It might've come to your attention that Bardens Boudoir, our amazing home for these past two years, is closing its cellar doors on July 1st.
The closing party is gonna be hosted by Upset The Rhythm (so it started, so it shall finish), with bands playing including The Human Race and Covergirl (Bloody Knees/Trash Kit et al supergroup). Make sure you get down there to mark what really is the end of an era for Dalston and the east. Nowhere else came close, we'll miss you terribly Bardens.
it's not all sad though. in other news:
- The Pictures zine #4 will be available early July from the usual outlets, a documentary special including interviews with Frederick Wiseman and Ondi Timoner among others - we're pretty convinced it's the best issue to date, really going for the next level of this kind of thing.
- The Pictures night is going on a UK (European?) tour this August! Details sketchy at present but keep your eyes peeled for dates in a town maybe vaguely within 100 miles of you. More on this as and when.
After almost a decade in soul searching cinematic limbo, Harmony Korine returned in 2007 with Mister Lonely. The film was an unexpected departure – at least on the surface – from the nihilistic, fragmented collages of films like Gummo and julien donkey-boy, films that made his name and established his reputation as a cinematic provocateur. Where the previous films were lo-fi and improvised, Mister Lonely was glossy technicolour, location sequences and complex effects. Where his older films were bleak, revelling in carnival grotesquery and desire to shock, Mister Lonely was occasionally hopeful, at times even sentimental. Reaction was mixed, and some wondered if a clean Korine had lost his bite.
Heads were turned, then, with the recent announcement that his latest feature, Trash Humpers, was already completed and would be released imminently. Shot on obsolete VHS and edited in a matter of weeks, the film was prominently billed as “a return” to Korine’s earlier aesthetic, even dubbed ‘Gummo 2’ by one French site. Following the exploits of a gang of elderly anarchists who smash up the scenery, harrass locals, tell offensive jokes, tap dance and, as the title suggests, fuck rubbish bins, the film (and initially, for want of screenings, the film’s high concept) was seen by some as a direct response to the vast scale of Mister Lonely – another intense reaction from an engrained reactionary, a film even more degraded, base and impudent than his early work.
However, just as Mister Lonely was less a departure from the philosophy of Gummo and julien donkey-boy than was at first apparent, Trash Humpers is more a small step forward than back, a minimal production that has more in common with its multi-million dollar predecessor than the films made a decade ago.
Both films have us join up to a gang of outsiders, celebrity impersonators or anti-social OAPs who have cut themselves off from their surroundings. The same could be argued for the earlier films, but there is much more of a sense in those films that the outcast characters belong to a similarly abjected community within the world of the film, a community within which they are accepted and play their roles. In contrast, the central character of Michael in Mister Lonely confesses his confused isolation in voiceovers. The trash humper Herv (the cameraman, played by Korine) delivers a monologue about the despair that lives in the routine of the community around him – going to work, raising families in their image, wasting time. The characters are speaking with the same voice, the same language and tones, undoubtedly the voice of the film’s author.
Michael seeks solace in impersonating Michael Jackson, “being someone else”, while the trash humpers find theirs in chaos and destruction, recorded in one long CKY-as-elderly-psychopaths home video. Between stunts they catch up with other subcultural crazies - a schoolboy preacher who sermonises while hammering a doll’s face, conjoined twin chefs (joined at the head). An alcoholic telling endless racist sexist jokes with no punchlines makes a guest appearance. Often the trash humpers murder their companions, though we only get to see the VHS grained corpses and are not a party to the killings.
The idea to construct the film as a found curiosity - a discarded VHS tape, a film as a time capsule – has echoes of Godard’s Weekend, and like in Weekend, is used more as a device of narrative and atmosphere than a pure concept. The home video looks crude, washed out and slightly decayed, coming across equal parts creepy and familiar. Tracking lines and VCR actions appear on screen, and are used stylistically as well as functionally. At one point, ‘REW’ appears and the tape seems to rewind, though only for a second or two, resuming in a new and unseen position that would not be found on a real tape. And VHS home videos were never played in cinemas. Their format was not intended to be blown up and projected on this scale. In doing this, Trash Humpers is every bit as much a ‘film’ as Mister Lonely.
The blown up VHS picture continually distorts, sometimes phasing in and out of abstraction, sometimes approaching poetic. The continual atonal laughter of the cameraman is unsettling verging on inhuman. The alien lives of the trash humpers are enthralling and repellant. Their infectious sense of freedom almost always gives way to dark manic episodes and woozy inertia. From the home video perspective we join in the revelrie and carnage and going too far. We’re made to laugh right out of our comfort zones and into a much darker place underneath the trash humper’s mask. The video stands as proof, a rememberance and evidence.
In Mister Lonely, Michael finds his utopia in a Highland commune for impersonators, far removed from the world, benign and in all ways fulfilling. Trash Humpers is another film about idealism and idealised worlds – idealism giving rise to rejection, building utopia by destroying. Michael’s dreams are shattered, but those of the trash humpers remain. There are no consequences for their actions within their home video world and it’s difficult to imagine any outside of it – they are totally self contained and self sufficient, and in a lot of ways very American.
Harmony Korine has jokingly described himself as “the most American director making movies today”, and this feels like something that has come to the fore in has last two features, much more so than his earlier, more European influenced work. Mister Lonely was about a man outside of his country, while Trash Humpers is about people who are very much at home, but the concerns in the films are identity and ideals and the search for both. In both films, the clarity of Korine’s voice shines through. The characters are pro-active and even motivational where in the older films they were observed. This nervous energy and compulsion to do something, anything, that brings a greater authenticity, a more intense and true experience into life – is no longer something that Korine just talks about in statement of intent interview questions, but something which, in recent years, has made its way into the fabric of his films as well.
When I found out that Lilo was sleeping with Samantha Ronson, I thought: there goes that last remaining barrier. Lindsay likes women. What possible excuse could Lindsay have for not liking me? And when they split up, I had that thought again: case closed. She likes women, and she's single, and she's clearly unhappy alone - the only thing standing between us is the fact that we haven't met yet. This sort of grand delusion could, in a man, seem sad, sinister, dangerous (apart from your garden variety miserable losers and misogynists, you've got crazed stalkers, violent criminals, and let's not forget the would be presidential assassin who did it all for love of Jodie Foster. (Which reminds me, Jodie Foster more than merits a why-won't-she-sleep-with-me column). But I decided that, in a woman like me, it could easily be disguised as whimsical charm. In the attempt to pass off my egotistical Lilomaniac disorder as a lovable quirk, I had three major things going for me. #1 I look, for the most part, nonthreatening. #2 I'm too lazy to take any stalkerlike action in the realm of real life (or anywhere else outside my own bedroom). And the clincher: #3 I didn't actually tell anyone about it.
I've now decided two things is enough. I'm coming clean about LL, and about all the other objects of my desire who couldn't possibly be less obscure. I'm going to tell you about them because the egotistical element of my condition has at least begun to wear off, and I have realised this: - Lindsay Lohan et al are never going to sleep with me - there is nothing I can do except whine - whining is something I really, really can do.
I begin with Lindsay because she really does contain multitudes - she's younger than me, born in 1986, and yet she has been so many women already, and I've found a way, dutifully, painstakingly, to fall in love with each one. Even by the standards of movie stars, even by those of recovering child stars (and ex-child stars should have a why-won't-they-sleep-with-me subcategory of their own [hello again, Jodie]), LL moved in record time from exuberant redheaded strength to Firecrotch faux-trash to half-cracked late-Marilyn blonde (Oh, MM! If anyone deserves a spinoff, it surely must be the ranks and ranks of Dead Movie Stars Who Won't Sleep With Me).
She is so many of my fixations, incarnate. In my mind's eye all those iterations are entangled, messily mapped onto one another, most of all her open, resilient, beaming Mean Girls smile superimposed on those Vanity Fair shots - that breakable woman moving delicately, barely lifting her heavy lids, naked but hidden under layers of impersonation (of Monroe, of herself) or wrapped in wool as if she might freeze, even there on the hot beach. That quality of letting people see too little and too much of her at once is what most makes a movie star. It's why I usually can't fall for someone if she (of he, but they don't make male stars like they used to, so I'll save the boys for my Dead column) is too good an actor. So often with a real star you can look straight through the part and see the woman trapped inside; or she bursts through the script like a movie monster; or the character thins to nothing as the star becomes remote, chills you, endlessly retreats. Each of these can be magical, but none is acting. LL should have been disqualified from this column simply on grounds of competence, but like Marilyn she gets round it because although she really can act, she frequently doesn't (even on those now rare occasions when she appears in films), and those warring LL personae threaten to overwhelm all else.
LL is also one in a long line of my fantasy beloveds with well-documented daddy troubles. Why these should inspire such longings I can't say. Again, this rare small advantage of non-manhood saves me - not only can I make Lilo-in-lingerie my desktop image even at work with barely a disapproving glance, but I can admit to loving her partly for the woundedness without counting myself a predator looking for an easy mark. After all, these lost Hollywood Electras are by definition such a forbiddingly heteronormative bunch - LL's brief conversion notwithstanding - that they'd top the list of stars who don't want me without even trying. In any case, LL's public sufferings, though long years of victim-worship have trained me to appreciate them, to respond with tenderness and renewed devotion, can't stop me missing the old Lilo, the one whose faint image still flickers about every gossip page I see her smeared across. So many Lindsays and yet always one; she's torn to shreds and yet she rises up; she's overexposed and yet unfathomable: Rumsfeld might call her a known unknown. But, godless though I am, I should stop short of blasphemy. Her artifice is all the more beguiling because it isn't quite successful - you can't see where it begins and ends but you can certainly see what it does. Watching her fall, of course, had a force and intensity of its own, and made it easier to imagine she might change her mind and sleep with me after all, but I'd trade that mirage any day for one more movie starring freckled insouciant LL with that hair and the American teeth and the wide-open eyes.
andy kaufman died for your sins / andy kaufman lives
***NOTE: WE'RE ON A TUESDAY THIS MONTH***
and on that Tuesday you will see:
ANDY KAUFMAN best known as Latka in Taxi/for being played by Jim Carrey in Man On The Moon/for having an R.E.M. song written about him, Andy Kaufman was a stand-up comedian-cum-performance artist-cum-song and dance man whose impossible to categorise act has won him a huge and well deserved cult following over the years. His exploits are far too many to go into here but career highlights include holding the International Women's Wrestling championship (and touring the country challenging any who thought themselves woman enough to try and take it back), playing the bongos in Carnegie Hall, playing with Johnny Cash, and potentially faking his own death. Tonight we spend some time with the man behind the moon, with (very rare) sketches, shorts and best loved Kaufman performances as well as excerpts from the documentaries I'M FROM HOLLYWOOD and ANDY KAUFMAN MIDNIGHT SPECIAL. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Kaufman
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A TRIP TO THE MOON & other shorts by GEORGE MELIES Another great enigma, arguably the first person to ever use a special effect on film, Melies was the celluloid magician, creating visual trickeries that really have lost none of their magic even though created as early as 1898. We pay tribute with a selection of classic shorts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Melies
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CITIZENS OF THE UNIVERSE live Shirani of The Super Shirani Nitemare Band returns with a new project, Citizens Of The Universe - moody, emotional and raw pop hooks with nods to Leonard Cohen, Lee & Nancy along the way. http://www.myspace.com/herecomethecitizens
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PORTALS by GIRL MOUNTAIN - video by Ambrose Yalley/LIVE SOUNDTRACK by Girl Mountain The new Girl Mountain video Portals by Ambrose Yalley, with Mr. Mountain himself crafting a live soundtrack. This is a Pictures first, and something we hope to do a lot of. Promises noise and chaos. http://www.myspace.com/girlmountain
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CRACKED WORLD FOUNDATION Festival warm-up show...incessant gabble and hiss & you're allowed to dance http://www.myspace.com/crackedworldfoundation
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DIY MOVIES BY Lawn-Darte & Steele http://lawndartesteele.blogspot.com/
Still Corners/Garry Sykes - premiere of the new STILL CORNERS video
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our BODYCOUNT GAME bows out with a massacre (maybe) & cool prizes as per
