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AMERICAN 

INDEPENDENT 

DIRECTORY OF 

WORLD 

CINEMA 

EDITED BY JOHN BERRA

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 

2 Japan

ONTENTS 

DIRECTORY OF 

WORLD CINEMA 

AMERICAN INDEPENDENT 

Acknowledgements 5 

Introduction by the Editor 6 

Film of the Year 8 

The Hurt Locker 

Industry Spotlight 12 

Interviews with Adam Green 

and Wayne Kramer 

Cultural Crossover 24 

John Waters and Baltimore 

Scoring Cinema 28 

Mulholland Dr. 

Directors 32 

Stuart Gordon 

Charlie Kaufman 

David Lynch 

African-American Cinema 42 

Essay 

Reviews 

The American Nightmare 62 

Essay 

Reviews 

Chemical World 84 

Essay 

Reviews 

Crime 104 

Essay 

Reviews 

Documentary 126 

Essay 

Reviews 

Exploitation USA 144 

Essay 

Reviews 

Familial Dysfunction 162 

Essay 

Reviews 

Narrative Disorder 180 

Essay 

Reviews 

On the Road 198 

Essay 

Reviews 

Queer Cinema 218 

Essay 

Reviews 

Rural Americana 240 

Essay 

Reviews 

Slackers 258 

Essay 

Reviews 

The Suburbs 276 

Essay 

Reviews 

Underground USA 296 

Essay 

Reviews 

Recommended Reading 316 

American Cinema Online 319 

Test Your Knowledge 322 

Notes on Contributors 325

CKNOWLEDGENTS 


This first edition of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent is the result 

of the commitment of a range of committed 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 

Acknowledgements 5


6 American Independent 

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

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


The Hurt Locker, First Light Productions/Kingsgatefilms. 

FILM OF THE YEAR 

THE HURT LOCKER 

8 American Independent

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 

Film of the Year 9



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


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


Courtesy of AireScope Pictures. 

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: 

INTERVIEWS WITH ADAM GREEN 

AND WAYNE KRAMER 

12 American Independent

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 (1981) 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 13 th, (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 

to get the script for Hatchet in front of FX wizard John Carl Buechler. He helped 


Industry Spotlight 13



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.

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. 




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

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

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. 





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

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 




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

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 





Pecker, Polar Entertainment 

CULTURAL CROSSOVER 

JOHN WATERS AND 

BALTIMORE

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



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,

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 Babylon, 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 (2004). 

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



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

SCORING CINEMA 

MULHOLLAND DR.

Mulholland Dr. 


Asymmetrical Productions 

Studio Canal 

Universal 

Director: 

David Lynch 

Producers: 

Alain Sarde 

Mary Sweeney 

Neal Edelstein 

Michael Polaire 

Tony Krantz 

Screenwriter: 

David Lynch 


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. 

Scoring Cinema 29


Cast 

Naomi Watts 

Laura Elena Harring 

Justin Theroux 

Robert Forster 

Year 

2001 


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.


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 

Scoring Cinema 31

Left: Edmond, 2005, Muse Prods. 

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. 

Directors 33



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

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 


Directors 35



Synecdoche, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. 

DIRECTORS 

CHARLIE KAUFMAN

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 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 


Directors 37



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 which strives to break free of the trappings of the genre. This seeminglyparadoxical 

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

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 


Directors 39


DIRECTORS 

DAVID LYNCH 

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

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 


Directors 41

AFRICAN- 

AMERICAN 

CINEMA


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. 

African-American Cinema 43



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

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 




Baadasssss! 

How to Get the Man’s 

Foot Outta Your Ass 


Sony Picture Classics 

Director: 

Mario Van Peebles 

Producer: 


Screenwriters: 


Dennis Haggerty 


Robert Primes 

Art Director: 

Jorge Gonzalez Borrelli 

Editors: 

Nneka Goforth 

Anthony Miller 

Composer: 

Tyler Bates 

Duration: 

110 minutes 

Cast: 


Joy Bryant 

T.K. Carter 

Year: 

2003 


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

Bone 


Larco Productions 

New World 

Jack H Harris Enterprises 

Director: 

Larry Cohen 

Producer: 

Larry Cohen 

Screenwriter: 

Larry Cohen 


George Folsey Jr 

Composer: 

Gil Melle 

Editor: 

George Folsey Jr 

Duration: 

95 minutes 

Cast: 

Yaphet Kotto 

Andrew Duggan 

Joyce Van Patten 

Year: 

1972 


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 

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. 

Critique 

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 



Coffy 


American International Pictures 

Director: 

Jack Hill 

Producer: 

Robert Papazian 


Richard Fire 

John McNaughton 


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 

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-


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. 




The Cool World, 1963. 

The Cool World 


Wiseman Film Productions 

Cinema V 

Director: 

Shirley Clarke 

Producer: 

Frederick Wiseman 



Carl Lee 


Baird Bryant 


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.

Composer: 

Mal Waldron 

Art Director: 

Roger Furman 

Editor: 


Duration: 

105 minutes 

Cast: 

Hampton Clanton 

Carl Lee 

Clarence Williams III 

Year: 

1964 

Hustle & Flow 


Crunk Pictures 

MTV Films 

New Deal Productions 

Paramount Classics 

Director: 

Craig Brewer 

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 

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. 




Producers: 

Stephanie Allen 

John Singleton 

Screenwriter: 

Craig Brewer 


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 


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

Killer of Sheep 

Distributor: 

Mypheduh Films 

Milestone Film and Video 

Director: 

Charles Burnett 

Producer: 


Screenwriter: 




Editor: 


Duration: 

83 minutes 

Cast: 

Henry Gayle Sanders 

Kaycee Moore 

Angela Burnett 

Year: 

1977 

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 

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), 





Killer of Sheep, Milestone Films. 

the abattoir scenes do not to 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

She’s Gotta 

Have It 


40 Acres & A Mule 

Island-Alive 

Director: 

Spike Lee 

Producer: 

Spike Lee 

Screenwriter: 

Spike Lee 


Ernest R. Dickerson 

Art Director: 

Wynn Thomas 

Composer: 

Bill Lee 

accomplishment 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 African- 

American culture, and a particular cultural experience of it, 

deep into the fabric of Burnett’s blues movie. 

Mark Bould 

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 the 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 




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

Straight Out of 

Brooklyn 


American Playhouse 

Blacks in Progress 

The Samuel Goldwyn Company 

Director: 

Matty Rich 

Producer: 

Matty Rich 

Screenwriter: 

Matty Rich 


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- 




Sweet 

Sweetback’s 

Baadasssss 

Song 


Cinemation Industries 

Director: 

Melvin Van Peebles 

Producers: 

Jerry Gross 


Screenwriter: 



Robert Maxwell 

Editor: 


Composers: 

Earth Wind & Fire 


Duration: 

97 minutes 


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 

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

Cast: 


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 




Watermelon 

Man 


Columbia Pictures 

Director: 


Producer: 

John B Bennett 

Screenwriter: 

Herman Raucher 


W Wallace Kelley 

Art Director: 

Malcolm C Bert 

Composer: 


Editors: 

Carl Kress 

Sydney Z Litwack 

Duration: 

100 minutes 

Cast: 

Godfrey Cambridge 

Estelle Parsons 

Year: 

1970 


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. 

Critique 

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

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 



THE 

AMERICAN 

NIGHTMARE


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. 

The American Nightmare 63



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 13 th (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

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 




American 

Psycho 


Lions Gate Films 

Director: 

Mary Harron 

Producers: 

Edward R. Pressman 

Chris Hanley 

Christian Halsey Solomon 


Mary Harron 

Guinevere Turner 


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 


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 



The Blair Witch 

Project 


Haxan Films 

Artisan 

Directors: 

Daniel Myrick 

Eduardo Sánchez 

Producers: 

Zev Guber 

Jeremy Wall 


Daniel Myrick 



Neal Fredericks 

Art Director: 

Ricardo Moreno 

Editors: 

Daniel Myrick 


Duration: 

86 minutes 

Cast: 

Heather Donahue 

Joshua Leonard 

Michael C. Williams 

Year: 

1999 


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

Carnival of 

Souls 


Herts Lion International 

Director: 

Herk Harvey 

Producer: 

Herk Harvey 


Herk Harvey 

John Clifford 


Maurice Prather 

Art Director: 

Dan Fitzgerald 

Composer: 

Gene Moore 

Editors: 

Bill de Jarnette 

Dan Palmquist 

Duration: 

78 minutes 

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 

from 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. 


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. 

Critique 

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 



Cast: 

Candace Hilligoss 

Francis Feist 

Sidney Berger 

Year: 

1962 

Halloween 


Compass International Pictures 

Director: 

John Carpenter 

Producers: 

Debra Hill 


Kool Lusby 

Irwin Yablans 

Moustapha Akkad 



Debra Hill 


Dean Cundey 

Art Director: 

Tommy Wallace 


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 

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

Composer: 


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 




Henry: Portrait 

of a Serial Killer 


Maljack Productions 

Director: 


Producers: 

Malik B Ali 

Waleed B Ali 

Lisa Dedmond 

Steven A Jones 



Richard Fire 



Charlie Lieberman 

Art Director: 

Rick Paul 

Composers: 

Ken Hale 

Steven A Jones 

Robert McNaughton 

Editor: 

Elena Maganini 

Duration: 

83 minutes 


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 

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

Cast: 

Michael Rooker 

Tracy Arnold 

Tom Towles 

Year: 

1991 

The Honeymoon 

Killers 


Roxanne 

Cinerama Releasing 

Corporation 

Director: 

Leonard Kastle 

Producers: 

Warren Steibel 

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. 


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. 




Screenwriter: 

Leonard Kastle 


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

House of 1,000 

corpses 


Spectacle Entertainment Group 

Universal Pictures 


Director: 

Rob Zombie 

Producers: 

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 

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. 




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

The Devil’s 

Rejects 



Director: 

Rob Zombie 

Producers: 

Mike Elliott 

Andy Gould 


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.

Marco Mehlitz 

Brent Morris 

Michael Ohoven 

Rob Zombie 

Screenwriter: 

Rob Zombie 


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 




A Nightmare on 

Elm Street 


New Line Cinema 

Director: 

Wes Craven 

Producer: 

Robert Shaye 

Screenwriter: 

Wes Craven 


Jacques Haitkin 

Art Director: 

Gregg Fonseca 

Editors: 

Patrick McMahon 

Rick Shaine 


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 

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

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 eighties’ American 

horror boom 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 harbours 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 




Night of the 

Living Dead 


Laurel Group 

Market Square Productions 

Director: 

George A Romero 

Producers: 

Karl Hardman 

Russell Streiner 


John A Russo 




Art Director: 

Charles O’Dato 

Editors: 

John A Russo 


Duration: 

96 minutes 

Cast: 

Duane Jones 

Judith O’Dea 

Keith Wayne 

Year: 

1968 


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 

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 African- 

Americans 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

The Texas Chain 

Saw Massacre 


Vortex 

Director: 

Tobe Hooper 

Producers: 

Tobe Hooper 

Lou Peraino 


Kim Henkel 

Tobe Hooper 


Daniel Pearl 

Art Director: 

Robert A Burns 

Editors: 

J. Larry Carroll 

Sallye Richardson 

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 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. 


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. 




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 


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

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 



HEMICAL 

ORLD


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. 

Chemical World 85



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

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 


Chemical World 87



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

Barfly, Cannon. 

Barfly 


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 

Chemical World 89



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 – Alka- 

Seltzer – 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

The Blackout 


Les Films Number One 

CIPA 

Director: 

Abel Ferrara 

Producers: 

Edward R. Pressman 

Clayton Townsend 


Abel Ferrara 

Marla Hanson 

Christ Zois 


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 his maniacal mode as 

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. 

Although unflattering to its subjects, the apparent function 

of The Blackout is as self portrait (here the object of identification 

is split between prima donna Matty and pornographer 

Mickey) and Ferrara 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 own self image. The Blackout is 


Chemical World 91


Boogie Nights 



Director: 

Paul Thomas Anderson 

Producers: 


Lloyd Levin 

John Lyons 

Joanne Sellar 

Screenwriter: 



Robert Elswitt 

Art Director: 

Ted Berner 

Editor: 

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 


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 

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. 

Critique 

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,

Drugstore 

Cowboy 


Avenue Pictures 

Director: 

Gus Van Sant 

Producers: 

Karen Murphy 

Nick Weschler 

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 

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 


Chemical World 93



Gus Van Sant 

Daniel Yost 


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

Gridlock’d 


Def Pictures 

Polygram Filmed Entertainment 

Gramercy 

Director: 

Vondie Curtis-Hall 

Producers: 

Erica Huggins 

Duncan Jones 

Paul Webster 

Screenwriter: 



Bill Pope 

Composer: 

Stewart Copeland 

Art Director: 

Scott Plauche 

Editor: 

Christopher Koefoed 

Duration: 

91 minutes 

Cast: 

Tupac Shakur 

Tim Roth 

Thandie Newton 


Year: 

1997 

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. 

Critique 

‘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, 


Chemical World 95



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

Half Nelson, Journeyman Pictures. 

Half Nelson 


Hunting Lane Films 

Silverwood Films 

Director: 

Ryan Fleck 

Producer: 

Anna Boden 


Ryan Fleck 

Anna Boden 


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 

Chemical World 97


Composer: 

Broken Social Scene 

Editor: 

Anna Boden 

Duration: 

106 minutes 

Cast: 

Ryan Gosling 

Shareeka Epps 

Anthony Mackie 

Year: 

2006 

The Panic in 

Needle Park 


Didion-Dunne Inc. 

Director: 

Jerry Schatzberg 


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 

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.

Producer: 

Dominick Dunne 


Joan Didion 

John Gregory Dunne 


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. 



Chemical World 99


Requiem for a 

Dream 


Artisan Entertainment 

Director: 

Darren Aronofsky 

Producers: 

Beau Flynn 

Eric Watson 

Palmer West 


Hubert Selby Jr 



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

The Trip 


American International Pictures 

Director: 

Roger Corman 

Producer: 

Roger Corman 

Screenwriter: 

Jack Nicholson 


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 


Chemical World 101


A Woman under 

the Influence 


Faces International Films 

Director: 

John Cassavetes 

Producer: 

Sam Shaw 

Screenwriter: 



Mitch Breit 

Al Ruban 


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 

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

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 


Chemical World 103

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. 


Crime 105



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

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 African- 

American 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 


Crime 107



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

The Big Lebowski, Polygram/Working Title. 

The Big 

Lebowski 


Polygram Filmed Entertainment 

Working Title 

Gramercy 

Director: 

Joel Coen 

Producer: 

Ethan Coen 

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 

Crime 109



Joel Coen 

Ethan Coen 


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 


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

The Funeral 


October Films 

Director: 

Abel Ferrara 

Producer: 

Mary Kane 

Screenwriter: 

Nicholas St. John 


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 

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 

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 


Crime 111



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

The Killing of a 

Chinese Bookie 


Faces Distribution 

Director: 


Producer: 

Al Ruban 

Screenwriter: 



Mitch Breit 

Al Ruban 

Art Director: 


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 Academy- 

Award-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 


Crime 113


Killing Zoe 


Davis Films, October 

Director: 

Roger Avary 

Producer: 

Samuel Hadida 

Screenwriter: 

Roger Avary 


Tom Richmond 

Composer: 

Tomand Andy 

Art Director: 

David Wasco 

Editor: 

Kathryn Himoff 

Duration: 

90 minutes 

Cast: 

Eric Stoltz 

Julie Delpy 

Jean-Hughes Anglade 

Year: 

1994 


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 

Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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

The Limey 



Director: 

Steven Soderbergh 

Producers: 

John Hardy 

Scott Kramer 

Screenwriter: 

Lem Dobbs 


Ed Lachman 

Editor: 

Sarah Flack 

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 

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. 


Crime 115

The Limey, Artisan Pics. 

Composer: 

Cliff Martinez 

Duration: 

89 minutes 

Cast: 

Terence Stamp 

Peter Fonda 

Lesley Ann Warren 

Luis Guzmán 

Year: 

1999 


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

The Man Who 

Wasn’t There 


Working Title Films 

USA Films 

Director: 

Joel Coen 

Producer: 

Ethan Coen 

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 counterculture 

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 

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 the piano-playing 


Crime 117



Ethan Coen 

Joel Coen 


Roger Deakins 

Art Director: 

Chris Gorak 

Editors: 

Ethan Coen 

Joel Coen 

Tricia Cooke 

Composer: 


Duration: 

116 minutes 

Cast: 

Billy Bob Thornton 

Frances McDormand 

James Gandolfini 

Scarlett Johansson 

Year: 

2001 


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 Curtin 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

Mean Streets 


Warner Bros. 

Director: 

Martin Scorsese 

Producer: 

Jonathan T Taplin 

Screenwriter: 

Martin Scorsese 


Kent Wakeford 

Editor: 

Sidney Levin 

Duration: 

105 minutes 

Cast: 

Harvey Keitel 

Robert De Niro 

Amy Robinson 

Year: 

1973 

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 

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 


Crime 119


Pulp Fiction 


A Band Apart 

Jersey Films 

Miramax 

Director: 

Quentin Tarantino 

Producer: 

Lawrence Bender 


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 

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



Roger Avary 




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 


Crime 121


Reservoir Dogs 


Live Entertainment 

Dog Eat Dog Productions 

Director: 


Producer: 

Lawrence Bender 

Screenwriter: 




Editor: 

Sally Menke 

Duration: 

99 minutes 

Cast: 

Harvey Keitel 

Tim Roth 

Michael Madsen 

Chris Penn 

Steve Buscemi 

Year: 

1992 


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,

Sin City 


Troublemaker Studios 

Dimension Films 

Directors: 

Frank Miller 

Robert Rodriguez 


Producers: 

Elizabeth Avellan 

Frank Miller 


Screenwriter: 

Frank Miller 




Steve Joyner 

Jeanette Scott 

Editor: 


Composers: 

John Debney 

Graeme Revell 


Duration: 

124 minutes 

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 

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 


Crime 123


Sin City, Dimension Films. 

Cast: 

Benicio Del Toro 

Josh Hartnett 

Clive Owen 

Mickey Rourke 

Bruce Willis 

Year: 

2005 

124 American Independence 

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

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 


Crime 125

OCUMENTARY

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 


Documentary 127



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

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 


Documentary 129


Capturing the 

Friedmans 


HBO Films 

Director: 

Andrew Jarecki 

Producers: 

Andrew Jarecki 

Marc Smerling 


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 


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

DiG! 


Interloper Films 

Palm Pictures 

Director: 

Ondi Timoner 

Producer: 

Ondi Timoner 

Screenwriter: 

Ondi Timoner 


Vasco Nunes 

David Timoner 

Ondi Timoner 

Editor: 

Ondi Timoner 

Duration: 

107 minutes 

Cast: 

Anton Newcombe 

Courtney Taylor-Taylor 

Year: 

2004 

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 

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 

Documentary 131

DiG!, Interloper. 


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 Capital 

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

Dogtown and 

Z-Boys 


Agi Orsi Productions 

Vans Off the Wall 

Sony Pictures Classics 

Director: 

Stacy Peralta 

Producer: 

Agi Orsi 


Stacy Peralta 

Craig Stecyk 


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 


Documentary 133


Fahrenheit 9/11 


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 


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 

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-

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-nflammatory 

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 


Documentary 135

The King of Kong, Largelab. 

The King of 

Kong 


Large Lab 

Picturehouse 

Director: 

Seth Gordon 

Producer: 

Ed Cunningham 


Seth Gordon 

Editor: 

Seth Gordon 

Duration: 

79 minutes 

Cast: 

Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell 

Year: 

2007 


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.

Overnight 


THINKFilm 

Directors: 

Tony Montana 

Mark Brian Smith 

Producers: 

Tony Montana 




Composers: 

Jack Livesey 

Peter Nashel 

Editor: 

Tony Montana 

Duration: 

82 minutes 

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 Redsox 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 classic music or Wiebe’s own drum and piano playing. 

The King of King 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 

Synopsis 

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 

Critique 

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 


Documentary 137


Cast: 

Troy Duffy 

Taylor Duffy 

Year: 

2003 

Sex: The 

Annabel Chong 

Story 


Coffee House Films 

Strand Releasing 

Director: 

Gough Lewis 

Producer: 

Gough Lewis 


Gough Lewis 


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 

Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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-

Composer: 

Peter Mundinger 

Editor: 

Kelly Morris 

Duration: 

86 minutes 

Cast: 

Grace Quek 

John T Bone 

Year: 

1999 

Super Size Me 


Samuel Goldwyn Films 

Roadside Attractions 

Director: 

Morgan Spurlock 

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 

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’ 


Documentary 139


Producer: 


Screenwriter: 



Scott Ambrozy 

Art Director: 

‘Joe the Artist’ 

Composers: 

Jim Black 

Folkfoot 

Editors: 

Stela Georgieva 

Julie Bob Lombardi 

Duration: 

100 minutes 

Cast: 


Daryl M Isaacs MD 

Lisa Ganjhu 

Steven Siegel MD 

Year: 

2004 


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

Tarnation 


Wellspring Media 

Director: 

Jonathan Caouette 

Producers: 

Stephen Winter 




Editor: 


Composer: 

Max Avery Lichtenstein 

Duration: 

91 minutes 

Cast: 

Renee LeBlanc 


Year: 

2004 

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 

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. 

Critique 

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 

make 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 


Documentary 141


The Thin Blue 

Line 



Director: 

Errol Morris 


more 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. 


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

Producer: 

Mark Lipson 

Screenwriter: 

Errol Morris 


Robert Chappell 

Stefan Czapsky 

Composer: 

Philip Glass 

Editor: 

Paul Barnes 

Duration: 

103 minutes 

Cast: 

Randall Adams 

David Harris 

Year: 

1988 

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. 

Critique 

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 as 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. 



Documentary 143

EXPLOITATION 

USA

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. 


Exploitation USA 145



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 mid- 

1970s, 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).

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 




Alligator, Alligator Inc. 

Alligator 


Alligator Inc. 

Group 1 International 

Distribution Organization Ltd 

Director: 

Lewis Teague 

Producer: 

Robert S Bremson 


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.

Screenwriter: 

John Sayles 


Joseph Mangine 

Art Director: 

Michael Erler 

Composer: 

Craig Hundley 

Editors: 

Larry Bock 

Ron Medico 

Duration: 

91 minutes 

Cast: 


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 




Angel of 

Vengeance 


Navaron Films 

Rochelle Films 

Director: 

Abel Ferrara 

Producers: 

Richard Howorth 

Mary Kane 

Rochelle Weisberg 

Screenwriter: 

Nicholas St. John 


James Mornel 

Art Director: 

Ruben Masters 

Composer: 

Joe Delia 

Editor: 

Christopher Andrews 

Duration: 

80 minutes 

Cast: 

Zoë Tamerlis 

Albert Sinkys 

Editta Sherman 

Year: 

1981 


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

Assault on 

Precinct 13 


CKK Corporation 

Overseas FilmGroup 

Director: 


Producer: 

J. Stein Kaplan 

Screenwriter: 



Douglas Knapp 

Art Director: 

Tommy Lee Wallace 

Composer: 


Editor: 


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 

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 




Duration: 

91 minutes 

Cast: 

Austin Stoker 

Darwin Joston 

Laurie Zimmer 

Tony Burton 

Year: 

1976 

Blood Feast 


Friedman-Lewis Productions 

Box Office Spectaculars 

Director: 

Herschell Gordon Lewis 


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 

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.

Producer: 

David F Friedman 

Screenwriter: 

Alison Louise Down 



Editors: 

Frank Romolo 

Robert L Sinise 

Composer: 


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 




The Driller 

Killer 


Navaron Productions 

Rochelle Films 

Director: 

Abel Ferrara 

Producer: 

Rochelle Weisberg 

Screenwriter: 

Nicholas St John 


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 


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

God Told Me To 


New World Pictures 

Director: 

Larry Cohen 

Producer: 

Larry Cohen 

Screenwriter: 

Larry Cohen 


Paul Glickman 

Composer: 

Frank Cordell 

Editors: 

Mike Corey 

Arthur Mandelberg 

William J Waters 

Duration: 

91 minutes 

Cast: 

Tony Lo Bianco 

Deborah Raffin 

Sylvia Sidney 

Richard Lynch 

Year: 

1976 

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 

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? 

Critique 

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 




It’s Alive 


Larco Productions 

Warner Bros. 

Director: 

Larry Cohen 

Producers: 

Larry Cohen 

Janelle Cohen 

Screenwriter: 

Larry Cohen 


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 

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


Fenton Hamilton 

Composer: 

Bernard Herrmann 

Editor: 

Peter Honess 

Duration: 

91 minutes 

Cast: 

John Ryan 

Sharon Farrell 

James Dixon 

Year: 

1974 

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. 

Critique 

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. 

Mark Bould 




King of the 

Zombies 


Monogram Pictures 

Director: 

Jean Yarbrough 

Producer: 

Lindsley Parsons 

Screenwriter: 

Edmond Kelso 


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 


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 should 

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. 

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 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

The Last House 

on the Left 


Sean S Cunningham Films Ltd. 

Director: 

Wes Craven 

Producer: 

Sean S Cunningham 

Screenwriter: 

Wes Craven 


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 




White Zombie 


United Artists 

Director: 

Victor Halperin 

Producer: 

Edward Halperin 

Screenwriter: 

Garnett Weston 


Arthur Martinelli 

Composer: 

Guy Bevier 

Art Director: 

Ralph Berger 

Editor: 

Harold McLernon 

Duration: 

67 minutes 

Cast: 

Bela Lugosi 

Robert Frazer 

Madge Bellamy 

Year: 

1932 


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 

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. 



FAMILY

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). 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 (1956) would present James Mason as Ed Avery, a 

Left: The Royal Tenenbaums, Touchstone 

Pictures, Photographed by James Hamilton 


Family Dysfunction 163



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. 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 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 

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. 

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 




Buffalo ‘66, Cinepix Film. 

Buffalo ‘66 


Cinepix Film Properties 


Muse Productions 

Director: 

Vincent Gallo 

Producer: 

Chris Hanley 


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.


Vincent Gallo 

Alison Bagnall 


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 




Flirting With 

Disaster 


Miramax 

Director: 

David O Russell 

Producer: 

Dean Silvers 

Screenwriter: 



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, Miramax, Photographed by Barry Wetcher. 

Flirting With Disaster, David O Russell’s follow up to oedipal 

black comedy Spanking the Monkey (1994), is a further

Editor: 

Christopher Tellefsen 

Duration: 

92 minutes 

Cast: 

Ben Stiller 

Patricia Arquette 

Téa Leoni 

Lily Tomlin 

Alan Alda 

Year: 

1997 

Harold and 

Maude 


Mildred Lewis and Colin Higgins 

Productions 

Paramount 

Director: 

Hal Ashby 

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 

well-drawn 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 

Regan-worshipping matriarch, achieve a hard-to-match screwball 

intensity that holds up well to the greats of the genre. 

Rob Dennis 

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 




Producers: 

Colin Higgins 

Charles Mulvehill 

Screenwriter: 

Colin Higgins 


John A Alonzo 

Art Director: 

Michael Haller 

Composer: 

Cat Stevens 

Editors: 

William A Sawyer 

Edward Warschilka 

Duration: 

91 minutes 

Cast: 

Ruth Gordon 

Bud Cort 

Vivian Pickles 

Year: 

1971 

170 American Independence 

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. 

Critique 

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

Human Nature 

Studio/Distributor Prod: 

Fine Line Features 

Studio Canal 

Good Machine 

Director: 

Michel Gondry 

Producers: 

Anthony Bergman 

Ted Hope 

Spike Jonze 


Julie Fong 

Screenwriter: 



Tim Maurice-Jones 

Art Director: 

Peter Andrus 

Composer: 

Graeme Revell 

Editor: 

Russell Icke 

Duration: 

96 minutes 

Cast: 


Rhys Ifans 

Tim Robbins 

Miranda Otto 

Year: 

2001 

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 

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 




My Big Fat 

Greek Wedding 


Playtone 

IFC Films 

Director: 

Joel Zwick 

Producers: 

Paul Brooks 

Steve Shareshian 

Norm Waitt 

Screenwriter: 

Nia Vardalos 


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 a 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 

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


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 

Roger Dodger 


Holedigger Films 

Artisan 

Director: 

Dylan Kidd 

Producer: 

Anne Chaisson 

Screenwriter: 

Dylan Kidd 


Joaquín Baca-Asay 

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 

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 the 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 




Composer: 

Craig Wedren 

Editor: 

Andy Keir 

Duration: 

106 minutes 

Cast: 

Campbell Scott 

Jesse Eisenberg 

Isabella Rossellini 

Jennifer Beals 

Year: 

2002 

The Royal 

Tenenbaums 


American Empirical Pictures 

Mordecai Films 

Touchstone Pictures 

Director: 

Wes Anderson 


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. 


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,

Producers: 

Wes Anderson 

Barry Mendel 

Scott Rudin 


Wes Anderson 

Owen Wilson 


Robert Yeoman 

Art Director: 

Carl Sprague 

Editor: 


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- 




sex, lies and 

videotape 


Outlaw Productions 

Miramax 

Director: 

Stephen Soderbergh 

Producers: 

John Hardy 

Robert Newmayer 

Screenwriter: 



Walt Lloyd 

Art Director: 

Joanne Schmidt 

Composer: 


Editor: 


Duration: 

100 minutes 

Cast: 

James Spader 

Andie MacDowell 

Peter Gallagher 

Laura San Giacomo 

Year: 

1989 


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 

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

Spanking the 

Monkey 


Buckeye Films 

Swelter Films 

Fine Line 

Director: 


Producer: 

Dean Silvers 

Screenwriter: 



Michael Mayers 

Editor: 

Pamela Martin 

Duration: 

100 minutes 

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 

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.’ 




Cast: 

Jeremy Davies 

Alberta Watson 

Benjamin Hendrickson 

Year: 

1994 

A Wedding 


20th Century Fox 

Director: 

Robert Altman 


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 sexuallyvolatile 

teenage tabula-rasa. The darkly-humorous tensions 

within the first half of the film significantly outweigh the comingto-terms 

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 slightly younger than himself 

develops from innocent conversations whilst he walks his dog 

with her, 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 

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

Producer: 

Robert Altman 


John Considine 

Allan F Nicholls 

Patricia Resnick 

Robert Altman 


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 

for the reception dinner, over which various inter-family 

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 civilizations 

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 



NARRATIVE 

DISORDER

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. 


Narrative Disorder 181



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

Adaptation 


Sony Pictures 

Director: 

Spike Jonze 

Producers: 

Jonathan Demme 

Vincent Landay 

Edward Saxon 



Donald Kaufman 


Lance Acord 

Art Director: 

Peter Andrus 

Editor: 

Eric Zumbrunnen 

Composer: 


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 




Being John 

Malkovich 


Gramercy Pictures 

Propaganda Films 

Single Cell Films 

Director: 

Spike Jonze 


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 

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.

Producers: 

Steve Golin 

Vincent Landay 

Sandy Stern 

Michael Stipe 


Michael Kuhn 

Screenwriter: 



Lance Acord 

Art Director: 

Peter Andrus 

Editor: 

Eric Zumbrunnen 

Composer: 


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 




Choose Me 


Tartan Productions 

Director: 

Alan Rudolph 

Producers: 

Carolyn Pfeiffer 

David Blocker 

Screenwriter: 

Alan Rudolph 


Jan Kiesser 

Composer: 

Teddy Pendergrass 

Editor: 

Mia Goldman 

Duration: 

106 minutes 

Cast: 

Lesley Ann Warren 

Geneviève Bujold 

Keith Carradine 

Rae Dawn Chong 

Year: 

1984 


Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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.

Eternal Sunshine 

of the Spotless 

Mind 


Focus Features 

Director: 

Michel Gondry 

Producer: 

Steve Golin 

Screenwriter: 



Ellen Kuras 

Art Director: 

David Stein 

Composer: 

Jon Brion 

Editors: 

Valis Óskarsdóttir 

James Haygood 

Duration: 

108 minutes 

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 

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 




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 


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

Lost Highway 


CIBY 2000 

Director: 

David Lynch 

Producers: 

Deepak Nayar 

Tom Sternberg 

Mary Sweeny 


David Lynch 

Barry Gifford 

Cinematography: 

Peter Deming 

Art Director: 

Russell J Smith 

Editor: 

Mary Sweeny 

Duration: 

135 minutes 

Cast: 

Bill Pullman 


Balthazar Getty 

Robert Loggia 

Year: 

1997 

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 

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 




Magnolia 


Ghoulardi Film Company 


Director: 


Producers: 


Michael De Luca 

Lynn Harris 

Daniel Lupi 

JoAnne Sellar 



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 

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,

Screenwriter: 



Robert Elswit 

Composers: 

Jon Brion 

Aimee Mann 

Editor: 


Duration: 

188 minutes 

Cast: 

Tom Cruise 

Philip Seymour Hoffman 

William H. Macy 


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 




Nashville 


Paramount 

Director: 

Robert Altman 

Producer: 

Robert Altman 

Screenwriter: 

Joan Tewkesbury 


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 


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

Pi 



Director: 


Producer: 

Eric Watson 



Sean Gullette 

Eric Watson 


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 

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 

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 




Primer 


THINKfilm 

Director: 

Shane Carruth 

Producer: 

Shane Carruth 

Screenwriter: 

Shane Carruth 

Art Director: 

Shane Carruth 

Composer: 

Shane Carruth 

Editor: 

Shane Carruth 

Duration: 

77 minutes 


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. 


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-

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 




Short Cuts 


Fine Line Features 

Director: 

Robert Altman 

Producers: 

Cary Brokaw 


Robert Altman 

Frank Barhydt 


Walt Lloyd 

Art Director: 

Jerry Fleming 

Editors: 

Suzy Elmiger 

Geraldine Peroni 

Composer: 

Mark Isham 

Duration: 

187 minutes 

Cast: 

Jennifer Jason Leigh 

Matthew Modine 


Chris Penn 

Tim Robbins 

Tom Waits 

Year: 

1993 


Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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 bluecollar 

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

Short Cuts, Spelling/Fine Line. 

he boils down the essence of each story to their 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 


ON THE

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 Hell’s 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. 


On the Road 199



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

(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 




Bottle Rocket 



Director: 

Wes Anderson 

Producers: 

Cynthia Hargrave 

Polly Platt 


Wes Anderson 

Owen Wilson 


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 


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

Broken Flowers 



Director: 

Jim Jarmusch 

Producers: 

Jon Kilik 

Stacey Smith 

Screenwriter: 

Jim Jarmusch 


Frederick Elmes 

Art Director: 

Sarah Frank 

Composer: 

Mulatu Astatke 

Editor: 


Duration: 

105 minutes 

Cast: 

Bill Murray 

Jeffrey Wright 

Sharon Stone 

Jessica Lange 

Year: 

2005 

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 

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. 

Critique 

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 



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, is simply 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

The Brown 

Bunny 


Vincent Gallo Productions 

Wild Bunch 

Wellspring Media 

Director: 

Vincent Gallo 

Producer: 

Vincent Gallo 

Screenwriter: 

Vincent Gallo 


Vincent Gallo 

Art Director: 

Vincent Gallo 

Editor: 

Vincent Gallo 

Duration: 

92 minutes 

Cast: 

Vincent Gallo 


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 




The Darjeeling 

Limited 


Fox Searchlight Pictures 

Director: 

Wes Anderson 

Producers: 

Wes Anderson 

Roman Coppola 

Lydia Dean Pilcher 

Scott Rudin 


Wes Anderson 

Roman Coppola 

Jason Schwartzman 


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 

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. 


Robert Yeoman 


Aradhana Seth 

Adam Stockhausen 

Editor: 

Andrew Wiseblum 

Duration: 

89 minutes 

Cast: 

Owen Wilson 

Adrien Brody 

Jason Schwartzman 

Anjelica Huston 

Year: 

2007 

(1994), 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. 



Easy Rider 


BBS Productions 


Director: 

Dennis Hopper 

Producer: 

Peter Fonda 


Dennis Hopper 

Peter Fonda 

Terry Southern 


Laszlo Kovacs 

Art Director: 

Jerry Kay 

Editor: 

Donn Cambern 

Duration: 

95 minutes 

Cast: 

Dennis Hopper 

Peter Fonda 


Year: 

1969 


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 

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 late- 

1960s’ 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.

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 




Five Easy 

Pieces 


BBS Productions 


Director: 

Bob Rafelson 

Producers: 

Bob Rafelson 

Richard Weschler 


Bob Rafelson 

Adrien Joyce 


Laszlo Kovacs 

Editors: 

Christopher Holmes 

Gerald Shephard 

Duration: 

95 minutes 

Cast: 


Karen Black 

Susan Anspach 

Year: 

1970 


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 ones 

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

Sideways 


Michael London Productions 

Fox Searchlight 

Director: 

Alexander Payne 

Producer: 

Michael London 


Alexander Payne 

Jim Taylor 



Art Director: 

T K Kirkpatrick 

Editor: 

Kevin Tent 

Composer: 

Rolfe Kent 

Duration: 

126 minutes 

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 

Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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 




Cast: 

Paul Giamatti 

Thomas Haden Church 

Virginia Madsen 

Sandra Oh 

Year: 

2004 

The Straight 

Story 


Studio Canale 

Picture Factory 

Director: 

David Lynch 

Producers: 

Neal Edelstein 

Mary Sweeney 


John Roach 

Mary Sweeney 


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 

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


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 




Stranger Than 

Paradise 


Grokenberger Film Produktion 

Island-Alive 

Director: 

Jim Jarmusch 

Producers: 

Sara Driver 

Otto Grokenberger 

Screenwriter: 

Jim Jarmusch 


Tom DiCillo 

Composer: 

John Lurie 

Editors: 

Jim Jarmusch 

Melody London 

Duration: 

89 minutes 

Cast: 

John Lurie 

Richard Edson 

Eszter Balint 

Year: 

1984 


Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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,

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, 




Two-Lane 

Blacktop 



Director: 

Monte Hellman 

Producer: 

Michael Laughlin 


Rudolph Wurlitzer 

Will Corry 


Jack Deerson 


H. Alan Deglin 

William Kincheloe 

Richard Ruth 

Editor: 

Monte Hellman 

Duration: 

103 minutes 

Cast: 

James Taylor 

Warren Oates 

Laurie Bird 

Dennis Wilson 

Year: 

1971 


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 

Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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

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 



UEER CINEMA

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. 


Queer Cinema 219



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; 

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 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 


Queer Cinema 221


The Doom 

Generation 


Why Not Productions 

Trimark 

Director: 

Gregg Araki 

Producers: 

Gregg Araki 

Yves Marmion 

Andrea Sperling 

Screenwriter: 

Gregg Araki 


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 


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 

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 femme-fatale persona

Female Trouble 


Dreamland Films 


Director: 

John Waters 

Producer: 

John Waters 

Screenwriter: 

John Waters 


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 

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. 


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 


Queer Cinema 223


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.

Mala Noche 


Janus Films 

Director: 

Gus Van Sant 

Producer: 

Gus Van Sant 

Screenwriter: 

Gus Van Sant 

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. 


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 


Queer Cinema 225



John J. Campbell 


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

Mondo Trasho 




Director: 

John Waters 

Producer: 

John Waters 

Screenwriter: 

John Waters 


John Waters 

Art Director: 


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 


Queer Cinema 227


Multiple 

Maniacs 





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. 


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

Director: 

John Waters 

Producer: 

John Waters 

Screenwriter: 

John Waters 


John Waters 

Editor: 

John Waters 

Art Director: 


Duration: 

90 minutes 

Cast: 

Divine 

David Lochary 


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 


Queer Cinema 229


Nowhere 


Why Not Productions 

Pathé Distribution 

Director: 

Gregg Araki 

Producers: 

Andrea Sperling 

Gregg Araki 

Screenwriter: 

Gregg Araki 


Arturo Smith 


Dan Knapp 

Pae White 

Editor: 

Gregg Araki 

Duration: 

78 minutes 


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. 


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 

Greg 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

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. 

Arkai’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. 



Queer Cinema 231


Pink Flamingos 




Director: 

John Waters 

Producer: 

John Waters 

Screenwriter: 

John Waters 


John Waters 

Art Director: 


Editor: 

John Waters 

Duration: 

100 minutes 

Cast: 

Divine 

David Lochary 


Mink Stole 

Year: 

1972 


Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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

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’. 



Queer Cinema 233


Poison 


Bronze Eye Productions 

Poison L.P. 

Zeitgeist Films 

Director: 

Todd Haynes 

Producer: 

Christine Vachon 

Screenwriter: 

Todd Haynes 


Maryse Alberti 

Barry Ellsworth 

Art Director: 

Chas Plummer 

Editors: 

Todd Haynes 

James Lyons 

Duration: 

85 minutes 

Cast: 

Edith Meeks 

Larry Maxwell 

Susan Norman 

Year: 

1991 


Synopsis 

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’. 

Critique 

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

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 


Queer Cinema 235


Shortbus 


Fortissimo Films 

THINKFilm 

Director: 

John Cameron Mitchell 

Producers: 


Howard Gertler 

Tim Perell 

Screenwriter: 



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 


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 

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

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 237


The Sticky 

Fingers of Time 


Crystal Pictures 

Good Machine 

Strand Releasing 

Director: 

Hilary Brougher 

Producers: 

Jean Castelli 

Isen Robbins 

Susan A. Stover 

Screenwriter: 

Hilary Brougher 


Ethan Mass 


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 


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

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 239

RURAL 

AMERICA

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. 


Rural America 241



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

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 


Rural America 243


Affliction 


Largo Entertainment 

Lionsgate 

Director: 

Paul Schrader 

Producer: 

Linda Reisman 

Screenwriter: 

Paul Schrader 


Paul Sarossy CSC 

Art Director: 

Anne Pritchard 

Composer: 

Michael Brooks 

Editor: 


Duration: 

110 minutes 

Cast: 

Nick Nolte 

Willem Dafoe 

James Coburn 

Sissy Spacek 

Year: 

1997 


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

All the Real 

Girls 


Jasmine Productions 


Director: 

David Gordon Green 

Producer: 

Jean Doumanian 

Screenwriter: 



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 

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 

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 


Rural America 245


The Apostle 


Butcher’s Run Films 

October 

Director: 

Robert Duvall 

Producer: 

Rob Carliner 

Screenwriter: 

Robert Duvall 


Barry Markowitz 

Composer: 

David Mansfield 

Art Director: 

Linda Burton 

Editor: 

Stephen Mack 

Duration: 

120 minutes 


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 

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

Cast: 

Robert Duvall 

Farrah Fawcett 

Miranda Richardson 

Year: 

1997 

Badlands 


Warner Bros. 

Director: 

Terrence Malick 

Producer: 


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 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 

Synopsis 

South Dakota and Montana. The 25-year-old Kit, a renegade 

with a dead-end job as a garbage collector, meets Holly, 

a freckled, red-haired, baton-twirling 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 


Rural America 247


Screenwriter: 



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 


records a suicide note to buy them 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 trigger-happy, 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

The Brave 


Brave Pictures 

Majestic Films International 

Director: 

Johnny Depp 

Producers: 

Charles Evans Jr 

Carroll Kemp 

Jeremy Thomas 


Paul McCudden 

Johnny Depp 

DP Depp 


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 starts 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 twohour 

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 accountant-turned-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 


Rural America 249


The Last Picture 

Show 



Director: 

Peter Bogdanovich 

Producers: 

Stephen J. Friedman 

Bert Schneider 

Harold Schneider 


Larry McMurtry 

Peter Bogdanovich 


Robert Surtees 

Art Director: 

Walter Scott Herndon 

Editor: 

Donn Cambern 


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 

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

Duration: 

126 minutes 

Cast: 

Timothy Bottoms 

Jeff Bridges 

Cybil Shepherd 

Cloris Leachman 

Ben Johnson 

Year: 

1971 

Lone Star 


Castle Rock 

Director: 

John Sayles 

Producers: 

R. Paul Miller 

Maggie Renzi 

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 

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. 


Rural America 251


Lone Star, 1995, Castle Rock. 

Screenwriter: 

John Sayles 


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 


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.

Napoleon 

Dynamite 



Director: 

Jared Hess 

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 

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. 


Rural America 253


Producers: 

Jeremy Coon 

Sean Covel 


Jared Hess 

Jerusha Hess 


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 


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 ‘sweet’s 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

Snow Angels 


Crossroads Films 

Snow Blower Productions 

True Love Productions 

Director: 


Producers: 

Dan Lindau 

R Paul Miller 

Lisa Muskat 

Cami Taylor 

Screenwriter: 



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 

in its recognizable yet defamiliarized seams and stitches. 

Napoleon Dynamite is like a bunch of Urkle’s old clothes, 

sown together the wrong way. 


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 


Rural America 255


The Station 

Agent 


SentArt Films 

Miramax 

Director: 

Tom McCarthy 

Producers: 

Mary Jane Skalski 

Robert May 

Kathryn Tucker 

Screenwriter: 

Tom McCarthy 


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 


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 

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 

Rural America 257

SLACKERS

Left: Clerks, View Askew. 

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 throughout the 1990s. 

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 


Slackers 259



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

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. 



Slackers 261


Before Sunrise 


Castle Rock Entertainment 

Director: 

Richard Linklater 

Producer: 

Anne Walker-McBay 



Kim Krizan 


Lee Daniel 

Art Director: 

Florian Reichmann 

Composer: 

Fred Frith 

Editor: 

Sandra Adair 

Duration: 

105 minutes 

Cast: 

Ethan Hawke 

Julie Delpy 

Year: 

1995 

Before Sunset 


Castle Rock Entertainment 

Warner Independent Pictures 

Director: 


Producers: 




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. 

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. 



Ethan Hawke 

Julie Delpy 

Kim Krizan 


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 

Slackers 263


Clerks 


Miramax 

Director: 

Kevin Smith 

Producers: 

Scott Mosier 

Kevin Smith 

Screenwriter: 

Kevin Smith 


David Klein 


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 –s 

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. 


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

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 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 


Slackers 265


Dazed and 

Confused 



Director: 


Producers: 

Sean Daniel 

James Jacks 


Writer: 



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

Ghost World 


United Artists 

Director: 

Terry Zwigoff 


Daniel Clowes 

Terry Zwigoff 

Producers: 

Lianne Halfon 

John Malkovich 

Russell Smith 


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. 



Slackers 267


Go 


Columbia 

Director: 

Doug Liman 

Producers: 

Matt Freeman 

Mickey Liddell 

Paul Rosenberg 

Screenwriter: 

John August 


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 


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. 

Metropolitan 



Director: 

Whit Stillman 

Producers: 

Whit Stillman 

Peter Wentworth 

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. 


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


Screenwriter: 

Whit Stillman 


John Thomas 

Composers: 

Tom Judson 

Mark Suozzo 

Editor: 

Christopher Tellefsen 

Duration: 

98 minutes 

Cast: 

Edward Clements 

Christopher Eigemann 

Carolyn Farina 

Year: 

1990 


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. 

Critique 

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. 

Sarah Cronin

Slacker 


Detour Film Production 

Orion Classics 

Director: 


Producer: 


Screenwriter: 



Lee Daniel 


Denise Montgomery 

Debbie Pastor 

Editor: 

Scott Rhodes 

Duration: 

97 minutes 

Cast: 


Rudy Basquez 

Jan Hockey 

Year: 

1991 

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. 

Critique 

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. 



Slackers 271


Smithereens 


Domestic Productions 

Director: 

Susan Seidelman 

Producers: 

Joanne Gross 



Peter Askin 

Ron Nyswaner 



Chirine El Khadem 

Editor: 


Duration: 

89 minutes 

Genre: 

Comedy 

Cast: 

Susan Berman 

Richard Hell 

Brad Rijn 

Year: 

1982 


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

Swingers 


Miramax 

Director: 

Doug Liman 

Producers: 

Victor Simpkins 

Jon Favreau 

Screenwriter: 

Jon Favreau 


Doug Liman 

Art Director: 

Brad Halvorson 

Composer: 

Justin Reinhardt 

Editor: 

Stephen Mirrione 

Duration: 

90 minutes 

Cast: 

Jon Favreau 

Vince Vaughn 

Ron Livingston 

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 

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 hang-ups 

over a girl, fretted about their sexual prowess or performed 

a drunken dance on a restaurant table. John 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 


Slackers 273


Waking Life 



Director: 


Producers: 

Palmer West 

Jonah Smith 

Tommy Palotta 


Screenwriter: 




Tommy Palotta 

Art Director: 

Bob Sabiston 


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 

Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

With Waking Life director Linklater returned to the fragmented 

structure of Slacker (1991), whereby the film shuns a

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. 



Slackers 275

THE 

SUBURBS

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 lawn mowers, and 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, Father of the Bride (1991), builds its setting 

Left: Safe, American Playhouse/Channel 4. 


The Suburbs 277



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

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. 



The Suburbs 279


Brick, Focus Features, Photographed by Steve Yedlin. 

Brick 


Bergman Lustig Productions 


Director: 

Rian Johnson 

Producers: 

Ram Bergman 

Mark G. Mathis 

Screenwriter: 

Rian Johnson 


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.


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. 



The Suburbs 281


Happiness 


Good Machine 

Director: 

Todd Solondz 

Producers: 


Ted Hope 

Screenwriter: 

Todd Solondz 


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 


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 into 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.

Public Access 


Prod: Cinema Beam, Triboro 

Entertainment Group 

Director: 

Bryan Singer 

Producers: 

Kenneth Kokin 

Adam Ripp 

Bryan Singer 


Christopher McQuarrie 

Bryan Singer 

Michael Feit Dougan 


Bruce Douglas Johnson 

Art Director: 

Bruce Sulzberg 

Composer: 

John Ottman 

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 

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 

Rachel, 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, 


The Suburbs 283


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. 

Carl Wilson

[Safe] 



Chemical Films 

Director: 

Todd Haynes 

Producers: 


Lauren Zalaznick 

Screenwriter: 

Todd Haynes 


Alex Nepomniaschy 

Art Director: 

Anthony R Stabley 

Composer: 

Ed Tomney 

Editor: 

James Lyons 

Duration: 

121 minutes 

Cast: 


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 


The Suburbs 285


Society 


Society Productions Inc 

Wild Street Pictures 

Republic Pictures 

Director: 

Bryan Yuzna 

Producer: 

Keith Walley 


Rick Fry 

Woody Keith 


Rick Fichter 

Art Director: 

Kelle DeForrest 

Composers: 

Phil Davies 

Mark Ryder 

Editor: 

Peter Teschner 

Duration: 

99 minutes 


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. 


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 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,

Cast: 

Billy Warlock 

Connie Danese 

Ben Slack 

Year: 

1989 

Storytelling 


Killer Films 

Good Machine 

New Line 

Director: 

Todd Solondz 

Producers: 

Ted Hope 


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 

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 


The Suburbs 287


Screenwriter: 

Todd Solondz 


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 African- 

American 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

Trees Lounge 


Live Entertainment 

Director: 

Steve Buscemi 

Producers: 

Chris Hanley 

Brad Wyman 

Kelly Forsythe 

Sarah Vogel 

Screenwriter: 

Steve Buscemi 


Lisa Rinzler 

Art Director: 

Jennifer Alex 

Composer: 

Evan Lurie 

Editor: 

Kate Williams 

Duration: 

95 minutes 

Cast: 

Steve Buscemi 


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 

stalk 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 


The Suburbs 289


The Unbelievable 

Truth 


Action Features 

Miramax 

Director: 

Hal Hartley 

Producers: 

Jerome Brownstein 

Hal Hartley 

Bruce Weiss 

Screenwriter: 

Hal Hartley 


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 

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


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 


The Suburbs 291


The Virgin 

Suicides 


American Zoetrope 

Paramount Classics 

Director: 

Sofia Coppola 

Producers: 

Francis Ford Coppola 

Julie Constanzo 

Dan Halsted 

Chris Hanley 

Screenwriter: 

Sofia Coppola 


Edward Lachman 

Art Director: 

Jon P Goulding 

Editors: 

Melissa Kent 

James Lyons 

Composer: 

Air 

Duration: 

93 minutes 

Cast: 

Kirsten Dunst 

Josh Hartnett 

James Woods 

Kathleen Turner 

Year: 

2000 


Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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

Welcome to the 

Dollhouse 


Suburban Pictures 


Director: 

Todd Solondz 

Producer: 

Todd Solondz 

Screenwriter: 

Todd Solondz 


Randy Drummond 

Art Director: 

Lori Solondz 

Editor: 

Alan Oxman 

Duration: 

88 minutes 

Cast: 

Heather Matarazzo 

Brendan Sexton III 

Eric Mabius 

Year: 

1995 

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. 


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, 


The Suburbs 293


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

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 


The Suburbs 295

UNDERGROUND 

USA

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. 


Underground USA 297



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 41 st 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

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 


Underground USA 299


Chelsea Girls 


Andy Warhol Films 

Directors: 

Paul Morrissey 

Andy Warhol 

Producer: 

Andy Warhol 


Ronald Tavel 

Andy Warhol 


Andy Warhol 


Art Director: 

Andy Warhol 

Editors: 


Andy Warhol 

Duration: 

210 minutes 

Cast: 

Brigid Berlin 

Nico 

Mary Woronov 

Year: 

1966 


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

David Holzman’s 

Diary 


Direct Cinema Limited 

Director: 

Jim McBride 

Producer: 

Jim McBride 

Screenwriter: 

Jim McBride 


Michael Wadleigh 

Editor: 

Jim McBride 

Duration: 

74 minutes 

Cast: 

L M Kit Carson 

Eileen Dietz 

Lorenzo Mans 

Year: 

1967 

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 

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. 

Critique 

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 

Underground USA 301


Flaming 

Creatures 

Director: 

Jack Smith 

Producer: 

Jack Smith 


Jack Smith 


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 

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. 

Critique 

Coy and camp, raw and exuberant, pornographic and socially 

conscious, beautiful and ugly, totally irreverent and morbidly

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. 



Underground USA 303


Flesh 


Score Movies 

Director: 


Producers: 

Andy Warhol 


Screenwriter: 




Art Director: 


Editor: 


Duration: 

105 minutes 

Cast: 

Joe Dallesandro 

Patti D’Arbanville 

Candy Darling 

Year: 

1968 


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

Heat 


Andy Warhol Factory / 

Image Entertainment 

Director: 


Producer: 

Andy Warhol 


John Hallowell 




Composer: 

John Cale 

Editors: 

Jed Johnson 

Lana Jokel 

Duration: 

100 minutes 

Cast: 

Joe Dallesandro 

Sylvia Miles 

Andrea Feldman 

Year: 

1973 

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 

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. 

Critique 

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 


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

I Woke Up Early 

the Day I Died 


Muse Productions 

Cinequanon Pictures 

Director: 

Aris Iliopulos 

Producers: 

Chris Hanley 

Billy Zane 

Screenwriter: 

Edward D Wood Jr 


Michael F. Barrow 

Art Director: 

Cecil Gentry 

Composer: 

Larry Groupé 

Editor: 

Dody Dorn 

Duration: 

90 minutes 

Cast: 

Billy Zane 

Christina Ricci 

Karen Black 

Eartha Kitt 

Year: 

1999 

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. 


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 ... 

Critique 

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. 


Underground USA 307


Medium Cool 


H & J/Paramount 

Director: 

Haskell Wexler 

Producers: 


Jerrold Wexler 

Tully Friedman 


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 

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

Screenwriter: 




Art Director: 

Leon Erickson 

Editor: 

Verna Fields 

Duration: 

111 minutes 

Medium Cool, Paramount. 

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 

Underground USA 309


Cast: 


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

Pull My Daisy 


G-String Entrerprises 

Directors: 

Robert Frank 

Alfred Leslie 

Producers: 

Robert Frank 

Alfred Leslie 

Screenwriter: 

Jack Kerouac 


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 


Underground USA 311


Schizopolis 


.406 Production 

Northern Arts 


Director: 


Producer: 

John Hardy 

Screenwriter: 




Editor: 

Sarah Flack 

Composers: 



Jeff Rona 


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. 


Synopsis 

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. 

Critique 

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

Duration: 

96 minutes 

Cast: 


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 


Underground USA 313


Shadows 


Lion International 

Director: 


Producer: 

Seymour Cassel 

Maurice McEndree 

Screenwriter: 



Erich Kollmar 

Composer: 

Shafi Hadi 

Editor: 

Len Appelson 

Duration: 

81 minutes 

Cast: 

Lelia Goldoni 

Ben Carruthers 

Hugh Hurd 

Year: 

1959 


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’s 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,

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. 



Underground USA 315

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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.

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



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. 


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.

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. 


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. 


American Independent Cinema Online 321

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?

E 

21. Name the star of Paul Morrissey’s Flesh, dubbed ‘Little Joe’ by Lou Reed. 

22. Billy Zane headed the cast of which tribute to the films of Edward D Wood Jr.? 

23. Which documentary cameraman turned director for Medium Cool? 

24. Which Todd Solondz film is divided into two parts; ‘Fiction’ and ‘Non-Fiction’? 

25. Drug-fuelled alternative band The Brian Jonestown Massacre were the 

subject of which documentary? 

26. President George Bush was the unwitting ‘star’ of which Michael Moore 

documentary? 

27. Which socially-conscious independent film-maker wrote the screenplay for 

the monster quickie Alligator? 

28. ‘A Seriously Sexy Comedy’ was the tagline for which Spike Lee ‘joint’? 

29. Unconventional screenwriter Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into which movie? 

30. A loudmouth white insurance salesman wakes up to discover he has become 

black in which Melvin Van Peebles movie? 

31. Which David Lynch film features the line, ‘Dick Laurent is dead’? 

32. Who played the title role in Drugstore Cowboy? 

33. Who composed the scores for Magnolia and Eternal Sunshine of the 

Spotless Mind? 

34. Which veteran movie mobster appeared in Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket? 

35. ‘Good time to pick … Bad day to pick’ was the tagline for which drugfuelled 

black comedy? 

36. Which Alexander Payne film takes place around the vineyards of California? 

37. Two disaffected New York ‘hipsters’ take a Hungarian immigrant on a road 

trip in which Jim Jarmusch movie? 

38. Name the two musicians who starred in Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop. 

39. Which bomb-disposal thriller was written by war correspondent Mark Boal? 

40. Who played the title role of A Woman under the Influence? 

41. Which American independent director made his debut with Speaking 

Directly in 1975? 

42. Who directed Re-Animator, From Beyond and Stuck? 

43. A barber wants to be a dry-cleaner in which Coen Brothers movie? 

44. Who wrote the comic book on which Sin City was based? 

45. Which French band composed the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin 

Suicides? 

46. Eddie Adams and Jack Horner are characters in which Paul Thomas 

Anderson drama? 

47. Robert De Niro plays Johnny Boy in which Martin Scorsese movie? 

48. Who starred as an advertising executive under the influence of LSD in The Trip? 

49. Which documentary dealt with a middle-class teacher and parent accused of 

child abuse? 

50. Robert Altman’s Short Cuts was based on short stories by which American 

writer? 


Test Your Knowledge 323



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

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: 

Lone Star (2009) 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 senior in the Film Studies department 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. 




Matt Delman is a junior 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 writing. 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.

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. 



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, Generation-X slackers 

and homicidal maniacs 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 

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Directory of World Cinema: American Independent 9781841503684 

Directory of World Cinema: American Independent eISBN 9781841503851 � �� 

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