Killer Condom (1996): Gay Horror coming out of the closet

Killer Condom (1996)
dir: Martin Walz

In 1996, gay cinema was finally starting to come into the mainstream, having been led by the 1-2 drag punch of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Finally, emboldened by the success of these 2 drag movies, queer cinema was making its way out of the art house and into the world of the genre.

In America, we saw the release of Bound, and The Birdcage. And, in Germany, Martin Walz made the first gay horror comedy satire that also had origins in comic books, Killer Condom. Based off the comic book of the same title by Ralf Konig, Killer Condom sent up cop movie tropes and horror tropes in a manner not much seen outside of Grindhouses. That it was also a satire of American politics and moralities made it that much more delectable.

Killer Condom is actually a misnomer. The actual title is Kondom des Grauens of Condom of Horrors. The titular condom never kills anybody. It just bites off their cocks. And, the movie delivers on condom violence in the first scene, when a college professor is forcing a student to have sex in the seedy Hotel Quickie, when the condom he puts on bites off his johnson.

Turns out, there was a plague of johnson removal in the Hotel Quickie that night, with four guys getting their penii removed, mostly in front of prostitutes. Detective Mackeroni, a Sicilian gay man played by Udo Samel, a German edition of Bob Hoskins, is on the case as he's a frequent customer at Hotel Quickie, having a predilection for young rent boys. And, while investigating, he picks up a new conquest, Billy...and also has an encounter with the Killer Condom who bites off his right nut while going after his 12+" pecker.

What follows is a send up of every hardboiled cop cliche. Mackeroni can't convince his boss that this is actually all being done by a condom. The boss yells and screams at him. His partner is a mismatched tall, lanky, straight homophobe. Mackeroni has to deal with an old flame, Babette (formerly Bob), who is a drag queen that used to be a cop. Mackeroni also has the new romance with Billy to come to terms with since he has walled off his emotions due to the hard life of New York City. There's even a visiting politician, Dick McGovern, who is a hard right-wing conservative who has flings on his travels, and who loses his dick from a condom that uses a rubber ducky as a diving board.

Then there's the condom itself. A cute white condom that giggles, squeaks, and makes all sorts of adorably humorous sounds, until it turns into a tube with teeth and becomes a grotesque throat of violence. I would be neglect if I didn't mention that H.R. Giger was the Creative Consultant for the film. Yes, that H.R. Giger. Which makes the film kind of beautifully seedy.

What really sets this movie apart from it's usual horror movie is that the morality it espouses is the opposite of the usual horror movie conservative bent. Yes, gays and hookers are punished in the course of the movie, but those punishments are always seen as wrong. By the end, Killer Condom has a pro-gay, sex positive message in the form of a finale sermon. Not only that, it sets itself up against the Religious Right which had been given a voice by the Republicans since the 1980s. Truly, this is a movie that is intended to piss off the homophobes.

Sure, some of the jokes are well-worn, with a setup that recalls the satirical intentions of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. Some of the humor also comes from insider gay knowledge, as in an amazing use of the Hanky Code that heterosexuals may not understand the set up for. And, at 107 minutes it is a bit long in the tooth, even though it's always doing something interesting throughout the course of those 107 minutes. But, gay horror movies have rarely been this much campy fun. And, really, when was the last time you saw a horror movie about condoms that had 2 distinct Hitchcock references, and a scene that was like a more real life scene from Cruising. Fortunately, stateside, Troma was able to see that Killer Condom was actually releasable, and they still have it available.

Freeway (1996): A Leftist Feminist Screed...by accident?

Freeway (1996)
dir: Matthew Bright

As some personal background, I have a history with this movie. This movie came out when I was a developing teenager. I think I remember it playing for all of a week in my market. It got rave reviews from both of my local newspapers, 2 thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert, and everybody was commenting on how the movie was an overly-violent, tarted-up, foul-mouthed blackly comic modern exploitation take on the Big Bad Wolf fable.

Of course, I had to see it.

By this time, I had already been absorbing early John Waters and knew my way about some of the midnight screeds if not the 70s exploitation genre. But, still, Freeway blew me away. I rented this movie on VHS the first week it was out, and watched it twice before returning it. This was the type of balls-out black comedy that I'd been looking for.

It wasn't until recently when I really started looking at it as the ground-breaking work that it actually is. There is so much bubbling under the take-no-prisoners surface, but it gets coated in every bit of slick bleakness that it all you see is the black-as-night sugar coating, and not the radically political underbelly that Matthew Bright has concocted, inadvertently or intentionally.

Now, Matthew Bright was a person with ties to some of the Hollywood alternatives. He had been a writer and actor in Forbidden Zone, directed by Richard Elfman in part to highlight Oingo Boingo, whose leadership Richard had just passed to Danny Elfman, his brother. He had also scripted Guncrazy, the Drew Barrymore vehicle by Tamra Davis, wife of Mike D of the Beastie Boys and director of CB4.

Matthew Bright had ties. With Freeway, he made the move to also being a director, and scored an executive producer in Oliver Stone. And, with Freeway, Matthew Bright made the only movie that has any sort of quality, or at least mass appeal. It's hard to determine just how much of this movie is Matthew Bright's and how much is Oliver Stone's, especially given Bright's later works, Ted Bundy, Freeway 2, and Tiptoes. Yes, THAT Tiptoes.

Freeway is interesting in that it is possibly one of the most radically progressive scripts to ever come out of even the indie world with one of the most exploitative features even in the post-Tarantino world.

Bright took a Brothers Grimm cautionary tale of Red Riding Hood, and made it more adult. We're introduced to Vanessa Lutz, a high schooler, as she is being taught to read the sentence "The cat drinks milk." When she finally manages to figure it out, she makes out with her black fiance, Chopper, as a reward. The next scene introduces the audience to her mother prostituting herself on the street, and her stepfather smoking crack in the motel room they reside in. And, in the third scene, Vanessa is watching TV with her stepfather when the local news does a story on the I-5 Killer, who has been raping and killing teenage girls up and down the freeway.

Matthew Bright engages in one of the most effective storytelling setups ever. The main character is an illiterate Southern female criminal who is in an interracial relationship, her mother is a meth-addicted whore, her father is out of the picture, her stepfather is a crack-smoking pedophile, and there is a killer on the loose. Within minutes, her mother is pinched, the cops take away her parents, she cuffs the child welfare lady, and takes off for her grandmother's house with a basket of beer and a gun from her boyfriend who is also killed.

On the freeway, her car breaks down, and in walks Bob Wolverton, who is a school psychiatrist who probes her brain, then degrades her. He assaults her until she manages to grab the gun and take back the situation, and shoots Bob...who survives. And then they go through the court systems a bit before Bob is exposed as a pederast, and everybody ends up at her grandmother's house where Bob has killed the grandma, and is set to kill Vanessa.

Matthew Bright has created a movie with so many political issues.

First, Freeway is feminist. Sure, it's written by a man and has a male perspective. And, Matthew Bright's commentary is totally one of the most disturbing thing that has ever been put to disc, with Bright constantly perving over the bodies of the females in the movie, saying that this film is his "Ode to girls."  Which, *shudder*. I don't know if it is a joke, but he's just sounding creepy.  However, this is totally one of the feminist movies of the 1990s. Vanessa Lutz is a female who can only be a female. She is given agency, aggression, and is a victim of a system that is set up against her, but does not allow herself to be victimized. She accepts help when it is necessary, but otherwise, she's never a damsel-in-distress, nor is she a gender-neutral character. Vanessa Lutz is a street-smart girl who has a brutal sense of morality, but she does have a functioning sense of morality.

Which is more than most of the men in the movie have. Bob Wolverton is a rapist and a murderer. Both of the detectives think that she's a lying criminal because of her past of being a shoplifter, firebug, and was pinched for soliciting. Her stepfather is a lazy shit who molests her while her mother is out being a prostitute. Yet, the moral center is this strong female character who constantly looks after herself in a system that has been aimed against her.

Freeway is also progressive in sociopolitical ways as well. Much like the earlier Pink Flamingoes, whose opening song is actually used in the first scene of Freeway, Matther Bright is engaging in what most of polite society would call the dregs. This is a girl who came from a broken trailer trashy home, whose mother split from the father after she splashed chemicals on grandma's face. Her family is addicted to drugs and gets rent vouchers. These are ALL of the conservative hot button issues of how society is falling to the bottom.

Bright is also using these characters to contrast with the characters of Bob and his wife. Mrs. Wolverton is constantly shown in white and gold, which was in fashion with the yacht club elite. They live in a multi-level house in the suburbs, and own an SUV. They have a big yard, and basically have a lot of money. These are the "respectable" people, who even on television get called "heroes." Yet, Mrs. Wolverton is out for Vanessa's blood, and Bob is a serial rapist and murderer.

Freeway isn't a type of script that comes along all that much, because it is also a vital smooth black comedy which masks all of this through an over-the-top tonality that makes it feel as light as 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, except hilarious. The last movie I can think of that had a strong female in the face of adversity and a focus on treating the poor as people of a certain morality, was the sour but great Frozen. Strong female characters are rare, especially unconditionally strong females. Movies like Gravity are being praised as Feminist because it is about a female who carries the whole damn movie, but this is a female who almost kills herself and has to conjure a male voice to give her strength. Not Vanessa. She may be troubled, but she doesn't need a man to give her strength. It is all female.

In turn, this movie may have benefited from being partically produced by Oliver Stone, whose fingerprint might actually be on this film. It is in the energetic phase of Stone's filmmaking, such as Natural Born Killers and U-Turn. The frequent jokes, visual puns (such as Freeway Entrance with a sign saying No Motorized Bikes immediately after Chopper being killed), aggressive people, moral amorality, and inversion of meaning have tones that seem to be founded in Stone's past as much as Bright's past. And, given Bright's "this is my ode to girl" commentary, one is left to wonder if it is more of Stone's movie.

But, in any case, Freeway is an amazing one-of-a-kind bullet of sexy violent leftism. It's almost a progressive screed saying "think of the children." It's fast, hilarious, smart, and brutal. Bright would never create a film of such nerve again.

Postscript: keep your eye on the jewelry, as that's almost a story unto itself. Vanessa starts off with a necklace that says "Foxy Lady" while also having stuffed teddy bear earrings. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wolverton is introduced with these earrings that look like a tchotchke cabinet of maybe religious symbolism puked on her ears. They're seriously the single-most ridiculous pair of earrings I think I have seen in a movie. Everything tones down a bit by the end, but man...those earrings.

Bound (1996): Lesbians Are People Too

Bound (1996)
dir: The Wachowskis

In 1996, when Bound came out, it wasn't entirely unheard of for straight filmmakers to treat gay characters as human beings with depth, emotions, and humanity...but it still was relatively rare. In 1993, we had seen Philadelphia and HBO's ...And The Band Played On. Even still, across the pond, we've always had a friend in Stephen Frears, even if you don't necessarily like his movies. His 1985 breakout movie was the iconic My Beautiful Laundrette, from which Vanilla Ice stole his look (kidding! kind of). Stateside, William Friedkin did The Boys in the Band in 1970 and Cruising in 1980. Hell, there are whole books dedicated to gays in cinema by both straights and gays.

If you noticed, all of the films mentioned have been about gay men. That's because lesbians have had a way different treatment than gay men. Since lesbians are about two women, and most directors are men, the lesbians become objects to be conquered or sexualized, but rarely given depth and humanity. GLAAD had boycotted 1992's Basic Instinct because it featured evil murderous lesbians who were always scheming on how to kill a man. In the old potboilers, lesbians were occasionally given agency and sometimes a lead role, but then were punished for exercising the agency.

And, then there was Bound.

Bound is notable for being the first movie by The Wachowskis. These directors were dynamite in the '90s, toxic in the '00s, and are now controversial in the '10s. In the '90s, they had Bound and The Matrix. In the '00s, they had the two Matrix sequels and Speed Racer. And last year they had Cloud Atlas. But, Bound, man...it's astounding. It shows and delivers on all of the promise that The Wachowskis had when they broke out.

Bound is the condensation of pulp noir novels and cinema with Hitchcock and then distilled into one shiny sleek dirty package of mafia, cash, sex, and murder. With that description, one could be forgiven for thinking it was a Tarantino clone, but The Wachowskis weren't out for ironic shits and giggles, they were out to make the most noir thriller they could. Add in the hottest lesbian sex scene I have ever seen committed to film, and I'll be damned if I can figure out why this movie didn't set the world on fire when it came out. I remember dying to see it in theaters, but it didn't come anywhere near where I lived. This is a movie that should have been gangbusters, but only got $3m. To this day, it had one bare bones DVD release which is in fucking letterbox format, and then got a bare bones treatment from Olive Films last year which added in the animorphic but nothing else.

To give you a sense of this movie's relative stature, let me tell you that this was a lesbian movie made by two then-perceived-as-hetero-male directors that received a GLAAD award for best representation in a film of wide release. This is sort of a major award from a group that largely keeps their eyes out for lesbians being exploited by straight males.

Bound could easily be considered lesbian exploitation. During the hottest lesbian sex scene, the camera completely lingers over both Jennifer Tilly's and Gina Gershon's bodies. Their breasts, hips, stomach, lips, fingers, back. It has the hottest realistic lesbian sex scene I think has ever been committed to a mainstream film. It's intimate, lusty, steamy, and full of heaving body parts. The camera lingers without really exploiting. It sticks on heaving stomachs and fingers going into lips. It does a long tracking shot from the back to the front. And, it is fucking hot.

The Wachowskis aren't really interested in using lesbians as cardboard cutouts on which to present the heterosexual object of lust. The one sex scene is very brief, which has a much much longer foreplay scene full of leaky pipes and tattoos. Instead, the Wachowskis gave their lesbian characters depth, personality, and an actual fleshed out life. Gina Gershon is a lesbian who lusts, trusts, has problems with trusting, has devotion, an instinct to rescue, a past, damage, and debates her own motivations. Jennifer Tilly also has deception, depth, changes throughout the film, and plays the part to a T. All the male characters are relatively static and have severely less depth. It's not their film.

I haven't really said much about the film itself, with real intent. It is a basic pulp twisty neo-noir about the mob and trying to escape it. Saying much more spoils the fun of discovering the film. I'm sure a lot of people have seen it by now, even though it completely bombed. But, if you haven't, you absolutely need to pick up this advancement of the neo-noir into something transcendent. This was a necessary step in mainstream-ish storytelling for GLBT characters, and it was also a necessary step in the neo-noir genre that would lead to Sin City. Essential Viewing.

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996): Heroics of a Madwoman

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
dir: Mary Harron

Mary Harron got her start in the New Queer Cinema movement with her first feature, I Shot Andy Warhol. It's a semi-fictionalized biopic about radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who actually did shoot Andy Warhol in real life.

Mary Harron became fascinated with the figure of Valerie Solanas in the '90s, working on a PBS documentary series titled "Edge." Since she had some foundational roots in the punk scene, I'm sure that Solanas' radical feminism and her need to make her views explicit appealed to Harron. From her film career, Harron has always been fascinated with women who are unconventional and strong-willed, but ultimately with some deference to the needs of men. She also likes playing with lesbianism in her films, and discovering what that means in a world surrounded by men.

Valerie Solanas is the root of all of Harron's eventual obsessions. Solanas is a lesbian and a feminist who wrote the now famous SCUM Manifesto. In Harron's version of Solanas' life, SCUM stands for Society for Cutting Up Men, but in the Manifesto itself, SCUM is a name for strong rebellious women who are defeating the status quo.

The SCUM Manifesto itself is a semi-satirical cry for women to buck the patriarchal society that had been developed (and was surrounding the 1960s, when the Manifesto was written), and to develop their own society which was reflective of the women's role for love and grooviness.  In the Manifesto, men were responsible for all of the negative violence and aggression in the world, and the women were responsible for making everything even keel and happy. Solanas argues that by eliminating men from society, women can make a cleaner society that won't be as crazy and violent as the one in which she lived.  Which is ironic because she also shot Andy Warhol, and some of the feminist movement took that as a clarion call for violent radical uprising in the US.

In the realm of the New Queer Cinema movement, I Shot Andy Warhol behaves in a manner similar to Swoon, but also keeps things on a more rational narrative.  It starts out with the shooting of Andy Warhol, and then recounts Solanas' story from her abusive childhood (including molestation by her father) through to the shooting, with the majority of the film taking place in New York between 1966 and 1968.

Solanas was a lesbian, hustler, and writer who stumbled into Warhol on accident, in part by way of Candy Darling, She wrote a play titled Up Your Ass, which would probably have worked in the Caffe Cino/Andy Milligan scene, if she hadn't had arrived on it just as the first Caffe Cino burnt down, and she had started to associate with the Warhol crowd, which was also the Cino's undoing. But, according to Harron's film, she wrote it and was dependent on Warhol for producing it. Of course, Warhol was uninterested in the play deeming it "too dirty" and lost his version of the script.

In I Shot Andy Warhol, Solanas became irate that Warhol wouldn't produce the script, and also wouldn't return it, and also wouldn't give her any money for it. Which is all very weird considering she had another copy to peddle, and she could just go get it mimeographed.  But, Harron isn't one for logic in this movie, and instead moves the pawns into a war over this script and money.

Solanas was treated badly by the Warhol "superstars" as she started to become unglued. Now, mind you, even outside I Shot Andy Warhol, the superstars were generally portrayed as selfish drug-addled followers who hated anybody who wasn't in the group...so, it rings of truth. At one point, a follower tells Solanas that she has been "excommunicated." And, she eventually starts writing the SCUM Manifesto, with which she gets a novel deal through Olympia Press.

But, money woes still happen, and Solanas keeps becoming increasingly unglued. She buys a gun, and intends to shoot her publisher. But, instead ends up shooting Warhol. Supposedly over money and/or the script.

The way Harron posed everything, Solanas was a lesbian lost in a man's world where she was rejected by everything for being a hard-edged dyke that rebelled against society. Warhol was modestly accepting, even putting her in a movie of his, but ultimately his rejection of her crazy leads her to shoot him in a statement against the male domination of the society. Or, something. Harron also poses the possibility that the paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis Solanas received after the shooting could have been real, as she started seeing every man as being an obstacle in her path to success.

Harron's view of the Factory scene was that you had to go with its flow, and not rebel. Solanas was an example of that, but Harron also displays this through one brief scene where some gay dude is ranting about the need for gay bars (which is a weirdly modern touch) and is isolated as a result.  Not all of this, however, can be pointed at Harron.  She co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Minahan, who later would go on to write and direct the indie reality-show spoof movie Series 7: The Contenders. And, indeed, that rant may have been based on a modern complaint, but the scene informs fairly simply that outsider viewpoints are discouraged and shockingly segregated.

I Shot Andy Warhol is a mixed bag. It starts with such interesting avant garde techniques, but it slowly becomes normalized. The first few minutes are a wild compendium of the finale, voice overs, family home videos, and flash backs.  At another point, the SCUM Manifesto is read aloud between scenes. But, all of this fades away as the movie becomes more focused on the narrative of Solanas losing her mind, and finally shooting Andy Warhol.

In the end, it's a fairly solid movie. As with most biopics, take the reality with a grain of salt. There is enough fictionalization to make this a pretty crappy beginner's movie to knowing the life of Valerie Solanas. In 2013, Sara Warner published Acts of Gaiety through the U-Mich press, which dedicates its first chapter to Solanas, Up Your Ass, and the Scum Manifesto. It's a damned good read that discusses Warhol, the off-off Broadway theater (including Caffe Cino post-fire), and Solanas' participation in it.

But, if you're just looking to see how Mary Harron and Daniel Minahan interpreted Solanas' life (probably primarily through interviews with the Warhol "superstars"), then this is an interesting movie for you.

Schizopolis (1996): Going Backwards to Re-educate

Schizopolis (1996)
dir: Steven Soderbergh

I introduced myself to Schizopolis in quite possibly the best way possible.  I was doing a sleep study drug test for research, and had to stay in a psych ward for 72 hours.  I didn't socialize much at the psych ward, and was the only person there for "research."  So, I watched movies and tv on DVD all day.  Schizopolis was one of those movies.  And, in my mind, there is no other way to experience this movie, which is quite possibly the closest experience anybody could ever have of a nervous breakdown without actually having one themselves.  And, yet, this is only the surface of the movie.

I'm sure you all know Steven Soderbergh.  This was a man who came on strong with his first movie, Sex, Lies and Videotape, but got sucked into indie Hollywood hell of a string of rather uninspired crappy non-movies for 7 years.  Then, after he divorced his wife, he came out with Schizopolis, which is simultaneously a student film by a then-not-so-major director, a clarion call for help, and a learning process.  After this movie, his career rejuvenated and he started making popular and/or award-winning movies, and has continued to do so to this day.

Schizopolis is the story of three nights and days in the life of three characters told from different points of view.  The first two characters are Fletcher Munson (Steven Soderbergh) and his wife, Mrs Munson (real-life ex-wife Betsy Brantley).  After the death of Munson's co-worker, Fletcher is assigned to write a speech for his boss, a pseudo-L. Ron Hubbard type for the book Eventualism, but struggles with it.  His wife, however, has been having an affair with our third character Dr Jeffrey Korchek (Steven Soderbergh, again)...who is also trying to seduce Attractive Woman #2 (Betsy Brantley, again).  As the days go by, and the speech gets finished, and the affair is totaled, Schizopolis finally gives us a fake fantasy ending of happiness that it doesn't share with the real life couple.

Intertwined in this are two separate tales, whose tales move linearly out of sync with the Soderbergh stories.  The first is that of Elmo Oxygen, a pest control agent who goes door to door to seduce women, and is hired by a reality TV show team to assault people.  The second is that of Nameless Numberhead Man who is unhappily married to Attractive Woman #1, because she used to be fat but has lost all of her weight. So, while she's having affairs with the likes of Elmo and possibly Dr. Korchek, he's seducing an insurance agent who is much larger in size.

Soderbergh structures Schizopolis in 3 acts, each act telling the same set of days from a different perspective.  It's very Go before Go.  But, it is post Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.  The first act is told strictly from Munson's point of view, in which he is so bored with his usual marriage that he doesn't even hear their conversations in real sentences.  All he hears is "Generic Greeting" and "Generic Greeting returned".  Basically, the framework of all our routine conversation to maintain our lives, even though it seems inconsequential.  Meanwhile, he has to suffer through work by masturbating in the bathroom, while writing shitty speeches and getting phone calls offering him money to be a mole.  He doesn't even notice that his wife is obviously cheating on him.  And, he barely notices that she left him on the second evening.  Also, in this first section, we first see Elmo seducing women using a Burroughs-esque cut-up nonsensical language.  And, we learn that Nameless Numberhead Man is depressed by his wife.

The second act is told from Dr. Korchek's point of view, which is fairly mundane and straightforward but observatory in ways that Munson's story isn't.  He also acknowledges that this may be the same character but a completely different personality.  At one point, he remarks "I'm having an affair with my wife."  In this section, we learn that Korchek is in love with Mrs. Munson and asks her to move in with him.  But, when she does move in with him, he rejects her out of the possibility that he has fallen in love with Attractive Woman #2.  The second act also has Elmo, now hired by a different reality tv crew, assaulting random people for his show.  And, we watch NNM seduce the rather large secretary as he mildly belittles Attractive Woman #1 for losing weight, telling her to eat something.

The third act is told from Mrs. Munson's point of view, who only hears herself in English.  She hears all the men in different, unsubtitled, foreign languages.  She hears Fletcher in Japanese, Korchek in Italian, and when she reconciles with Fletcher post-Korchek rejection, he is now in French.  The new information presented is that she actually leaves Fletcher.  And, after she is rejected by Korchek, Fletcher comes and rescues her from a coffee shop and they go home together.  They have sex, the speech is finished, and everybody is talking in normal English once again.   The third act is missing Elmo until he shows up in the epilogue.  And, Mrs Munson finds a video tape meant for NNM which is really large women who are having sex with small men.

So, in reality, this is a screaming reality check by Soderbergh for himself.  He started shooting with no script, and this is the movie that came straight out of his head.  It may seem like it is a psychotic movie about personalities and points of views that is further confused and obfuscated by Soderbergh playing two parts and Brantley playing two parts.  It may seem like the whole point of the film is story as therapy.  Especially when you add in that the speech sections came straight out of notes from executives on Soderbergh's scripts.  But, really, I don't think that was the purpose of this movie at all.

Schizopolis reminds me of Man Bites Dog, in that this was a movie that really wasn't about its subject.  Man Bites Dog was a movie about the making of movies.  Sure, it happened to be a movie about the making of a movie about a serial killer.  But, it was intended to be a movie about making movies.  It just had a sick sense of humor. Likewise, Schizopolis is mainly a training ground for Soderbergh to experiment on the effect of cinematic points of view, and in turn, to teach the audience on how to watch movies.  That it is also a bit of masturbation on affairs and marriage, just after he divorced his ex-wife, is incidental mind-fuckery.

Soderbergh was teaching himself what a point of view was in a film, and how the different ways you tell a story can have different effects on the story itself.  Since we don't follow Mrs. Munson at all in the first act, we don't really know that she's having an affair, even though the audience suspects it.  We see how following this character affects what the audience knows about the story, and then when we follow Dr Korchek, we learn more about the affair.  And, when we follow Mrs. Munson, we get the final pieces.

In the process, the audience learns that the language to the scene is incidental, even though the language used is far from incidental.  While one character is hearing things as a generic script filled with replacement place holders, the other is hearing the same conversation in two completely different languages.  Teaching us that we may not actually be hearing each other even if we think we're listening.  Also, teaching the audience that the words in plays and movies barely even need to exist as long as we learn the various attitudes of the characters through their dialogue.

Where the A-story is mainly an experiment in structure and form, the B-stories (that of Elmo Oxygen and NNM) are an experiment in style.  Elmo jumps from genre to genre.  From weird detective movie to sexpot movie to 60s drug out movie to reality tv show to, eventually, assassination thriller.  NNM is a straight up generic romance. Each different style is showcasing how every movie structures their camera shots, lighting, and editing to achieve a different feel for every scene.

Schizopolis played at Cannes to a legendarily bad reception.  Nobody knew what to make of it.  It played as a "surprise" film, and had no credits. The title is presented as a word on the shirt of a bottomless man, and ends with a single frame blip of a copyright. The movie, moving extremely fast with its overly complicated plot, operates at a pace where it is years ahead of its first-time audience at every scene.  Just as an audience thinks it may have caught up, wham its a different movie.  People were still catching up on the timeline experimentation that was Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.  Variety had a particularly scathing and clueless review, saying "No narrative is developed on a comprehensible level, nor is any single idea fleshed out to meaningful dimensions."

As I said, though, Schizopolis is a training ground for both Soderbergh and for audiences alike (even though nobody saw Schizopolis).  In 1997, Tarantino would reuse this type of multiple viewpoint narration for his movie Jackie Brown, and Soderbergh would totally fuck timelines up with Out of Sight in 1998.  In fact, five of his next six movies would deal with points of view or timeline fuckery that Soderbergh developed here in Schizopolis.  Those movies: Out of Sight, The Limey, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven, and Full Frontal.  They also dealt with genre styling in a way that Soderbergh developed in Schizopolis.

There are a lot (a lot) of valid criticisms of Schizopolis. It's intentionally confusing. It's too fast to keep up with. It's too compressed with too many ideas. It's pretentious and self-indulgent as all get out. It's amateurish. It feels like a student film thesis project. It's disconnected. It's obvious. It's obtuse. In a sense, this movie doesn't work for a lot of people not willing to put time or energy into a film.  On the other hand, it is a blisteringly funny take on relationships, communication, and how to watch movies in general without feeling lecture-y about any of it.  This is one of The Other Films' Required Viewings.