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Synopsis A disillusioned couple, Jordan White and Amy Blue, encounter a mysterious stranger named Xavier, whom they pick up while night driving. Placing an obstacle in their already turbulent relationship, X (as he is soon known) draws Jordan and Amy into a world of hedonism and violence as they embark on a journey through the dark underbelly of America, via convenience stores, cheap motels and small rural towns, getting caught up a series of murderous and sexual encounters. Along the way, the dynamic between the three characters continually shifts, as passions are redirected and allegiances are never certain. With the FBI and several other parties in hot pursuit, many of whom claiming to be Amy’s ex-lovers, the trio take refuge in an abandoned barn, where a certain encounter will change their lives forever.

Critique Billed from the outset as ‘A Heterosexual Movie by Gregg Araki’, The Doom Generation marked a particular turning point in the writer-director’s career. Until then, Araki had focused on fragmented scenes loosely woven to form a cut-up style narrative, detailing the experiences of predominantly gay characters in the early part of the nineties. With The Living End (1992) and Totally F***ed Up (1994) he investigated the lives of a series of fictional characters, delving into their views on sex, pop culture and American life. Here, he takes an amalgamation of these views, constructing a brutal and kinetic portrayal of an isolated and morally-corrupt generation within a straight narrative framework. As Trent Reznor screams over the opening credits: ‘God is dead, and no-one cares. If there is a hell, I’ll see you there’, perfectly typifying the warped zeitgeist of Araki’s near-apocalypse, where innocents are killed in a nonchalant manner and the outside world in general means little or nothing to his characters. Released just a year after Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994), the film suffered somewhat from comparisons between the two. While both films make satirical observations, they each have their own style and The Doom Generation holds up well against Stone’s film, even though it was made for a fraction of the former’s budget. Araki makes striking use of its rich imagery; where hotel rooms are styled in vibrant red and several scenes graded with a deep blue, creating a sense of the hyperreal which distances his audience from the characters as they are distanced from each other. James Duval brings a wonderful sense of stupidity to the role of Jordan, whose passive and influenced nature leads to an inevitable divide between him and Amy. He seems to embody a certain stoner stereotype seen frequently in nineties’ youth films. Rose McGowan channels a

Directory of World Cinema

femme-fatale persona equipped with a foul mouth into Amy, delivering some of the wittiest insults ever committed to film. Johnathan Schaech’s Xavier, meanwhile, remains inexplicable throughout, harbouring an enigma that becomes irresistible to Amy, against her better judgment, and eventually Jordan himself. While Araki may not have garnered significant critical acclaim until 2004 with Mysterious Skin, The Doom Generation remains his most accessible and enjoyable work, bringing together many of his recurrent themes in a killer road movie that typifies a distinctly alienated age of youth.

James Merchant

Female Trouble Studio/Distributor:

Dreamland Films New Line Cinema Director:

John Waters Producer:

John Waters Screenwriter:

John Waters Cinematographer:

John Waters Art Director:

Vincent Peranio Composer:

Peter Golub Editors:

Charles Roggero John Waters Duration:

98 minutes Cast:

Divine David Lochary Mary Vivian Pierce Mink Stole Year:

1974

Synopsis Baltimore, 1960: Delinquent teenager Dawn Davenport flees her family home after being refused the cha-cha heels she wanted for Christmas. Nine months later, Dawn gives birth to daughter Taffy (the result of an encounter with lecherous Earl Peterson) before working an assortment of jobs, from waiter to mugger, after Earl refuses to offer support. 1968: Dawn visits ‘Le Lipstick Beauty Salon’, as a distraction from the demands of motherhood. The salon owners, Donald and Donna Dasher, two ostentatious thrill-seekers, are attracted to Dawn’s criminality; thus she passes her ‘audition’, marrying her favourite hairstylist Gaiter a year later, although the latter’s Aunt Ida still hopes he will become gay. Dawn’s marriage lasts five years, with Gaiter’s promiscuity leading her to throwing him out. The Dashers, meanwhile, persuade Dawn to be their photographic model in a ‘crime is beauty’ project, before the vengeful Ida disfigures Dawn’s face with acid during a dinner party. Taffy stabs her molesting father to death, before joining the Hare Krishnas. Brainwashed by the Dashers into believing herself a star, Dawn strangles Taffy to death, on the eve of her nightclub act during which the audience is invited to ‘die for art’, resulting in mass hysteria.

Critique Due to the international success (or notoriety) of Pink Flamingos (1972), Waters was able to increase the budget of his next film to $27,000, allowing him to finally write and record a title song (sung by Divine) to a pre-existing piece of blues music, rather than rely on a fifties’/sixties’ rock’n’roll soundtrack, as with his earlier works. Similarly, the costumes and decor (by Vince Peranio) are more elaborate than in earlier productions, with Waters even purchasing some of Massey’s outfits from Fredericks of Hollywood, despite finance running out halfway through shooting. This proved to be David Lochary’s final film with Waters, and also the last in

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Female Trouble, Dreamland.

which Divine played a variant on her outrageously-glamorous screen alter-ego as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world – almost’. In Female Trouble, Waters continued with fusing his twin obsessions of criminality and celebrity, dedicating the film to Manson-acolyte Charles Watson, and having Dawn namedrop mass-murderer Richard Speck, among others. This fascination first featured in his second short, Roman Candles (1966), in which the cast (including Divine in his debut) modelled garments that they had shoplifted down a catwalk; and continued to inform his later films Serial Mom (1993) and Cecil B. Demented (2002) – the well-written courtroom sequence further attesting to Waters’ personal hobby of attending murder trials.

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However Female Trouble also takes its cue from juveniledelinquency flicks such as Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) and Kitten with a Whip (1965); early Russ Meyers films (with the brief, low-angle shot of a vibrating Dawn in a go-go club being the most obvious signifier); maternal melodramas Stella Dallas (1937), Mildred Pierce (1945), and especially Douglas Sirk’s remake of Imitation of Life (1959); and noirs such as Sunset Boulevard (1950), with Dawn’s conviction of her celebrity status. The Dashers’ pleasure in observing Dawn’s exploits further evokes the similar exploitation of Ian Ogilvy by Boris Karloff and Catherine Lacey in Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers (1967). Waters is no mere pastiche merchant, however, as he subverts and camps-up mainstream conventions through narrative, dialogue, and character nuances, encouraging deliberately-heightened and artificial performances from his cast. Waters clearly shares leather-clad Ida’s observation that ‘the world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life!’, thus we enjoy the thrill of an outraged Dawn disrupting her conservative parents’ Christmas by stomping on the presents. As with Pink Flamingos, it is Divine’s gleefully-exuberant performance and persona, modelled partly on Jayne Mansfield, Elizabeth Taylor and Cruella de Vil, which drives the film, despite the narrative pace flagging halfway through. Van Smith and Lochary were responsible for Divine’s hairstyles, makeup and outfits, which become increasingly perverse as Dawn’s desire for infamy reaches its inevitable apotheosis: a ringletted mohican, roller coaster eyebrows and mascara that both stretch around her head, bedecked in emerald green leopard print mini dress (with gloved sleeve), this cartoonish appearance appropriately matches her own vivid sense of reality; a sense shared with Waters himself.

Matthew Motyka

Mala Noche Studio/Distributor:

Janus Films Director:

Gus Van Sant Producer:

Gus Van Sant Screenwriter:

Gus Van Sant

Synopsis An openly-gay grocery store clerk, Walt, works in a store in Portland, Oregon and lusts after the illegal Mexican immigrants who are arriving in the town. Overcoming the language problems with a very basic Spanish vocabulary and with obvious intent, Walt tries to seduce a new arrival called Johnny. When Johnny proves immune to his charms and his wallet, Walt ends up sleeping with, and beginning a relationship with, Johnny’s best friend Pepper. The three continue to spend time together, with their relationships tempered by sexual frustration and the Mexicans’ desire to be elsewhere. Walt attempts to teach both of them to drive, leading eventually to his car being towed away after an accident. Johnny disappears and reappears later, having been deported and

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Cinematographer:

John J. Campbell Art Directors:

Steve Foster David Thorson Composer:

Creighton Lindsay Editor:

Gus Van Sant Duration:

78 minutes Cast:

Tim Streeter Doug Cooeyate Ray Monge Nyla McCarthy Year:

1985

then having escaped back over the border, leading to a final and tragic encounter with the police. Pepper remains in Portland, with Walt seemingly oblivious that there is no future to their relationship.

Critique There is a school of thought that a director’s first film often encapsulates all the themes that will suffuse the rest of their career, with David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) being a prime example. Mala Noche’s plot of gay desire and problematic relationships combined with the slight story, naturalistic relationships and beautiful cinematography, make this very much a career-defining film. Surprisingly, though, Van Sant’s first feature has been pretty much ignored for over twenty years, with Drugstore Cowboy (1989) instead being discussed as his seminal work in lieu of his actually debut. Yet, almost a quarter of a century after its first screening, Mala Noche retains a freshness and simplicity that makes it a joy to watch. Cinematographer John Campbell’s high-contrast, monochromatic footage is often startlingly beautiful and yet, surprisingly, Van Sant comments on the fashion-magazine artifice of the film’s aesthetic by having occasional shots taken from a colour 8mm camera used by the characters. Although based on a novel by Walt Curtis, the dialogue and situations often feel improvised; but since the director is belatedly offering his version of cinema-vérité to the many film makers who preceded him, it shows him to be a director both brave and precocious to comment on the artificially-constructed ‘truth’ on screen. The comings and goings of the characters in Mala Noche are endearing and affectionate. Although Walt seems oblivious to the effect he has had on the two young men he encounters, he is an engaging lead and a refreshing gay alternative to the many self-centred heterosexual lotharios beloved by audiences over the years, such as Michael Caine’s Alfie (1966) and David Hemmings’ Thomas in Blowup (1966). To call Mala Noche a milestone in gay cinema is disingenuous if hardly anyone has seen the film for over two decades, but perhaps it can be belatedly discussed as such. However, rather than just talking about the film in relation to gay cinema, which is perhaps the reason it has been neglected for so long, Van Sant’s debut deserves to be included with the other low-budget debuts of the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) and Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994); it is an engaging view of the emerging ‘Generation X’, which displays a joie de vivre and honesty that was lacking in much of the contemporary American cinema of the time.

Alex Fitch

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Mondo Trasho Studio/Distributor:

Dreamland Films New Line Cinema Director:

John Waters Producer:

John Waters Screenwriter:

John Waters Cinematographer:

John Waters Art Director:

Vincent Peranio Editors:

Charles Roggero John Waters Duration:

95 minutes Cast:

Divine David Lochary Mary Vivian Pearce Mink Stole Year:

1969

Synopsis Bonnie, a Harlow-esque blonde, takes a bus to the park, is stalked and has her feet worshipped by a ‘shrimper’, only to be concussed after plump bombshell Divine backs her Cadillac into her, (the latter was temporarily distracted by a hunky hitchhiker she imagines to be naked). Out of guilt, Divine drives the unconscious woman into Baltimore, shoplifts a new outfit for her, before taking her to the laundromat to change her out of her blood-stained clothes. The Virgin Mary makes a miraculous appearance and grants Bonnie a wheelchair; however after witnessing her Cadillac being stolen, Divine and comatose Bonnie are dragged off to the Baltimore asylum. Once inside, the Virgin Mary makes a second appearance, although not in time to prevent an inmate from being raped by a fellow patient; leaving the still supine Bonnie a fur shawl, the Virgin frees Divine and the other residents. Divine takes Bonnie to the surgery of Dr Coat Hanger, a heroin-addicted ‘mad scientist’ who replaces Bonnie’s feet with rubber monster feet; on finally waking, she discovers her new feet are equipped with powers of teleportation.

Critique Having already made three short films, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Roman Candles (1966) and Eat Your Make-Up (1968), Waters embarked on his ‘gutter movie’: so named because it was shot in Baltimore’s ‘gutters, alleys and Laundromats’ – the credits appearing over a static shot of a dustbin overflowing with rubbish, a clear metonym for Waters’ intent, and obsession with ‘filth’. Made for $2,000, the title of his debut feature refers to a cycle of crudelymade, lurid Italian ‘shock-umentaries’, beginning with Mondo Cane (1961), all of which took an unflinching look at often extreme cultural practices from around the world (a mix of sensationalism and animal cruelty, sometimes ‘simulated’ for the camera), later inspiring 1970s’ ‘snuff’ films and the ‘Cannibal’ film cycle, among others. Such championing of the sensationalistic is central to Waters’ films. However, he restricts this aspect to the confines of his hometown of Baltimore. This reference to ‘shock-umentary’ is made explicit in Mondo Trasho’s unsettling prologue in which three live chickens are beheaded by a cowled executioner (who resurfaces as one of Dr Coat Hanger’s nurses): a scene which still disturbs (because it is genuine) and because Waters zooms in on each chicken’s wretched demise. As with the surreally-presented eye-slitting opening to Louis Brunel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929), this is clearly intended as a visual assault on the audience, remaining isolated from the rest of the film. The only

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closely-comparable ‘nasty’ moment is when Mink Stole has a paper bag placed over her head prior to being raped by an asylum inmate. Blending fantastical narrative elements from The Wizard of Oz (1939), Freaks (1932) and Flaming Creatures (1963) with a Catholic sensibility (the Virgin Mary’s materializations recall those of Glinda the Good Witch), the film still follows a narrative structure, although overlong at times. Bonnie’s trip to the park triggers a series of bizarre encounters and surreal happenings inspired by Lewis Carroll as much as by sensationalist headlines in the gutter press. Waters makes further nods to 1960s’ underground maestros Kenneth Anger, the Kuchars and Jack Smith through including a patchwork soundtrack consisting of extracts from classical music, Hollywood films and popular songs of the 1950s and early 1960s, so that each excerpt functions as dialogue, commenting melodramatically on the immediate, otherwise-silent, narrative action, as well as ironically distancing the audience from it – thus, for example, Bonnie’s car accident is accompanied by the Shangri-Las’ ‘Leader of the Pack’, and she and Divine are dragged into the asylum to the strains of ‘We’re off to See the Wizard’. This inclusion of popular 1950s’ and 1960s’ music would be a regular feature of all Waters’ later films (even setting two during those periods). Divine’s brassy persona is in its infancy, with her role being that of a gum-chewing 1950s’ juvenile delinquent, modelled on Jayne Mansfield. Due to the film’s miniscule budget, cast members appear in multiple roles. Waters was evidently still learning the finer points of film-making, as Mondo Trasho suffers from an often slow pace and many scenes outstay their welcome. Nevertheless, recognizable elements feature, reoccurring in his later works: patriarchal figures are viewed with a jaundiced eye (drug-addled surgeons, violent police, fascistic asylum staff); female teenage rebellion through fashion and acts of criminality; the exploitative nature of the popular press; narcissism; the ‘outsider’ as ‘insider’; toe-sucking; car accidents; and Catholicism.

Matthew Motyka

Multiple Maniacs Studio/Distributor:

Dreamland Films New Line Cinema

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Synopsis Passing through Baltimore, Lady Divine’s ‘Cavalcade of Perversions’: a travelling sideshow of such distractions as a heroin addict, a pornographic model, a human ashtray, and a kissing gay couple is actually a front for raven-haired Lady Divine’s crime ring. Her MC boyfriend Mr David lures unsuspecting prudish locals into witnessing these acts, before Divine ties, gags, robs and shoots some of them, sharing

Directory of World Cinema

Director:

John Waters Producer:

John Waters Screenwriter:

John Waters Cinematographer:

John Waters Editor:

John Waters Art Director:

Vincent Peranio Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Divine David Lochary Mary Vivian Pearce Mink Stole Year:

1970

the spoils with the performers and hiding out at her daughter Cookie’s apartment. Lady Divine’s relationship with her boyfriend is at breaking point (as are her nerves), not helped when informed by a tavern-owner that Mr David and Bonnie, who had earlier failed to impress Divine when auditioning for the cavalcade, are conducting an affair. Divine sets out to confront them, only to be raped by two glue-sniffers from the Cavalcade (a woman and a bearded transvestite). Led to a local church by the Infant of Prague, her prayers are disrupted by the religious whore who gives her a ‘rosary job’, before both women leave the church together. Meanwhile, Mr David and Bonnie are having sex in a hotel room and plotting Divine’s murder.

Critique Made for $5,000, in the wake of the Stonewall riots, antiwar protest movement and the Tate/Manson murders (which continue to influence the director’s films), is it any wonder that Multiple Maniacs is perhaps Waters’ most angry, nihilistic, violence-obsessed film? The main characters discuss murders when not committing them, and the bland, enthusiastic innocence of Bonnie masks a willingness to kill for the man she loves. Waters’ first all-talking feature is very much a transitional film in that he admitted he overcame his Catholicism whilst making it, hence the deliberately sacrilegious tone, not least the infamous ‘rosary job‘, culminating with the shot of someone shooting-up on the altar. Waters even subverts the ‘road to Damascus’ cliché, whereby, having been found by the Infant of Prague after being raped, Divine believes that his leading her to church is surely proof that God approves of her seeking vengeance! However, Waters was to return briefly to Catholicism in later films such as Serial Mom (1992) and Pecker (1998). Like Trasho, Maniacs acknowledges Freaks (1932), which, after years of obscurity due to it being deemed ‘obscene’, had finally been re-released in 1963; Warhol productions such as My Hustler (1965), and Flesh (1968); 1950s’ ‘creature features’; and the works of 1960s’ cult horror directors William Castle, George A Romero and Herschell Gordon Lewis: hence the film is an uneasy amalgam of grindhouse, soap opera, gay underground and surreal fever dream. The title itself is a deliberate reworking of Lewis’ 2000 Maniacs (1964), whilst the shot of Divine gorging on Mr David’s internal organs (in closeup) is clearly informed by Romero’s seminal debut, The Night of the Living Dead (1968); as are, apparently, Waters’ staging of Christ feeding the five thousand with bread rolls and tinned tuna (which, despite its gospel basis, films the starving hoards advancing on Christ’s table like Romero’s hungry dead); even Mr David’s glib MC patter: ‘Watch as this drug-crazed animal loses all sense of human dignity and decency! He will literally become a maniac before your very eyes!’ would not

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sound out of place in a low-budget horror trailer. Waters, however, crosscuts ironically between Mr David’s sensationalistic speeches and behind-the-scenes shots of the supposed ‘perverts’ preparing themselves, whilst Divine, in an evident homage to her idol Elizabeth Taylor, reclines naked, Cleopatra-style, demanding drugs. Waters began shooting some months after the brutal murders of pregnant Hollywood starlet Sharon Tate and four houseguests (in August 1969, in the Bel Air mansion she and husband Roman Polanski rented), which were unsolved until halfway through filming. In the style of Castle, Waters intended to ‘scare the pants off America’ (also the title of Castle’s autobiography), by making audiences believe that Divine and Mr David were responsible – Divine convincing him of his involvement. Waters still admits to being fascinated by the case, with its combination of brutality and celebrity; and the film’s bloodbath ending involving five of the principle characters, has distinctive echoes.

Matthew Motyka

Nowhere Studio/Distributor:

Why Not Productions Pathé Distribution Director:

Gregg Araki Producers:

Andrea Sperling Gregg Araki Screenwriter:

Gregg Araki Cinematographer:

Arturo Smith Art Directors:

Dan Knapp Pae White Editor:

Gregg Araki Duration:

78 minutes

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American Independent

Synopsis Twenty-four hours in Los Angeles. Dark is a disenfranchised student looking to secure his fleeting relationship with Mel, whose promiscuous antics have added to his already mounting anguish that may or may not have something to do with his own attraction to David Bowie-eyed classmate Montgomery. According to a radical religious cult in South Cambodia, the apocalypse will occur on this particular day, and these beliefs may be confirmed by Dark’s sightings of a lizard-like alien. The film soon fragments into a weaving portmanteau of noxious tales and illegal antics, all leading up to a much-hyped party hosted by the elusive Jujyfruit, where the fate of the world will be discovered. Such narrative strands include the S&M-infused relationship of student Alyssa and biker Elvis, the struggle of Mel’s younger brother Zero to impress his girlfriend Zoe through getting into the party despite being underage, and the tale of shy girl Egg, whose encounter with a TV star yields both an increase of self-confidence and imminent danger. As Jujyfruit’s party gets underway, these strands merge to offer answers that may change the characters’ lives forever, or may not.

Critique Gregg Araki’s third feature in his so-called ‘Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy’ is a striking visual assault and inflammatory portrait that embodies the directionless existence of its alienated subjects. Graced with a larger budget than its spiritual predecessors, Totally F****ed Up (1993) and The Doom Generation (1995), the film makes use of its economic

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Nathan Bexton James Duvall Debi Mazar Rachel True Year:

1997

freedom through elaborate production design that forms much of its hyperreal mise-en-scène, and bars and bedrooms are given conceptual art makeovers, hinting at a misguided, or merely underused, sense of creativity within its unfulfilled assemblage of characters. Nowhere plays like an acid trip, melding vibrant imagery with a superbly-warped soundtrack selection of industrial, shoegaze and post-punk tracks that have now become a trademark of Araki’s work, and these elements provide an insight into the inhabitants of the director’s destructive vision of contemporary Los Angeles. Araki’s characters do not have traits: they have dyed hair and obnoxious names, such as Handjob and Lucifer, as the only means of diversification amongst their peers. They weave in and out of scenes shared with people they neither care for nor readily acknowledge, except for engaging in casual sex or group drug experiments. Supposed principles are depicted through John Ritter’s manic televangelist: a semi-coherent preacher who, through the medium of television, drives at least two of the characters to suicide; a possible hint that attempts to live a more morally-inclined life are simply fruitless. As with Araki’s previous works, the characters in Nowhere speak in a bizarrely-grotesque dialect that is at once frank and referential, a choice example being: ‘Hello darling, can I jizz in your face?’ The dialogue here conveys a sense of self-importance and alienation, keeping the viewer at a distance, although a sense of familiarity is instilled through Araki’s use of familiar actors, usually popping up for no longer than one scene. Such instances include Beverly D’Angelo as Dark’s face-masked mother, then-rising stars Ryan Phillippe and Heather Graham as a nihilistic, sexually-charged couple, and the three-pronged Valley-girl attack of Shannen Doherty, Traci Lords, and Araki alumni Rose McGowan. If there is an emotional heart to be found amidst this hedonistic chaos, it is with Dark himself, who embodies any empathetic sense of traditionalism. In spite of his imperfections, his pining for Mel is both heartfelt and believable and, from the outset, we see him naked: firstly in a physical sense (the opening shot shows him masturbating in the shower), then metaphorically as he is one of the few characters not hiding behind florescent hair or emotional walls. His only companion willing to display her true self is Egg, whose story is as inevitable as it is tragic. By taking elements that permeated his earlier work – notions of intemperance, boredom, chemical love affairs and carefree violence – to an extreme, Araki offers a heightened depiction of a generation who had nothing to rebel against apart from themselves.

James Merchant

Queer Cinema

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Pink Flamingos Studio/Distributor:

Dreamland Films New Line Cinema Director:

John Waters Producer:

John Waters Screenwriter:

John Waters

Due to her notoriety with the gutter press as the self-proclaimed ‘filthiest person alive’, Divine has adopted the pseudonym of Babs Johnson, and hides out in a trailer in Maryland, along with her egg-obsessed, infantile mother Miss Edie, delinquent son Cracker and glamorous, voyeuristic travelling companion, Cotton. Babs’ reputation is contested by envious middle-class Connie and Raymond Marble, who are determined to steal her title, kidnap and imprison young women, and have their butler Channing forcibly impregnate them, eventually selling the babies to lesbian couples. The Marbles spy on Babs’ movements, whilst Babs outrages downtown Baltimore.

Cinematographer:

Critique

John Waters

Made for approximately $12,000, and originally billed as ‘an exercise in poor taste’, John Waters’ first colour feature is also his most notorious – which, thanks to its unforgettable denouement (dreamed up by Divine long before the film had been scripted), brought him and the Dreamlanders up from the underground and onto the Midnight movie circuit when New Line cinema decided to exhibit it internationally. The kitsch title refers to the plastic lawn ornaments gracing the entrance to Babs’ trailer, and in and out of which Waters’ newsreel camera zooms during the titles sequence; like Divine’s deliciously gleeful performance, they are deliberately tacky yet incongruously urban in such a rural setting. Waters has admitted the ending was merely a publicity stunt designed to promote the film, and which, even more than 35 years later, is what audiences most associate with Waters’ and Divine’s careers: an unlikely-to-be- repeated cinematic first, both stomach-churningly sickening yet outrageously amusing, this unforgettable gesture clearly inspired the later homoerotic stunt antics of the Jackass phenomenon (2000–02); ironically the show’s lead stunt actor, Johnny Knoxville, was later cast as Christ-like sex addict, Ray-Ray, in Waters’ A Dirty Shame (2004). Divine’s onscreen canine coprophagia is the ultimate in the film’s catalogue of unforgettably-vile images and lines of dialogue, (similarly scatological in nature), such as her defecating on someone’s front lawn, having first stolen a piece of steak by concealing it between her naked thighs, later declaring with histrionic outrage that she has received a gift-wrapped ‘bowel movement’ from the Marbles; Connie meanwhile, informs an unsuccessful applicant that she ‘can eat shit’ for all she cares, before later informing Raymond that she loves him more than her own shit whilst the pair indulge in mutual toe-sucking. In Waters’ world, taboos and boundaries surrounding bodily secretions, functions and sexual practices

Art Director:

Vincent Peranio Editor:

John Waters Duration:

100 minutes Cast:

Divine David Lochary Mary Vivian Pearce Mink Stole Year:

1972

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are typically broken, and then connected, for humorous and subversive effect; so that Babs’ and Crackers’ ingenious and hilarious desecration of the Marbles’ home by drooling over, licking and molesting every surface (surreally resulting in the furniture ‘ejecting’ its owners), leads to mother and son committing incest (or two male actors having sex); among the acts appearing at Babs’ birthday party is a man able to make his anus open and close like a gaping mouth; and Crackers and Cookie engage in a brief sexual act involving a live chicken placed between them, which is promptly beheaded. Further, phallocentrism is mocked and subverted in Raymond’s appendage requiring an additional length of meat attached, and that his second attempt at flashing is spoiled for him when the woman he exposes himself to reveals her own penis. Unlike those of his previous films, the narrative of Pink Flamingos is more tightly structured, despite the typical inclusion of dialogue-free scenes of action with ironic popular-musical accompaniment on the soundtrack. Waters’ crosscutting between the two families allows for a contrast of their ‘filthy’ activities–- thus the Marbles are shown to be far less sympathetic figures than Babs’ family, due to the formers’ economic exploitation of young women in the production of a ‘baby ring’ and avaricious desire for the very infamy which Babs attracts, whereas Babs announces that ‘filth is my politics, filth is my life’; the very mundane act of shopping in Baltimore allows for her to indulge in random acts for her own pleasure, and the hilarity of the audience: in this way, filthiness becomes almost life-affirming (despite her proclamation to ‘kill everyone now’), in contrast to the murderous obsessions of the characters in Multiple Maniacs (1970). The feud between the two warring families: Babs’ matriarchal tribe of polymorphously-perverse outsiders, versus the fame-hungry, middle-class Marbles, is a narrative hook that would be endlessly repeated in later films, notably Hairspray (1988), in which the Turnblads spar with the von Tussles, Cry-Baby (1990), with the Drapes versus the Squares, and, finally, A Dirty Shame, in which sex addiction replaces a desire for filthiness and is opposed by Mink Stole’s ‘neuters’.

Matthew Motyka

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Poison Studio/Distributor:

Bronze Eye Productions Poison L.P. Zeitgeist Films Director:

Todd Haynes Producer:

Christine Vachon Screenwriter:

Todd Haynes Cinematographers:

Maryse Alberti Barry Ellsworth Art Director:

Chas Plummer

Poison interweaves three separate stories, ‘Hero’, ‘Homo’ and ‘Horror’, each shot in different styles. Resembling a tabloid documentary, ‘Hero’ tells the story of Richie Beacon who shot his father, then flew off into the sky, reconstructing the absent child through interviews with those who knew him. ‘Homo’ charts the troubled reunion of Broom and Bolton in Fontevrault prison in 1944. At reform school, Broom had (perhaps) bullied and humiliated Bolton, but now Bolton is physically larger and mixes with a formidable gang. Broom remembers (or fantasizes) about the homosocial/homosexual reformatory environment, including sexualized assaults and a marriage ceremony for two boys. In these sequences, the muted, grubby realism of the prison scenes, almost drained of colour, are replaced with self-consciously colourful artifice. Eventually Broom has violent sex with Bolton, who is shot dead three days later in an escape attempt. ‘Horror’, shot like a 1950s’ film noir, follows the tribulations of Dr Thomas Graves after he isolates the human sex drive in liquid form and accidentally ingests it, becoming the ‘Leper Sex Killer’.

Editors:

Critique

Todd Haynes James Lyons

Inspired by the work of Jean Genet (most obviously in ‘Homo’), Poison, which had been funded through various grants, became a cause célèbre and a key movie of the New Queer Cinema after it won the Sundance Festival’s Grand Jury Prize. Usually framed as a ‘queer’ movie and nothing else, it was typically contextualized within the Christian Right’s attacks upon public funding of the arts. Notoriously, for example, Reverend Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association vociferously and repeatedly attacked its (non-existent) ‘explicit porno scenes of homosexuals involved in anal sex’ and the National Endowment for the Arts for awarding Haynes a $25,000 completion grant. In doing so, Wildmon very clearly positioned himself and those for whom he spoke with the forces of intolerance that the film criticizes (although he had not actually felt the need to watch it in any of its three – unrated, NC17, R – versions). Despite their varied subject matter and visual styles, the three story strands are woven together so as to comment upon and challenge the viewer’s understanding of what has gone before, continually re-inflecting what we thought we had understood, destabilizing and reformulating meaning and identity. This refusal of fixity can also be seen in the ambiguous status of the reformatory scenes (memories? fantasies? desires?), in the contradictory view of Richie pieced together from the faux-documentary vox pops (is he some strange fey being, wild and abhuman? The troubled child of a nuclear family that is falling apart under the pressures

Duration:

85 minutes Cast:

Edith Meeks Larry Maxwell Susan Norman Year:

1991

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Synopsis

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Poison, Bronze Eye.

of its own conformities as sexual and violent impulses burst through repression? A young boy stalled in his Oedipal trajectory, beginning to understand that there is something queer – in either sense – about his emerging identity?), and in the space between the literal and metaphorical occupied by the diseased Graves (trapped in a 1950s-like nightmare of oppression, exclusion and red-scare/lynch-mob-style hysteria, his story is also very clearly about HIV-AIDS in the 1990s). A key moment in the film comes when the Broom watches Bolton with his mouth forced open so the other reformatory boys can spit into it. Bolton drops to his knees in a vaguely Christ-like pose, the camera craning up to keep his face in the centre of the screen. The scene moves from the intentionally revolting to the mildly comical before the gobs of saliva are joined by and then transformed into a cascade of falling

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petals. The troubling, lyrical, comical Genet, who exhibited little interest in gay identity politics or community, instead relishing the notion of ‘criminality’, is perfectly captured by this transformation of humiliation into transcendence. Refusing the common imperative to represent homosexuals as the kind of ‘nice’ people that Tom Hanks could play, Poison’s significance lay in its rejection of the essentialism that (queer) identity politics had strategically needed to construct but which was becoming increasingly reified. Poison proposes in its place difference, fluidity, contingency and the powers of transformation.

Mark Bould

Shortbus Studio/Distributor:

Fortissimo Films THINKFilm Director:

John Cameron Mitchell Producers:

John Cameron Mitchell Howard Gertler Tim Perell Screenwriter:

John Cameron Mitchell Cinematographer:

Frank G DeMarco Art Director:

Jody Asnes Composer:

Yo La Tengo Editor:

Brian A Kates Duration:

101 minutes Cast:

Tim Sook-Yin Lee Paul Dawson Lindsay Beamish Raphael Barker Year:

2006 236

American Independent

Synopsis The lives of various New Yorkers interconnect due to their meetings at, and proximity to, a sex and performance club called Shortbus. These include Sophie, a relationships councillor who is unable to achieve an orgasm; James, an artist and film maker who is documenting his own life in order to give his boyfriend Jamie a happy record of their time together before he kills himself; Severin, a dominatrix who photographs everyone she meets in order to try and connect with people. James suggests bringing an extra person into their relationship and they find a young model called Ceth at Shortbus, unaware that a man called Caleb has been watching him from across the street and fallen in love. Sophie goes to Shortbus with her increasingly-disinterested husband Rob with a remote-controlled vibrator in her underwear, so that he can try and control her sexual sensations as she meets new people, but in fact she connects emotionally with Severin and they start a friendship. After a botched suicide attempt, Caleb and James start a relationship. A blackout in New York coincides with Sophie finally achieving orgasm with a couple she meets in the club while Rob and Severin connect during a masochistic encounter.

Critique A belated example of the sub-genre termed ‘hyperlink cinema’ by Alissa Quart in Film Comment, Shortbus moves back and forth between the lives of various characters as their plots and lives intertwine. In the hands of other directors, such as Paul Thomas Anderson with Magnolia (1999), this technique is very successful and John Cameron Mitchell certainly aims high with Shortbus: characters are created by improvisation by actors in a film that tries to deal with sex honestly. However, the overall effect leaves the audience alienated from many of the film’s events. Partially, this is because the

Directory of World Cinema

director has chosen some self-obsessed New Yorkers who are less engaging than any of the sexually-confused and transgender characters of the director’s earlier Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). ‘Real’ sex has only started to be acceptable in arthouse films in recent years, but it is a filmic tool that is still unfamiliar to audiences and something that can exclude the viewer through its realism and unfamiliarity. Many genres of films cause physiological reactions: comedies make us laugh, thrillers make us tense, horror films make us jump, but portrayals of sex on screen inevitably arouse the audience and that is not necessarily something that many people want to experience in the company of strangers. The utopian vision of the film – a clean, brightly-coloured club where people of all ages, genders and sexualities can drink, listen to music and copulate with each other – is a noble idea, but ultimately unworkable. Not that many people are turned on by portrayals of gay sex, lesbian sex, sado-maschism, masturbation, orgies and so on. Everyone has their own specific fetish that does not necessarily work for someone else. There are certainly several interesting vignettes and performances – the relationship between James, Jaimie and Ceth; the friendship between Sophie and Severin – but this is a film designed to work around the idea of a sex club that liberates the characters and, as such, many of the situations seem contrived rather than realistic. Ironically for a film that is about frustration in emotional and sexual relationships, the viewer’s engagement with the plot is equally frustrating as we do not get to spend time with any of the characters long enough to see beyond their broad strokes and into their lives. Perhaps if the film was longer, or organized into discreet chapters, or even set on another planet, it would be easier to engage with. New York is rendered geographically with brightly-coloured CGI, and perhaps this is indicative of the problem with the film overall: as the club is as unrealistic as the childlike rendering of the city, how can we believe in the lives of the characters if the central tenet of the film makes it so hard for us to suspend our disbelief?

Alex Fitch

Queer Cinema

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The Sticky Fingers of Time Studio/Distributor:

Crystal Pictures Good Machine Strand Releasing Director:

Hilary Brougher Producers:

Jean Castelli Isen Robbins Susan A. Stover Screenwriter:

Hilary Brougher Cinematographer:

Ethan Mass Art Directors:

Paul Etheredge-Ouzts Dina Varano Composer:

Miki Navazio Editor:

Sabine Hoffmann Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Terumi Matthews Nicole Zaray Belinda Becker James Urbaniak Year:

1997

238

American Independent

Synopsis In 1953, genre writer Tucker leaves her apartment in New York to buy some coffee. She crosses a street to meet her friend Isaac and suddenly finds herself in the present day. In 1997 a frustrated and suicidal writer called Drew comes across Tucker’s novel ‘The Sticky Fingers of Time’ in a secondhand book shop, which includes a newspaper clipping of the author’s murder 40 years earlier. A meeting with Isaac in a bar reveals that the three of them are time travellers, the women due to their genetic code – Tucker’s was altered due to observing a H-bomb test, and Drew was born that way – while he is from the future and has a time machine implanted in his fingers. They are being tracked by murderers from the future who want to stop them travelling in time.

Critique When making a low-budget time-travel movie – such as the following decade’s Primer (2004) and Time Crimes (2007) – the inability of the film-makers to show the machinations of science via special effects has to be replaced by a thoughtprovoking plot and, in each, it is a slightly impenetrable plot that does not quite make sense. Certainly, writer-director Hilary Brougher does her best to make the circular story add up, but seems to have forgotten the most glaring problem with the plot – the novel written by Tucker which gives the movie its title has not been finished when she gets murdered, so could not exist in the present to contain a clipping of her death – which could have been fixed with a slight rewrite. This haphazard approach to the internal logic of the film could equally be applied to the lesbian aspect of the story. While it is great to have a pair of female leads in this film – indeed, it is in keeping with the film-noir trappings of the opening scene which casts Tucker as writer-cum-noir protagonist and her lover, Ophelia, as the femme fatale – it does not seem to have been particularly well thought-out. As three of the female protagonists have male names, they could have been played by men, as most of the characters seem to be bisexual and their gender seems fairly arbitrary to their characterization. Bizarrely, the only character that actually has a semblance of female desire and sexuality – Ophelia – is inexplicitly revealed to have a tail for no other reason than to show this as an affectation of living in the future. On paper, these elements – time travel as a side effect of exposure to radiation, having your soul trapped inside a cactus, women from the future having prehensile tails – seem to have come straight from a surrealist comic book. However, on screen this plays as a typically languid arthouse movie that often frustrates the viewer because the film is happy to have

Directory of World Cinema

the characters sitting around in bars instead of getting on with the plot. The film starts very strongly with the introduction of Tucker in the 1950s and then seems to lose direction when she arrives in the present, with certain scenes seeming to act as padding to get the movie to feature length, and it is in these scenes that the performance of some of the supporting cast leaves a lot to be desired. However, the outré nature of the plot and engaging characterization of the two female leads goes a long way to compensate for the failing of the film in other respects. If The Sticky Fingers of Time had been made by a male director with adolescent fantasies in mind, it might have been as over the top and tacky as the title suggests – the Wachowski brothers’ Bound (1996) springs to mind when considering this ‘alternative version’ – but, for this film to have achieved a greater cult following, it needed a more lurid style than that offered by the matter-of fact-direction, which often weighs down the plot rather than complementing it.

Alex Fitch

Queer Cinema

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RURAL AMERICA

Directory of World Cinema

It is the cinema made within the heartlands of rural America which has produced films that are at once deeply personal and formally innovative. While there is not an official movement which defines itself as ‘rural Americana’, there are many common features shared by the films featured in this section. Whereas we might associate the urban America with action and melodrama, the nation’s rural cinema is characterized by low-key lifestyles and attention to environment. Ample room is given to portraying the role of the work place within a small community, as seen in the mills, factories and cafes which frequently feature in these films. Location shooting is part of an aesthetic which, though partially necessitated by budgetary constraints, is also rooted in a long-standing visual tradition found in the photography of Walker Evans, Joel Sternfeld and the paintings of Edward Hopper. We might even trace this contemporary interest in organic community back to the work of American transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, as well as the work of later pragmatists, such as John Dewey and Lewis Mumford. In the work of the latter two thinkers, there was a call for a return to community in the face of America’s increasing urbanization. This is reflected directly in the more politically-engaged films of Jon Jost and John Sayles, both of whom come from a broadly liberal position and sympathize with working-class culture; this is a form of cinema in which actors and place invariably take precedence over plot and action. These observations are applicable to much of the work of the veteran film-maker Jon Jost, who has maintained creative control over his work throughout his career. While he has occasionally made films in American cities, such as Los Angeles in Angel City (1976) and New York in All the Vermeers in New York (1990), he is better known for his work in small-town America. As in the recent work of David Gordon Green, a strong autobiographical element colours many of Jost’s films. The film-maker is inspired by the people, environments, and events which he has experienced first-hand. This is evident in Jost’s first feature film, Speaking Directly (1975), a combination of a diary, essay and political polemic. It documents Jost’s own life in rural Oregon, where he lived a frugal lifestyle without running water or electricity. As in his later work, Jost was responsible for his own camerawork and editing. This first film was self-funded, and his later films have been produced on miniscule budgets never exceeding $40,000. As in much of his subsequent work, Jost’s first feature is also a social critique, examining America’s social malaise in global context. Home movie footage of either Jost cutting wood or conversations with his own friends are juxtaposed with formal montage, mixing footage of the bombing of Hanoi with advertising images from corporate America; we are constantly reminded that both the individual and the wider nation exist within a context which is resolutely political and is marked by state-endorsed violence. This is a view

Left: The Bed you Sleep In, Complex Corp.

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Directory of World Cinema

which is derived directly from Jost’s own experience of being imprisoned in 1965 for two and a half years for refusing to be drafted to fight in Vietnam. His experience of prison is one which he claims to be integral to the strikingly-bleak vision of American society which surfaces throughout his films, reaching its peak in Frame Up (1993), where the lead characters are executed at the climax. This rather sombre vision is augmented by Jost’s troubled, but nevertheless creative, relationship with the mercurial American actor Tom Blair, who makes his first appearance in Last Chants for a Slow Dance and appears in two later films, Sure Fire (1990) and The Bed You Sleep In (1993). In Last Chants for a Slow Dance, we gradually see a young man grow up and emerge from the wayward loser and murderer to become a family man (albeit, an unhappy one) in the later two films, both of which culminate in suicide. Tom Blair might be seen as Jost’s alter ego, an American small-town equivalent of Truffaut’s Jean Pierre Léaud. But whereas the French film-maker invests his main character with a certain charm and sympathy, Jost’s engagement with Blair becomes a vehicle to explore the darkest aspects of the human psyche. In the first of these films, Blair plays a character that is incapable of holding down a steady job or a stable relationship. He is a deceitful and promiscuous philanderer who eventually shoots a fellow American in the woods. As with the work of Green and Gus Van Sant, the film is strong on ambience and character, as we feel that we almost know too much about this man, enduring his ribald humour in the dimly-lit bars and motel bedrooms. However, Jost’s work also displays a degree of formal experimentation which aligns his work with the avant-garde. Long tracking shots of the road dominate, while much of the film is characterized by long uninterrupted takes whose duration and internal tension only serve to accentuate the outbreaks of anger and violence. Last Chants for a Slow Dance ends on a bleak note when a superimposed title over a bleak shot of the road reminds us that Tom’s actions are literally a ‘dead end’. This sets the tone for Jost’s other rural films, as Tom Blair reappears in Sure Fire, with the film centring on the ambitions of Wes, a small town entrepreneur, who is attempting to convince tourists from California to buy second homes in the quieter landscapes of rural Utah. While Wes is a character who is accepted within the local community, he is also even more manipulative and cynical than his younger counterpart in the earlier film; the film includes scenes of Wes at home rehearsing potential conversations with the people he seeks to take advantage of. The film builds to a tragic finale. When Wes discovers that his son intends to leave the family, he shoots his offspring before turning the gun on himself. This perhaps marks Jost as the bleakest of the film-makers working within rural American cinema, for whereas Green, Sayles, and, to a lesser extent, Robert Duvall, celebrate the virtues of rural communal life, Jost’s account is much less nostalgic and is increasingly concerned with the destruction of family life within the context of American economic decline. Jost’s fascination with the darker side of the human psyche is further evident in the final collaboration between Jost and Blair, The Bed You Sleep In (1993), which was shot in a depressed logging town in Oregon. The title of the film reminds us that we bear the consequences of our own thoughts and actions. Like many of the films made in rural America, landscape takes on a life of its own. Almost a third of the film consists of carefully-composed shots of the small town, emphasizing the presence of the logging mill, which is the main source of employment for the inhabitants. In contrast to the earlier two films, the character played by Tom Blair is not immediately unsympathetic; Ray is a happily-married man and a lover of nature, and early scenes show homely images, such as Ray

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making love with his wife in the woods or fishing with the boyfriend of his daughter Tracy, emphasizing a harmony between the individual and nature. This is abruptly disturbed by accusations of incest and abuse from his wife, Jean. While their daughter is never seen on screen, the repercussions of a letter, recounting in detail what is never actually evidenced, are irreversible. Both Jean and Ray commit suicide, and the last shot of the film tilts up from the man’s body to the desolate hills in the background. The juxtaposition of a highly-personal story and numerous landscape shots, which suggest social and economic context, means that we can also view Jost’s work as a form of philosophical inquiry into the nature of truth. It is an exploration which continues through Frame Up, which combines the road movie with a more general look at American social pathology, and can be found in his most recent digital work: Homecoming (2004), Over Here (2007) and Parable (2008). These films deal directly with the after effects of America’s involvement in Iraq, with soldiers returning to their homes in small-town America. Jost’s work displays a singular vision of America which, although bleak in nature and experimental in narrative form, demonstrates that miniature descriptions of American rural life can serve to provide alternative accounts of the American moral psyche which are entirely different from the gloss of more urban-orientated Hollywood fare. It is this combination of a singular authorial vision and a genuine sense of sensitivity towards local landscape which makes him a notable film-maker, and these qualities are also in evidence in some of the other films examined in this section.

Hing Tsang

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Affliction Studio/Distributor:

Largo Entertainment Lionsgate Director:

Paul Schrader Producer:

Linda Reisman Screenwriter:

Paul Schrader Cinematographer:

Paul Sarossy CSC Art Director:

Anne Pritchard Composer:

Michael Brooks Editor:

Jay Rabinowitz Duration:

110 minutes Cast:

Nick Nolte Willem Dafoe James Coburn Sissy Spacek Year:

1997

244

American Independent

Synopsis Wade Whitehouse is a sheriff in a small Maine town. Barely able to keep his mind together, thanks to a recent divorce and a troubled upbringing at the hands of his abusive father, Glen, his life spirals out of control when a shooting is reported in the woods. Wade aims to blow the case wide open but a family death suddenly forces him and the alcoholic Glen both closer together (and yet further apart). With a distant younger brother Rolfe, the only relationship he can maintain is with the warm Marge – but for how much longer?

Critique Suffering under the influence of its literary inspiration (Russell Banks’ novel), Paul Schrader’s Affliction is disappointingly undercooked as a psychological drama but does succeed on its own terms as an atmospheric backwoods tale. The gulf between novel and film, reality and fiction, is blurred in elegant fashion from the opening title sequence, where, out of a collection of still photos, one is magnified to become the opening shot of the movie: a truck moving down a snowy road at night in New Hampshire. Accompanied by Willem Dafoe’s hypnotic narration and Michael Brooks’ quiet score, several core themes are laid down, principally that things are not what they seem with the soon-to-be-introduced Sheriff Wade (Nick Nolte). As a snapshot of a failed life, crystallized in image and narration, the opening certainly grabs the attention. It is a shame, then, that the rest of the film fails to live up to it, despite the very best efforts of Nolte, who subtly establishes character problems with his daughter, ex-wife and father. Wade is also walked over by local contractor, Gordon LaRiviere (Holmes Osbourne), whom he hires for road-clearing duties. When a businessman is found shot, Wade senses a conspiracy and sets out to prove it, but his deranged conspiracy theories will prove more destructive than he anticipates. Gothic themes of repression (aided by the snow-swept landscape), plus Oedipal themes of parental relationships, are ladled on but evaporate thanks to a lack of structure. Several overbearingly literary motifs are also introduced, including the recurrence of Wade’s toothache that will come to gnaw at him as much as the people he despises. The central problem is the compressed timeframe: within two hours, Wade has gone from unstable but likeable fellow investigating a death to virtual crackpot, courtesy of his violent father’s influence. Two hours is far too short a running time to portray such tragic events and the film feels rushed, surprising coming from the writer of that ultimate angsty tale, Taxi Driver (1976). Bar a few grainy flashbacks (filmed in the style of a home movie), there is little sense of why Glen has had such a negative influence on Wade’s life. Performances, however, are

Directory of World Cinema

largely outstanding across the board. Nolte finally gets a role he can chew on; Coburn won an Oscar as the monstrous Glen (reportedly pleased that he finally received a role requiring acting) and Sissy Spacek is, as ever, brilliant as the town’s sole likeable inhabitant. Only Dafoe suffers with a role that feels like a cipher, the didactic writer character of Rolfe seemingly shoehorned in for Wade to bounce his increasingly-unhinged theories off. Ultimately the film conjures up some meta-fictional puzzles of its own: namely, that the mysteries of a man’s mind are hardly as fascinating as the mysteries of the void between literature and movies.

Sean Wilson

All the Real Girls Studio/Distributor:

Jasmine Productions Sony Pictures Classics Director:

David Gordon Green Producer:

Jean Doumanian Screenwriter:

David Gordon Green Cinematographers:

Tim Orr Art Director:

Jeffrey Barrows Editors:

Zene Baker Steven Gonzales Duration:

108 minutes Cast:

Paul Schneider Zooey Deschanel Patricia Clarkson Danny McBride Year:

2003

Synopsis Marshall, North Carolina, a desolate, decaying mill town. As the film opens to a song by Will Oldham, we meet Paul and Noel standing in a rubbish-filled alley, contemplating their first kiss. Noel has just returned from six years at boarding school, and is a desperately-needed distraction from the boredom of Paul’s everyday life. Somewhere in his mid-twenties, he helps out at his uncle’s body repair shop, fixing beat up, rusty old trucks and lives at home with his mother, who entertains sick children at the hospital by dressing up as a clown. But there are obstacles in the way of young love: Noel is his best friend Tip’s little sister and, beneath his easygoing charm and boyish good looks, he is the asshole ex-boyfriend who has slept with most of the women in town, leaving a string of bitter, broken hearts along the way. And although Noel seemingly offers him a way to redeem himself, she has problems of her own, and a drunken weekend away with her old private-school friends results in a disastrous rift between the couple.

Critique Although this heartfelt film by David Gordon Green is a classic story about two people falling in love, much of its beauty lies not in the timeworn plot but in the strong performances of the characters living on the fringes of the main story, and in its evocative picture of the small North Carolina town that is brilliantly captured by the cinematographer Tim Orr. Much of the film takes place outdoors (the notable exception being the bedrooms): pianos are played in a dusty yard, Paul and his aimless friends drink beer by a bonfire in the shadow of the looming mills across the river, or, in a playful, slightly absurd scene, race a station wagon around a dirt track, Nascar-style. Green is clearly inspired by Terrence Malick’s creative style and shots of the landscape and the town are cut with the intimate scenes featuring Paul and Noel; when their relationship

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is blown apart, the camera turns its eye on a blood-red sky and the frantic machines on a factory floor to mark the crucial twist in the film. Like the setting, it is the impressive supporting cast that lends All the Real Girls its offbeat realism. Uncle Leyland (Ben Mouton) is weighed down by sorrow, raising his young daughter on his own after the loss of his wife. Paul’s mother, played by the terrific Patricia Clarkson, fears that she has raised just the kind of man who left her broken-hearted in the crumbling town, while his friend Butt-Ass, played by a scene-stealing Danny McBride, has little better to do than sit around all day drinking beer, making banal conversation and hitting on his friend’s girl. Against this backdrop, the classic love story unfolds with all of the tentative awkwardness of any new relationship. Zooey Deschanel and Paul Schneider (who co-wrote the story after meeting Green at the North Carolina School of the Arts) at times deliver their lines in a halting, stumbling way that feels painfully realistic and, although the film veers towards sentimentality towards the end, for the most part the writing successfully avoids the usual timeworn clichés that litter the genre.

Sarah Cronin

The Apostle Studio/Distributor:

Butcher’s Run Films October Director:

Robert Duvall Producer:

Rob Carliner Screenwriter:

Robert Duvall Cinematographer:

Barry Markowitz Composer:

David Mansfield Art Director:

Linda Burton Editor:

Stephen Mack Duration:

120 minutes

246

American Independent

Synopsis Sonny is a passionate, borderline-fanatical, fundamental Texan preacher with a devoted group of followers. However, frustrated by the sudden collapse of his job as holy man, not to mention his wife’s affair with another minister, Sonny commits an act of violence and flees the town, crossing the border into Louisiana. There he builds a new life as The Apostle, named EF, using local radio to promote his message and re-building an old church. Although the community are receptive to EF’s work, how long will it take for his past to catch up with him?

Critique A parable about the blinding, as well as healing, power of faith, The Apostle is from the outset dominated by Robert Duvall’s performance in the central role as Sonny/EF, the troubled fallen angel in a deep south-set allegory. It is a tale of two halves, with Robert Duvall also writing and directing (his debut). Funded independently of his own accord, act one introduces Sonny, pre-violence: first seen mid-flashback sitting as a child absent-minded in a gospel church. Less absentminded is the adult Sonny, who soon takes centre stage, channelling his heart, soul and very being into helping those in his local community (including those in a near-recent car accident). However, the film’s message is certainly a doubleedged sword, Sonny is so engrossed in his faith that it blinds

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Robert Duvall Farrah Fawcett Miranda Richardson Year:

1997

him to the emotions and needs of the people around, including that of his mother (whom he leaves unwell on the floor at one stage) and most importantly his wife, Jessie (Farrah Fawcett). With Jessie unwilling to commit to a life of pure religious devotion, Sonny’s erratic behaviour worsens when he discovers her affair with a younger man. Worse still, he is supplanted from role of preacher in his town. The catalyst for Sonny’s fall then takes place when he attacks his wife’s lover with a baseball bat, leaving him in a coma. Sonny the angel becomes Sonny the condemned. Fleeing his community, he is cast adrift in an unknown land, re-named EF, on a personal exodus to redeem himself (a train of causality marked in the film’s tagline ‘Lust, Obsession, Revenge … Redemption’). Sonny is quick to use his preaching skills in his new adopted town. The difference is, where first he was blind, now he can see: instead of simply preaching, EF now practices as well, Duvall’s excellent performance bringing out an element of human connection in EF that was absent in Sonny as he utilizes radio for the first time and re-builds a ruined church with the help of a reverend who has distanced himself from community work. In fact, so consumed is the film with its passionate evangelical message that incidental characters and themes risked being blindsided. Scenes of Sonny frantically preaching to God for guidance, only to get mixed signals (in his own mind, that is, resulting in his violent actions) in reply, are some of the most impassioned, carrying the bulk of the thematic weight. Miranda Richardson’s receptionist has an unconsummated date with EF, but it goes nowhere; Billy Bob Thornton turns up all too briefly as a hick ready to destroy EF’s new church, only to be reconciled with his own faith (one has to question Duvall’s motives for making the film, for they surely would be as fascinating as anything on-screen). The most impassioned scene is the closing one of Sonny giving his final gospel as the police close in on his location. In a stunningly-visceral act of faith healing, he finally connects spiritually and humanely with his flock, and the circle of redemption is complete.

Sean Wilson

Badlands Studio/Distributor:

Warner Bros. Director:

Terrence Malick Producer:

Terrence Malick

Synopsis The 25-year-old Kit, a renegade with a dead-end job as a garbage collector, meets Holly, a freckled, red-haired, batontwirling high-school student 10 years his junior. Seduced by his James Dean looks and lazy charm, Holly defies her widowed father by dating the rebel from the wrong side of the tracks, making out with him under the school bleachers, or by the sun-drenched banks of a nearby river. After Holly’s father forbids her from seeing him, Kit disposes of his problem by killing the man; he then records a suicide note to buy them

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Screenwriter:

Terrence Malick Cinematographers:

Tak Fujimoto Stevan Larner Brian Probyn Art Director:

Jack Fisk Composer:

George Tipton Editor:

Robert Estrin Duration:

94 minutes Cast:

Martin Sheen Sissy Spacek Warren Oates Year:

1973

some time, sets Holly’s house on fire to cover their tracks, and hits the road with his hopelessly-naïve girlfriend. Their escape into the wilderness at first has something of an idyllic, playful quality to it, until the bounty hunters catch up with them, and the killing spree begins in earnest. And although Holly is shocked to discover that her man is more than a little triggerhappy, she sticks by his side almost to the end, when the cops finally catch up with them in the Badlands of Montana.

Critique The first of only five films directed to date by the reclusive Malick, who also wrote and produced the picture, Badlands was inspired by the 1958–9 Starkweather-Fugate killing spree and is widely regarded as not only one of the most impressive debut films in American cinema but also one of the finest movies released during the Golden Decade of the 1970s. Visually stunning, with a pitch-perfect soundtrack that features an unforgettable, lilting theme song by Carl Orff, as well as music by Erik Satie, the film is a remarkable whole, complemented by terrific performances from its two leads. Malick’s characters deliver their lines with an understated sense of economy, often in seeming disregard of the enormity of their actions, cleverly contrasting the banality of everyday conversation with the shock of cold-blooded murder. For Kit’s part, he is unfailingly polite, almost gentlemanly (even telling the two cops who finally arrest him that they have performed like heroes), yet chillingly dispassionate at his core. And while Holly, dressed in frilly dresses and white lace blouses, with her wide-eyed air of innocence, exudes a hopeless naïvety, her thoughts uttered on the terrifically evocative voiceover offer a deeper reflection on her newfound exile; looking through a Stereopticon at vintage travel photos, the images thrown up on the screen, she wistfully wonders where she might have travelled to, what experiences she could have had, what other men she might have met, had it not been for Kit. Although Badlands is dedicated to the director Arthur Penn, Malick eschews the bullet-riddled action and bloodsoaked scenes that characterize Bonnie & Clyde (1967) in favour of a lyrical, almost poetic approach to his characters and story. The iconic, timeless cinematography dramatically reflects the wide open vistas and big blue skies of the Midwest, beautifully encapsulating the sense of isolation and loneliness suffered by Kit and Holly after their lives are irrevocably altered by their senseless actions. But as the camera lingers on the tall prairie grasses, or a full moon breaking through the clouds, Malick seems to suggest that there is an elemental force in all of us, capable of blurring the boundary between right and wrong.

Sarah Cronin

248

American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

The Brave Studio/Distributor:

Brave Pictures Majestic Films International Director:

Johnny Depp Producers:

Charles Evans Jr Carroll Kemp Jeremy Thomas Screenwriters:

Paul McCudden Johnny Depp DP Depp Cinematographer:

Vilko Filac Art Director:

Branimir Babic Composer:

Iggy Pop Editor:

Pasquale Buba Duration:

123 minutes Cast:

Johnny Depp Marlon Brando Marshall Bell Elpidia Carrillo Year:

1997

Synopsis Raphael is a Mexican-Indian living with his family in a trailer park located next to a garbage dump. Hindered by a criminal record for assault and a drinking problem, Raphael is struggling to provide for his wife and two children, but a strange offer from the wealthy, wheelchair-bound McCarthy promises financial security, albeit at a heavy price. McCarthy is producing a snuff film, and informs Raphael that his family will receive $50,000 if he is willing to be tortured and murdered on screen. The ex-convict accepts the offer but, as he enjoys his remaining week with his family, Raphael begins to reconsider.

Critique When one considers the fact that Johnny Depp is one of the biggest movie stars in the world – due to his pantomime turns in such summer blockbusters as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) rather than his more understated work in Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream (1993) or Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) – it is a surprise that The Brave, his only directorial outing to date, remains languishing in obscurity. The film received a hostile critical reception at the Cannes Film Festival, and was never released, either theatrically or to home video, in the United States, surfacing on DVD in Europe in 1998 only to be overshadowed by Depp’s tremendous turn as Hunter S Thompson in Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). A resolutely-downbeat experience, The Brave has some flaws and the slight narrative is severely stretched over the two-hour running time, but it is an undeniably intriguing effort that should not have been so readily dismissed; as with the films directed by Sean Penn, it is largely influenced by the New Hollywood of the 1970s, as indicated by the casting of Marlon Brando and Frederic Forrest in small but significant roles, and Depp’s performance also echoes his role in the western Dead Man in which he portrayed an accountantturned-outlaw who survives a shoot-out only to discover that a bullet has lodged itself too close to his heart to be removed and will eventually prove fatal. The squalid trailer park, seedy bars and disused warehouses of The Brave suggest an Americana where poverty is rife and opportunity is scarce, with Depp’s low-key performance effectively conveying the quiet yet palpable desperation of the central character. Unfortunately, he indulges his co-stars, who become a gallery of grotesques – particularly Brando as McCarthy, rationalizing the production of snuff on the grounds that, ‘the final measure of bravery is to stand up to death in exquisite anguish.’ The snuff film element is not

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as sensationalistic as in Joel Schumacher’s later 8mm (1999), with only a few appearances by one of McCarthy’s ‘associates’ serving to inject some much-needed tension as he turns up to physically and verbally harass Raphael and to remind him that his family will be punished if he does not honour the agreement. Depp is, instead, interested in his Raphael’s redemption through sacrifice, and this unfortunately entails several sentimental scenes in which he reconnects with his wife and children, including a comedic shopping trip with his daughter which feels out of place in an otherwise sad story about a man who is worth more to his family in death than he is in life. However, as a director, Depp almost makes up for the pacing problems and awkward tonal shifts with some strong scenes and observations; there is a genuinely-disorientating drinking scene, captured from Raphael’s intoxicated perspective, and the ‘advance payment’ that Raphael receives from McCarthy comes in the form of grubby notes and handed over in a brown paper bag, suggesting dirty money for an unspeakable service and the dark side of the American dream.

John Berra

The Last Picture Show Studio/Distributor:

Columbia Pictures Director:

Peter Bogdanovich Producers:

Stephen J. Friedman Bert Schneider Harold Schneider Screenwriters:

Larry McMurtry Peter Bogdanovich Cinematographer:

Robert Surtees Art Director:

Walter Scott Herndon Editor:

Donn Cambern

250

American Independent

Synopsis November, 1951. It is Sonny Crawford’s senior year in Anarene, a dusty, windswept town in West Texas, where high-school football is the local obsession. Wide-eyed and well-liked, Sonny and his rough-and-tumble best friend Duane have little to do besides shoot pool in the hall run by Sam ‘the Lion’, the gruff, salt-of-the-earth father figure who also owns the only diner and movie theatre in town. Duane has improbably landed the only decent girl around for miles, Jacy, whose mother Lois is a brassy, aging femme fatale who has been hard-drinking ever since she married for money instead of love. Despite her own unhappiness, she is determined that her daughter do the same. Sonny and Duane’s lives soon begin to unravel over the course of their unsuccessful football season: Sonny finds himself enmeshed in an affair with his coach’s desperately-unhappy wife, Ruth, while Duane sees his relationship disappear before his eyes when Jacy finds herself drawn to the country-club boys from Wichita. In the summer after graduation, the boys find themselves driven apart while the town crumbles around them; Sonny seems trapped in decaying Anarene, while Duane’s only escape is to join the army at the height of the Korean War.

Critique Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film was co-written with Larry McMurtry and based on the author’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. By far the director’s finest feature (it

Directory of World Cinema

Duration:

126 minutes Cast:

Timothy Bottoms Jeff Bridges Cybil Shepherd Cloris Leachman Ben Johnson Year:

1971

was deservedly nominated for eight Academy awards), The Last Picture Show is a bleak, yet nostalgic, look at small-town America which beautifully captures the ennui and frustration (often sexual) that envelop the town’s inhabitants. That bleakness is enhanced by Robert Surtees’ black-and-white cinematography, which brilliantly evokes the desolate nature of the Texas prairie and roots the film firmly within the Western tradition perfected by directors like Howard Hawks and John Ford, who clearly inspired the 31-year-old director (the last picture show at the Royal in Anarene is a screening of Hawks’ 1948 classic Red River). At its heart, the film is a moving coming-of-age story told through the parallel stories of the two generations of townsfolk, portrayed by a remarkable ensemble cast (both Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson, himself a star of several Westerns, won Oscars for their supporting roles). The younger actors imbue their characters with a fragile innocence and naïvety that is marvelled at by the town’s older inhabitants: Lois is amused by her daughter’s love for Duane, knowing that it is only a matter of time until she finds herself as bitter and jaded as her mother. Ruth, neglected by her husband, finds some solace in Sonny’s arms, but she is destined to be abandoned in favour of the younger, better-looking Jacy. Bogdanovich holds the older generation up as a mirror to the young, but the only reflection is one of broken dreams. Despite the bleakness inherent in The Last Picture Show, the film is suffused with an elegiac quality – a wistful longing for the past, reflected both in the black-andwhite visuals and in its perfectly-attuned soundtrack of mournful country and western songs, heard on the ubiquitous car and truck radios and played on the town’s jukebox. It is a time when the kids go steady, have swimming parties and neck in the back row at the picture house. Bogdanovich’s excellent film is a bittersweet classic that pays tribute to a simpler era in American history, and to a generation of film-makers who inhabited that time and space.

Sarah Cronin

Lone Star Studio/Distributor:

Castle Rock Director:

John Sayles Producers:

R. Paul Miller Maggie Renzi

Synopsis After a skeleton is discovered outside a small town on the Texas/Mexico border, local Sheriff Sam Deeds is forced to confront the personal demons that arise from his investigation. With the trail stretching back to the 1960s and encompassing his legendary father Buddy’s confrontation with the corrupt lawman Charlie Wade, the stage is set for an intricate murder mystery, an examination of racial politics and a delicate love story. Confronting his father’s mystique, one that has cast a shadow over his whole life, Sam has to question whether the man was a force for good or evil.

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Lone Star, 1995, Castle Rock.

Screenwriter:

John Sayles Cinematographer:

Stuart Dryburgh Art Director:

Dan Bishop Composer:

Mason Daring Editor:

John Sayles Duration:

130 minutes Cast:

Chris Cooper Elizabeth Peña Kris Kristofferson Matthew McConaughey Year:

1996 252

American Independent

Critique Throughout his career, John Sayles has been at the forefront of American independent directors chronicling small town life, from the mining community in Matewan (1987) to the blues troupe in his recent Honeydripper (2007). With rare grace and elegance, he fuses this perceptive commentary with that most iconic of genres, the western, and the result is Lone Star, a witty, engrossing, self-aware piece that both comments on and employs the tools the genre is famous for. Much like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), Sayles’ postmodern take on the modern cowboy tale is shot through with a resultant pessimism and realism. He takes great delight in upending conventions, bringing them strikingly into a modern setting. Gunfights for example, or threatened ones at least, now no longer take place in wide-open settings but crowded bars, where Corona-swigging sheriffs mingle with people of all races, and are as corrupt as the criminals they took down in movies decades before.

Directory of World Cinema

However, the movie also has a solid backbone and heart with its central mystery story centring on Sam (Chris Cooper), and the affair he rekindles with local teacher Pilar (Elizabeth Peña). With the interracial relationship frowned on by her mother Mercedes (Miriam Colon), further complexities and wrinkles are added to the tale. Not just a series of indulgent winks and nudges, the multi-stranded story is, at its core, a tale of interracial romance and of one man’s troubled relationship with a father he hardly knew. Past and present, personal and political, all blends together, with clever panning shots concealing transitions that take the viewer smoothly from one time zone to another. The ever-excellent Cooper ably projects Sam’s sense of duty, undershot with melancholy when he realizes that his father may be implicated in the death of the monstrous Wade (a chilling Kris Kristofferson). Throughout, he is presented with contradictory accounts of his father’s actions: some say he was a fair, brave man who stood up to corruption; others say he was as much a part of the institutional racism of the time as everyone else. It is up to Sam to burrow to the heart of the matter, beset on both sides by the Texan and Mexican views of history. As necessitated by the border-town setting, an examination of the violent American/Mexican conflict is also put through the spectrum, the ensuing mix of multi-regional actors and sharp dialogue offering a tangible sense of verisimilitude and authenticity. One of the sub-plots is that of ‘wetbacks’: immigrant Mexicans fleeing into Texas across the river. Again this turns out to have significant ramifications on central characters. As much an examination of the contradictory American character as the individual characters themselves, Sayles weaves a tapestry that is perhaps most remarkable for its balance: every piece of the puzzle is significant, every incident important. What could remain as a basic skeleton-in-thecupboard potboiler is raised far above thanks to the director’s immense skill in bringing it all together.

Sean Wilson

Napoleon Dynamite Studio/Distributor:

Fox Searchlight Director:

Jared Hess

Synopsis Abandoned by his grandmother, neglected by his uncle Rico, and unsupported by his brother Kip, Napoleon has to tutor himself in the lessons of becoming a man, of friendship and love. Unsurprisingly, he makes quite a few beginners’ mistakes: he is unsure of how to look, he too quickly disregards his friendship and his strategies of seduction prove somewhat naïve. Yet after initial disappointments and rejections, his determined efforts prove successful, and along the way he learns the most important lesson of all: to stay true to oneself.

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Producers:

Jeremy Coon Sean Covel Screenwriters:

Jared Hess Jerusha Hess Cinematographer:

Munn Powell Art Director:

Curt Jensen Composer:

John Swihart Editor:

Jeremy Coon Duration:

82 minutes Cast:

Jon Heder Tina Majorino Aaron Ruell Efren Ramirez Year:

2004

254

American Independent

Critique ‘Gosh’, a quirky film about a sympathetic, slightly eccentric small-town/high-school outcast’s coming-of age ... where have we seen that before? Its pastel tinted shots of clear skies and long-shot single-family homes set in motion (and time) by a 1980s’ soundtrack are hardly a first either. Yet however unoriginal Napoleon Dynamite’s premise might be, however seemingly uninspired its panache, writer/director Jared Hess manages to turn his film into a considerable and entertaining feat. Indeed, it is exactly by its evocation of such conventional narrative and audio-visual language that the film amuses. Armed with a plethora of one-liners (‘what the flip’, ‘vote for Pedro’, ‘do chickens have large talons?’), an excess of buzzwords (‘Gosh’, ‘heck yes’, ‘sweet’), too many long sighs to count and a wardrobe ostensibly borrowed from Steve Urkle, Napoleon Dynamite recounts a teenager’s battle with, well, about everything and everyone a teenager can battle with: small-town values, high-school mores, annoying relatives, girls, ‘ligers’ (crossbreds between lions and tigers), moustaches, and, perhaps most of all, himself. That is not to say however, that Napoleon Dynamite is merely, or is at all, a parody. Much like the animated sitcom with which its shares much of its themes, characters and locales, the brilliant King of the Hill (1997–2009), it occasionally ‘mocks’ these conventions, and then only superficially, almost accidentally. It rather extends, or enhances them, divulging another, as yet undisclosed, nuance. Its episodic plotting and ‘formalistic’ character development at once acknowledge the stasis and simplicity of its fiction world, and hint, by way of their intermittent illogicality, to a latent, suppressed unpredictability (visible most obviously when uncle Rico, for no particular reason, throws a piece of steak at Napoleon’s head). Its consistent use of long, still takes and static shots (the film denies almost every camera movement) simultaneously forces the audience to look closer at images they merely glanced at before, and encourages it to contemplate both the monotonous rhythms and recurring landscapes of small-town America, and the scenes’ emotional intensity and ambiguity. And Napoleon’s vernacular, finally, of ‘gosh’es and ‘sweets and exceedingly long sighs, is both a pun on many a cinematic teenager’s articulateness and an expression of a heartfelt sense of dejection and disappointment (perhaps related to the never explained absence of his parents). An instant commercial and critical success, the tone of more recent comments has, perhaps unsurprisingly, soured somewhat. And, indeed, the film is not as politically ambitious as, say, Juno (2007), nor is it as thorough a psychological study as Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) is. Yet the value of this patchwork – for it is, and wilfully so, a patchwork, evoking convention after convention without narrative necessity, and without internal logic – and certainly its comedy, can be found

Directory of World Cinema

in its recognizable yet defamiliarized seams and stitches. Napoleon Dynamite is like a bunch of Urkle’s old clothes, sown together the wrong way.

Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen

Snow Angels Studio/Distributor:

Crossroads Films Snow Blower Productions True Love Productions Director:

David Gordon Green Producers:

Dan Lindau R Paul Miller Lisa Muskat Cami Taylor Screenwriter:

David Gordon Green Cinematographer:

Tim Orr Art Director:

Terry Quennell Composers:

Jeff Mcllwain David Wingo Editor:

William M. Anderson Duration:

107 minutes Cast:

Kate Beckinsale Sam Rockwell Nicky Katt Tom Noonan Year:

2007

Synopsis Annie, who spends her days as a waitress at a local restaurant, is doing everything in her power to get her life back together and support her daughter. Once the most beautiful girl in her hometown, she is now struggling with the remnants of a destructive relationship with the damaged Glenn, a troubled man who will not stay out of her life. Working with Annie at the restaurant is a teenager named Arthur that she used to baby-sit when he was a kid. Arthur is becoming involved with a girl his age named Lila, but he has feelings for Annie, but they only leave him confused as he sits back and watches her inability to escape from Glenn. A terrible tragedy involving Annie casts a dark shadow over everyone in the town, and it changes the lives of all of the main characters forever.

Critique Arkansas-born film-maker David Gordon Green has, within ten years, established himself as one of the most provocative and talented young film-makers of his generation. He has also proven himself as someone delightfully hard to pin down, as his films have ranged from the affecting indie drama All the Real Girls (2003) to the flat-out hilarious major studio production The Pineapple Express (2008). One of his key films, if not his best, is the disturbing Snow Angels. Working from a novel by Stewart O’Nan, Green’s script for Snow Angels shows that his considerable capabilities as a director are matched by his abilities as a writer, as the film is one of the best written of the decade. Moving, smart and extremely troubling in the way few modern American films are, Snow Angels continues Green’s major winning streak, and it shows that he is one of the most unpredictable American film-makers since the enviable run that Peter Bogdanovich enjoyed in the seventies. While his writing has a wonderfully poetic quality about it, and his framing and composition skills are quite exceptional, perhaps the greatest thing about David Gordon Green is his ability to bring truly-superlative performances out of his actors. Snow Angels, like all of Green’s films, is filled with remarkable characterizations including Sam Rockwell’s disquieting turn as the devastated Glenn. The film also features affecting performances from often-underused talent like Griffin Dunne, Nicky Katt and Amy Sedaris. Even though the entire cast of Snow Angels delivers memorable performances, the film belongs

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to British-born Kate Beckinsale, whose startling role as Annie makes up for a near-decade run of bad films. Like Zooey Deschanel in All the Real Girls, Beckinsale delivers a moving and volatile performance that stands as one 2007’s best. As captured under the beautiful and chilling photography of Tim Orr, Beckinsale’s Annie is a truly-haunting creation, and Green’s intelligent and sympathetic direction of her only adds to its mystery and allure. Snow Angels is regrettably missing some of the eccentricity that marks George Washington (2000) and Undertow (2004), but it is an important chapter in the career of one of modern American film-making’s most interesting talents.

Jeremy Richey

The Station Agent Studio/Distributor:

SentArt Films Miramax Director:

Tom McCarthy Producers:

Mary Jane Skalski Robert May Kathryn Tucker Screenwriter:

Tom McCarthy Cinematographer:

Oliver Bokelberg Art Director:

John Paino Composer:

Stephen Trask Editor:

Tom McArdle Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Peter Dinklage Patricia Clarkson Bobby Cannavale Michelle Williams Year:

2003 256

American Independent

Synopsis Train enthusiast Fin McBride is a dwarf who has suffered enough from people’s prejudice. When his best friend dies and leaves him a dilapidated railway depot in upstate New Jersey, Fin takes the opportunity to be alone and moves in, only to find that solace is not possible when friendly hotdog vendor Joe and scatty artist Olivia are keen to make his acquaintance. Each suffering with their own personal problems, the three eventually form a strong friendship.

Critique The Station Agent is a film of enchanting contradictions: of urban and shared alienation; the differences in physical height between the protagonists, and how perception of one’s height clashes with one’s actual personality. Beginning with a landscape shot of urban, industrial New Jersey, we then cut to a close-up of disaffected, melancholy Fin McBride (Dinklage). This urban blot is soon to be contrasted with the more bucolic, arboreal side of the Garden State. When the camera jumps back from Fin’s close-up, we discover that, contrary to appearances, he is smaller than expected. From the outset, these contradictions (and the expectations they defy) are gently sketched, contained within a quiet meandering narrative. Peter Dinklage gives a beautifully-engaging performance as McBride abandoning the industrial sprawl and following his own odyssey along the NJ railway to his inherited depot. Because his legs are too small to reach the pedals of a car, he chooses to walk, a seemingly-arbitrary character point that further highlights the film’s desire to embrace the quirky and unexpected. It also allows one of the main motifs, man’s love of trains, to come forward. From here, the other two major components of the film come into play: Bobby Cannavale’s tactless but friendly vendor and Patricia Clarkson’s accident-prone artist (hilariously almost running down Fin on both their first and second

The Station Agent, Miramax / Senart Films.

meetings). Joe is struggling to look after his ill father back in Manhattan; Olivia has recently separated from her husband and grieves for her deceased son. Shattering Fin’s desire to be alone, each of the troubled souls finds that mutual loneliness is more fulfilling than suffering in silence. With Fin gradually opening up to Joe and Olivia’s advances (following a succession of clipped ‘Yes’/’No’ responses), his desire to be treated as a fully-grown adult is unveiled. Any hope of redemption he has in the arms of friendly librarian Emily (Michelle Williams) is, however, threatened by the bigoted views of the local community, similar to those he tried to escape in the city. While Emily’s redneck boyfriend is baffled by Fin’s presence, her gentle questioning about whether he has slept with someone of ‘normal’ height strikes a deeply humane chord. Speaking volumes about the callousness of human nature (the idea that society is predicated on one’s height), the flipside is the delicate, generous humanity demonstrated by Fin’s saviours. Even so, this delicate tapestry is under constant threat with Joe and Olivia beset by their problems. When Olivia’s ex turns up on the scene, the distraught woman retreats inside her own physical shell, raging at Fin at one stage ‘I am not your mother’. The key to the film is how the characters transgress their physical boundaries – tiny Fin, despondent Olivia, anachronistic Joe with shorts and flip-flops – to find the underlying human principle that makes life worth living. You may be judged by how you look – but this is not necessarily who you are.

Sean Wilson

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SLACKERS

Directory of World Cinema

On 16 July, 1990, Time magazine published an article written by David Gross and Sophronia Scott entitled ‘Proceeding with Caution’, a report aimed at deconstructing the current generation of domestic youth. Presenting itself as an all-encompassing cultural document, the article examined the aspirations, work ethics, artistic achievements, attitudes towards marriage and activism of Americans aged 18–29, who fell ‘between the famous baby boomers and the boomlet of children the baby boomers are producing.’ It noted their distain for the yuppie, career-led culture of the 1980s, their preference for a less rigid post-college lifestyle, a lack of notable role models and leaders, and reluctance to enter long-term relationships through fear of failure. While the article itself was almost impossibly wide in scope, it provides an appropriate starting point for a discussion detailing the representation of youth cinema in the early 1990s and the following decade. The 1990s brought about an abundance of popular independent films focusing on Generation X, the term popularized by Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture, offering various and often conflicting lifestyle assertions to those expressed in Gross and Scott’s article. Throughout the mid-to-late 1980s, teen cinema was dominated by the much-loved ‘Brat Pack’ studio films. While thematically accessible and widely distributed, these films also reflected the sociological concerns of their subjects: exploring the divisions of social hierarchy of high school students in The Breakfast Club (1984) and Pretty in Pink (1986); the confines of institution as represented in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986); and the pressures of graduating to the working world in St. Elmo’s Fire (1985). In addition, films such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and Lucas (1986) explored the dynamics of staple high-school characters such as jocks, nerds, and cheerleaders. Other films focused on stories of childhood adventure such as The Goonies (1985) and the 1950s-set Stand By Me (1986), which chronicled the activities of youths venturing into unknown territories in search of hidden promises. It is notable that these films featured a younger demographic than those found in the youth cinema of the 1990s and focused on themes of childhood rather than wider culture. Interestingly, however, it is this demographic that would grow to represent Generation X in cinema in the decade that would follow. The emergence of two independent films at the end of this era addressed the larger issues of youth experience head on, setting the tone for the following decade of teen and young adult cinema through exposing the absurdity of conservative social stature within teen films and the inherent angst suffered by their adolescent subjects that would resonate within all aspects of culture in the nineties. The first of these was Heathers (1988), the delightfully-dark comedy starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater as a young couple whose murders of members of a popular high-school clique spark a series of copycat suicides amongst their fellow students. The key difference between Heathers and the high-school films that preceded it is its relentlessly sinister tone; the film prefigured the grunge culture that would soon come to prominence and the high-school murders that would tarnish the innocent image of the school as institution in the 1990s. Heathers dwelled on the cruel nature of adolescence and the general feeling of apathy, with Ryder’s line, ‘Dear Diary, my teenage angst bullshit now has a body count’, typifying the teen zeitgeist of the time. The second of these films is Allan Moyle’s Pump up the Volume (1990), which stars Slater as Mark Hunter, a loner high-school student who uses a pirate radio show to express his outsider views about American society, becoming hugely popular amongst the local youth who have no idea of the broadcaster’s true identity. Moyle’s film

Left: Clerks, View Askew.

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serves as an embodiment of teen frustration during the early 1990s, with Mark’s exclamations of ‘all the great themes have been used up and turned into theme parks’ and where ‘you have parents, teachers telling you what to do, you have movies, magazines and TV telling you what to do, but you know what you have to do’, channelling the attributed concerns of the American youth. The sub-genre most attributed to the work ethic, or lack thereof, of Generation X were the so-called ‘slacker’ films, typified by Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) and Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994), both of which came to prominence through the Sundance Film Festival. Linklater’s film charts a day in a small Texan town, in which a multitude of bizarre characters occupy a scene each, sharing their oddball views while shirking any visible responsibilities, as depicted in the Time article. Smith’s offering adopts a more traditional structure while retaining the single-day setting, presenting twenty-four hours with two New Jersey convenience store workers and their associates. In Clerks, the apathetic characters pass time with discussions of popular culture, questioning the innocence of the contract workers aboard the doomed Death Star in The Return of the Jedi (1983) and generally avoiding work. Coupland’s term ‘McJob’ is particularly relevant to slacker cinema, as it refers to, ‘a low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.’ They appear as a necessity throughout films like Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991) and Go (1999), where working in such jobs is vital to the day-to-day survival of the characters. One film that deals with the striving to evade the cult of ‘McJobs’ is Ben Stiller’s directorial debut Reality Bites (1994), which exemplifies some career choices confronted by young adults in the 1990s. The film follows Lelaina (Winona Ryder), an aspiring film-maker who must juggle her allegiances between her career efforts and her immediate friendships, including the slacker Troy (Ethan Hawke), who spends his days strung out on their sofa or singing in a grunge band. The film is also notable, through Jeneane Garofolo’s character Vickie, for touching upon the subject of AIDS, the widespread knowledge of which brought about worldwide concern throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Lelaina’s determination to succeed in her desired career could be seen as typical of nineties’ youth and this would explain her turbulent relationship with Troy, who seems to be content with having no career aspirations other than performing in his rock band. Gross and Scott’s assertions of the lack of original cultural offerings from Generation X were clearly made before the mass popularity of grunge and hip hop music. That said, the influence of the former on films at the time was not particularly apparent, aside from the aforementioned inclusion in Reality Bites and Singles (1992), a film that used grunge as a backdrop for interweaving Seattleset love stories; so tame that Kurt Cobain himself allegedly hated it. One film from this period that overtly celebrated the music of the time was Allan Moyle’s Empire Records (1995), a drama focusing on the employees of an independent record store who struggle to stop their workplace being absorbed by a corporate chain. Evidently demonstrating the importance of rock music to nineties’ youth, the film’s most notable scene is perhaps left until the credits roll: two characters animatedly argue the superiority of Primus or the Pixies, detailing the intricacies of their passion for the music of these popular alternative rock bands. Romance and sensuality were unsurprisingly abundant in youth cinema throughout the decade, though more often than not through mutual exclusivity, and intertwined with other themes such as hedonism through alcohol and drug use. The most controversial depiction of such themes could be found in Larry

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Clark’s Kids (1995), a stark documentary-style work portraying a day in the lives of teenagers and pre-adolescents in downtown New York, charting their casual approach to unprotected sex, alcohol and drugs. Depicting a totally-different kind of romance, Richard Linklater’s subtle Before Sunrise (1995) explored the connection between a young American (Ethan Hawke) and a French student (Julie Delpy) he meets by chance on a train to Vienna, convincing her to accompany him for one full day in the city before he must part. Focusing on the more analytical and experienced qualities of Generation X, the film restrains any overt sensuality in favour of a more dialogue-led yet highly-captivating tale of true connection. Perhaps vitally, the film is not set within the United States. In conclusion, the depiction of youth in nineties’ cinema reflected a generation that adhered to many of the qualities that Time laid out at the beginning of the decade, save for the cultural achievements represented through the influential music of the decade (and indeed the notable films that came from this period). These representations differed greatly from those found in the 1980s, exploring a darker sensibility of a generation who strove for their own path in life, even if they did not know how to get there. The rise of independent cinema itself throughout the nineties allowed film-makers to explore the vast landscape of youth experience without having to compromise their visions to adhere to studio regulations and interests.

James Merchant

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Before Sunrise Studio/Distributor:

Castle Rock Entertainment Director:

Richard Linklater Producer:

Anne Walker-McBay Screenwriters:

Synopsis On board a train to Vienna, French student Céline is travelling back to Paris to resume her studies. When a heated argument erupts between a German couple in the carriage where she is sitting, she retreats to a different seat. There she meets Jesse, an American backpacker heading to Vienna, from where he will fly home. The two instantly connect, engaging in conversation about their travels, their childhood dreams, and their philosophies of life. As the train approaches Vienna, they acknowledge their tangible connection and decide to explore the city for one night before they must part.

Richard Linklater Kim Krizan Cinematographer:

Lee Daniel Art Director:

Florian Reichmann Composer:

Fred Frith Editor:

Sandra Adair Duration:

105 minutes Cast:

Ethan Hawke Julie Delpy Year:

1995

Before Sunset Studio/Distributor:

Castle Rock Entertainment Warner Independent Pictures Director:

Richard Linklater Producers:

Richard Linklater Anne Walker-McBay

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Synopsis Nine years later, Jesse has written a novel detailing a certain special night he spent with a French girl years earlier. When his book tour brings him to Paris, he spots Céline in the audience. Overwhelmed by this second encounter, he asks if she will accompany him for the final two hours before his return flight home. Now married with a child, Jesse is immediately reminded of the connection the two once shared and begins to open up about the loveless state of his marriage, while Céline herself has pursued her environmental interests as a career and now has a photojournalist boyfriend. Slowly, the romance they once shared resurfaces, leading to major decisions they must now make as mature adults.

Before Sunset, Castle Rock/Detour, Photographed by Emilie De La Hosseraye.

Screenwriters:

Richard Linklater Ethan Hawke Julie Delpy Kim Krizan Cinematographer:

Lee Daniel Art Director:

Florian Reichmann Editor:

Sandra Adair Duration:

80 minutes Genre:

Romance Cast:

Ethan Hawke Julie Delpy Year:

2004

Critique Having established himself with Slacker (1991) and Dazed and Confused (1993), Richard Linklater’s third feature took a more mature approach to the slacker subgenre he helped popularize. Whereas his earlier films focused on the apathetic nature of his adolescent subjects, though never in a condescending manner, Before Sunrise instead presented a view of twentysomethings as intelligent, hopeful and, above all, romantic. Through Jesse and Céline, Linklater and co-writer Kim Krizan offered an insight into a more cultured Generation X, where conversations echo Godardian influences as opposed to pop-culture references and druginduced tangents. The dialogue is sharp and delightfully realistic, presenting relatable situations that focus on small meaningful moments. Leaving on something of a cliffhanger, where it is uncertain if Jesse and Céline will reunite in six months as planned, audiences had to wait a full nine years before Linklater would pick up the story again, aside from an animated segment in Waking Life (2001) showing the couple together in an alternate reality. The films are also love letters to cities as much as people, as Linklater pays attention to the little details, such as sparks shooting from a Viennese tram line, the tranquility found

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within old cemeteries and parks, and the comfort of old Parisian book shops and cafés. The sequel was notably blessed with gorgeous weather, giving the film a warm golden glow that ignites the city of Paris. The excellent scripts map out the complexity of these characters, though both are further enhanced by the chemistry shared by Hawke and Delpy. This is particularly apparent in Before Sunset, which the stars cowrote with Linklater and Krizan, resulting in a well-deserved Oscar-nomination. While Before Sunrise perfectly introduced Jesse and Céline, the brilliance of these characters is found in Before Sunset, which seems to transcend the connotations of a sequel to deliver an emotionally-enthralling continuation of their story. There is something so tangibly tragic in the way in which these characters have grown older constantly thinking of each other, moving on with their lives only to a point. While the film itself is so short, the range of emotion explored is breathtaking; detailing ghosts from their past and a subdued hope for their future, ending in a poignant scene that ranks among the most enthralling of recent years. The basic concept of strangers finding connections over short spaces of time may not be exclusive to these films – witness recent offerings such as Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), the more mainstream Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008), and Alex Holdridge’s In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007). However, there is something inherent in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset that resonates long after they have ended, providing a fascinating yet unsentimental examination of modern romance.

James Merchant

Clerks Studio/Distributor:

Miramax Director:

Kevin Smith Producers:

Scott Mosier Kevin Smith Screenwriter:

Kevin Smith Cinematographer:

David Klein

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Synopsis Dante is an everyday slacker, working a dead-end job in a grocery store. Accompanied by best friend Randall, the two men ponder life’s difficulties over the course of an average working day: how to squeeze a hockey game into a 9–5 job; what constitutes excess fellatio; and how to maintain a relationship when your ex is getting hitched.

Critique Funded by credit cards and by selling a collection of comic books, and shot at director Kevin Smith’s then work place, Clerks was one of several early 1990s’ hits that spearheaded a revitalized youth cinema. Quentin Tarantino had already made headway, but Clerks is grounded in a far-less-cinematic universe. The material would seem so anti-cinematic that it is remarkable how funny and resonant the film is. It is Smith’s

Directory of World Cinema

Editors:

Scott Mosier Kevin Smith Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Brian O’Halloran Jeff Anderson Marilyn Ghigliotti Year:

1994

fundamental realization that life is inherently cinematic, and conveying this in celluloid form, that makes Clerks so enjoyable. Among several casually-allegorical references is the name of the central character, Dante. Assuming an in-built knowledge of the famous literary figure, Smith then cleverly places the character in his own Hell: the grocery store where he is confined to a sentence of menial work, serving various half-witted and sometimes plain psychotic customers (‘I’m not even supposed to be here today’ is Dante’s repeated plea). None of this is spelled out, but rather continues the naturalistic portrayal of onscreen life where the characters are as comfortable with signs as they are with perceived reality. Pop culture is, in fact, a primary method of escape for many characters in the film: Dante and Randall’s famous conversation about who would have been contracted to do work on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi (1983) even drags a customer into the mix, keen to get his own viewpoint as a labourer across. Appropriately, there is also no real narrative to speak of, with the film playing out as a series of interconnected events that somehow cohere to form a meaningful whole. With these events subdivided by novel-style chapter headings (‘Denouement’, etc.), further dramatic angles are added to Dante’s essentially-banal daily routine. Among several attacks on modern-American culture is an extended sub-theme on the arbitrary nature of smoking, highlighted where a rogue customer hijacks the store only to be revealed as a nicorette-gum salesman. Further levels of irony are added by the characters that subsequently walk in only to buy cigarettes. Smith refuses to be hindered by his cramped setting, becoming incredibly inventive with the camera (a literal behind-the-counter shot reveals a candid conversation between Dante and his current girlfriend, Veronica). The tangy and sexually-explicit dialogue (which originally landed the film an NC-17 rating) further ensconces the viewer in the slacker milieu and has been unsurpassed for sheer epic coarseness in any teen film since. The effortless comic performances by Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson and other cast members (sparring like they were in a classic screwball comedy) uncover real humanity beneath humdrum lives, in spite of the porn-toting elderly customers that get in the way.

Sean Wilson

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Dazed and Confused Studio/Distributor:

Universal Pictures Director:

Richard Linklater Producers:

Sean Daniel James Jacks Richard Linklater Writer:

Richard Linklater Cinematographer:

Lee Daniel Art Director:

Jenny C. Patrick Editor:

Sandra Adair Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

Jason London Rory Cochrane Wiley Wiggins Parker Posey Year:

1993

Synopsis Texas: 1976. It is the last day of school before the summer break and the students of Lee High School are ready to bust out and see what their vacation has in store for them. Randell ‘Pink’ Floyd, a star football player, debates whether or not to sign a form promising not to take drugs over the summer; a young freshman tries to evade the punishment that a carload of sadistic seniors want to dish out; a group of female seniors mete out similar humiliating punishment upon younger female students; a group of nerds decide to live it up and drive out to the keg party being held in the woods later that night. At the party, all of the characters find themselves at various crossroads in their lives.

Critique Like American Graffiti (1973) before it, Richard Linklater’s second feature is an accurate chronicle of teenage life, genially laid-back, funny, and stealthily emotional. It could have been a misguided nostalgia-fest but, as with Linklater’s best films, there is no urgency to push his characters where they do not want to go. Linklater is one of America’s most European film-makers, always drawing from character rather than conceptual idea, easing off on artificial plot development to allow his actors some breathing space. Because of Linklater’s nonchalance toward narrative, watching one of his films is like hanging out with his characters. That feeling is never stronger than in Dazed and Confused as we watch the various characters wander (or drive) through the hours of their last school day before the break. Although there are significant decisions to be made, Linklater never imposes needless melodrama and instead allows them – and us – to relax into the film. From the clothes to music to the killer muscle cars, Linklater’s attention to period detail is spot-on, and enshrines this as a bona fide modern cult classic. Dazed and Confused was ignored when it was first released, dumped to video by Universal Pictures after a token theatrical outing. It was Linklater’s first taste of working with a Hollywood film studio and the experience left a bitter taste, enough to convince the film-maker to remain in Austin and continue to make films on his own terms. But, while the film was initially ignored, it has proven to be influential and many of the young actors in it (Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, Milla Jovovich, Joey Lauren Adams, Ben Affleck, Renée Zellweger) would go on to bright careers. It is a groovy good time and proof that it is possible to make a high-school film set in the 1970s that is void of sentimentality and false-memory syndrome. Rock on.

Derek Hill

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Ghost World Studio/Distributor:

United Artists Director:

Terry Zwigoff Screenwriters:

Daniel Clowes Terry Zwigoff Producers:

Lianne Halfon John Malkovich Russell Smith Cinematographer:

Alfonso Beato Composer:

David Kitay Editors:

Carole Kravetz-Aykanian Michael R. Miller Duration:

111 minutes Cast:

Thora Birch Scarlett Johansson Steve Buscemi Brad Renfro Year:

2001

Synopsis Enid and Rebecca have just come to the end of High School, where they have proudly paraded their misfit status. The girls spend their newfound freedom making plans to move in with each other, hanging around and insulting local ‘freaks’ and generally revelling in the fact that everything around them ‘sucks’. But after they pull a practical joke on isolated record-dealer Seymour, the girls find themselves gradually drifting apart as Enid and Seymour become close friends and Rebecca begins to look for a job. Soon the demands of the real world begin to chip away at the carefully-constructed veneers of cynicism with which the girls have surrounded themselves.

Critique Following his documentary about the life of comic-book artist Robert Crumb, Terry Zwigoff’s fiction debut is a refreshinglycynical and sharp affair. Based on Daniel Clowes’ comic book of the same name, Ghost World is located in an unnamed American ‘everytown’ which is a curious mix of modern day and 1950s’ Americana, filled with diners and groovy music. We see this world through the eyes of Enid and, to a lesser extent, Rebecca and find a place in which surface image and nostalgia exist at the expense of any meaningful emotional attachments. Thus, Seymour (Steve Buscemi), a wounded older man who is well aware of his desperate situation but too trapped to be able to do anything about it, is obsessed by record collecting and seemingly unable to relate to people on any other level. As his and Enid’s relationship deepens, we soon discover that Enid – who has professed her disdain for the usual trappings of teenage life – is just as emotionally stunted as Seymour. Her entire way of relating to the world is built upon façade and cynicism. When Rebecca begins to become more involved in the ‘real world’ by getting a job, the rift between them deepens, as Enid fears any new way of life. But, whilst this cynicism is shown as unhealthy and damaging, the alternative – becoming a ‘fully paid up member of society’ – is seen as equally disturbing. From critiques of an endless stream of blue-collar jobs to a very sharp attack on the pretensions of the artistic community, society at large is seen as a disturbed place full of broken dreams and strange people (though the ending of the film does offer some small glimmer of hope). Zwigoff emphasizes this strangeness, whilst Birch and Johansson deliver measured performances that are appropriate for a languid yet humorous film about lives drifting out of control, and a society in which people hide behind masks.

Laurence Boyce

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Go Studio/Distributor:

Columbia Director:

Doug Liman Producers:

Matt Freeman Mickey Liddell Paul Rosenberg Screenwriter:

John August Cinematographer:

Doug Liman Art Director:

Rebecca Young Composer:

BT Editor:

Stephen Mirrione Duration:

103 minutes Cast:

Sarah Polley Katie Holmes Timothy Olyphant William Fichtner Year:

1999

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Synopsis Segmented into three interweaving tales, the film begins with the exploits of Ronna, a smart, cynical check-out clerk who looks to drug dealing to avoid eviction, only to find that climbing the drug food-chain comes at a price. After doublecrossing feared dealer Todd Gaines and evading a shady deal, she finds herself on the run, all the while profiting from pushing prescription pills to naïve partygoers; she must rely on her wits if she is to escape her dangerously-escalating situation. Meanwhile, Ronna’s British colleague Simon heads out on a wild weekend in Las Vegas, where he delves into tantric sex, finds the joy of stolen cars and is hunted by lethal strip club proprietors. Finally, gay TV-soap-opera actors Adam and Zack wind up in an undercover police investigation, headed where they must utilize what little acting talent they have to flee with their lives and careers intact.

Critique Doug Liman’s follow-up to his sleeper hit Swingers (1997) delves into the hedonistic world of drugs, celebrity, Vegas misadventures and the perils of pyramid schemes, all on one eventful Christmas Eve in Los Angeles. Even before the opening credits, Go establishes itself as a cheekily-defiant picture, as the standard Columbia logo is hijacked by a frenetic edit into an Ecstasy-fuelled LA club scene, with the accompanied thumping soundtrack interrupting its familiar musical theme. The film delves into a decadent world of excess and social escapism before plummeting into the banality of supermarket checkout work: a long-standing reality and symbol prevalent in films involving teens. John August’s script revels in quick wit and pop-culture references, first seen in the form of a game utilized to alleviate McJob hell, before later putting a decadent spin on the Ferrari-theft scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), all the while weaving a multi-stranded narrative that remains coherent and retains momentum. Despite using an ensemble cast, the piece is held together by Ronna (Sarah Polley), who not only bookends the story arc but personifies the familiar experience of being too smart for a job and the relentless need to survive against economic odds, while also relying on hapless friends to evade adversity. The exploitation of the drug-dealing opportunity offered to her seems totally justified by the context of her character’s existence and, as the most accessible personality, her scenes involving precarious circumstances are especially tense. Ronna is juxtaposed by the carefree insanity of Simon, who revels in his own stupidity, constantly in search of a self-gratifying experience. It is Simon’s segment that is perhaps the most enjoyable of the three, if the least original. While the concept of four male friends venturing to Vegas and getting themselves into inane amounts of trouble may not be new, it is constantly thrilling due to the chemistry of the cast and the pace of Liman’s direction. While Askew himself may have the best

Go, 1999, Columbia Tristar.

lines and set-ups, it is Taye Diggs who emerges as the most interesting, due to the experience of being the sole black member of the group and adopting the father/mentor role. While Adam and Zack’s section may be the least successful following the wit and action that permeated the previous strands, it remains enjoyable largely due to the wonderfully cringeinducing performance by William Fichtner as Burke, the creepy cop who blackmails the hapless actors into busting the local drug chain. While Go may lack the more experimental qualities and depth found in, say, the films of Gregg Araki, it is notable for being a morally-ambiguous independent feature with an established cast, distributed by a major US studio.

James Merchant

Metropolitan Studio/Distributor:

New Line Cinema Director:

Whit Stillman Producers:

Whit Stillman Peter Wentworth

Synopsis It is Debutante season in Manhattan. Socialites flit from one ball to another, congregating for drinks in their lavish homes between events. Within this privileged world is Tom, a committed socialist with a rented tux who is in danger of being disinherited by his wealthy father. Tom is swept up in the Upper East Side clique: Nick, the cynical social commentator and wit; Audrey, the Jane Austen fan and hopeless romantic; Charlie, protector of Audrey’s honour, who coins the term Upper Haute Bourgeoisie, or UHB, to define their social class; Slackers 269

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Screenwriter:

Whit Stillman Cinematographer:

John Thomas Composers:

Tom Judson Mark Suozzo Editor:

Christopher Tellefsen

and Baron Rick Von Sloneker, the European-educated playboy who threatens to pluck the girls out from under the ineffectual noses of the Upper East Side boys, when they find themselves short of escorts. The members of the Sally Fowler Rat Pack (she is a frequent hostess) find themselves voyeurs to the unfolding relationship between Tom and Audrey, who is intrigued by the novelty of his supposedly radical left-wing opinions and questionable disdain for their milieu. Initially oblivious to her feelings, Tom finally comes to his senses, and finds himself in a mad dash to rescue her from Von Sloneker’s dastardly grip.

Duration:

Critique

98 minutes

The first film in a trilogy about Manhattan’s socialites, with the others entries being Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998), Metropolitan is a brilliantly-observed comedy of manners about the changing fortunes of the upper class. Stillman’s otherworldly characters seem to spend countless hours debating their rarefied role in society, often defining themselves by their etiquette and decorum, as if they belong to an era untouched by 1980s’ pop culture, which is in stark contrast to the characters in The Last Days of Disco, set in the heart of New York’s Studio-54 scene. While little actually happens in Stillman’s debut, the film’s great strength lies in its remarkable screenplay, which was nominated for an Academy Award – plot is firmly secondary to the cleverly-written dialogue, and the film is littered with an endless stream of terrific one-liners. These are admittedly delivered in a somewhat affected manner by a cast of virtual unknowns; Christopher Eigeman as Nick, outclasses the rest of his peers. Stillman uses the impoverished Tom to not only shake up the rat pack, but also to reflect on their diminishing values and lifestyle (one of the film’s taglines was ‘Finally … a film about the downwardly mobile’). Tom finds himself chastised for not owning the correct overcoat (poorly keeping up appearances) and, more importantly, for failing to properly chaperone Audrey at one of the many balls, much to the collective dismay of the UHBs. Audrey, with her admiration for the virtuous heroine in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, seems especially old-fashioned; she is startled by Tom’s dislike for the book, although he confesses to never having read it, preferring literary criticism to literature – a trait that seems shockingly modern. Meanwhile, Nick is especially convinced that their elite status is in peril, their inherited fortunes buffeted by turbulent stock markets; Charlie, unhappy about encroaching yuppies, also frets that that they are doomed. Stillman’s subject matter has always risked alienating potential audiences, who may see little appeal in a slightly self-indulgent tale about the upper classes and the exclusive world they inhabit. But Metropolitan is a refreshingly-intelligent film, packed with subtle, understated humour, strengthened by the penetrating writing of a unique director.

Cast:

Edward Clements Christopher Eigemann Carolyn Farina Year:

1990

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Slacker Studio/Distributor:

Detour Film Production Orion Classics Director:

Richard Linklater Producer:

Richard Linklater Screenwriter:

Richard Linklater Cinematographer:

Lee Daniel Art Directors:

Denise Montgomery Debbie Pastor

Synopsis Slacker rejects any traditional sense of narrative in favour of presenting seemingly-arbitrary episodes focusing on one meandering character at a time. The film opens with the writer/ director himself travelling in the back of a taxi, animatedly offering a commentary on his recent dreams and philosophy to a passive driver. Upon exiting the cab he walks along the street to discover a woman lying in the road, from which two more characters appear, taking the focus from Linklater onto the individuals at hand. The film continues in this manner: a cinematic passing of torches capturing the intricacies of life within a wealth of offbeat characters in 1990s’ Austin. Highlights include inspiring rants concerning alternate realities and government conspiracy theories, and an intricate deconstruction of Scooby Doo and The Smurfs over beers and cigarettes. Taking place over the course of a single day, Slacker journeys through the coffeehouses, libraries and apartments of the diverse college town, exposing a world of quirky experiences and inanities among the marginal inhabitants.

Editor:

Critique

Scott Rhodes

Slacker undoubtedly paved the way for many of the filmmakers who would come to prominence in the 1990s’ boom in American independent film, notably Kevin Smith who has repeatedly cited the film as a key reference in relation to Clerks (1994). Made for a miniscule $23,000 and shot on beautifullygrainy 16mm, the film prefigured other Sundance micro-budget hits, such as Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (1992). Slacker’s key attribute is the insight it offers into pure existence in 1990s’ America, removed of all narrative structure and character development, which is not to say that it lacks coherence or enjoyable attributes. Far from it: the theories and anecdotes discussed are genuinely fascinating, from the crazy rituals of a group of men betrayed by women to a scene where little happens aside from a bizarre game involving combs and hand slaps. No other film from this era offers quite the same observation of the so-called Generation X, a remarkable impression of time and space as lived by thousands of twentysomethings during that period. Linklater is interested in the minute details, such as the way in which friends ink-stamp onto each other’s wrists to avoid club entry fees, or the awkward conversations that occur when old peers meet again. The film is never condescending towards its subjects, however. More so, the slacker ethos is celebrated through the likeability and relative coherence of the majority of characters. Linklater went on to engage in far larger projects following the film’s success, and his independent and studio films have yielded both positive and negative responses. While his subsequent features may have garnered more widespread attention, it was Slacker that made an indelible mark on the world of independent cinema.

Duration:

97 minutes Cast:

Richard Linklater Rudy Basquez Jan Hockey Year:

1991

James Merchant Slackers 271

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Smithereens Studio/Distributor:

Domestic Productions Director:

Susan Seidelman Producers:

Joanne Gross Susan Seidelman Screenwriters:

Peter Askin Ron Nyswaner Susan Seidelman Cinematographer:

Chirine El Khadem Editor:

Susan Seidelman Duration:

89 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Susan Berman Richard Hell Brad Rijn Year:

1982

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Synopsis Wren is a lonely and frustrated woman in her early twenties who has big dreams but no direction. Originally from New Jersey, Wren has made her way to New York City to pursue her goals of being somebody, even if she has no clue as to exactly who she wants to be. A classic hanger-on, Wren survives by drifting from one acquaintance to another looking for anyone who will lend her some pocket change and a place to crash for the night. She forms two relationships with two very different men: Eric is a fading punk star trying to revitalize his career, while Brad lives in a van on the outskirts of the city. Eric does not care about Wren, and wants to get to California to pursue his musical career. Brad, on the other hand, has unrequited feelings for her but he just wants to escape the city and get back to the comfort of his family’s home in New Hampshire. Wren finds herself having to pick between the two in the hopes of setting her directionless life in motion.

Critique One of the most vivid snapshots of New York City ever presented, Susan Seidelman’s incredibly original Smithereens remains one of the most invigorating film debuts of the past thirty years. Existing in the very pivotal moment between the Punk and New Wave movements that marked the shift between the 1970s and the 1980s, Smithereens is a one of the few works that confronts both by allowing itself to be told in a an aggressively DIY Punk manner, while simultaneously taking a penetrating look at characters looking to slide into the comfortable corporate gloss of the New Wave. Not yet thirty when she made Smithereens, the inexperienced Susan Seidelman proved to be a film-maker capable of delivering a picture that resonates long after its initial pleasures wear off. Indeed, the initial thrills of Smithereens are easy to spot and are undeniably noteworthy. The colourful costume design of Alison Lances remains influential and still really pops, while the soundtrack music of New York cult band The Feelies is both propulsive and moving. The performances are uniformly great, as well, with special note going to Susan Berman, who has the guts to play the lead Wren as downright unlikable at times and never less than frustrating. As the fading punk star Eric, real-life music icon Richard Hell delivers a performance dripping with charisma and intensity, mixed with just the right amount of both sadness and humour. What really makes Smithereens work beyond its initial visual delights is its early acknowledgement of the creeping commercialism that would soon be infecting every aspect of American popular culture. While most of the film-makers of the period were still operating under the illusion that the uncompromising nature of the 1970s was going to continue, Seidelman seems

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totally aware with Smithereens that a marked change was occurring. Indeed, the frustrated, directionless and doomed-tosell-out character of Wren can be looked upon as a reflection of the state of American cinema in the early-to-mid-1980s better than any other. Smithereens manages to transcend its position as just another ‘quirky indie comedy’ at every turn, and its final moments remain among the period’s most chillingly profound and eerily perceptive. It would take the director several years to follow up Smithereens, but the delightful Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) – which features Hell in a memorable cameo – proved to be worth the wait.

Jeremy Richey

Swingers Studio/Distributor:

Miramax Director:

Doug Liman Producers:

Victor Simpkins Jon Favreau Screenwriter:

Jon Favreau Cinematographer:

Doug Liman Art Director:

Brad Halvorson Composer:

Justin Reinhardt Editor:

Stephen Mirrione Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Jon Favreau Vince Vaughn Ron Livingston

Synopsis Mike is a struggling Hollywood actor who abandoned the Big Apple for Los Angeles, leaving behind a girlfriend of six years. Unable to get over his break-up and consumed with a lack of self-worth, his slick, womanizing friend Trent takes him on a journey to Las Vegas to pull him out of the rut. On the return to LA, though, can Mike remain optimistic about his love life, future career and friendships?

Critique Piercing the male psyche with uncanny and exhilarating precision, Swingers is one of the ultimate ‘guy’ movies, indispensible for anyone who has ever had long-term hangups over a girl, fretted about their sexual prowess or performed a drunken dance on a restaurant table. Jon Favreau’s Mike is heading nowhere fast; seduced by the grandeur of Hollywood, his career has fallen through in a matter of months and all he has to show for it is a perfunctory act in a comedy club. Thankfully, he has a brash, boorish friend to fall back on and that is where Vince Vaughn’s Trent steps in, with Vaughn demonstrating charisma strangely absent from his biggerbudget outings. Director Doug Liman mines several excruciatingly-well-observed moments to note the contrasts between the two men: Trent is shallow but irresistible to women, Mike is the more considered but consumed with a crippling selfloathing that ends conversation as soon as it starts. Trent packs Mike off on an overnight trip to Vegas, where he hopes his friend will find redemption among the craps tables and cocktail waitresses. A priceless early scene that will have singletons squirming in their seats reveals that this is most certainly not the case: having hooked up with two girls, Trent scores while uncomfortable Mike is unable to stay away from the phone in the vain attempt that his ex will take him back. The other drawback is that he has to gatecrash Trent’s

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bedroom action in order to get to the phone. Such vignettes are proof that Favreau (working from his own screenplay based on his own experiences) genuinely understands the insecure male animal. Mike remains the fluctuating heart of his testosterone-fuelled band of brothers, aimlessly wandering around night-time LA in search of casual sex and drink. In a repeat of his earlier Vegas failure, Mike seems to have made a successful pick-up at a local bar only to drag out several painful answer phone messages, effectively breaking up the relationship before it has got off the ground. Swingers was shot on a shoestring budget by Liman, with funds so tight that filming permits were out of the question, causing many of the Vegas scenes to be shot on the hop. In the end, though, this creativity lends an indie swagger to the film, bringing it closer to the one which Mike and his friends happen to worship: Reservoir Dogs (1992), with the famous opening tracking shot even being replicated. The fan worship of Quentin Tarantino’s debut comes across as another of their male wish-fulfilment fantasies, allowing them to escape into a cinematic replication of male bravado and attitude, only to find the cold light of reality much more difficult to negotiate. By the time Mike is offered another chance with a sexy blonde named Lorraine (Heather Graham), the restoration of the male libido cannot come any more urgently.

Sean Wilson

Waking Life

Cinematographers:

A young boy and girl mull over the chances in life as dictated by a paper fortune-teller; the boy picks an option giving the answer ‘Dream is Destiny’. That night, he creeps outside, spotting a comet in the midnight sky. He stares intently, only to find himself levitating from the ground, clutching a car door handle for support. The boy awakes as a twentysomething man travelling on a train from which he exits, wandering through the station to happen upon an amphibious boat. As he rides alongside another drifter at the helm of a philosophical driver, he is ejected on a random street. Walking on, he spots a piece of paper warning him to look to his right, after which he is hit by a car. The boy wakes to find himself trapped in a continuous series of dreams, floating through different locations; encountering a succession of theorists, artists, ranting madmen and regular citizens, all sharing their philosophical views and experiences of life.

Richard Linklater Tommy Palotta

Critique

Studio/Distributor:

Fox Searchlight Director:

Richard Linklater Producers:

Palmer West Jonah Smith Tommy Palotta Anne Walker-McBay Screenwriter:

Richard Linklater

Art Director:

Bob Sabiston

274

Synopsis

American Independent

With Waking Life director Linklater returned to the fragmented structure of Slacker (1991), whereby the film shuns a

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Editor:

Sandra Adair Composer:

Tosca Tango Orchestra Duration:

96 minutes Cast:

Wiley Wiggins Ethan Hawke Julie Delpy Year:

2001

traditional story arc, favouring a succession of chance encounters and loosely-connected conversations that offer no single viewpoint or meaning. More so, the radically-diverse assertions offer a fascinating insight into a wealth of characters, resulting in an innovative and consistently thought-provoking experience. The key difference between this and Linklater’s earlier film is the use of an animation process known as ‘interpolated rotoscoping’: the film was shot digitally using real actors and locations before the images were traced via computer to give a moving painting/graphic-novel-type quality. Though this process had been used before, notably in the work of Max Fleischer (who patented the method in 1917) and Ralph Bakshi, the use of the process by Linklater and art director Bob Sabitson is particularly inventive as its hypnotic nature fits perfectly with Waking Life’s reflection upon the relationship between dreaming and reality. Locations are vividly captured, perspective is fluidly shifted and characters themselves are given the freedom to illustrate their views; the film plays out as a surreal dream itself. Aside from the striking animation, the overall content of the film is breathtaking, offering meditations on art, life and philosophy that are at once accessible and deeply engaging. As the nameless man drifts in and out of scenes, he experiences a deconstruction of love in relation to linguistics in the mould of Ferdinand de Saussure or Claude Levi-Strauss, a journey into the psyche of a ranting prisoner, and a reflective discussion of identity via Benedict Anderson amongst many others. Linklater also weaves a patchwork of references both to his own work and that of his influences, the most striking of which is the appearance of Jesse and Celine from Before Sunrise (1995) where, from a bed in an alternate reality, they muse upon conversations from the earlier film, such as Celine’s dream in which she experiences life from the perspective of an old woman about to die, and Jesse’s questions about reincarnation. The opening of Waking Life, where Wiley Wiggins enters the train station, strongly echoes a conversation between Linklater’s character and the taxi driver at the beginning of Slacker, where the director discusses the idea of alternate realities and ponders the thought of randomly meeting a beautiful woman at the station from which a wild romance would stem. Here, Wiggins encounters what may have been that woman, though, instead, his life takes a different turn as he chooses to exit the station before entering the boat/car. The notion of dreams within dreams alludes to the work of Buñuel, while a shouting protester, wildly preaching from his car about the conditioning of humanity, echoes Peter Finch’s on-air breakdown in Network (1976), and the scene dedicated to a discussion of André Bazin acknowledges the influence of the theorist and film-makers of the French nouvelle vague such as François Truffaut.

James Merchant

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THE SUBURBS

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In recent years, Hollywood’s landscape has become increasingly suburbanized and Indiewood’s scenery has come to be dominated by tree-lined streets, white picket fences, lawns and lawnmowers; consequently, the arthouse has become home to predominantly white, middle-class nuclear families. This relocation can hardly be considered surprising, as it mirrors America’s changing demographic: by 2000, more than half of all Americans had already come to inhabit a suburban dwelling; and that number is still steadily increasing. Popular culture tends to follow its audience, even if that audience has moved to the hinterland. This development is as noticeable in television, as seen in Desperate Housewives (2004–present), Weeds (2005–present) or The Sopranos (1999–2007). Film critics and scholars, however, have been remarkably slow to recognize this trend, almost entirely overlooking its existence until the mid-2000s. As film scholar Catherine Jurca has so aptly put it, the cinematic suburb has remained relatively ‘uncharted territory’. According to Jurca, this blind spot stems from a too-easily-accepted popular belief that this formal canon – or any formal canon, really – is as ‘mediocre’ as its subject allegedly is (which seems a rather credible suspicion if we consider the critical silence that surrounds other ‘colloquial’ forms and genres, such as the soap, or ‘ordinary’ television). But even if one would take another, closer look at this socalled middling landscape, how could one ever map it in its entirety? Suburbanization has become so widespread, and so diverse, that it is close to impossible to locate it within just one medium, one industry or one genre, let alone one distinct aesthetic or specific iconography. And it is ever more sprawling. The aim of this introduction, then, is not so much to outline the entire terrain as to take a short route through it: through its wealthier areas and the poorer neighbourhoods, the densely-populated quarters and the desolate locales; the clichéd corners and the unexplored spots, taking snapshots and sketches along the way. It is necessary to look at some of the ways in which cinematic explorations of suburbia have so far been defined and characterized. The cultural theorists Douglas Muzzio and Thomas Halper have usefully distinguished films that are centred on the suburb from films merely set in them. In the former, they argue, the suburb functions as the narrative centre. These films thus cannot but take place there (a relocation, indeed, would imply nothing less than rewriting the script entirely). The latter, in contrast, often family melodramas, domestic sitcoms or teen flicks, are situated in suburbia but are, with a narrative centre other than it (such as middle-class discontents, family dysfunction or illicit love), not necessarily bound to it. They could, indeed, potentially be located elsewhere. Films like Happiness (1998), Trust (1990) and [SAFE] (1995) construct their respective plots in accordance with their settings; a film such as Father of the Bride (1991) builds on

Left: Safe, American Playhouse/Channel 4.

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its setting in support of its plot. The former set out to explore suburbia, and happen to stumble upon alienation and family dysfunction en route. The latter aimed to investigate mid-life crisis with suburbia providing the appropriate backdrop. Similarly, the narratives of teen films like Crime and Punishment in Suburbia (2000) and Brick (2005) rely on the complexity of their settings (from wealthy to poor, from McMansion to terrace, backyard to back lot, cellar to sewer); the plot of the American Pie series (1999–2003) is more or less independent of its locale. After all, one can enjoy a piece of apple pie just about everywhere. Muzzio and Halper (2002) have termed the former films ‘suburb’ films. Following conventional film criticism, we could try to divide this ‘genre’ into at least two sub-traditions: the Hollywood take on the suburbs – let us call this ‘Hollywood on the margin’ – and the indie take on it – let us call that ‘indie on the Edge’. Whether this division is valid, however, (in terms of aesthetic choices, production and financing, and so on), or whether it collapses in much the same way the division between city and small town, public and private, and communal and individual, have begun to disintegrate with the advent of the suburb remains to be seen. Indeed, where would we place a film like Disturbia (2007), or Storytelling (2001)? When is an indie on the edge, and when is it Over the Edge (1979)? ‘Suburb’ films have been characterized in a variety of ways, all seemingly applicable to both sub-traditions. Muzzio and Halper (2002) have asserted, for one, that they can be characterized by their presentation of the suburb as a ‘den of dysfunction’. Along similar lines, literary scholar Robert Beuka (2004) has suggested that ‘suburb’ films can be typified by a threefold approach to their setting: Firstly, they exhibit the suburb as a wholly-commodified environment, in which all locations, sites and objects are signifiers of economical position and – as it allegedly goes in suburbia – status. Secondly, they expose the suburb as a panopticon, in which the distinctions between the public and the private sphere are disintegrated. Thirdly, they reveal the suburb as a metaphor for ‘alienation, disconnection, spiritual and even physical death’. Film critics Leslie Felperlin, Richard Porton and, most recently, Stanley Solomon have added to this a fourth approach: the uncovering of the suburb as a ‘teenage wasteland’. Another specific way of engagement by which ‘suburb’ films have been characterized is their employment of the suburb as a commentary on the way suburbs were presented in melodramas, sitcoms, advertisements and household magazines from the 1950s. And yet another point of recognition has been their criticism of the American Dream, or, rather, of that specific variation of the American Dream associated with bourgeois materialism. However convincing many of these definitions and characterizations may sound, they are surprisingly problematic. It might seem self-evident that the ‘suburb’ film takes place in the suburb, but it is doubtful that every ‘suburb’ film actually does, when judged on the geographical and iconographic traits of its settings. The settings of films as varied as Blue Velvet (1986) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) bear less in common with a suburb than with a small town. If we look at their physical traits alone, they are miles away from any city, and they have a town centre, set around a market square or main street. White picket fences and semi-detached bungalows, moreover, are not necessarily signs that we are looking at suburbia either: they have a much longer associative history within small towns. That these films have been labelled ‘suburb’ films, not least by the film-makers themselves, must therefore point at another element of engagement which is perceived to be typically ‘suburban’. What does the cinematic suburb look like, anyway? It is certainly not just the homogenous, middle-class landscape that many seem to believe it is: that much

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has been proven by films as diverse as The Unbelievable Truth (1989), Ghost World (2001) and SubUrbia (1996), with their lower-class environs of one-bedroom apartments and basement dwellings, their congested highways, abandoned gas stations and wastelands. Other characterizations, too, appropriate as they might seem, can be said to be applicable to several other types of films as long as we do not add to them a certain distinctive ‘suburban-ness’. An examination of mise-en-scène will not be of much help, either. If we were to assess films like Far From Heaven (2002) and Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) on their ‘look’, we would have to conclude that they have little to nothing in common with each other. Even the few consistencies we can discern – the pastel-colour palettes, the deep-focus photography, the long takes and the static mid-shots – are more often than not an amalgam of conventions taken from other types of films as varied as horror and the sitcom, film noir and melodrama, the city film and the ‘small town’ movie and, at times, with a ‘queer’ slang. So what does define and characterize the ‘indie on the edge’? What is its distinct ‘suburban-ness’? It may be that what distinguishes this emerging tradition, this oh-so contemporary sensibility, from city flicks and small town movies (but not, perhaps, from ‘Hollywood on the margin’) is its tone – as in its tone of voice. Almost every ‘indie on the edge’, and certainly most of those discussed in this section, articulates its narrative with a voice that oscillates between expectation and experience, enthusiasm and irony, nostalgia and melancholy, comedy and tragedy. Indeed, it is this tone, lingering between what we see and what we might see, that defines and characterizes that almost-clichéd tension we tend to think about when considering suburbia: the tension between the modern illusion of utopic unity and the postmodern disillusion of irresolvable conflict and disintegration. By complicating each, by never entirely excising one or the other, it affirms our belief that this tension might be irresolvable. Popular culture follows its audience; but it does not necessarily follow suit.

Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen

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Brick, Focus Features, Photographed by Steve Yedlin.

Brick Studio/Distributor:

Bergman Lustig Productions Focus Features Director:

Rian Johnson Producers:

Ram Bergman Mark G. Mathis Screenwriter:

Rian Johnson

280

American Independent

Synopsis When high-school loner Brendan learns that his ex-girlfriend Emily has been murdered, he takes it upon himself to track down her killer. With the help of the school geek – who is aptly called The Brain – and certainly not hindered by a lack of conviction, determination or perseverance, he traces the trail back to about every teenage socialite crowd around: from the in-crowd to the out-crowd; from the football squad to the cheerleaders; from the artistes to the addicts; and from an adolescent version of the muscleman to an equally young variation on the femme fatale. Eventually it leads him to a drug cartel headed by the mysterious figure of The Pin. Yet the deeper he delves into the suburban underworld, and the closer he gets to the Pin, the more slippery and unreliable the trail seems to become – and the harder it gets for Brendan to hold onto it.

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Cinematographer:

Steve Yedlin Composer:

Nathan Johnson Editor:

Rian Johnson Duration:

117 minutes Cast:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Norah Zehetner Noah Fleiss Lukas Haas Year:

2005

Critique In postmodern cinema, the confusion of genres and the complication of conventions have become such common practices that they have informed something of a genre or aesthetic of their own: the re-appropriation. Few of these cut-and-paste pastiches, however, actually add to our understanding of the genres they abuse, or the principles they use up; rarer still are the films that utilize them for the sake and benefit of another, as yet undiscovered, genus. In that respect, the mere detail that Brick succeeds in printing a film noir onto high school drama celluloid without exploiting or exhausting either is already quite an achievement in itself. That it happens to be an occasionally breathtakingly-ironic, but mostly deadly-serious, effort, is just the icing on that rich suburban cake. Johan Wolfgang von Goethe once described genius as that which is open to all but seen by none – bar, he of course implied, himself, and a few others he considered equals (some age-old Greeks). Now, Brick might not be a work of genius (is anything still?), yet it does provide us with a cinematic landscape that was always there: a suburbia of empty highways, abandoned school yards, back lots and sewers, a hell for the poor as well as a haven for the wealthy, a purgatory for the black as much as the white, but no one ever seemed to notice, or wanted to notice. That is not to say, however, that, like so many of its contemporaries, Brick merely shows that suburbia (surprise, surprise!) also has an obverse, or rather, perverse, side to it. Rather, like film noir, or, to be precise, the hard-boiled novel, it maps the sprawling and obscure relations that tie them to one another. It links a McMansion house party to a prefab-bungalow-cellar gathering; it associates (to adopt the usual high-school movie vernacular) the cheerleaders to the loners, the jocks to the potheads. In Brick, private and public spaces, social and asocial places are as separated, as divided, as they are connected. Add to that a persuasive colour palette of predominantly greys and browns, well-graded pale hues, an ever-more intriguing plot, clever and consciously-prosaic dialogues and finely-tuned performances, and you have got yourself a convincing revision of a number of more- and less-related genres and forms, a considerable discovery of unexplored cinematic territory, and a pretty engaging film in its own right.

Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen

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Happiness Studio/Distributor:

Good Machine Director:

Todd Solondz Producers:

Christine Vachon Ted Hope Screenwriter:

Todd Solondz Cinematographer:

Maryse Alberti Art Director:

John Bruce Composer:

Robbie Kondor Editor:

Alan Oxman Duration:

134 minutes Cast:

Jane Adams Dylan Baker Lara Flynn Boyle Phillip Seymour Hoffman Year:

1998

282

American Independent

Synopsis Set primarily in New Jersey, Happiness follows the fortunes of three middle-class grown-up sisters. Joy Jordan is a perennial singleton, who becomes a teacher in an adult education class. There she meets Vlad, a Russian taxi-driver, thief and serial womanizer. Also single, Helen Jordan is a high-flying author who lives next door to Allen, who is obsessed with her, bugging her with anonymous obscene phone calls. Their sibling Trish is a mother-of-three and married to Dr Bill Maplewood, a successful psychiatrist who is currently treating Allen, amongst others. Maplewood – unbeknownst to all – is a paedophile who takes a shine to the classmates of his eldest son, 11-yearold Billy. Interwoven throughout all of this is the story of the Jordans’ Florida-based parents, who are in the process of splitting up after forty years of marriage.

Critique A story about paedophilia, masturbation and alienation, Todd Solondz’s follow-up to his Sundance-winning Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) was never going to be an easy sell. So much so that, when Universal Studios bought a stake in October Films, the boutique independent distributor was forced to drop Happiness after the major studio executives were reportedly horrified by what was seen as a sympathetic portrayal of a child abuser. With October ultimately selling it back to the film’s production company, Good Machine – who released it unrated in the US – it was a black moment in the history of American independent film, as a studio became a selfappointed moral guardian. Still, can you blame them? Solondz never allows us to feel superior to characters that seem uncomfortably close to home. Constantly probing at our own neuroses, he never lets us settle throughout the film – so much so, our laughter is more nervous than knowing. For sure, Happiness is a difficult watch. While the Jordan family may toast to happiness in the final scene, not one of his characters finds it. This elusive state-of-being proves to be either unobtainable or simply an illusion for most. Take Trish, the carefree mom who believes she ‘has it all’ – just as the audience has glimpsed her husband Bill masturbating to a teen magazine in the back of his car. Not since David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) has there been such a disturbing examination of sexual dysfunction in the suburbs. Allen himself, with his pornographic magazines and obscene phone calls, exists in a fantasy world that he is too ‘boring’ to put into action – even when he finally plucks up the courage to confront the object of his desires. As for Helen, who writes a book called ‘Pornographic Childhood’, her perspective is so skewed that she wishes she had been raped for her work to feel more authentic.

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Solondz is cruel to his characters – though not out of spite. ‘You think I’m pathetic, a nerd … well you’re wrong. I’m champagne’ says Joy’s date Andy, in the opening scene, after she dumps him. In a Hollywood film, this rousing speech would be the precursor to Andy finding love and redemption. In Solondz’s world, the next time we hear of Andy he has committed suicide. Same goes for Billy, whose candid relationship with his father, as he asks him about masturbation, might be seen as progressive in some circles – only for this to be crushed when Bill admits he would ‘jerk off’ to the thought of his son. Yes, Solondz is cruel, but only in the way life is. From the film’s title to the naming of his characters (Joy experiences anything but in her miserable life) to the road sign ‘Watch Children’ that we glimpse at one point, Solondz works with irony as his principal tool. But thanks to the genuine performances by the cast (in particular Hoffman, Baker and Adams) this never becomes simply a soulless exercise in black comedy. There is something genuinely touching when you see Allen and Kristina dancing to Air Supply’s ‘All Out of Love’ – a sentiment that arguably fits every one of Solondz’s emotionally-stunted characters.

James Mottram

Public Access Studio/Distributor:

Prod: Cinema Beam, Triboro Entertainment Group Director:

Bryan Singer Producers:

Kenneth Kokin Adam Ripp Bryan Singer Screenwriters:

Christopher McQuarrie Bryan Singer Michael Feit Dougan Cinematographer:

Bruce Douglas Johnson Art Director:

Bruce Sulzberg Composer:

John Ottman

Synopsis The small-town community of Brewster has its peaceful sense of self ruptured when a mysterious outsider called Whiley Pritcher arrives and asks his listeners to respond to only one question on his new radio show: ‘What’s wrong with Brewster?’ As the residents of Brewster begin to complain about increasingly-widening issues – from their neighbours, to employee discrimination, to deep-seated political corruption that threatens to destroy the town itself, Whiley subtly rephrases his question to ask: ‘Who is wrong with Brewster?’ Exploring this theme, Whiley interviews the former Town Mayor, Bob Hodges, who, instead of uncovering dark secrets, declares across the airwaves his firm belief in UFOs and aliens. Whiley also develops a relationship with the librarian, a girl who is torn between staying in Brewster and leaving for the Big City. Amidst the clamour to blame people, an anonymous caller declares Whiley to be the problem with Brewster; and when this person then announces that they also know the hidden machinations of the local council members, Whiley quickly seeks to rectify what is wrong with Brewster.

Critique Bryan Singer is best known as the director of The Usual Suspects (1994), and the superhero epics X-Men (2000) and Superman Returns (2006), but his minimally-financed first film,

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Editor:

John Ottmann Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Ron Marquette Burt Williams Dina Brooks Year:

1993

Public Access (1993) shares one significant theme with his later work: identities are kept secret and the narrative action of uncovering that secret becomes the undoing of nearly everyone involved. Clark Kent is revealed to be Superman, Keyser Soze is shown to be Verbal Kint and Whiley Pritcher, the antagonist of Public Access, appears from nowhere, behaving like a ‘wily preacher’, teasing the secrets out of the town of Brewster until he is forced to reveal his own hidden motivations. Public Access revolves around what is believed to be known about the citizens of Brewster, and the film is entirely successful in slowly uncovering a wider plot beyond the voyeuristic dissemination of small-town gossip-mongering. As the veil surrounding Whiley’s purpose in Brewster unfolds, Ron Marquette is outstanding in his presentation of a man who is mentally crumbling but capable of remaining suave and composed before his fawning acolytes. The film is elevated through the quality of Marquette’s performance but he is ably supported by a cast that has had little or no film-acting experience. The fresh-faced naïvety of Rachel (Dina Brooks), who sleeps with Whiley because he represents change, coupled with Burt Williams’ Bob Hodges, who embodies the ‘crazy old guy of the town’ stereotype with maximum effect, imbue the film with a bathetic charm that accentuates Whiley’s ambiguous presence. The atmosphere is consistently unsettling: when Whiley is on the radio, tension is extracted from waiting for calls; and tension is also accentuated by the number of night shots, as young gangs loom out of the darkness and a body is discovered under a bridge. Whiley travels around at night because of the times that he works at the radio station, but the shadows become a pathetic fallacy that underscores his character. As an investigation into the stagnant and often hypocritical underbelly of contemporary living, Public Access does not quite measure up to the Blue Velvet (1986) benchmark, in which the clichéd white picket fences mask a surreal and depraved melange of misfits. The issue of ‘what’s wrong in Brewster?’ is a game played by Whiley to expose the knowledge of immoral acts held by relatively-innocent people, who are then punished for what they have accidentally stumbled across. Nevertheless, in reversing the central figure from the naïve adventurer protagonist of Blue Velvet to the manipulator false-hero in Public Access, the viewer is increasingly placed into positions whereby they are encouraged to align their exhortations with Whiley; and this is where the film stands apart. Whiley is not the vehicle for exposing corruption that we were led to believe and, as with Singer’s following film, The Usual Suspects, the film is quickly turned upon its head in the final act. The denouement itself is slightly absurd, given the mode in which the film has presented itself, but the lingering effect is that the viewer has been duped by Singer just as easily as Whiley duped the inhabitants of Brewster: figures that we were earlier encouraged to laugh at due to their naïvety.

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[Safe] Studio/Distributor:

American Playhouse Chemical Films Director:

Todd Haynes Producers:

Christine Vachon Lauren Zalaznick Screenwriter:

Todd Haynes Cinematographer:

Alex Nepomniaschy Art Director:

Anthony R Stabley Composer:

Ed Tomney Editor:

James Lyons Duration:

121 minutes Cast:

Julianne Moore Peter Friedman Xander Berkeley Susan Norman Year:

1995

Synopsis Carol White, a young housewife living in an upper-class LA suburb, suddenly takes on an unexplained and inexplicable illness, causing her to hyperventilate, cough and nosebleed. As the symptoms worsen, conventional medical treatment ceases to have any remedial effect. Unsupported by her doctor and psychiatrist, increasingly alienated from her frustrated, inconsiderate husband and impatient son, and isolated from her acquaintances (neither she nor anyone else seems to hold any friendships), she eventually seeks answers, support and solace from a New Age-like environment- and health community which believes her symptoms are caused by – and parallel to – the symptoms the earth is suffering from: smog, chemical pollution and self-loathing. Under influence of its guru, she resorts to the community’s facilities in rural New Mexico, where, despite the clean air, healthy food, assisted introspection and encouraged self-loving, she long appears to weaken even more, her body seemingly further deteriorating, her mind ostensibly disintegrating. Yet does that last shot exhale a ‘gasp’ of hope?

Critique As with most of Todd Haynes’ films [SAFE] is as much an exercise in audio-visual expression as it is in narrative articulation. It employs inconsistent tracking shots of and from cars in order to map a sprawling, congested space; it applies static long shots of massive architectural designs and deep-focus photography as its means of portraying an alienated and isolated protagonist. Colours, moreover, are mostly kept pale, pastel and white. And performances are more often than not formal and impersonal (in that gestures seem to derive from and adhere to social convention rather than personal intent). As a result, [SAFE] presents us more with a sensual experience of suburbia and its discontents, an ambience, a mood, than – as so many other recent films have attempted – with a chronicle of it. It is a harrowing, haunting experience, whose uncanny images and eerie sounds remain with one much longer than the ninety-odd minutes they take. Indeed, [SAFE] constantly questions the extent to which mise-en-scène and plot correlate, cohere. It suggests their relationship to one another might just be more complicated. The film’s final scene, or rather, its final shot, is exemplary in this respect. While the camera gradually zooms into Moore’s face, her lips are seen – and seen more than heard – muttering the words ‘I love you’ to herself. The shot’s subtle miseen-scène suggests these words might signify her recovery: it is the first and last medium close-up of the film, with Moore looking directly into the camera; and her performance is withheld, tense rather than formal. Its plot however – an ill woman

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mumbling words of either consolation or affirmation – implies her resignation. The former language expresses hope, the latter articulates tragedy. How one interprets this shot, thus, depends on the idiom one understands best. If [SAFE] is rather more sensual than many of its like-minded contemporaries, and as theoretically informed (at times it views like an adaptation of VF Perkins seminal textbook Film as Film, just as Far From Heaven (2001) occasionally views like an allusion to Laura Mulvey’s interpretation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s essays on Douglas Sirk’s melodramas), it is also – perhaps surprisingly, considering the premise – less sarcastic. Its lens is not so much a distorting mirror as it is a magnifying glass; instead of laughing at caricatures, it worries about the frail and vulnerable beings whose fears and anxieties it so painfully (yet unjudgementally) exposes. [SAFE] is a careful film, about uncared-for (as opposed to careless) people.

Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen

Society Studio/Distributor:

Society Productions Inc Wild Street Pictures Republic Pictures Director:

Bryan Yuzna Producer:

Keith Walley Screenwriters:

Rick Fry Woody Keith Cinematographer:

Rick Fichter Art Director:

Kelle DeForrest Composers:

Phil Davies Mark Ryder Editor:

Peter Teschner Duration:

99 minutes

286

American Independent

Synopsis A popular high-school student Bill comes from an affluent family in Beverly Hills but suffers from feelings of paranoia and isolation. While at the beach with his girlfriend, he is accosted by his sister’s ex-boyfriend Blanchard with a Dictaphone recording of an orgy, which starts to confirm some of Bill’s worse fears. Blanchard then apparently dies in mysterious circumstances and the tape is replaced by his psychiatrist with a more innocuous recording. Bill gets drugged and taken to hospital but escapes and finds allies in his friend Milo and girlfriend Clarissa. Returning home, he discovers his parents have organized an orgy there, the depiction of which reveals the town to have a subset of humanoid beings, who merge with each other during sex and cannibalize any actual humans they kidnap for these parties. One such victim is Blanchard, whose death was faked and who has been kept in captivity for this purpose. Bill refuses to accept his parents’ desires and a fight breaks out at the party allowing him, Clarissa and Milo to escape.

Critique A late addition to the 1980s’ ‘body horror’ theme that had been pioneered in half a dozen early genre films by David Cronenberg, from Shivers (1975) to the The Fly (1986), Society is an underrated curio almost lost among Bryan Yuzna’s collaborations with director Stuart Gordon in bringing H P Lovecraft to the screen, probably due to distribution problems which prevented the film from being released in the United States until 1992. Unlike Cronenberg’s films, which exhibit a clinical detachment regarding the subject matter,

Directory of World Cinema

Cast:

Billy Warlock Connie Danese Ben Slack Year:

1989

even when the protagonists are voyeurs, Yuzna’s film is a harder movie to like – perhaps because of the enjoyment shown by many of the characters in participation in the film’s acts of ‘shunting’, and because of the broad performances and clichéd script which never seems quite sure if it is meant to be a comedy or not. However, the film still has a lot to offer, even if Yuzna is not as comfortable as his frequent collaborator Gordon in combining horror and comedy on screen. Most American horror films of the 1980s offered a simple morality: if you have sex outside of marriage and, worse still, enjoy it, you will get killed by the monster. Occasionally this was subverted to surprisingly-challenging effect, such as having a boy rather than a girl as the hero of A Nightmare on Elm Street part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), who is struggling with his sexuality in an atmosphere of homosexual panic. Although admired by critics, it was one of the least popular entries in the Elm Street series, so it should come as no surprise that Yuzna, making a film about class issues, sex with other species and presenting orgies on screen in a matter-of-fact way rarely seen outside of ‘arthouse cinema’, had perhaps bitten off more than he could chew. One should not berate a film for ambition, and even the clunky dialogue and performances can be seen as satire when compared to the popular TV dramas of the time that had similarly-sexcrazed preppy teens on screen, albeit in less outré scenarios. Not quite accepted into the ‘yuppie hell’ sub-genre which included such excellent examples as After Hours (1985) and Heathers (1988), or embraced by the horror crowd, Society is a suitably-strange beast that, like the creatures on screen (luridly augmented by the special effects of ‘Screaming Mad George’), is neither fish nor fowl, but should be tracked down by fans of more esoteric genre fare.

Alex Fitch

Storytelling Studio/Distributor:

Killer Films Good Machine New Line Director:

Todd Solondz Producers:

Ted Hope Christine Vachon

Synopsis Storytelling is a twofold chronicle of two unrelated stories, associated only by their genius loci: New Jersey. In the first, aptly titled ‘Fiction’, Vi, a white middle-class, politicallycorrect twentysomething literature student is subsequently abandoned by her boyfriend Marcus, who she presumably dated primarily because of his illness, and ‘raped’ by her professor Mr. Scott, with whom she supposedly went mainly due to the colour of his skin. When she later tries to recount her experiences in a short story, she is criticized by her female, white middle-class, politically-correct peers for being a fascist, racist liar. In the second piece, called ‘Non-Fiction’, social misfit Toby Oxman purports to film a documentary about (teenage) life in suburbia, while in fact attempting to record a

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Screenwriter:

Todd Solondz Cinematographer:

Frederick Elmes Art Director:

Judy Rhee Composer:

Nathan Larson Editor:

Alan Oxman Duration:

88 minutes Cast:

Selma Blair Paul Giamatti John Goodman Mark Webber Year:

2001

mockumentary. However, his choice of genre begins to seem increasingly unethical and of ill taste when tragedy befalls his subject Scooby, and his family, the Livingstons.

Critique Long deemed less tragic than its immediate predecessor Happiness (1999), and often considered less comic than Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Storytelling has hardly ever been a critics’ favourite. Yet Todd Solondz’s fourth feature film has surprisingly much to offer. This is due for a large part to its self-reflective stance. Storytelling’s second piece, ‘Nonfiction’, for example, is as much a reflection on the director’s previous engagements with, if not exploitations of, suburban America as being, itself, another engagement with this environment. The film is more critical of Toby – the character resembling Solondz, or, perhaps rather, American Beauty (1999) director Sam Mendes, whose preposterous contemplation of a plastic bag floating in the wind is parodied – than it is of any of the suburbanites he tries to mockument. It portrays Toby’s exploitative behaviour as a conscious choice: he wilfully intends to take advantage of his subjects, even in their misery. The Livingstons, however, are seen to be oblivious of that choice: for them individualism and inequality are laws of nature. ‘Civilized’ snobbism (of which Solondz himself has been accused more than once) is as much, if not more, a theme as are ‘barbaric’ ignorance and middle-class values. Similarly, ‘Fiction’, the first short film, addresses representations of racism, misogyny, and physical deviance as much as the forms of prejudice and intolerance themselves. Indeed, much of Storytelling’s discomfort stems from the confusion between the two: the extent to which it is nearly impossible to identify where the former ends and the latter begins. What, for instance, is one to make of a scene depicting an AfricanAmerican older man raping a young WASP girl ‘with a Benetton complex’ half his size, while forcing her to say ‘N*****, fuck me hard’. Is it the condemnation of a racist stereotype, or merely the perpetuation of it? Or could it just be both at once? Ambitious and assertive, grotesque and banal, Storytelling is, at once, a conscientious Critique of America, of the white middle class, of suburbia, and a contrite consequence of it. As one character shouts into the camera, ‘New Jersey is where America’s at!’ If there is a criticism to be expressed, then, it is that both short films (and then especially ‘Fiction’) are too short. Their brief durée does not allow for Solondz to ‘tone’ his seemingly disengaged, disinterested style of long shots and static framing. His plot remains too one-dimensional, his characters too cartoonesque, too caricatural to be likeable or empathized with in any way – as ‘flat’ perhaps, as the world he tries to represent. But then again, in a self-reflective film like this that might just be what he is aiming for.

Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen 288

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Trees Lounge Studio/Distributor:

Live Entertainment Director:

Steve Buscemi Producers:

Chris Hanley Brad Wyman Kelly Forsythe Sarah Vogel Screenwriter:

Steve Buscemi Cinematographer:

Lisa Rinzler Art Director:

Jennifer Alex Composer:

Evan Lurie Editor:

Kate Williams Duration:

95 minutes Cast:

Steve Buscemi Chloë Sevigny Daniel Baldwin Anthony La Paglia Year:

1996

Synopsis Tommy Basilio is an alcoholic who lives in the Trees Lounge bar and sleeps in the apartment above it. Connie, his exgirlfriend, has left him for Rob, Tommy’s old boss. Rob has fired Tommy from the garage where he worked after he borrowed a substantial amount of money (without asking) and failed to return it. The film follows Tommy as he fails to gain re-employment, engages with the Trees Lounge patrons, and attempts to seduce every female surrounding him with overwhelmingly-negative results. He also continues to despair over Connie, whom he still loves, and frequently stalks her. However, when Uncle Al dies behind the wheels of his beloved ice-cream truck, the baton is passed onto Tommy with the opportunity for redemption. Tommy is not suited for life in the ice-cream business but, then, he receives help from Debbie (the personable seventeen-year-old niece of Connie) with whom he subsequently sleeps. Debbie’s father Jerry discovers what has transpired and smashes the truck with a bat before taking it to Tommy’s head. By the end of the film, Connie is pregnant and still with Rob, Debbie has left town, and Tommy is still drinking in Trees Lounge, but now he has a split lip.

Critique Steve Buscemi’s first directorial and screenwriting outing trades on the one thing that we know about Steve Buscemi: that he is ‘kinda funny looking’ and, as such, will probably have calamity befall him in nearly every role that he plays. If Reservoir Dogs (1992), In the Soup (1992), Living in Oblivion (1995), and Fargo (1996), demonstrate the development of a star persona in which Buscemi’s characters strive to achieve and are met with immense difficulties along the way, finally succeeding or failing through the capricious nature of luck alone, then Trees Lounge features a character that has already fallen foul of his anti-heroic qualities and from the mire of his baseness cannot help but transform redemptive possibilities into further degrading misadventures. When Tommy is offered the opportunity to metamorphose from habitual barfly to an ice-cream vendor of social standing, he sleeps with a seventeen-year-old girl who, despite his manboy mentality, is not only considerably younger than himself but is also the daughter of his ex-girlfriend’s sister. Tommy’s flaws drive the narrative of the film, yet he still remains endearing because, instead of fully indulging in his errors, he charismatically flounders about, trying to rectify his previous mistake whilst making two more. Tommy’s reaction to the world around him is the opposite to that of Nicolas Cage’s character in Leaving Las Vegas (1996), which was released in the same year as Trees Lounge. The character in the Mike Figgis film is an

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alcoholic who has come to terms with his addiction and intends to literally drink himself to death to escape the problems of his life, whereas Tommy misguidedly depends upon alcohol to elevate his life out of inertia and cannot accept that alcohol is the stumbling block to his happiness. The main reason why Trees Lounge is such an enjoyable film is because Steve Buscemi has assembled a fantastic ensemble cast to complement and reflect Tommy, the soused fool. Future Buscemi regulars such as Mark Boone Junior and Seymour Cassel play characters that represent alternative lifestyles for Buscemi’s character. Uncle Al (Seymour Cassel) is a respected hero to the children of the neighbourhood, whilst Tommy inadvertently has sex with them; and Mike (Mark Boone Junior) is a depressed, alcoholic husband who longs to escape his indecisive wife and represents an alternative to Tommy, who had already pushed away his girlfriend before the misery became too engrained. In only her second screen role following the notorious Kids (1995), Chloë Sevigny seems particularly at ease as an alluring older Lolita figure without recourse to Hollywood’s peculiar ‘adultification’ of child actors. Furthermore, with a typically-excitable appearance by Samuel L Jackson, several peculiar characters who inhabit the Trees Lounge, and a particularly intense performance by Daniel Baldwin as the young girl’s dad, the milieu in which Tommy’s character exists is comparable to that within a Jarmusch film such as Mystery Train (1989), where oddball characters and events are shot in a cinéma-vérité style that adds a spontaneous quality to the action.

Carl Wilson

The Unbelievable Truth Studio/Distributor:

Action Features Miramax Director:

Hal Hartley Producers:

Jerome Brownstein Hal Hartley Bruce Weiss Screenwriter:

Hal Hartley

290

American Independent

Synopsis Lindenhurst, Long Island. Audry has been accepted at Harvard, but refuses to go to college, obsessed instead with the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Just released from jail where he was serving time for murder – although few of the town’s inhabitants really seem to know who he has killed or how they died – Josh Hutton has returned home to start again. In his black suit, he is constantly mistaken for a priest, but is really a mechanic who learnt his trade in prison. After they meet at a bookstore over a mutual interest in George Washington, Audry helps find him a job at the garage owned by her blue-collar father, Vic. Intrigued, Audry has to shake off her ex-boyfriend Emmett, who obsesses about money and his career, while she contemplates the end of the world. Josh, who was jailed over the death of a girlfriend and her father, needs to get over his guilt-induced celibacy. Other pitfalls and obstacles include a sleazy photographer, who gets Audry into the modelling business, and a father desperate to

Directory of World Cinema

Cinematographers:

Michael Spiller Editor:

Hal Hartley Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Robert John Burke Adrienne Shelley Christopher Cooke Year:

1989

cut a deal with his daughter to prevent her from seeing the potentially-dangerous ex-con – although the truth behind his crimes may be more complicated than anyone suspects.

Analysis While Hal Hartley’s first feature seems a little crude in comparison with his following films Trust (1989) and Simple Men (1992), which together form his ‘Long Island trilogy’, The Unbelievable Truth remains an original and intelligent film. A preoccupation with his characters’ sense of alienation in their materialist, middle-class suburban world is encased within the writer/director’s own unique minimalist style and deadpan sense of humour, which allow him to tease out the absurdities of daily life. Hartley injects his films with a witty cynicism; he toys with his audience, from repeating lines of dialogue like a merry-go-round (‘Are you a priest?’/ ‘No, I’m a mechanic’/‘Are you a priest?’/ ‘No, I’m a mechanic’) to randomly throwing in musical interludes (Marc Bailey, a hapless fellow-mechanic, playing an electric guitar in the garage). Inter-titles with words like ‘But’ or ‘Meanwhile’ are used to playfully change the direction of the storytelling, in a nod to the influence of the nouvelle vague, and especially Godard, on his work. Robert Burke, deliberately humourless, puts in an excellent performance as the scarred, stoic philosopher-mechanic; Adrienne Shelley, with her red lips and huge eyes, is terrific as the apathetic yet love-struck Audry, who has learnt a lesson or two about pursuing men from playing the flirt in Molière’s Misanthrope. The supporting cast of relative unknowns, from Christopher Cooke, who plays Vic, to Gary Sauer (Emmett), deliver such hammy performances that their stilted and exaggerated delivery starts to feel deliberate rather than merely examples of mediocre acting. Emmett trails around after Audry like a melodramatic lost puppy after he has been dumped, and in some of the film’s most absurd and humorous scenes, throws punches at anyone who looks at her (including the actor Bill Sage, one of the stars of Simple Men, seen here for only a second in the background as he gets decked). The movie, made in less than two weeks on a relativelyminiscule budget, does seem dated: synth sounds feature a little too heavily on the electronic soundtrack, while Audry’s fear of nuclear war is a firmly 1980s’ trait (if the film had been made today, she would have been taking action against global warming instead of listening out for the sound of falling bombs). But the compelling performances by the two dynamic leads and Hartley’s insightful, clever writing make The Unbelievable Truth an essential independent film.

Sarah Cronin

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The Virgin Suicides Studio/Distributor:

American Zoetrope Paramount Classics Director:

Sofia Coppola Producers:

Francis Ford Coppola Julie Constanzo Dan Halsted Chris Hanley Screenwriter:

Sofia Coppola Cinematographer:

Told from the perspective of five men who, as boys, inhabited a small American suburb in the 1970s, The Virgin Suicides tracks their obsession with the five beautiful Lisbon sisters: daughters of overbearing parents whose constrictive nature eventually led to each of them taking their own lives. Conveyed through snippets of discovered journals, interviews and memories of past encounters, pieced together, is the story of each sister: Cecilia, the youngest at 13, the sultry Lux, 14, Bonnie, 15, Mary, 16 and Therese, 17. In spite of their enviable beauty, the girls crave the experiences of a normal life prohibited by their parents’ short-sightedness. Cecilia is the first to attempt suicide. At a party intended to restore her faith in life, she excuses herself and leaps from her bedroom window, impaling herself on a fence. Following the tragedy, the girls’ parents become even more stringent, causing the sisters to delve into their own minds to experience the enjoyment required by adolescents until, finally, as a chain reaction, they follow the fate of their youngest sister.

Edward Lachman

Critique

Art Director:

Sofia Coppola’s remarkably-assured debut-feature takes Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel and creates a beautifullypoignant portrayal of a suburban tragedy, enriched with wry humour and hallucinatory visuals. It is at once a heartbreaking tale and an insight into the psyche of teenagers of both sexes, through exploring the mesmerising effect the girls have on their admirers and the intricate moments they share between themselves. The allure of the Lisbon sisters is vividly depicted through dream-like scenes displaying the boys’ fantasies, the overbearing excitement of exploring their bedrooms and the tangible lust that permeates their consciousness. It is a film that dwells on the tiny moments that matter, such as a hand gently brushing another, or the intricate study of private notebooks. Edward Lachman’s cinematography perfectly captures these events and the essence of summer, where sunlight peers through leaves and fills each frame with a warm glow. Beneath this radiant surface, however, lie dark and traumatic themes handled in such a way that the film never slips into social realism. Rather, the distress caused by certain events in the film is subdued to the extent where it is experienced in a haze, superbly aided by Air’s haunting score, summarizing the balance of beauty and heartbreak. Coppola also draws noteworthy performances from her (predominantly young) cast. James Woods and Kathleen Turner fill the roles of the Lisbon parents perfectly, adopting a mutual persona of utmost conservatism without ever slipping into caricature. Josh Hartnett balances his cool with vulnerability as Lux’s

Jon P Goulding Editors:

Melissa Kent James Lyons Composer:

Air Duration:

93 minutes Cast:

Kirsten Dunst Josh Hartnett James Woods Kathleen Turner Year:

2000

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suitor Trip Fontaine, though the film’s star turn is undoubtedly Kirsten Dunst, who injects an undeniable sensuality and coldness into Lux, re-launching her career as an adult actress after several successful appearances as a child. Also notable is the voiceover by Giovanni Ribisi, used sparingly yet creating a sense of the lingering memory the girls left on their admirers, evoking Richard Dreyfuss’ voiceover from Stand by Me (1986), another film that creates a magical and somewhat nostalgic tale from what is ostensibly a tragedy.

James Merchant

Welcome to the Dollhouse Studio/Distributor:

Suburban Pictures Sony Pictures Classics Director:

Todd Solondz Producer:

Todd Solondz Screenwriter:

Todd Solondz Cinematographer:

Randy Drummond Art Director:

Lori Solondz Editor:

Alan Oxman Duration:

88 minutes Cast:

Heather Matarazzo Brendan Sexton III Eric Mabius Year:

1995

Synopsis Suburban New Jersey. Painfully geeky, with a wardrobe full of lurid clothes and an enormous pair of glasses, Dawn Weiner is suffering through the agony of her first year at junior high. Nicknamed ‘Dog Face’ and ‘Weiner Dog’ by her classmates, she is bullied at school and in her middleclass home, where her nerdy older brother is obsessed with getting into college and her little sister, Missy, is a sickeningly-pretty ballerina, adored by everyone. Her arch enemy Brandon is a dope-smoking little punk from the other side of the tracks who torments her at every possible opportunity. When Dawn’s brother starts up a garage band called The Quadratics (his somewhat-misguided contribution is the clarinet), she falls for the manly, popular lead-singer Steve Rodgers, who has been enticed to join the band in exchange for computer-science tutoring. Dawn’s crush on Steve leads to the first stirrings of her adolescent sexuality, and the crazy idea that she might be able to seduce the hunk takes hold – leading to a chain of events with potentially-devastating consequences.

Critique Todd Solondz has built up a reputation as a controversial writer-director for his proclivity for confronting distasteful subject matter in a wholly-uncompromising way. But Welcome to the Dollhouse, his debut feature and the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, seems somehow tame in comparison to his following film, Happiness (1998), which tackled child molestation and rape in an affluent, suburban setting. While the kids in Solondz’s debut have a tendency to spit out homophobic taunts that might make some viewers cringe, there is nothing controversial about teenagers wanting to get laid, or the lengths that bullies will go to in traumatizing their victims – although Solondz clearly makes the point that adults would prefer to keep brushing all that under the carpet. While the film is smartly written,

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Welcome to the Dollhouse, Suburban Pictures.

witty and often extremely funny, it is too tragic to be seen as a comedy; it is more caustic, critical and misanthropic than any of the John Hughes teen movies, or the film’s slapstick, pseudo-successor Napoleon Dynamite (2004). Solondz perfectly captures the feeling of isolation that surrounds Dawn, forcing the audience to share in her humiliation as she is insulted and abused by her fellow students, teachers (the 12-year-old is punished for being ‘undignified’ when she pleads to re-take a test) and parents, especially her mother; indeed, it is the adults that Solondz paints as particularly cruel and immature. Heather Matarazzo, who was only 11-years-old when the film was shot, deservedly won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She is brilliantly cast as Dawn, pulling off an achingly-genuine performance as the unpopular and often unlikeable anti-hero who hurls her own

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fair share of abuse at the few people even more vulnerable than herself, including her only friend Ralphie, a kid in fifth grade already nicknamed ‘Fag’. But although the film excels as a character study, Solondz’s handling of plot is far less convincing. One or two incongruous twists towards the end strain credulity, and the film’s structure seems to fall apart by the time Dawn is seen roaming the mean streets of New York in search of her missing little sister. There is little doubt that Welcome to the Dollhouse brilliantly evokes the horrors of junior high, but it is a slight, at times crude, picture – a stepping stone to the director’s subsequent films, which are far more sophisticated and ambitious, not to mention more provocative. Still, Solondz’s debut remains a crucial film in American independent cinema and a classic of the teen genre.

Sarah Cronin

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Writing in the November 1957 issue of Commentary, a magazine for Jewish cultural affairs, critic and artist Manny Farber chewed over a phenomenon that he christened ‘underground film’. The term was Farber’s attempt at categorizing a thenneglected class of Hollywood cinema: the male action movie, a subterranean domain populated by directors like Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman and Anthony Mann, that represented, for Farber, the true art of cinema. By 1969, when poet and critic Parker Tyler wrote his book Underground Film: A Critical History, Farber’s term had taken on an entirely new life, far removed from the straight-talking narrative art the original writer had sought to elevate. Tyler’s historical survey of just a few short years spoke of a movement that had, for the most part, eschewed narrative, dramatic action, characterization, and, in some cases, film’s primary function of representation. The book, however, would be more of an elegy than a call to arms. By the early 1970s, the underground, which had, at its height, had many studio heads looking anxiously over their shoulders, was retreating back into obscurity. Ten years before Farber’s article, Austrian émigré Amos Vogel had founded Cinema 16, a subscription-based film society holding screenings at venues in New York. In packed auditoriums, Vogel would present a ‘mixed programme’ of short, alternative film: scientific, ethnographic, animated, and historical and contemporary avant-garde. In the mix were contemporary American experimental film-makers like Meya Deren, James Broughton and James Whitney who, taking their cue from the earlier European avants-garde of the 1920s and 1930s had produced short, experimental works, finding receptive audiences at other international film societies (including the pioneering London Film Society, established in 1925). Vogel saw the potential for such fresh, challenging cinema to reach a new, larger, appreciative audience. Cinema 16’s economic model of subscription-based membership (effectively making people pay to see the films before knowing what they were) made such ambitious programming viable. One noteworthy subscriber was Jonas Mekas, a young Lithuanian poet who had arrived in New York as a displaced person following World War II. Impassioned by what he saw, Mekas would go on to found Film Culture magazine in 1954, dedicating much of its space to championing this new avantgarde. By 1958, Mekas would also be contributing to the more-widely-circulated Village Voice and, in his Movie Journal column, he would discuss the latest movements on this new fringe film culture to a vast (if mostly baffled) audience. Among the films shown by Vogel in the early days of Cinema 16 was Fireworks (1947), a leftfield coming-out fantasy, full of potent, shocking imagery of burgeoning homosexual lust, made by precocious Californian teenager Kenneth Anger. His noisy, nonconformist and symbolically-laden films would make Anger an early underground hero. His blend of

Left: Flaming Creatures.

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pop imagery, Hollywoodian glamour, frank sexuality and occult iconography, all tied together in masterly Eisensteinian montage, would prove to be massively influential, with the look and feel of many of Martin Scorsese’s early films being a case in point. On 11 November 1959, Cinema 16 presented a double-bill of new films by young American artists. Pull My Daisy, a half-hour short directed by Alfred Leslie and Robert Frank, with a script by Jack Kerouac and appearances from Allen Ginsberg and painter Larry Rivers, brought a hip swagger and Beat sensibility to narrative film. Next was John Cassavetes’ debut feature Shadows, another film with a cocksure awareness, injecting a new improvisational realism to the screen. The underground as we understand it was now in place. Although often viewed as a local, New York phenomenon, artists on America’s West Coast were producing parallel works, many of which were screened by Vogel. Growing out of the concurrent assemblage art scene, San Francisco-based artist Bruce Conner would construct his own quasi-narratives out of fragments of readymade footage. In short films like A Movie (1958), Conner displayed Hollywood off-cuts, ‘nudie’ stag films, scientific documentary and hard-hitting war footage, all pieced together with a Marx Brothers’ sensibility. Cinema 16’s eclectic embrace of any kind of cinema that deviated from the status quo (evidenced in Vogel’s 1974 guidebook Film as a Subversive Art) was not, however, universally adored. Vogel’s insistence on selecting films from what he thought to be the ‘best’ of experimental inevitably led to confrontation with sidelined film-makers. In 1960, Mekas joined forces with other disgruntled film-makers and thinkers to form an alternative unit named the New American Cinema Group, which, in turn, led to the Film-maker’s Co-Op, a rival distribution network managed on an open submission policy. The Co-op offered a more generous dividend to the film-maker than Vogel (75 per cent as opposed to 50 per cent) and put up no barrier of quality to film-makers submitting work. Soon, Mekas began organizing his own screenings at the Cinematheque on 41st Street, most often consisting of whole programmes devoted to a single film-maker’s work. The Co-Op’s defining moment would come in 1964 when Mekas and three others were arrested on obscenity charges for screening Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963). With its outrageous acts of polysexuality and flagrantly-shambolic visual style, Smith’s film would become emblematic of the Underground as a whole. In the crowd at these Co-Op screenings was emerging art-world star Andy Warhol. He and Mekas became friends, and Warhol was encouraged to make his own films. Between 1963 and 1966, Warhol, inspired by the Dionysian antics of Jack Smith and co, as well as a contemporaneous move toward minimalism in other arts (most notably the work of John Cage in music), produced a body of work so vast that its entirety is only just being fully grasped four decades on. His first major film, Sleep (1963), a portrait of his then-lover John Giorno, consisted of a series of static shots of the poet’s sleeping torso, stretched and looped to achieve a running time of six hours. This was followed by a further series of ‘stillies’: fixed framings of objects or actions, projected at 16 frames per second to achieve an elegiac, dreamlike quality. Haircut (1963), Eat (1963), Blow-Job (1963) and Empire (1964) were among these early austere, neo-luddite works (Empire, perhaps his most notorious film of this period, consisted of shots of the Empire State Building at night, for eight hours.) Simultaneously, Warhol had begun collecting ‘Screen Tests’ of visitors to his factory: placing his bolex camera in front of arriving personalities, and letting the film roll for a single reel, as the subject struggled to remain dignified. These shorts, (including ‘tests’ of such figures as Bob Dylan, Susan Sontag and Salvador Dali) numbering almost 500, exist as

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perhaps the singularly-most-captivating filmic document of the mid 60s’ art/film/music scene. By 1965, Warhol had begun to incorporate multiple camera set-ups and, with the help of avant-garde playwright Ronald Tavel, semi-scripted scenarios, casting from a stock troupe of eccentric outcasts that peopled his factory-cum-flophouse that included Flaming Creatures-creator Jack Smith, proto-It girl Edie Sedgwick, Puerto Rican drag-artist Mario Montez, poet Taylor Mead, and clean-cut stud, Paul America. Warhol had always been reliant on his factory collaborators and, over time, conceded more control to his subordinates. Paul Morrissey, an upstanding and drug-free anomaly in the Warhol crowd, soon seized control of much of the production side of factory life, bringing with him new standards of professionalism. Their first major collaboration together would be Chelsea Girls (1966), a rambling multi-screen tour de force that would clock in at over 3 hours. Commercially, if not artistically, this would be the underground’s finest hour, with audiences queuing to witness a series of mostly unintelligible conversations in designer squalor. The commercial viability of ‘underground’ works was not something that escaped the attention of the mainstream media. By 1969, films like Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy added a little populist sheen to the hippy sleaze, with profitable results. Warhol continued to produce, but his input into the films that bore his name became nominal. The untapped market exposed by Chelsea Girls would be filled by Morrissey himself with his more narrative-focused works like Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat (1973), and later by the Midnight Movie phenomenon of films like John Waters’ Underground-inspired odes to depravity like Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). Additionally, the greater commercial availability (and greater social acceptability) of pornography, elevated films like Deep Throat (1972) to mainstream consciousness, meaning that the curious audience no longer had to suffer the art to get to the dirty bits. Over the ensuing decades, attempts have been made to resurrect the underground tradition, notably the No-Wave/Cinema of Transgression movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s which attempted to stir things up with a little punk phlegm. But, as the lines between mainstream and alternative culture became increasingly blurred, the act of locating the ‘underground’ became all the more troublesome, making its unexpected flourish a very specific historical phenomenon and a fascinating glitch in the system.

Rob Dennis

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Chelsea Girls Studio/Distributor:

Andy Warhol Films Directors:

Paul Morrissey Andy Warhol Producer:

Andy Warhol Screenwriters:

Ronald Tavel Andy Warhol Cinematographers:

Andy Warhol Paul Morrissey Art Director:

Andy Warhol Editors:

Paul Morrissey Andy Warhol Duration:

210 minutes Cast:

Brigid Berlin Nico Mary Woronov Year:

1966

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Synopsis Chelsea Girls is a non-linear experimental film focused on the daily lives of several figures commonly known as Andy Warhol Superstars. Lasting over three hours and consisting of 12 thirty-minute films running side by side, Chelsea Girls presents life in mid-sixties’ New York City as being often dull and ordinary, while at other times literally bursting with excitement and creativity. Set in both The Chelsea Hotel and Andy Warhol’s Factory, the film is mostly made up of some of its stars clearly just playing themselves, while others attempt to create sketches and rather loose characterizations.

Critique Presented with no credits and no clear beginning or end, Chelsea Girls defies description with regards to a traditional plot, and abandons even the most rudimentary principals of traditional storytelling. A work of overwhelming importance in the film and art world, Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol’s sprawling 1966 production is still quite unlike anything else ever made. Uncompromising in its technique and vision, Chelsea Girls would prove a sensation during the sixties and it remains one of the most influential, if little seen, works from that pivotal decade. While perhaps not its most notable element, the most famous (or infamous) thing about Chelsea Girls is the split screen technique that Warhol uses throughout its epic running time. The result can be disorienting, frustrating and overwhelming to even seasoned viewers of experimental films, but Chelsea Girls is worth the trouble as it successfully pushes the boundaries of everything the viewer might accept as what cinema should be. While its filming style and technique might remain its most known characteristics, the real power of Chelsea Girls is the way it manipulates the ideas of time and space in both cinema and life. To Warhol, everything is connected and by presenting separate stories simultaneously next to each other, Chelsea Girls not only questions the idea of narrative in cinema, but also in our own lives. Chelsea Girls finally plays out like memory in that it is jumbled and fragmented but ever-present. Warhol’s use of sound is also totally revolutionary as his decision to alternate the film’s screens between silence and sound makes the work at least half a modern silent-film production. Equally mesmerizing are the often sudden splashes of colour that Warhol interjects throughout the mostly-black-and-white film, another choice that makes it seem both of its time and oddly timeless. Since Chelsea Girls is a long film made up of shorter vignettes, certain sequences stand out from others. Oddly, it is some of the more mundane sections that feel the most resonant, because in these Warhol and Morrissey seem to really

capture a type of authentic realism rarely found in any type of cinema. Images of the legendary Nico applying makeup while her son Ari plays nearby has a much more enduring and resonant quality as opposed to some of the film’s more topical moments, such as future-cult-star Mary Woronov playing a figure called Hanoi Hannah. Perhaps the greatest triumph of the film is Warhol and Morrissey’s ability to find something gloriously cinematic in life’s most commonplace moments. Chelsea Girls polarized critics upon its release in the autumn of 1966 and has been extremely hard to see since its brief release, but remains one of the most important films of the past fifty years. Unlike many of the ‘revolutionary’ films of the period that have now lost much of their power, Chelsea Girls remains a trailblazing and downright visionary work that reminds us how far the envelope can be pushed with regards to the cinema as a vibrant art form.

Jeremy Richey

David Holzman’s Diary Studio/Distributor:

Direct Cinema Limited Director:

Jim McBride Producer:

Synposis David Holzman begins to compile a film diary in an attempt to capture the ‘truth’ of things. Believing that the film camera enables one to probe beyond the surface of human perception and aid understanding, he ceaselessly documents himself and others around him. His project is met with scepticism from his friend Pepe, while his girlfriend Penny is increasingly alienated and irritated by David’s constant need to film everything. Events eventually become more serious as David’s filmmaking obsession leads to socially-questionable behaviour.

Jim McBride

Critique

Screenwriter:

Jim McBride’s debut feature is a seminal film both in how it comments upon the film-making of its time and also in its anticipation of the increasing omnipresence of film and video technologies within everyday life. A ‘mockumentary’, the film is a fake ‘personal diary’ in which Holzman (L M Kit Carson) records his life in an attempt to excavate ‘truth’. It most clearly stems from two traditions: direct cinema and the French nouvelle vague. It relates to direct cinema in its use of lightweight camera and sound equipment and its use of such equipment as a tool to document reality; the nouvelle vague is invoked through verbal references (to Godard and Truffaut, for example) and an attempt to mix direct cinematic modes with fiction. Where it differs from nouvelle vague films is that it presents fiction in the guise of documentary rather than actually injecting fiction film-making with documentary techniques. The mockumentary approach enables McBride to critically reflect upon cinema and its ability to reveal ‘truth’. While

Jim McBride Cinematographer:

Michael Wadleigh Editor:

Jim McBride Duration:

74 minutes Cast:

L M Kit Carson Eileen Dietz Lorenzo Mans Year:

1967

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Holzman quotes Godard’s maxim that film is ‘truth twentyfour times a second’, it is direct cinema which is subjected to a broader critique: its attempts to ‘objectively’ portray real life is undercut by the focus on Holzman as the film-maker and, hence, his presence as a subjective manipulator, a factor exacerbated by his fictional status. Further criticism of direct cinema’s truth-claims is gradually built up through Holzman’s increasing frustration to get at any truth whatsoever. The implication of McBride’s documentary is that technology alone cannot be relied upon to produce insights; it is only in the service of human subjects that technology constructs meaning. The problem with Holzman, though, is that his consciousness is increasingly subordinated to his technology, to the extent that he rids himself of human traits. As a result, he becomes increasingly neglectful of people’s sensitivities and his own relations in his attempts to turn himself into an objective observer. McBride goes on to demonstrate that, despite his attempts to turn himself into an objective recorder, Holzman cannot actually do so. This is revealed through his actions, which become increasingly disturbing: from using his camera to peer into other people’s accommodation, to recording his phone calls to his Lucy, his estranged girlfriend, to actually stalking her towards the end of the film. Alienating many around him, Holzman has to turn the camera on himself to a greater and greater extent as the film unravels, but the more he does so the less he has to say. If the film does reveal any ‘truth’ about Holzman it is that his mental state is not particularly healthy, but it is does not appear that he himself has quite managed to grasp this. David Holzman’s Diary is both a cinematic essay and a satire of direct cinema; it looks forward not only to the mockumentary style that would become common, but also to the increasingly ‘personal’ style of documentary film-making, in which the director is also the star and subject of the film. As such, it remains relevant to our own period, in which questions of narcissism and surveillance have become even more pressing.

Jamie Sexton

Flaming Creatures Director:

Jack Smith Producer:

Jack Smith

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Synopsis Shot on the roof of the now-defunct Windsor Theatre in New York City in 1962, Flaming Creatures is made up of a series of tableaux depicting various beautiful and horrifying ‘creatures’ performing sexual acts and dances amidst a violent earthquake and an attack from a vicious and lascivious vampire and the aftermath of their perhaps abnormal love.

Cinematographer:

Critique

Jack Smith

Coy and camp, raw and exuberant, pornographic and socially conscious, beautiful and ugly, totally irreverent and morbidly

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Duration:

45 minutes Cast:

Mario Montez Francis Francine Year:

1963

serious, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures is the essential filmic revelation on what is paracinematic, how to blend high and low culture, East and West, the sparkling white teeth of Hollywood and the gritty angst of New York, the pre-Stonewall gay subculture with inclusivity and unflinching acceptance. Jack Smith, ever the trickster, the cinematic magician, hoodwinks the viewer at every turn in this film. His aim is to re-appropriate the Hollywood kitsch that marked his youth, to take back what had been repressed, exploited by that star factory, to expose the sexual and subsequently political hypocrisy in those films, and, through each step of the process, from the means of his production to the end of the film, he manages to subvert, desecrate, and celebrate his own subculture as well as the overarching culture under which it creeps. Using bits and bobs of black-and-white reversal film stock, his friends as actors, no lighting, and whatever available space he could find, Smith crafts a film of unbelievable power from beginning to end. Like all other attributes of the film, the setting seems like a blend of heaven and hell, a scary and seductive dream. Smith’s tight control, belied by the hysterics of his cast, is evident in the way each composition manages to be as painterly and as beautifully staged as possible. The film, perhaps due to its higgledy-piggledy construction of film stock odds and ends, vacillates between high- and low-contrast black and white, which only adds to the feeling of ethereality, with Smith’s choice of angles, his prevalence of close-ups of faces and body parts, feathers and beaded gowns, leading the viewer into a state of priapic befuddlement, ecstatic confusion, to question where and what and how this is all happening. The beginning of the film alerts the spectator to the suspicion that all is not quite as it seems. A woman gives instructions on how to apply lipstick, and then one of the attendees asks, ‘Is there a lipstick that doesn’t come off when you suck cock?’ before the film’s pace quickens to a rapid beat and an earthquake hits the creatures’ lair. Men who seemed like women are indeed to be revealed as men, when skirts are hiked and body parts clutched and waggled. The orgy scene in the film is genuinely shocking, hilariously funny, and tremendously poignant, as the creatures leer and pull and ravish and probe.

Emily Caulfield

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Flesh Studio/Distributor:

Score Movies Director:

Paul Morrissey Producers:

Andy Warhol Paul Morrissey Screenwriter:

Paul Morrissey Cinematographer:

Paul Morrissey Art Director:

Paul Morrissey Editor:

Paul Morrissey Duration:

105 minutes Cast:

Joe Dallesandro Patti D’Arbanville Candy Darling Year:

1968

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Synopsis Joe is a sometime hustler, and recovering drug addict, living in a shoddy little New York City apartment with his lesbian wife, Geri. Joe is forced to take to the streets for money after Geri tells him she needs cash to pay for her girlfriend’s abortion. Joe, as he goes through several friends and johns, attempts to raise the money.

Critique While it will forever be associated with Andy Warhol – largely due to its original billing as Andy Warhol Presents Flesh – Flesh is in fact very much the work of just one man: writer, editor, photographer and director Paul Morrissey. Morrissey had already made a name for himself in the underground film circuit of the 1960s through his work on Warhol’s experimental films, but Flesh served as his real break-out picture, a searing work that manages to be simultaneously funny, shocking and never less than extremely moving. Viewed by the standards of conventional narrative film-making, it is easy to criticize Flesh; amateurish, filled with continuity errors, and episodic with long stretches most editors would exorcise, Flesh simply put does not work as a conventional film, but those viewing it as such totally miss the point. Flesh is a legitimately confrontational work, playing very much by its own rules, that dares and asks its viewers to rethink how they define great cinema. The last thing Morrissey seems interested in with Flesh is making a typical film. An interesting way to view Flesh all these years later is to compare it to John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969), a work with similar thematic elements that opened a year later. While Midnight Cowboy remains a powerful experience, it clearly falls into the mainstream realm of film-making despite the strides it made. Flesh, on the other hand, remains a fiercely defiant work and, because of this, has aged better than Schlesinger’s Oscar winner, a film that, not coincidently, used some of Warhol and Morrissey’s actors to beef up its attempt at authenticity. Looking beyond Morrissey’s astonishing mastery of his form as he sees it, with the still visionary ‘flash editing’ being the most relevant of his accomplishments, perhaps the most amazing thing about Flesh is the cast. Working quite literally as a companion piece to Lou Reed’s 1973 song ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, Flesh’s cast of outsiders and iconic figures includes famed Warhol stars Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and of course Joe Dallesandro, whose charismatic charm guides the film from beginning to end. Dallesandro, or ‘Little Joe’ as Reed would later immortalize him, had, along with Morrissey, become something of an underground sensation throughout the mid-1960s, but Flesh would nearly make him a major star when he got kudos from

Directory of World Cinema

everyone from major critics to old-school film-makers like George Cukor. Dallesandro is fascinating and very touching in the film, and comparisons that were made to a young Brando still seem dead on. Now over thirty years old, Flesh remains an invigorating experience. The fact that time has still not caught up with either Morrissey’s technical advancements or his unflinching gaze at the male body makes Flesh a timeless piece, despite the fact that it probably works better than any other film of the period as an authentic snapshot of New York City in 1968. A success on its original limited release in the States, and a box-office sensation in Europe in the early 1970s, Flesh would lead Morrissey and Dallesandro to Trash (1970), a film that would garner them even more notoriety and acclaim.

Jeremy Richey

Heat Studio/Distributor:

Andy Warhol Factory / Image Entertainment Director:

Paul Morrissey Producer:

Andy Warhol Screenwriters:

John Hallowell Paul Morrissey Cinematographer:

Synopsis Joey Davis, a former child star, returns to Hollywood after being discharged from the army and finds the town is not quite the place he remembers. He takes up residence in a crummy motel on Sunset Boulevard, run by a brash landlady, Lydia, who discounts the rent in return for his attentions, and inhabited by a cast of odd characters who are all looking for love or money, or love for money. He meets a young girl, Jessica Todd, who lives there unhappily with her baby and her girlfriend, trying to escape from her mother Sally Todd, a washed-up actress who was never a star, even in her prime. Sally promises Joey work in return for his affections, and when he takes up with her in her big empty mansion, he sets in motion a chain of events in which the stakes become life or death.

Paul Morrissey

Critique

Composer:

The third in a series of films that were thematically unrelated but all starred the good-looking, if vaguely seedy, Warhol supernova Joe Dallesandro, Paul Morrissey’s Heat continues the legacy cemented in Andy Warhol’s film experiments like Kiss (1963), Mario Banana (1964), My Hustler (1965), and Chelsea Girls (1966). These earlier films were compelling because of the rigorous parameters set up by Warhol, his proclivity to set up a camera and let it run forcing his performers to adapt, to change, beat by beat. Heat, unfortunately, has none of the rigour of Warhol, and considerably less charming performances than the earlier films. Joe Dallesandro, that beautiful hood, has none of the scrubbed-clean wholesomeness of My Hustler’s Paul America. Both men are prostitutes, but, where America seduces everyone around him with his

John Cale Editors:

Jed Johnson Lana Jokel Duration:

100 minutes Cast:

Joe Dallesandro Sylvia Miles Andrea Feldman Year:

1973 Underground USA 305

Heat, 1972, Warhol.

boyish enthusiasm, Heat’s Joey Davis wanders around this sleazy Sunset Strip like a zombie, allowing himself to be felt up by anyone with hands, making for some seriously-mismatched couplings. The sexual charge of the film is tired, stale. Eric Emerson, another Warhol star, in the role of a deaf-mute who has sex with his brother in their stage act, spends his time around the motel pool masturbating distractedly, like a monkey in the zoo. His performance aims for the just-discovered-ness of his appearance in Chelsea Girls, but the scene is cold, perfunctory, and utterly without sympathy. Pat Ast as Lydia the landlady has a stronger performance and flair for improvisation than the other secondary characters, but she too falls short as a kind of stand-in for the bawdy, sexy, and brash female impersonators like Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis who usually populate Morrissey’s films. She makes her mark early in the film: beating her Chinese hand fan, she shouts ‘Hey! Don’t throw that kid in the pool!’ to startled swimmers. The melodrama and the exuberantly-written and often improvised dialogue is the strength of many of Morrissey’s films, as well as the seedy underbelly of the sexual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and all of these elements are alive and well in Heat. However, one wonders why these tropes are riveting in a film like Chelsea Girls where, here, the characters are mere grotesques. One wonders whether the effect is contrived. Is Morrissey pulling the old Brechtian hoodwink, urging

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the spectator to disengage with the characters? Is the static camera in My Hustler a stare into the soul of squeaky-clean Paul America, where Heat’s shifty pans and in-camera zooms purposefully distract and distance? The film is a useful text for those who want to romp in the liminal world of sex and scum in 1970s’ Los Angeles, but probably more appealing to a diehard Morrissey fan, as only those would like this cock-and-bull story of charmless lives.

Emily Caulfield

I Woke Up Early the Day I Died Studio/Distributor:

Muse Productions Cinequanon Pictures Director:

Aris Iliopulos Producers:

Chris Hanley Billy Zane Screenwriter:

Edward D Wood Jr Cinematographer:

Synopsis The Thief ties up a female nurse, dresses in her clothes and escapes from an asylum. The reason for his incarceration remains a mystery but we do learn that, due to a childhood baseball accident, he finds certain sounds unbearable, causing seizures. He steals a change of clothes from washing lines and a shoe-fetishist store-owner, food from a street vendor, and a car from a parking lot. Penniless, he robs a bank, but kills a teller. He goes to observe the funeral from a distance, but finds himself observing the ritual burial of a member of a satanic sect. Caused to collapse by a burst of bagpipe music, he wakes to find that the stolen money is gone. He murders the cemetery caretaker, discovers the cemetery is being relocated, and makes his way to the undertakers’. The money is not in the coffin but he does find a list of the professional mourners who attended the funeral. The Thief begins to work his way – murderously – through the list ...

Michael F. Barrow

Critique

Art Director:

I Woke up Early the Day I Died has immaculate cult-movie credentials. Based on a screenplay that Ed Wood spent a decade trying to get produced, with a director whose only other credits consist of the ‘idea’ for and co-starring in Manhattan Gigolo (1986), it is as obscure as anyone could desire. After festival screenings and a small New York opening, legal problems forestalled a general release; and it is only available – unsubtitled – on Spanish and German DVDs. However, the lack of subtitles is not an overwhelming problem for the monolingual Anglophone since the film contains no dialogue, except for Eartha Kitt’s (English) song, the occasional but not infrequent scream or moan, and a (Spanish or German) voiceover explaining the Thief’s hearing problem (the accompanying sound effects and footage from an educational film make its meaning relatively clear). While the shot-descriptions superimposed over several shots to explain some plot details are not in English, newspaper headlines and letters explaining others are.

Cecil Gentry Composer:

Larry Groupé Editor:

Dody Dorn Duration:

90 minutes Cast:

Billy Zane Christina Ricci Karen Black Eartha Kitt Year:

1999

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The film has a ‘to die for’ cast (not all credited), mostly in fleeting cameos, and appearances by Wood’s widow Kathleen and Wood-regular Conrad Brooks – as well as by Maila Nurmi, the Howard Hawks ‘discovery’ who became TV horror-host and Vampira. The film creates an ingenious soundscape in which urban discord, sonic shocks and cartoon effects blend with a fabulously-eclectic soundtrack, which includes Darcy Clay’s ‘Jesus I Was Evil’, scratches by Goldie, and tracks by DJ Spooky, The Ink Spots, Ray Davies, Nat King Cole, Gene Bua, Billy Zane’s sister, Lisa, and his own band, ZVH. And, despite winning some half-dozen (admittedly obscure) awards, the half-dozen newspaper reviewers who saw it hated it. Without exception, they dismissed it for trying too hard to be a camp, so-bad-it’s-good, ‘Ed Wood movie’, but give no sense that they have actually seen, let alone enjoyed, one themselves (and the screenplay is much closer to the lurid fiction Wood churned out in the 1960s and 1970s than to any of his films, anyway). Shot on a miniscule budget, it does pay tribute to his films in its loose structure, interpolated stock footage and rough edges, but where I Woke up Early the Day I Died is truly Wood-like is in its queer embrace of marginality and exclusion. It depicts LA as a cacophonous, derelict city, peopled by those discarded or spurned by the Hollywood Rat Race (after which Wood titled his rather bitter memoirs). And at the centre of the film is the ethnically- and sexually- ambiguous Billy Zane. With his typical precision and physical grace, he comes over as a cross between Chaplin’s tramp and a demonic Latin gigolo (who more than slightly resembles Ed Wood), while conveying – as always in his direct-to-video years, but perhaps more appropriately here – an ironic self-awareness of his own peculiar notexactly-a-star status. In succeeding as a failure, and failing as a success, he is perfect.

Mark Bould

Medium Cool Studio/Distributor:

H & J/Paramount Director:

Haskell Wexler Producers:

Haskell Wexler Jerrold Wexler Tully Friedman

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Synopsis 1968: the year of the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations, and of the ‘Resurrection City’ encampment of impoverished Americans in Washington. John Cassellis, a TV-news cameraman, is caught up in the events leading up to the Chicago police riots outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC). He is fired by Channel 8 when he begins to suspect that a human-interest story he is pursuing might lead to a bigger story about vigilante gangs preparing against the coming protests, and because he objects to the TV station handing over footage for the police and FBI to study. In a parallel story, he

Medium Cool, Paramount.

Screenwriter:

Haskell Wexler Cinematographer:

Haskell Wexler Art Director:

Leon Erickson Editor:

Verna Fields Duration:

111 minutes

meets and begins to date Eileen, an impoverished single mother newly arrived in the city from West Virginia, living in the Appalachian ghetto. On the eve of the convention, her son Harold sees them kissing and runs away. She scours the city for him as protestors gather, and as police and national guardsmen begin their brutal assault. She finds Cassellis and together they set out in search of Harold.

Critique Effectively suppressed by Paramount, Medium Cool is a remarkable testament to the period’s countercultural politics and European-influenced experiments in narrative cinema. Kin to films by John Cassavetes, Peter Watkins, Barbara Kopple and John Sayles, it is best understood as a collision between Jean-Luc Godard and the American naturalism of Frank Norris

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Cast:

Robert Forster Verna Bloom Harold Blankenship Year:

1969

and Upton Sinclair. The opening crash wreckage, and the indifference with which Cassellis films it, recall Godard’s Week End (1967). Wexler nods to À bout de souffle’s (1960) use of Bogart posters with one of Jean-Paul Belmondo, and lifts his ending – turning the camera on the audience – straight from Le mépris (1963). Other Godardian techniques include the introduction of captions (‘America is Wonderful’) and statistics about increasing gun registration (‘up 46% since the 1967 riots’); direct address to camera by both real people and actors; narrative lacunae; proleptic narration and other disjunctions between the soundtrack and the images, much of it a result of shooting without sound, but some of it selfconsciously pointed, such as playing ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ over footage of celebratory crowds inside the DNC and then of the victims of state violence outside. Such Brechtianisms are modulated through a naturalist impulse, evident in the frequent use of actuality footage and a long-lens observational style. Wexler – whose considerable documentary experience included working on the Mayles brothers’ Salesman (1968), and who, as a cinematographer, had introduced cinema-vérité preferences into Hollywood films – was initially hired to adapt Jack Couffer’s The Concrete Wilderness, about a young boy raising pigeons in the city. Traces of this remain, but Medium Cool is more concerned with capturing the details of everyday immiseration in relation to structures of power (Eileen, who taught five grades in one West Virginia schoolroom, is considered insufficiently qualified to teach in the city and must take factory work instead) in a time of political upheaval. Cassellis is repeatedly confronted with questions about the point at which reporters should intervene in the events they cover, about news programming’s sensationalism, and about his ability to represent people, even as he learns how his work is integrated into apparatuses of domination. Ultimately, he realizes that the role of news media is to process material through formulaic scripts so as to defuse challenges to the status quo. But this lesson is learned in a film which itself questions distinctions between fact and fiction. For example, the famous line, ‘Look out, Haskell, it’s real’, audible on the soundtrack when a teargas canister explodes near the crew, was dubbed in afterwards (they were shooting without sound) in order to capture something truthful about that moment. In a similar vein, the bright-yellow dress which Eileen wears as she walks through protests and police violence makes her stand out from the crowd, individualizes her against a backdrop of unknown others, like a star in a conventional movie; but she is the only person in shot who is acting, reminding us that narratives are constructs that we impose upon the world.

Mark Bould

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Pull My Daisy Studio/Distributor:

G-String Entrerprises Directors:

Robert Frank Alfred Leslie Producers:

Robert Frank Alfred Leslie Screenwriter:

Jack Kerouac Cinematographers:

Robert Frank Alfred Leslie Composer:

David Amram Editors:

Robert Frank Alfred Leslie Leon Prochnik Duration:

30 minutes Cast:

Allen Ginsberg Gregory Corso Jack Kerouac Year:

1959

Synopsis In a loft in the Bowery live a railway brakeman, his wife, and their young son. They live a bohemian lifestyle among artists and vagrants, but one day the wife invites the bishop over. The brakeman’s beatnik friends happen to come over the same night, and the dark world of jazz and artists clashes hilariously with the light world of a man of the cloth.

Critique Pull My Daisy occupies a liminal position, a cine-poem that is not quite either, yet succeeds at emblematizing both. The film has no dialogue and, instead, is narrated by Jack Kerouac, who alternates between commenting on the action unfolding on the screen and speaking all the parts as in a play or even a bedtime story. Then he riffs, following his stream of consciousness, about New York and religion and possibly Allen Ginsberg’s innermost thoughts. A sequence early in the film exemplifies these different modes quite fluidly: Ginsberg and Corso sit by the window flipping through a notebook and, as their mouths move, Kerouac provides their conversational back and forth. Then, as the camera tilts slowly from the notebook to Ginsberg’s face, Kerouac talks about what their conversation might have meant: ‘their secret naked doodlings do show secret scatological thought … that’s why everybody wants to see it.’ Then, after a dissolve, Ginsberg and Corso sit on the floor smoking marijuana, and Kerouac merely comments on the action, then quickly moves into more fasterpaced associative poetry, as Ginsberg’s movements become more energetic and acrobatic. It is hard to tell whether Kerouac is speaking for the characters again or if he is rapping over their action. The moment is incredibly effective: the spectator feels as if he is right in that apartment in the Bowery in 1959, feels the beat, the booze, the weed, the poetry. Although the film has gained a reputation for being spontaneous and improvisational, Frank’s script and plotting were deliberate. It is the strength of Kerouac’s poetic prose that makes everything seem breezily off-the-cuff. Also deliberate, the camerawork is minimal; if not totally static, the camera pans over the scene slowly, seeming to replicate the Beat poet’s glassy gaze across a room, taking in everything, commenting on all of it. Often one needs the commentary to understand the action, as the low-budget film seems to use only available light, which produces a lovely chiaroscuro effect. The most famous sequence in the film occurs after the bishop arrives. He fields the artists’ questions about what is holy, and ends up (via Kerouac’s narration, of course) giving an impromptu sermon. The camera pans across the scene and lands on the young bishop’s face as someone asks: ‘Is baseball holy?’ The bishop is stumped. He breathes, ‘Is baseball

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holy?’ and the close-up of him dissolves to him on the street, next to a giant American flag and giving a sermon to a cluster of people. Kerouac does not narrate this interlude; perhaps he cannot imagine what is in the far reaches of the young bishop’s memory. As the flag waves in front of the camera, the film cuts back to the scene in the kitchen, considerably darker now, and pans right from the bishop’s face as Kerouac explains, ‘the angel of silence has flown, over all their heads.’ The camera pans slowly past their faces and through the kitchen, the dreamy associative prose-poem being at once spoken about them, and spoken nearby them. The moment is another quintessential one in the life of a beatnik: darkness, unfathomable expressions on faces, free verse rolling off someone’s tongue, stream of consciousness echoes action, the world is a poem. The film was added to the National Film Registry in 1996 by the National Film Preservation Board because of its significance not only to American culture but also to film-making. Pull My Daisy pulls from many sources, like documentary, underground and experimental film-making, literature and jazz, creating a bricolage film quite unlike anything before or since, and decidedly holy.

Emily Caulfield

Schizopolis Studio/Distributor:

.406 Production Northern Arts Universal Pictures Director:

Steven Soderbergh Producer:

John Hardy Screenwriter:

Steven Soderbergh Cinematographer:

Steven Soderbergh Editor:

When a colleague dies, Fletcher Munson is instructed by his boss to take over the deceased’s work: writing a speech for a Mr. T Azimuth Schwitters, a so-called ‘Eventualist’. So absorbed does he become with his speech-writing, Munson fails to notice that his wife is having an affair with a dentist named Dr Korcek. Munson’s wife decides to leave her husband and move in with her lover, only to find that Korcek has just fallen for a patient: Attractive Woman # 2. This scenario is later echoed with the same set of characters, but with Munson and Korcek now speaking in foreign languages. Meanwhile, at Munson’s work, his colleague Mr. Nameless Numberheadman is fired for corporate espionage, only to revenge himself by passing secrets onto a rival company. And a pest-controller named Elmo Oxygen, who is having an affair with Schwitters’ wife, meets with two film-makers who offer him a better role in another film. Schwitters later delivers Munson’s speech at a lecture, only to be shot and wounded by Elmo.

Sarah Flack

Critique

Composers:

In an industry where the term ‘independent’ has become less and less meaningful as each year passes, Schizopolis – as Steven Soderbergh himself notes wryly in the prologue – might just be ‘the most important motion picture you will

Cliff Martinez Steven Soderbergh Jeff Rona

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Duration:

96 minutes Cast:

Steven Soderbergh Betsy Brantley Eddie Jemison Year:

1996

ever attend’. Shot for $250,000 in Baton Rouge with a group of friends, Soderbergh was at his lowest ebb, professionally and personally, when he made it. Fresh from his divorce to actress-wife Betsy Brantley, he had just come off a miserable time on the neo-noir The Underneath (1995). Feeling in need of a refresher course in film-making, he embarked on what must now be regarded as the most unconventional film ever made by a contemporary mainstream American film-maker. A postmodern comedy about the redundancy of language, Schizopolis is guerrilla film-making in its purest sense. Indeed, Soderbergh was only able to finish it by the advance from Universal (who had bought the video rights to the film) for another – ultimately aborted – film, Neurotica. Recalling the anarchic energy of the comedies of Soderbergh-idol Richard Lester (the man who dies at the outset is even called Lester Richards), Schizopolis is a disorientating experience. But with a trio of distinct, yet interlinked, sections giving it a clear three-act structure, the film ticks its own internal logic. Inside this, everything from parallel universes, notions of cause and effect, and the search for order in our lives – in particular through the Scientology-like cult of Eventualism – is explored. The only time Soderbergh – apart from a brief cameo in Full Frontal (2002) – has ever appeared in one of his films, he does not hold back. Be it shots of him masturbating on the toilet, or playing opposite his real-life ex Brantley, it is arguably one of the most daring performances ever by a director in one of his own films. Much of the film deals with what happens when language is used to obscure rather than illuminate – notably his early exchanges with Brantley (‘Generic greeting’, he says; ‘Generic greeting returned’, she replies). If this was an attempt to show the bland platitudes couples frequently engage in, there are other more baffling experiments with words (from Elmo’s own crazy phrases – ‘nosearmy’ and the like – to Schwitter’s non-sequiturs). Using the sort of linguistic gymnastics that British comic Chris Morris would also make his name with (the news report that Rhode Island is being turned into a shopping mall is pure Brass Eye), it seemed to suggest that Soderbergh was searching for a new cinematic language to play with. For all its obliqueness, Schizopolis is also surreal, silly and downright funny at times: take the Monty Python-like moment when a naked man – wearing just a T-shirt with the film’s title on it – is chased by two men in white coats. As Soderbergh notes in the film’s scant publicity materials, ‘any attempt at synopsising the film have ended in failure and hospitalization’. Like the T-shirt man, watching Schizopolis may lead us to be carted off to the funny farm. But as Elmo might say, ‘Ambassador Jumpsuit Landmine.’

James Mottram

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Shadows Studio/Distributor:

Lion International Director:

John Cassavetes Producer:

Seymour Cassel Maurice McEndree Screenwriter:

John Cassavetes Cinematographer:

Erich Kollmar Composer:

Shafi Hadi Editor:

Len Appelson Duration:

81 minutes Cast:

Lelia Goldoni Ben Carruthers Hugh Hurd Year:

1959

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Synopsis New York, 1959. Lelia, Ben and Hugh are three siblings living together in an apartment, the absence of their parents making them more roommates than brothers and sister. Hugh, the eldest, is a struggling musician on the fringes of the scene, constantly degrading himself by accepting jobs where he plays second fiddle to dancing girls instead of singing in the spotlight. His brother Ben is a disaffected youth, a James Dean type, screwing around with his buddies and fooling around with girls, trying to deal with the implications of his African-American roots and his light complexion. He does not know quite where he belongs. Their younger sister Lelia, just twenty, is a wordly woman far beyond her years in many respects; however, in matters of the heart, she is an innocent girl. She meets a man who does not realize what her light skin hides, and who breaks her heart, causing the family to bond together more strongly than ever before.

Critique Shadows is a totemic film for American independent cinema. Made the same year as Francois Truffaut’s Les quatre cents coups (1959), Shadows’ roots seem to be more firmly planted in the Italian Neorealism of the post-war era than in the nouvelle vague of any Young Turk. The miniscule budget, the mix of professional and non-professional actors, the grainy film stock, the 16mm hand-held camera style, the episodic structure – these attributes might apply to either, but there is something in the way Cassavetes handles the delicate subject matter, so deftly, so tenderly, that the work has all of the experimentalism but none of the affectation of the French nouvelle vague. The world of Shadows is where any cool kid in 1959 would want to be. The film is as much a paean to the seductive world of jazz clubs and parties, the intelligentsia and the literati, the cafes, the Met, to Central Park in autumn, as it as a rumination on the complexities of the human heart. The gangly innocence of Lelia coupled with her exotic beauty is an apparent metaphor for the line between black and white she must traverse. The jazzy underworld frequented by darkcomplected Hugh juxtaposed with Ben’s life, the world of the quintessential American 1950s’ teen, bolstered by his two white friends, foster a dynamism both in their individual lives as well as in the life they are trying to forge together. Of that life, it and Cassavetes’ worldview may be summed up in a line shouted by Ben’s art-loving friend about a statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘It’s not a question of understanding it man; if you feel it, you feel it, stupid!’ This is what Shadows is about; as cute and winking as it may sound, this film is about feelings. Despite all the formal characteristics, the prevalence of close-ups, actors blocking the camera,

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the canted angles, the long takes, the violations of the Hollywood continuity-editing principles, Shadows is essentially and always about human emotion, the breadth and complexity of it all, and Cassavetes does not always offer a solution to this universal question. There is no resolution, for example, to the question of Lelia’s sexual nature and her immature heart. There is only the documentation of her relationship with Tony, a white boy who does not suspect her race, their quick courtship and Lelia’s disappointment in their sex. The most touching and intimate scene in the film is their post-coital confrontation. In Tony’s starkly-lit apartment, Lelia lies facing the camera, Tony behind her. Her expression is unfathomable. Tony apologizes for his forwardness; he says he never would have touched her if he had known it was her first time. This news is genuinely shocking: Lelia’s cool self-possession and forward, opinionated nature with her brothers and friends belie her sexual innocence. She says quietly, ‘I never knew it could be so awful.’ The awfulness, the hugeness, the exhilaration and the emotional crushing blow of this situation is emblematized by this line, and Lelia’s stoicism, her confusion and heartache yet complete acceptance of this fate, is a magnificent moment of performance. This scene and the film itself should be watched, examined, pondered, and watched again, over and over, as it encapsulates not a family, not an era, (although it does do both of these things) but because, in its quiet way and its silhouetted beauty, it encapsulates the whole of human experience.

Emily Caulfield

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RECOMMEN READING Anderson, John (2000) Sundancing – Hanging out and Listening in at America’s Most Important Film Festival, New York: Avon. Andrew, Geoff (1998) Stranger than Paradise – Maverick Filmmakers in Recent American Cinema, London: Prion. Berra, John (2008) Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partiality of Independent Production, Bristol: Intellect. Beuka, Robert (2004) SuburbiaNation: Reading Suburban Landscape in Twentieth Century American Fiction and Film, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Biskind, Peter (2004) Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film, London: Penguin Bloomsbury. Bould, Mark (2008) The Cinema of John Sayles, London: Wallflower. Buckland, Warren (2009) Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, Chichester, West Sussex & Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell. Corman, Roger (2008) How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, New York: Da Capo. Cripps, Thomas (1993) Making Movies Black, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cripps, Thomas (1977) Slow Fade to Black: the Negro in American film, 1900–1942, New York: Oxford University Press. Davison, Annette & Sheen, Erica (2005) The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, London: Wallflower. Fine, Marshall (2007) Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the American Independent Film, New York: Miramax. Fonda, Peter (1999) Don’t Tell Dad – A Memoir, Pocket Books. Gormley, Peter (2005) The New Brutality Film: Race and Affect in Contemporary American Society, Chicago & Bristol: Intellect. Gross, D M & Scott, S (1990) ‘Twentysomething: Proceeding With Caution’, Time Magazine, July 16. Guerrero, Ed (1993) Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hill, Derek (2008) Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood’s Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists & Dreamers – An Excursion into the American New Wave, London: Kamera. Hillier, Jim (2000) American Independent Cinema: A Sight & Sound Reader, London: BFI.

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Hoberman, Jim (2003) The Dream Life: Movies, Media and the Myth of the Sixties, New York: The New Press. Holm, D K (2008) Independent Cinema, London: Kamera. Holmlund, Chris & Wyatt, Justin (2004) Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream, London: Routledge. Jackson, Kevin (2004) Schrader on Schrader, London: Faber & Faber. Johnstone, Nick (1999) Abel Ferrara – The King of New York, New York: Omnibus. King, Geoff (2010) Lost in Translation, Edinburgh: EUP. King, Geoff (2009) Indiewood USA: Where Hollywood Meets Independent Cinema, London: IB Tauris. King, Geoff (2005) American Independent Cinema, London: IB Tauris. Kramer, Gary M (2006) Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, Harrington Park Press. Leab. Daniel J (1975) From Sambo To Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Spike, Lee (1988) Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking, New York: Simon & Schuster. Levy, Emmanuel (2001) Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film, New York: New York University Press. MacDonald, Scott (2008) Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor, Berkeley: University of California Press. Massood, Paula (2008) The Spike Lee Reader, Temple University Press. Massood, Paula (2003) Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Merritt, Greg (1999) Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Morrison, James (2006) The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All that Heaven Allows, New York: Wallflower. Mottram, James (2006) The Sundance Kids – How the Mavericks Took Over Hollywood, London: Faber & Faber. Mottram, James (2002) The Making of Memento, London: Faber & Faber. Murphy, J J (2007) Me and You and Memento and Fargo – How Independent Screenplays Work, New York: Continuum. Muzzio, Douglas & Halper, Thomas (2002) ‘The Suburb and Its Representation in American Movies’ Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 37, No. 4: 543–74.

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Needham, Gary (2010) Brokeback Mountain, Edinburgh: EUP. Parish, James Robert (2001) Gus Van Sant: An Unauthorised Biography, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. Patterson, Hannah (2007) The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America, New York: Wallflower. Pierson, John (1997) Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes – A Guided Tour Through a Decade of American Independent Cinema, London: Faber & Faber. Polan, Dana (2000) Pulp Fiction, London: BFI. Reid, Mark (2005) Black Lenses, Black Voices: African American Film Now, Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Rhines, Jesse (1996) Black Film/White Money, Lexington: Rutgers University Press. Rodley, Chris (2005) Lynch on Lynch, London: Faber & Faber. Rodriguez, Robert (1996) Rebel without a Crew: How a 23 Year-old Film-maker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player, London: Faber & Faber. Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2000) Dead Man, London: BFI. Rowell, Erica (2007) The Brothers Grim: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen, Lanham MD: Scarecrow. Sargeant, Jack (2009) Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, New York: Soft Skull Press. Sayles, John (1987) Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Smith, Gavin (1998) Sayles on Sayles, London: Faber & Faber. Suarez, Juan (2007) Jim Jarmusch, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Tyler, Parker (1969) Underground Film: A Critical History, New York: Grove Press. Tzioumakis, Yannis (2009) The Spanish Prisoner, Edinburgh: EUP. Tzioumakis, Yannis (2006) American Independent Cinema: An Introduction, Edinburgh: EUP. Thompson, David (2006) Altman on Altman, London: Faber & Faber. Vachon, Christine (2007) A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood & Beyond, New York: Simon & Schuster. Vachon, Christine (2004) Shooting to Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through Barriers to Make Movies that Matter, New York: Bloomsbury. Vogel, Amos ([1974]2005) Film as a Subversive Art, foreword by Scott MacDonald, New York: DAP/CT Editions Waters, John (2005) Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste, Avalon. Waters, John (2004) Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, New York: Simon & Schuster International. Watkins, S Craig (1999) Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Waxman, Sharon (2005) Rebels on the Backlot: 6 Maverick Directors and how they Conquered the Hollywood Studio System, New York: HarperCollins. Williams, Tony (2003) The Cinema of George A Romero – Knight of the Living Dead, New York: Wallflower. Winter, Jessica (2006) The Rough Guide to American Independent Film, Rough Guides. Wood, Jason (2009) 100 American Independent Films, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wood, Jason (2002) Steven Soderbergh, London: Kamera. Zuckoff, Mitchell (2009) Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, New York: Alfred A Knopf.

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AMERICAN INDEPENDENT CINEMA ONLINE Ain’t It Cool News http://www.aintitcool.com Reviews, blogs, interviews and development gossip courtesy of Harry Knowles and his team of industry ‘spies’. Hollywood features heavily, but Knowles and co also hit the festival circuit to raise awareness of exciting new independent films and filmmakers. Amos Poe http://www.amospoe.com Official website of independent filmmaker and screenwriter Amos Poe, featuring film and photo galleries, scripts and script consultation service, archives, news and online store. Beyond Hollywood http://www.beyondhollywood.com News and reviews website with some coverage of independent and exploitation cinema. Bright Lights Film Journal http://www.brightlightsfilm.com Bright Lights Film Journal is a popular-academic online hybrid of movie analysis, history, and commentary, looking at classic and commercial, independent, exploitation, and international film from a wide range of vantage points from the aesthetic to the political. Cineaste Magazine http://www.cineaste.com The website for one of America’s leading film magazines, examining both the art and the politics of modern cinema. Includes reviews of films and books and longer articles. American Independent Cinema Online 319

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David Lynch http://www.davidlynch.com The official website of leading American independent director filmmaker David Lynch; access the director’s short films and artworks, and order merchandise, including his unique brand of coffee. Directory of World Cinema http://worldcinemadirectory.org The website for the Directory of World Cinema series featuring film reviews and biographies of directors. An ideal starting point for students of World Cinema. Emanuel Levy http://www.emanuellevy.com The website of film critic Emanuel Levy, the author of Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (2001). Features reviews, Hollywood news, interviews and festival information. Filmmaker Magazine http://www.filmmakermagazine.com The website of Filmmaker Magazine, a publication devoted to independent film. Reviews and in-depth interviews are consistently interesting and informed, and the site also features an extensive list of resources for aspiring filmmakers. The Film Society of Lincoln Centre http://www.filmlinc.com America’s pre-eminent film presentation organization, The Film Society of Lincoln Centre was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema and to recognize and support new filmmakers. The Film Society is best known for the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films. It also publishes the widely-respected cinematic journal, Film Comment. Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com Leading source of information for international cinema and industry news with pages devoted to individual films, directors, actors, crew members, and regularly-updated links to breaking news and interesting articles. Independent Film Channel http://www.ifc.com IFC is the first and only network dedicated to independent film and related programming; operating under the mantra ‘always, uncut,’ IFC presents feature-length films, original documentaries and shorts. IFC aims to broaden the audience for independent film and supports the independent film community through its exclusive live coverage of notable film events like the Independent Spirit Awards and the Cannes Film Festival. Indiewire http://www.indiewire.com The leading news, information, and networking site for independent filmmakers, the industry and moviegoers alike, Indiewire was branded the ‘online heartbeat of the world’s independent film community’ by Forbes, and dubbed ‘best indie crossroads’ by film critic Roger Ebert.

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JJ Murphy http://www.jjmurphyfilm.com The official website of JJ Murphy, independent filmmaker and author of Me and You and Memento and Fargo: How Independent Screenplays Work. Features insightful reviews of independent features, longer articles about leading filmmakers, and screenwriting resources. Jon Jost http://www.jon-jost.com The website of independent filmmaker Jon Jost; features news, imagery, writings, press and blog. Paul Morrissey http://www.paulmorrisey.org The official website of frequent Andy Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey; features articles, forum, and links to ordering the Morrissey catalogue on DVD. Senses of Cinema http://www.sensesofcinema.com Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. Senses of Cinema is primarily concerned with ideas about particular films or bodies of work, but also with the regimes (ideological, economic and so forth) under which films are produced and viewed, and with the more abstract theoretical and philosophical issues raised by film study. Sundance Film Festival http://www.festival.sundance.org The official website of the Sundance Film Festival, America’s leading event for independent cinema. Programme announcements and online ticket-ordering facility available, plus updates on festival films as they receive commercial distribution. Vertigo Magazine http://www.vertigomagazine.co.uk Vertigo is a unique project which champions innovation and diversity in form and culture for independent film and the moving image. Through its magazine, website and special events, Vertigo engages audiences, educators, students and practitioners, introducing new work and critical debate. View Askew Productions http://www.viewaskew.com The website for the production company of Clerks writer-director Kevin Smith. Features updates regarding new projects and public appearances, and an online store for Jay and Silent Bob merchandise.

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TEST YOUR KNOWLEDG Questions 1. ‘A man went looking for America, and couldn’t find it anywhere’ was the tagline for which counter-culture road movie? 2. Who won an Oscar for his supporting role in Paul Schrader’s Affliction? 3. Which John Waters film stars Divine as, ‘the filthiest person alive’? 4. Céline and Jessie, the protagonists of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, feature in which other movie by the director? 5. Who directed The Boondock Saints and became the subject of the documentary Overnight? 6. Aside from the titular actor, which movie star plays himself in Being John Malkovich? 7. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac feature in which 1959 ‘beat’ movie? 8. Carnival of Souls was the sole directorial credit of which film-maker? 9. With which suburban thriller did Bryan Singer make his directorial debut? 10. Which Richard Linklater film takes place over the course of one day in Austin, Texas? 11. Which punk icon portrayed a struggling singer in Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens? 12. ‘Faith in chaos’ was the tag-line for which Darren Aronofsky film? 13. The Brain and The Pin are characters in which teen-oriented film noir? 14. Name the three film students who fall prey to a local curse in The Blair Witch Project. 15. Which documentary scrutinized the investigation into the 1976 shooting of a Dallas police officer? 16. With which film did Gus Van Sant make his directorial debut? 17. Name the maverick exploitation maestro responsible for God Told me To and It’s Alive. 18. The true story of the ‘Lonely Hearts Killers’ inspired which 1970 thriller? 19. House of 1,000 Corpses marked the directorial debut of which controversial music star? 20. Ryan Phillippe and Heather Graham cameo in which Greg Araki movie?

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GE 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Name the star of Paul Morrissey’s Flesh, dubbed ‘Little Joe’ by Lou Reed. Billy Zane headed the cast of which tribute to the films of Edward D Wood Jr.? Which documentary cameraman turned director for Medium Cool? Which Todd Solondz film is divided into two parts; ‘Fiction’ and ‘Non-Fiction’? Drug-fuelled alternative band The Brian Jonestown Massacre were the subject of which documentary? President George Bush was the unwitting ‘star’ of which Michael Moore documentary? Which socially-conscious independent film-maker wrote the screenplay for the monster quickie Alligator? ‘A Seriously Sexy Comedy’ was the tagline for which Spike Lee ‘joint’? Unconventional screenwriter Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into which movie? A loudmouth white insurance salesman wakes up to discover he has become black in which Melvin Van Peebles movie? Which David Lynch film features the line, ‘Dick Laurent is dead’? Who played the title role in Drugstore Cowboy? Who composed the scores for Magnolia and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Which veteran movie mobster appeared in Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket? ‘Good time to pick … Bad day to pick’ was the tagline for which drugfuelled black comedy? Which Alexander Payne film takes place around the vineyards of California? Two disaffected New York ‘hipsters’ take a Hungarian immigrant on a road trip in which Jim Jarmusch movie? Name the two musicians who starred in Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop. Which bomb-disposal thriller was written by war correspondent Mark Boal? Who played the title role of A Woman under the Influence? Which American independent director made his debut with Speaking Directly in 1975? Who directed Re-Animator, From Beyond and Stuck? A barber wants to be a dry-cleaner in which Coen Brothers movie? Who wrote the comic book on which Sin City was based? Which French band composed the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides? Eddie Adams and Jack Horner are characters in which Paul Thomas Anderson drama? Robert De Niro plays Johnny Boy in which Martin Scorsese movie? Who starred as an advertising executive under the influence of LSD in The Trip? Which documentary dealt with a middle-class teacher and parent accused of child abuse? Robert Altman’s Short Cuts was based on short stories by which American writer?

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Answers 1. Easy Rider 2. James Coburn 3. Pink Flamingos 4. Waking Life 5. Troy Duffy 6. Charlie Sheen 7. Pull My Daisy 8. Herk Harvey 9. Public Access 10. Slacker 11. Richard Hell 12. Pi 13. Brick 14. Heather, Josh and Michael 15. The Thin Blue Line 16. Mala Noche 17. Larry Cohen 18. The Honeymoon Killers 19. Rob Zombie 20. Nowhere 21. Joe Dallesandro 22. I Woke Up Early the Day I Died 23. Haskell Wexler 24. Storytelling 25. DiG! 26. Fahrenheit 9/11 27. John Sayles 28. She’s Gotta Have It 29. Adaptation 30. Watermelon Man 31. Lost Highway 32. Matt Dillon 33. Jon Brion 34. James Caan 35. Gridlock’d 36. Sideways 37. Stranger Than Paradise 38. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson 39. The Hurt Locker 40. Gena Rowlands 41. Jon Jost 42. Stuart Gordon 43. The Man who wasn’t there 44. Frank Miller 45. Air 46. Boogie Nights 47. Mean Streets 48. Peter Fonda 49. Capturing the Friedmans 50. Raymond Carver

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS The Editor John Berra is a Lecturer in Film Studies and the author of Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partiality of Independent Production (2008). He is also the editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Japan (2010) and a regular contributor to Electric Sheep, Film International, The Big Picture and Scope: The Online Journal of Film Studies. The Contributors Colette Balmain is a Lecturer in Film Studies. Her main area of expertise is East Asian Popular Cinema, although she also has published extensively on European horror cinema. She is the author of Introduction to Japanese Horror Film (2008) and has also contributed to the Directory of World Cinema: Japan (2010). She is currently working on a book about Korean Horror Cinema and is also an editor for the Electronic Journal of Japanese Studies. Mark Bould is Reader in Film and Literature at the University of West England and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (2009). His books include Film Noir: From Berlin to Sin City (2005), The Cinema of John Sayles (2008) and Neo-noir (2009). Laurence Boyce is an award-winning film journalist who currently writes for Little White Lies, Film & Festivals Magazine, The CultureVulture, Sci-Fi London and Netribution.co.uk. He has also worked as a programmer and moderator for the Leeds International Film Festival and, in 2007, became the director of Glimmer: The Hull International Short Film Festival. Emily Caulfield is a graduate of the department of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her focus is on film criticism and history, and loves forgotten or ignored cinemas. George Kuchar and Susan Sontag are her heroes. Sarah Cronin graduated from the Communication Studies programme at Concordia University in Montreal before moving to London to work in publishing. She is currently an Assistant Editor at Electric Sheep magazine. Notes on Contributors 325

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Matt Delman is studying Film and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He has won awards for his short films as well as his short fiction. In 2010, he will be studying creative writing at Roehampton University in London. Rob Dennis has contributed to Vertigo magazine, as well as the websites for the BFI London Film Festival, London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and London International Documentary Film Festival. Alex Fitch is the Assistant Editor of Electric Sheep magazine and a programmemaker for Resonance FM, the Arts Council radio station in London. He has presented Panel Borders, the UK’s only weekly radio show about comic books, since 2007. Paul Gormley is Head of Media, Communication and Screen Studies at the University of East London and author of The New Brutality Film: Race and Effect in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (2005). He is also a film-maker and has recently completed a documentary entitled Discovering Jerez/Sherry (2009). Derek Hill is currently working on a biography of Terry Gilliam and editing a book of interviews with Peter Jackson for the University of Mississippi’s Conversations with Filmmakers series. His first book, Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood’s Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists and Dreamers was published in 2008. He has also contributed to the Directory of World Cinema: Japan (2010). Eeleen Lee was born in London, where she lived for half her life. She was awarded an MA in Postmodern Literature and Contemporary Culture from Royal Holloway College, University of London. Now based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, she worked as a copywriter and college lecturer before turning to writing full time. She has had stories published in Malaysia and has been shortlisted for various writing awards. James Merchant currently works for the film distributor Revolver Entertainment. He is also a regular contributor to Electric Sheep magazine and the horrorrelated website EatMyBrains.com. Neil Mitchell has a BA in visual culture and manages an independent video shop in Brighton. He has contributed reviews for the Cambridge film festival. James Mottram is a film journalist who writes regularly on the subject for, among others, The Times, The Independent and Total Film. He is also the author of Coen Brothers: The Life of the Mind (2000), The Making of Memento (2002) and The Sundance Kids: How The Mavericks Took Back Hollywood (2006). Matthew Motyka is currently undertaking a research degree at Sussex University, specializing in the films of Bruce LaBruce, the influence of ‘queercore’ on experimental film-making and film theory. Martin L Patrick is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Black Cultural Theory. He is the award-winning playwright of Where to Now (1988) and consultant to Rukus and Black Male Inc. on matters of Black male equality.

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Jeremy Richey is a Kentucky-born writer who focuses mostly on obscure and sometimes forgotten cinematic works. He is the author of the film and music site Moon in the Gutter, as well as the blog site Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience. Joseph Christopher Schaub is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Communication Arts department at College of Notre Dame of Maryland. He has published several articles on Japanese cinema and is currently writing about the early films of John Waters. Jamie Sexton is a Lecturer in Film Studies as Aberystwyth University. He has co-edited (with Laura Mulvey) Experimental British Television (2007), edited Music, Sound and Multimedia (2007), and is the author of Alternative Film Culture in Inter-War Britain (2008). Forthcoming publications include Cult Cinema: An Introduction (co-authored with Ernest Mathijs, 2010) and Stranger than Paradise (2011). Greg Singh is currently a Sessional Lecturer in Film Studies at the Department of Film, Theatre and Television, University of Reading. His PhD thesis was on cinephilia and the experience of popular film narrative across different media forms. He has published on several film-related subjects, including writing on CGI and contemporary Hollywood, Japanese science-fiction film and neonoir. Greg is author of Film After Jung (2009), an overview of the connections between film theory and analytical psychology. Hing Tsang is a Lecturer at the University of Surrey, teaching Chinese Cinema and practical film-making. He is currently writing a book about semiotics and documentary, with reference to Charles Sanders Peirce and the cinema of Jon Jost, Van der Keuken and Rithy Panh. His research interests also include Asian cinema and American philosophy. Timotheus J.V. Vermeulen is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading, UK. His research focuses on cinematic and televisual representations of US suburbia and everyday space. His research is funded by the AHRC. Sarah Wharton is a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool’s School of Politics and Communication Studies. Her research interests are primarily concerned with screen studies, particularly Horror Cinema and its relationship to the American film industry. Carl Wilson is writing a PhD on the work of Charlie Kaufman at Brunel University. He has lectured internationally on film and television, and has contributed to Scope: The Online Journal of Film Studies, The Essential Sopranos Reader (2010) and the Directory of World Cinema: Hollywood (2011) Sean Wilson has a BA in Film Studies and English from the University of West England. He is a regular contributor to The Big Picture, while his blog, http:// seano22.blogspot.com, comprises film reviews and also articles on his niche passion of orchestral film music.

Notes on Contributors 327

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DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AMERICAN INDEPENDENT EDITED BY JOHN BERRA From the raw realism of John Cassavetes to the postmodern nightmares of David Lynch, the films that have emerged from the American independent sector represent a national cinema that has generated worldwide devotion and discussion. The Directory of World Cinema: American Independent provides an insight into American Independent Cinema through reviews of significant titles and case studies of leading directors, alongside explorations of the cultural and industrial landscape of key genres. The cinematic lineage of dysfunctional families, homicidal maniacs and generation-X slackers take their place alongside the explicit expressionism of the American underground, making this a truly comprehensive volume. Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema aims to play a part in moving intelligent, scholarly criticism beyond the academy by building a forum for the study of film that relies on a disciplined theoretical base. Each volume of the Directory will take the form of a collection of reviews, longer essays and research resources, accompanied by film stills highlighting significant films and players.

Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971 Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X Directory of World Cinema: Japan 9781841503684 Directory of World Cinema: Japan eISBN 9781841503851

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