Raspberry Revolution

Bruce LaBruce is a funny motherfucker. The other night my roommate and I watched The Raspberry Reich, which I hadn't seen before - surprisingly, Netflix has it! Where Otto: or, Up with Dead People is sort of a softcore porn gay zombie movie with satirical and political underpinnings, Raspberry Reich is more of the sort of film Andy Warhol may have made about midway through his film career if he had been working in East Berlin in the early 2000s and simultaneously more overtly political and more hardcore pornographic than Warhol ever was.

There's no denying it's a very homoerotically - no, homosexually - arousing film, and at the same time, I found it more entertaining than I expected. There were definitely moments where I felt, "LaBruce is just using the appearance of political subtext to satisfy his desire to see cute 'straight' young dudes get it on with each other." Well, no harm there, imho. BLB obviously has the same taste in guys that I do. The film is replete with hypersexualized Marxist propaganda and slogans such as "Out of the bedrooms and onto the streets!", "Heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses!" and "The Revolution is my boyfriend!" Of course, historically in Communist countries pornography has been outlawed and repressed, but that would only enhance its usefulness as a talisman of the sort of rebellion and revolution yearned and struggled for by the film's characters (particularly the hilarious Gudrun, portrayed by Susanne Sachße, who is much like the figure of Medea Yarn - an anagram of Maya Deren - in Otto.)

No doubt about it, this is fun stuff, bridging the gap between art and hardcore porn, with a heavy dollop of radical socialist politics thrown in. Not everyone's cup of tea, no doubt. I won't be recommending it to mum any time soon. But somehow, despite the explicit sexual sequences, I never found it more than...innocently charming. If you enjoy/can stomach films such as Shortbus, Caligula, Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom, Warhol films like Flesh and Chelsea Girls, and early John Waters movies like the infamous Pink Flamingos, this may work for you. If not, just play it safe and read about it here.

As for my own attitude, Perry Farrell summed it up best years ago: Nothing's shocking.

Art: it's on your plate and in your yard

I'm relieved/pleasantly surprised to be seeing rooms in the Mission / Castro / Upper Market area of the City that I should be able to afford. I was originally aiming for N. Oakland/Berkeley area, but if I can live right in the City, why not? Of course, it'll be a room, not an apartment, but that's fine to start until I get my college-grad job and can move on up.

My conception of the boundaries of art and creativity has been expanding lately, as a result of living here, and seeing Cousin's landscaping work, the way he's built an empire of real estate here in this tropical paradise, the way he takes flowers from the yard and arranges them into beautiful living indoor sculptures. Five acres of land are a giant green canvas to him. Although I have been painting, I'm beginning to look beyond the edges of a canvas and thinking of new forms of creativity. I'm starting to understand Warhol's statement that "business is the best art." I made an experimental stir fry last night out of things left in the crisper and it came out good, and I thought "this is art, and it's art you can eat." It's more useful than a painting on a wall, although of course, it also has a much shorter shelf life, so there's the trade-off, I suppose. The little tree Cuz trimmed into a martini (complete with pimento-stuffed olive on a giant toothpick) at the Hana house is art, on a larger scale than I've thought of before.

Now when I look at paintbrushes and palettes I'm starting to see garden shears, sickles and weed-eaters instead.

Hat Party / acting / Mercury vs. Village Voice

The Hat Party was fun, but the after-party crowd didn’t turn out. Neither did several of the people I went to the trouble of putting on the guest list. (Grrrrrrrrrr. I’m not mad at Vicky, though. She had a valid excuse, plus she’s going to let me store my boxes in her basement until I can have them shipped to San Fran, which is a lifesaver.) It was exciting until 10 or 11pm, then tapered off sharply, and I left around 12:30. Got great footage of the performers and the hat contest. Seventh and Element showed up early and made quite an entrance, since Element was wearing nothing but a leather harness and black jockstrap, and shaking his bare ass on the dance floor. I was glad when they appeared, though, ‘cause the party needed that extra push into un-inhibition. Sean and LeeAnn both snapped mass photos. The cute go-go boy from last year wasn’t there, they had other ones instead. I met a girl named Alison, Baby LeStrange’s friend, who is a film editor and photographer and gave me her card. Also a guy named Gregor, a former Silverado bartender, with whom I traded old memories of the City Nightclub and Portland back in the day. He said when My Own Private Idaho was filming River and Keanu would come to the City and Keanu would smoke pot in the bathroom constantly and River was “a weird guy.” (He’s also the first person I fell in love with, before Dylan, and before Ben Whishaw, unless you count Krystal Capps, but that was a different, platonic sort of love.)

Joel showed up after 10pm and said he loved the way Art Police turned out. He said every time Justin was on screen it made him laugh, and that Emie has the quality of a silent movie star – those big, expressive doe eyes. (“You should make a silent film with her.”) He also praised my editing, saying “You created spaces that didn’t exist.” It’s true that editing is where the magic really happens: you can take a bad movie and make it a good one through editing, that’s how potent it is to the final mix. Kirk said I should check into doing some community theater when I get to San Francisco, which is something I was already considering. Acting will help bring out my emotions more. I’m already starting to come alive again. I feel like the last eight years or so have been a slow recovery from the time I almost died from drugs, and for a long time after that I was in a sort of semi-zombified state, half alive you might say, which is why I related so much to Andy Warhol (post-assassination attempt Warhol, I mean). But I think I’ve finally made a full recovery. And corny as it may sound, it’s a certain English actor I’m obsessed with that brought me the final step back to being fully alive. Because if you lack the ability to love you can’t be full alive as a human being.The moment I first saw “Brideshead Revisited” in the theater it instantly became one of my favorite movies of all time. I’m going to do a series of expressive portraits of Ben when I get to Maui, I’ve decided. I did a preliminary drawing last night, and it came out really well. I think I’ll send it to Ben, in fact. I believe I am actually friends with him on MySpace.

Yesterday after seeing "Sunshine Cleaning" Joel and I had lunch at the Sunshine Cafe (where I had one of the worst gyros I've ever eaten and a semi-decent peanut butter cookie) and I brought up newspapers, saying I'd like to find one to write for in San Fran. I said the Village Voice would be my ideal, and Joel said the VV is only so revered and important because it's in New York, "If the Mercury was in New York it would be the Village Voice," he said, and I said I thought most of the writing in the VV is better than what's in the Mercury - the Stranger might be a better comparison - and I went off on the relentless snarkiness of the Mercury, and Joel said he likes that their reviews of bad movies are brutal, just tearing the film to shreds, but I said yes, they do that well, but they don't have the OTHER side of it. Let's say I wanted to write a review of "Brideshead Revisited," a film that truly moved me, that I think is beautiful and the highest cinematic art. I want to write a review that expresses that in a sincere, passionate, truthful way. And the sort of review I would write about a movie I loved wouldn't fit in the Mercury. They're too concerned with proving their coolness by being cynical and snarky to genuinely and unselfconsciously praise the beauty of a film. That is a LAME definition of cool and not one I will ever accept. I want to write for a paper where I can express the full range of my responses to art without tailoring them for a mentally deficient or emotionally lopsided audience. If you've read my film reviews in Just Out, you know I can decimate a shitty movie with the best of them, but that is hardly the range of my abilities.

All I care about is telling the truth as I see it.

I ran into Cliff at PSU yesterday – little Cliff who I made “Pestilence” with last year for our video class with Holly Andres. He said, “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else?” I guess I copied him on the email I sent out before I left for Glacier. Melanie arrives late Thursday night, and Lisa next Tuesday (St. Patrick's Day), and then it's only a week until I'm leaving on a jet plane for the islands! Oh, joy! My adult life begins NOW.

Bad News!

It is with some reluctance that I put this link up before I have Art Police finished and viewable on YouTube/Vimeo, because this little film, "Bad News," is very much a B side to Art Police, and started as almost an afterthought, but I guess it's funny enough to show people. Especially now that I've cut out the most embarrassing bits.

Actually, it's still kind of embarrassing, but if others can find amusement at my expense, I guess I regard that as sort of a charity duty that I perform for other humans.

I should probably add a disclaimer about how some of the commentary I issue here, which is excerpted from my writing collection, is satirical and tongue-in-cheek. Then again, a lot of it does reflect things I've thought or that I feel on various topics. It's about 50% scripted, 50% improv with Emie bringing her special blend of off-the-cuff belligerence to the proceedings. She stole the show. But I let her steal it. If I was Andy Warhol she would be one of my superstars.

The Hat Party is one week from today and I'm in one of the frenzies of packing, cleaning, getting shit done that always follows a lazy interlude of irresponsibility.

Milk and snow

Early afternoon yesterday I was starting my day slow when all of a sudden I looked outside and it was snowing! Again! Big, thick flakes coming down heavy. At that very moment I had just decided to go and see Milk, finally, and had a half hour to get to the Fox Tower before it started. I lashed on my hiking boots and dashed to the MAX station and got to the theater just as previews were starting. (A MATINEE is $8.25 now? Jesus allmighty, being a journalist has spoiled me.)

So, then, Milk. It’s not Brideshead Revisited, but it’s pretty good. (They’re verrrrry different films anyway, so that’s not a fair comparison, but it’s on my mind since I finally got my DVD copy of Brideshead a couple days ago! I’m watching it with Dylan on the 20th, the day before I film Art Police.) Sean Penn does a great job as Milk. James Franco is hot, although his character suddenly disappears about halfway through the film with no explanation that I heard, only to reappear just as suddenly closer to the end. Next to Penn, Josh Brolin’s performance may be the best in the film, albeit in service of the “villain” of the film, the guy who shoots Milk. (Hard to believe this is the guy who played Mikey’s older brother Brand in The Goonies so long ago!) There was a subplot involving Milk’s latino lover that was pretty annoying, the character is written as an obnoxious, childish drama queen who locks himself in a closet at a party because people aren’t nice to him – ugggh. The best scenes were the ones in which Milk speaks to and connects with his crowd in the Castro after some police action or political upheaval that has them buzzing like a stirred ant-pile. A lot of the script was kind of melodramatic and contrived, and I think I understand why Gus has shied away from being overtly political for so long – it doesn’t suit him. He’s much more at home being literary and cinematic and poetic – I have that same sensibility, actually. Music or films that are stridently political never lift me as high as peoples’ personal narratives when they have an elegiac quality to them (and I’m back to Brideshead!) I am interested in individual human response and experience and politics smashes all that flat and says “individuals are not important, what is important is the larger picture.” But it isn’t hard to see how Milk fits into a moment in history that’s happening right now and it’s obviously a labor of love on Van Sant’s part.

After the movie I went home (cold rain now, snow gone), surrendered to Taco Bell, then interviewed Kevin Reedy, the author of The Best Nonreligious Quotes Ever. I can tell when I conduct a smashing interview and this one was smashing. Totally smooth, no awkward moments, I had my questions prepared, but left the script when we just started talking, and I was able to effortlessly switch between asking him questions and relating my own experience to his responses. I said he needs some quotes from Andy Warhol and Virginia Woolf for his website and that I would pick some out and submit them. (I also suggested “Nothing is funnier than humor” for the humor section which is MINE!) They printed their book P.O.D. through LightningSource and I picked his brain a little about that, so in addition to getting what I needed for the article, I gleaned some more advice that I can use for my own book.

Joel came over to buy my DVD player and we ended up watching a 3-hour movie, one of his favorites: The Right Stuff, from 1983. It really didn’t look that old, if I was guessing I’d think it was made in the 90s. It’s definitely a guys’ film, or rather a boys’ film: reminded me of being a lot younger, like in the Mt. Rainier days. The script and acting both went awry at certain points, but it won a bunch of Oscars for things like editing and score and other technical things, and it deserved them. I’ve heard it described as “the intelligent man’s Top Gun.” Sam Shepard looks like a melange of four other celebrities – Matt LeBlanc from Friends, Val Kilmer, and a couple others whose names escape me. Ed Harris has the youthful face and glowing blue eyes of a baby or a little boy even though he’s a balding man. Anthony called to say he and J. have left Bora Bora and will be in San Fran now until shortly before I leave Portland, he said while they were away their dog attacked their neighbor’s dog and tore part of its ear off and other damage and I said, “So your dog won?” but I really wish they were cat people, I hate aggressive, violent dogs and I sure am gonna miss Lucy, even on Maui.