Pierrot Lunaire (2014): A Woman Playing A Man Playing A Woman Playing A Man

Pierrot Lunaire (2014)
dir: Bruce LaBruce

SIFF 2014 Film #11
(Best of Festival)

Pierrot Lunaire is the Bruce LaBruce that you’ve come to know, expect, and love. But, it’s not mere political statement with hardcore sexuality. Pierrot Lunaire is a full frontal assault on your sensabilities that doesn’t ever let you get comfortable as you’re watching for its full 51 minute run time.

Did I just say 51 minutes? Yes I did. Being under an hour, Pierrot Lunaire barely counts as a film in length, but starts addressing so many different ideas in those 51 minutes that you can’t call it anything but. By the time, Pierre Lunaire is over, the audience will be overstimulated and exhausted.

Pierrot Lunaire is originally a series of 50 French poems by Albert Giraud published in 1884. These poems were translated into the German by Erich Hartleben. In 1912, Arnold Shoenberg created Three Times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud’s “Pierrot Lunaire”, an atonal musical “melodrama” that used speech-singing and a minimal chamber-esque group of musicians. And, finally, Bruce LaBruce decided to completely subvert that whole work in this short-ish film, which uses the Shoenberg work as his foundation, in as much as a subversive work can be further subverted.

Bruce LaBruce reimagined the main character, Pierrot, as a transsexual, a woman pretending to be a man. I say pretending because it's unclear if Pierrot identifies as a woman but dresses as a man because lesbians were generally not accepted, or if Pierrot truly identifies as a man.  Pierrot has a female lover, Columbine, who believes that Pierrot is a man. When Pierrot meets Columbine’s patrician father, the father figures out that Pierrot is a girl posing as a man, and prevents them from seeing each other. As a result, Pierrot embarks on a journey to covet and gain a real live penis for himself.

LaBruce tells the story in a manner similar to the intent of the original stagings of the play. The film is divided into the 21 different poems, each with a title. Each section of 7 poems are divided by modern old school club techno that sounds straight out of a German leather bar. In addition, LaBruce tells the story of Pierrot in two different stagings that he edits together: a cabaret-esque live stage staging, and a traditionally cinematic staging. LaBruce uses a variety of silent film techniques (a la Guy Madden) to pull all of the sections into a semi-cohesive whole, and even has title cards detailing the action on screen, while the poems undercut the action of the film because they have little to do with the onscreen action…or maybe they have everything to do with the action. I'm not entirely sure.

To say that I fully understand Pierrot Lunaire after a single screening would be to lie. This is a film that assaults you on multiple fronts. The music is old-school atonal classical with multi-chromatic poems being read/sang in a variety of tones that ranges from whispering to shrieking. The aural sensibilities never get adjusted from the deep bass of the techno that opens to the atonal apocalypse of the main music. Then trying to process the music and the poems with the multi-level on-screen action, plus having silent-film title cards. It’s a crime on your brain.

For me, Pierrot Lunaire will probably stand up on rewatches. Or, it may possibly fall apart under its own pretension. I don’t know. I know that I will enjoy figuring out what it means. It’s a puzzle box of an arthouse film. I’m not sure if LaBruce is saying something vast about gender, or just fucking with us (are we ever sure of that?). Even if this movie is all style with little substance, it will still be fun as hell to watch and rewatch.

Best of Festival.

The Midnight After (2013): The Best Philip K Dick Adaptation that Wasn't

The Midnight After (2013)
(aka Lost on a Red Minibus to Taipo)
dir: Fruit Chan

SIFF 2014: Film 2

This is the second film I’ve seen that came from a web story/novel, the first being the rather insane John Dies at the End, which was a novel originally published as a web serial. The Midnight After is based on a web novel by Mr. Pizza on the internet forum HKGolden. And, yes, it’s as insane and episodic as John Dies at the End.

The Midnight After is a Hong Kong take on Philip K Dick’s book Ubik, with a lot of changes. A group of 17 people on a minibus go through a tunnel late at night and end up in a world totally devoid of humans except themselves. As they realize something might be amiss, suddenly they start dying strange deaths. A lot of spoilery things happen, including a spectacular musical number set to a famous David Bowie song. But, I don’t want to give away much more than that.

Half of the fun of The Midnight After is trying to figure everything out.  But, ironically, if you find it fun, you’ll also find the final scenes incredibly frustrating. The other half of the fun is the batshit insanity that is in The Midnight After. The characters include a spiritual psychic who sells insurance, a constantly bickering married couple, a couple of young punks named Airplane and Crazy Glue, and a druggie who is constantly on cocaine. They ping off each other, come back together, and gather to meet.

I found The Midnight After to be a helluva ride. I wanted more. The ending leaves you wanting more, in fact. It’s drama and science fiction and comedy and horror and musical and everything you could ever want in a movie all thrown in for a single experience. At 120 minutes, it almost runs a little long, and to be fair the movie could have a couple of minor edits where about 5 minutes might be removable. But, to niggle on 5 minutes when the rest of the movie is just a powerhouse rocket where the pacing ebbs and flows with a psychotic mastery seems petty at best.

The Midnight After doesn’t say anything deeper about life other than “Life can move pretty fast sometimes, and if you don’t appreciate it, you might miss it” and “Be good to each other.” But, that doesn’t matter because the film is all about the experience. It’s a blast, it’s fun, it’s something rather interesting, and gives you some stuff to chew on as you’re watching, so you won’t be bored. Puzzled, sure…but who doesn’t like a good puzzle?

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970): Using camp to dissect the woman's picture

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
dir: Russ Meyer

Boobs.

I think every review of a Russ Meyer film should begin with a word about breasts. Tits, mammaries, gazongas, huge tracts of land. Because, if there is one thing that Russ Meyer is obsessed with, it's breasts. Ok, well, two things because they do frequently travel in pairs.

However, to say Russ Meyer is obsessed with breasts is not to admonish him, nor to diminish his work as purely misogynistic exploitation. Far from it. Russ Meyer frequently enhances his love of the large chest with an equal love of the strong woman. His movies simultaneously exploit women in order to lust over their bodies and hold up women as stronger than life human beings who are very capable of surviving life without a man.

After the commercial success of Valley of the Dolls in 1967, 20th Century Fox commissioned Jacqueline Susann to write a sequel to the film, and she titled it Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. She had written the original novel, but had not written the screenplay...and both of her scripts failed to get published. Then, Fox looked to Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert to develop the film.

Ebert and Meyer didn't set out to make a straight-up drama like Valley of the Dolls was. Instead, they used the concept of camp in order to deconstruct Hollywood tropes that existed and would continue to exist in some fashion throughout. They're not subtle either. Making a sexy horror comedy musical drama that is also a satire, they just threw it all in and stirred.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a film about a female rock group from the sticks who go out to Hollywood in order to find success. As they become successful, they succumb to the various trappings of Hollywood, and everything crumbles and turns to shit.

That description is simultaneously an exact overview of the film and a vast oversimplification. All of the trappings of Hollywood they succumb to are generic stock scenarios that usually come with the woman's pictures.

The central rock band is initially called The Kelly Affair, named after the lead singer. The film opens with them playing at a prom, then taking a break to smoke some grass in their van in the parking lot. They come up with the idea to go to Hollywood to find Kelly's estranged Aunt Susan. Well, really, we find out that Kelly's mother was actually the black sheep of the family and was written out of her mother's will, leaving Aunt Susan to inherit the family fortune.

Aunt Susan is actually the editor of some high profile fashion magazine, and is into a really wild party scene. She invites the Kelly Affair to a party at Ronny "Z-Man" Bartell's pad. Z-Man is a rock producer, and takes the Kelly Affair under his wing, renaming them The Carrie Nations, and makes them famous.

Kelly ditches her boyfriend for the love of a muscled surf actor. Aunt Susan tries to give Kelly half of the fortune, but her lawyer really wants the money and tries to stop that from happening. One bandmate falls in love with a law student, cheats on him with a boxer who then beats up the law student. Kelly's boyfriend is seduced by a porn star, gets heavily into drugs and tries to kill himself but becomes a paraplegic. Another bandmate, sleeps with Kelly's first boyfriend, gets pregnant, an abortion, succumbs to drugs, and becomes a depressed lesbian.

The specifics could really have been filled any number of ways, but the result would be the same. The Carrie Nations all succumb to the horrors of their new locale and lose themselves before figuring out that true happiness isn't found in drugs or materialism, but in love. The details are only significant in how they take specific tropes and turn them on their head.

Roger Ebert was, at the time, a relatively new film critic out of Chicago. He had only been working for a couple of years, and seemed a strange choice for a million dollar sequel. But, there had been a shift brewing in Hollywood at the time.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, Hollywood had been working under the Motion Picture Production Code, or the Hays Code, which monitored what content it deemed appropriate for wide release. Depictions of out-of-wedlock sexuality, any homosexuality, cursing, violence, and a whole litany of questionable moral judgments were not allowed by the Hays Code. But, by the late 1960s, the code was getting more and more lax in its enforcement to the point where Hollywood came up with a new system entirely.

In 1968, the MPAA ratings system was born with G, M (which would become GP and then PG), R, and X. 20th Century Fox was eager to test the system, as the public was demanding more and more mature offerings, and hired the breast-obsessed Russ Meyer and the film critic Roger Ebert. At the time, Fox was losing money, and trying out some experimental films. In 1970, it released M*A*S*H*, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and Myra Breckenridge. All experimental films, especially for studio product. BVD and Myra were Fox's June releases, even.

With Fox being embroiled in bitter power struggles, Ebert and Meyer were able to do whatever the hell they wanted. In essence, Ebert and Meyer made the ultimate movie to close out one era of film history and usher in the next. They smashed together the psychedelic genre of the 1960s with the woman's soap opera of the 1950s and the fame picture of all the time, and then added in sex, drugs, violence, alcohol, and even queer sexualities...all amped up to 11. The movie opens with a scene from the finale where a girl is woken up by a gun being thrust into her mouth by an unknown assailant. And, the smash cut to the beginning is from the trigger being pulled.

Ebert and Meyer were satirizing what had come before, and ushering the new cynical genre that would come in the 1970s, as also shown by the X-rated Myra Breckenridge, which would come out the week after. The darkness of the media conglomerates selling false truths were to be explored and openly mocked, through the use of camp.

There is a direct contrast to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with Mahogany, as both of them use the same formula to different ends, but both ending up in camp. Mahogany doesn't realize it is going through camp, but ends up there due to the Sirkian subtexts that Berry Gordy consciously, or unconsciously, added in. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls actively subverts and mocks the formula with an intentionally campy tone inviting the viewer to actively dissect what they're watching as they're watching it.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls makes little sense to most people who don't actively have a sense of its origins. Those who haven't witnessed the tropes, nor seen the formulas, may think that BVD is just a bad movie without realizing it is intentionally over-the-top. However, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls persists to this day as an deep track for those who stumble across its titillating content.

Can't Stop the Music (1980): Gay Panic!

Can't Stop the Music (1980)
dir: Nancy Walker

Manufactured Bands have been around since the dawn of pop music. Bands have been constructed by managers and marketing gurus for ages. If it wasn't completely obvious to anybody, the Village People were certainly one of those pop bands that was crafted by a marketing genius, and were aimed specifically at the gay crowd that frequented the discos.

In case you weren't sure, the Village of the title referred to the then-gayborhood of Greenwich Village in New York City. The people were dressed as gay fetish icons of ultra-masculinity, including a straight-up gay leatherman. One would assume that Can't Stop the Music, a movie created to highlight and feature the Village People, would be queer as a two dollar bill. While it is campy as all hell, it was created to primarily assert the heterosexuality of the individual band members through far too long musical numbers (with one exception).

Can't Stop the Music is the fake origin story of our cinematic heroes the Village People. It tells the story of Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg) getting his big break by playing one of his songs at a disco night, but having the record producer say that he and his vocals weren't interesting enough. Instead of Morell getting to sing on the track, they create the Village People group to record the song and other songs which Morell may write.

Of course, the members of the Village People, by 1980, wanted to assert their heterosexuality, especially David Hodo. In fact, David Hodo gets his own overlong ode to his heterosexuality in the musical number I Love You to Death, which seems to go on and on, but is only 3:39. It probably seems like that because it only has about 15 words in total that get repeated throughout a prancing musical number set in a fantabulous sparkly brothel construction site where Hodo can dance around with a bunch of spangly-dressed women in order to say "Hey, I may be in a gay group, but I love PUSSY!!!" with jazz fingers and uber-macho moustache.

That duality sums up one of the basic problems with Can't Stop the Music. All of the musical numbers, save for Y.M.C.A. (incidentally, the only one of the Village People's actual hits that is in the movie...what the fuck is wrong with these people?!), are focused on showing either how famous they are or how straight they are. At one point near the end, they make a 3:30 commercial for milk with their song Milkshake...where you'll be surprised that the song is only 3:30.

This movie is over 2 hours long, with only a handful of musical numbers. The soundtrack features 6 numbers by The Village People, 2 by David London, and 2 by The Ritchie Family (another producer based group, only female). Probably about 30-40 minutes of this movie is music, and the rest is the god-awful plot with god-awful acting, including Bruce Jenner in short shorts. No, really, that exists. And, the only moment that truly actually calls to the gay culture that gay the Village People fame is the video for Y.M.C.A.

Now, mind you, Can't Stop the Music actually is a PG-rated adventure. But, Y.M.C.A. is all about athletes, exercise, swimming, and bathing...sometimes naked. Yes, Can't stop the Music is a PG-rated film with full frontal male nudity, albeit in fleeting flashes. So, I guess Nancy Walker threw the gay community a bone (entendre intended), and actually gave a few minute of homo-related activity. But, that's about it.

Can't Stop the Music was released in 1980, which is also the year that Cruising came out. Instead of being an counterpoint of gay positivity to Cruising's supposed negative gay stereotyping, Can't Stop the Music shoved the gays back into the closet and ignored everything about it. The problem being that Can't Stop the Music is also not a good movie. At all. It is a resounding failure on all levels, including most of the camp levels. It's barely bad enough to be good. And, by alienating the gay audience, it also alienates itself from the biggest connoisseurs of trashy camp classics. It would have been a slam dunk, if it wasn't so obviously pointed against its biggest audience.

Which is to say that Can't Stop the Music is nearly unwatchable by any standards. Oh, sure its one of the more fun trashy disco musicals, but its not that fun. It's not any good. And, it's way too long to be sustainable. That it sold out the gay crowd doesn't help its case. But, it makes a grand case for the excess of the disco era, and how ego can blind you to your failures.

The Devil's Carnival (2012): Aesop's Fables for Goths

The Devil's Carnival (2012)
dir: Darren Lynn Bousman

At a certain point in The Devil's Carnival, I thought "this would be awesome, if I were watching a community of amateurs doing this for free in a tent in the desert." Frequently, it seems like director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw 2-4) called his group together to say "Can you guys come help with this? It'll be fun! Not much money in it though. But, really, I won't take much of your time."

The whole genre of The Devil's Carnival fits Bousman's last film Repo! The Genetic Opera. Bousman's motley group consists of goth-industrial "singers," comic book artists, non-singing actors and actresses, and probably some array of actual burlesque and carnival folks. He had used many of this cast in Repo!, but had more success with the different singers at the focus of Repo!, including the now absent Sarah Brightman. But, without that powerhouse, we're left to listen to a bunch of non-singers warble their way through atonal circus-inspired carnival musical songs.

The Devil's Carnival is merely an excuse to string together three of Aesop's Fables. There is The Dog and His Reflection, The Scorpion and the Frog, and Grief and His Due. Since Aesop's Fables are generally short and to the point, we have to fill time with framing device.

In the real world, there are three characters who are about to die, and actually do die, each representing the three different stories. The first is a guy who locks himself in a bathroom, depressed, and then slits his wrists mourning his son. The second is a woman who is being chased by the cops. And, the third is a woman who is being beaten by her boyfriend. When they all die, they get transported to Hell, where they have to suffer through a short couple of songs based around their respective fables.

The woman being chased by the cops is a thief and always looking for material goods. Her story chases after bigger and bigger jewels, and when she sees a person in a mirror with a large amount of jewels, she dies. The woman being beaten goes from bad boy to bad boy, always trusting even though it doesn't benefit her. And the guy is looking for his dead son, but ultimately finds redemption.

Ultimately, in this movie, women are actually evil. Both women suffer through punishment for their transgressions. The greedy gold digger is also a liar. She doesn't escape. The habitually abused spouse is blamed because she trusts too easily, and her boyfriends are never punished for being bad boys (which, actually, goes against The Scorpion and the Frog, where the Scorpion stings the frog midway across the pond and they both die). But, the suicidal father is forgiven. So, no men are ever punished.

Besides the hideous streak of misogynistic patriarchal moralism, The Devil's Carnival is only passable in flashes. Sometimes, especially when Terrance Zdunich, Nivek Ogre, or Ivan L Moody are on screen, the carnival singing and music actually are sonically acceptable. They have a professional knowledge of tonality and atonality that the rest of the movie seems to not be able to reach with its non-professional singers. The sets are great for an amateur-style setup, creating more of a stagey feeling to it.

Which brings us to the question of "how much community feeling is acceptable?" In my review of Go Fish, I gave a lot of lee-way to the amateur community nature of Go Fish because it felt like a low-budget film that needed to be by a community. Sure actors flubbed lines, probably unintentionally, but it felt more home-style. Yet, for The Devil's Carnival, the amateur but we're trying nature grated on my nerves. Perhaps, it is because I enjoyed Repo! The Genetic Opera on an actual sonic level as well as on an entertainment level, thus my expectation levels were higher. Or, maybe the production levels of low-budget have gotten so professional looking that movies which would have previously looked like Go Fish (in black and white 16mm) now look pseudo-professional. Or, maybe its because I expect more from a director of 8 other films.

But, in any case, I can't get past that feeling like Bousman wants us to forgive the mistakes or off singing in order to really like this community film. It's a really high hurdle. Combine that with the misogyny of the film which condemns all females to hell, and you have a short film that is a bit toxic, and not in the good way.

Six By Sondheim (2013): Editing a Love Letter to Sondheim

Six by Sondheim (2013)
dir: James Lapine
editor: Miky Wolf

It's Christmas, you're sitting around with your family. You probably ate a bit much. But, you may be a bit wary of all the Christmas cheer that has been permeating culture since practically Halloween. A good match for a post-Christmas dinner family watch is Six by Sondheim, James Lapine's ode to his frequent collaborator, Stephen Sondheim.

But, I want to really open this review by giving a callout to editor Miky Wolf. Because, this movie is an ode to the editor. It is not as much a documentary pieced together by a director, as a montage created on the editing table by a careful culling of just the right quotes from Sondheim and his friends and collaborators to perfectly tell the idealized story of Stephen Sondheim's career throughout the years. The editing is masterful, and defining of how much work an editor needs to do to find the perfect phrase for the perfect section.

Six refers to six songs that Sondheim and Lapine have decided to use to spell the emotions of eras. His first musical as a lyricist, West Side Story, opened with "Something's Coming." Merrily We Roll Around has the song "Opening Doors" about three musical creators trying to get their musical created on Broadway. A Little Night Music brings the first mega-song "Send in the Clowns" to detail how to write for scenes and for specific actors. Follies brings us "I'm Still Here" about the ups and downs of a career. Company gives us "Being Alive" wherein Sondheim claims to have only fallen in love at 60. And, we close out with Sunday in the Park with George's "Sunday" which is a funereal march to forever.

Six By Sondheim isn't a be-all end-all guide to Sondheim. It's an ode to his musical career, which is always what Sondheim will be known for. At The Other Films, we love Sondheim for both his musicals and for his dramas, including The Last of Sheila co-written with his supposed then-lover Anthony Perkins, and Getting Away With Murder, which has nothing to do with the Lily Tomlin/Dan Ackroyd vehicle of the same name.  More of those, please Mr. Sondheim!

Six By Sondheim erases his occasional dramatic side ventures, as well as any relationship with Anthony Perkins to focus on his musical career, his influences as an artist, how he writes, and other such informational stuff that is best left up to be discussed by Mr. Sondheim himself from the mountains of archival footage that was lovingly culled through. It has original footage of Ethel Merman on stage as Gypsy Rose Lee. There is lost 16mm interview footage of Sondheim that was b-roll for an earlier interview in the 70s. Television footage, and just about everything you can imagine. It's all out of the mouth of Stephen Sondheim, and it works wonders.

And, if you don't want just talking heads, 3 of the 6 numbers are old videos. "Something's Coming" is taken from what looks like a television version. "Being Alive" comes from the documentary about the original cast album by D.A. Pennebaker. And, "Sunday" comes from the original stage show. And, 3 of the numbers are completely newly created. "Opening Doors" is directed in a technicolor candy-coated style by James Lapine featuring a cast of Glee singers to bookend the musical career. "Send in the Clowns" is sung by Audra McDonald and Will Swenson.

But, the most radical rendition is Jarvis Cocker's take on "I'm Still Here" in the segment directed by Todd Haynes, a New Queer Cinema movement alumnus. The story concocted around this is Jarvis is a bar singer, and this is a slow sultry take on it as various women look on. As "I'm Still Here" is usually a song of female power (see Shirley MacLaine's powerhouse performance from Postcards from the Edge which was left out of Six By Sondheim), especially given that it was based on Joan Crawford's career. Haynes' version is the diametric opposite. And, it works beautifully. This is a song so flexible that it is either the tragedy of bumpy roads, or the forceful determination through all the rough times.

Six by Sondheim is an amazing venture through archival footage that you'll love to discover. It's family friendly, and could be cherished in the holiday settings once you're done celebrating and are looking for something new and heartwarming to stumble across on television.

Only on HBO for now.

P.S. Please have more bonus footage on the blu-ray when it comes out. Including more on Sweeney Todd which was all but ignored in this documentary.

New York, New York (1977): Spousal Abuse is the Key To Success

New York, New York (1977)
dir: Martin Scorsese

The 1970s were a dark time for Martin Scorsese. Or, rather, they were a white time. Martin Scorsese was breaking up with his second wife, and buried up to his ears in cocaine. In this atmosphere, Martin Scorsese decided to make his second movie that deals with spousal abuse (after Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), and also decided that he would make it a musical. YAY!!!

Yes, New York, New York reeks of cocaine, and also is starting to show the sexual relations that Scorsese would later exploit in Raging Bull. Scorsese and Robert DeNiro (his muse at the time) teamed up to make a musical about the 1940s, an era where the men came back from war, abused their wives, and big band disappeared.

In New York, New York, Robert DeNiro plays a big band saxophone player who later becomes the band leader. He meets Liza Minnelli, a USO singer, in an 18-minute long opening scene where DeNiro continually harasses Minnelli until she finally rejects him, even after her friend has gone with his friend to DeNiro's hotel room. Of course, that means that Minnelli and DeNiro meet up at the hotel room when she picks up her friend, and he tries to return to his room. And, off we go on an epic 2hr43min journey of love, pregnancy, control, music, and abuse.

New York, New York is unabashedly unpleasant. DeNiro starts out as just a sleazeball with mildly aggressive temper tantrums. Yet, Liza falls for DeNiro...because he's talented? Or because she's a weak character? It's never fully explained. But, they go off on the road with DeNiro rising to the top, and Minnelli is singing her way to the top as well.

Eventually, Minnelli and DeNiro fuck, get married, get pregnant, return to New York, fight, bicker, and lose each other for several years leaving Liza to raise her son on her own while she works as an usher. Until she becomes famous in a number called "Happy Endings," and uses DeNiro's new number, "Theme from New York, New York" (yes, it's called that in the movie) to rocket her career. DeNiro calls her and its hinted that she may take him back.

New York, New York is Scorsese's ode to the the musical genre. In the commentary, Scorsese says that he's criticizing the male characters in many of the musicals, who are shown as likable heroes. He believes that they were masking the competitions, envy, and jealousy and making everything happier. Scorsese claims that he wanted to make DeNiro as unlikable as possible in order to criticize the musicals of the era.

But, he fails. Hard. This isn't much of a critique. It directly references other movies, but he just throws one completely unlikable character into the formula. This monkey wrench makes the whole movie unbearable. One of the reasons people don't mind, and even fall for, charming irresponsible people is because they're CHARMING. Take out the charming, and all you have is an asshole. Scorsese is basically saying that people will fall for assholes as long as they're talented. And, worse, women are weak characters who will fall for abusive sleazeballs with anger problems.

The irritating problem is...he's mildly right. I've seen first hand that some women will fall for men with anger problems, and even marry them and have a child with them. Unfortunately, it doesn't make for a pleasant experience. When DeNiro, on their first...um...date(?), yells at Liza and tells her to forcefully sit down, she still sticks around in order to duet with him and launch their success. The audience is left wondering why she's still there.

Does every movie have to be pleasant?  No.  But, almost 3 hours of a movie asking us to celebrate the success of both DeNiro and Minelli while also showing how ugly these characters are goes way past the point. At 2.75 hours, New York, New York is also longer than most of the movies that Scorsese references. Blue Skies is 104 minutes long. Meet Me in St Louis is 108 minutes. Singin' in the Rain is 103 minutes. Only Judy Garland's A Star is Born runs longer at 176 minutes. All of those movies have characters that are infinitely more pleasant and makes it easy to embrace the musical. In New York, New York, the audience finds itself rooting for everybody to die so we can meet some people who are interesting, or at least likable.

This isn't What's Love Got To Do With It? or Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore where Scorcese is critiquing DeNiro's character. This isn't even 1980's Raging Bull where Jake LaMotta is shown as an emotionally self-destructive character and the wives are actually collateral in the destruction. The abuse in New York, New York is shown to be part and parcel of DeNiro's sleazeball character that people put up with.

Scorsese actually does succeed in one thing, however. He succeeds in recreating the look and style of many of the movies he is directly referencing. His use of studio backlots, and closed sound stages captures the old feeling of movies that used to evoke feelings of happiness and joy. His use of Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, doubles down on those references. If you just watch it as an essay on other films, you may have a better time. But, even for that, 163 minutes is a long fucking time to be watching a montage of other films.

Scorsese even has an 11 minute sequence called Happy Endings, where the cocaine literally ends up on the screen in the titles of the musicals Liza is fantasizing about being in. Happy Endings is bizarre as it is a fantasy within a fantasy that ends up as a fantasy and rolls between reality, dreams, stage, and screen. It is just incomprehensible unless you realize it is practically a commentary on Broadway Melody Ballet from Singin' In The Rain which was, itself, a commentary on long musical sequences that existed in the other movies.

So, what are we left with?  163 minutes of joyous spousal abuse and talent leading to successful careers in a movie that is actually an essay on other movies. If that's what you want to watch, then this movie is probably successful. It's not a poorly constructed movie. But, the core goal of the film is a cocaine-addled failure of a goal. Making any movie where you're supposed to be rooting for mean-spirited assholes and naive nitwits is bad enough (most recently, this was embodied by Bachelorette), but then making a 3 hour journey? It tempts one to live in a forest.

Scorsese never made another musical. Thank God.

The First Nudie Musical (1976): Sleaze as Wholesome Fun

The First Nudie Musical (1976)
dir: Mark Haggard, Bruce Kimmel

The First Nudie Musical is high-concept, high-camp joyous fun coming out of the sexploitation underworld. If the title doesn't please you, this isn't the movie for you.

Stephen Nathan stars as Harry Schechter, the son of a famous studio producer, whose small movie studio has resorted to making pornographic films and is now in with the mob. They can't come up with the idea for their next movie until Harry pops on the idea of a pornographic musical-comedy. And, in dances the nude chorus girls to pitch the idea.  Of course, the mob gives him 2 weeks to make it, and has him use one of their sons, who is a bit on the naive side, as director.

The entirety of the movie is the making of this first nudie musical, Come Come Again. The First Nudie Musical takes much of its tonality from the irreverence of Singin' in the Rain. In that vein, we're shackled with tropes like having a difficult lead actress, inept rehearsals, and hilarious but far-too-brief musical numbers. The first movie-within-a-movie musical number starts out as a hardcore sex scene, when suddenly a guy pops in front of them crooning the song "Orgasm" in to a megaphone. Sample lyric "Orgasm, its the sure spasm of love, sweet love." Well, you get the idea of where the movie is going.

While the pacing is definitely 1970s era, and not nearly the bullet train of modern era comedies, the laughs come fairly frequently. From Cindy Williams' constant deadpan deliveries of such lines like "That was the worst orgasm I have ever seen" and "Your stunt cock is here" to the absurdity of 2/3 of the musical numbers about dildos, perversions, or lesbians (with the stunning "Lesbian, Butch, Dyke"), The First Nudie Musical delivers a fearlessly wholesome show filled with tits and ass. This is a movie you could probably share with your mother, as the sex is presented as stuff that happens.

In 1976, most American cinema was still down in the dumps too. In 1977, Martin Scorsese made the extremely dour, cocaine-addled, New York, New York, which was dubbed Wife Beater: The Musical. Scorcese meant to make a downbeat musical about abusive pieces of shit. But, Kimmel and Haggard are making the most upbeat happy-go-lucky musical one can imagine from terrible puns, and sometimes tasteless jokes. And, surprisingly, The First Nudie Musical is not all sexist. The men are jokes, Cindy Williams is a comedic powerhouse with her laconic wit where she's the most intelligent member of the crew. Schechter is only in charge because it's his studio. There is male and female nudity. And, the women are rarely shown to be exploited.

The First Nudie Musical may be minorly slow-paced, but it delivers on being chock-full of wholesome nudity, and also being a ridiculous musical of epic and satirical proportions. This should tickle your funny bone, but not that bone.

Lisztomania (1975): Psychadelic Fantasia as Biography

Lisztomania (1975)
dir: Ken Russell

Ken Russell is, quite possibly, the most unhinged director of the '70s and '80s. To say that Lisztomania is, quite possibly, his most unhinged movie...well, that says a lot. His career has included the pop rock psychedelia of The Who's Tommy, Kathleen Turner playing a flute with her pussy in Crimes of Desire, Gothic's drug trip with Mary Shelley and Lord Byron, a Hollywood actress with vampiric breast implants in Trapped Ashes, and William Hurt turning into a proto-human consciousness by taking drugs in a sleep tank in Altered States. Yet, Lisztomania, a bio-musical about composer Franz Liszt, contains more elements of insanity that slam against each other to make a hysterical metaphorical fantasia based in a litany of interpreted facts.

With Lisztomania, Ken Russell is asking "How does one adapt the jam-packed life of a musical pop star?" While I said Liszt was a composer, he was also a widely-adored composer whose performances could be interpreted as the foundlings of pop concerts. To go with that life, Franz Liszt had two wives, a residency in Rome, and a friendship with Richard Wagner, on top of being an astounding womanizing composer who influenced or hobnobbed with almost every major composer of the time.

Russell's answer was to make a movie that is as soaked in showmanship and fantasy as Liszt's pop concerts, where women were afflicted with "Lisztomania," which was the predecessor to Beatlemania. It was reported that women would swoon, collect broken piano strings, and even create a locket to contain the leaves of a cigar he had smoked and thrown into a gutter. In the mentality of that insanity, and the need to inflict a fever on his audience, Russell made a surreal-as-fuck movie about Franz Liszt. And, this being Ken Russell, he goes a bit far, obscuring the facts with his flights of fancy to the point where you don't know what is truth, what is false, and what is allusion. Really, this is the only movie that I think almost requires a pop-up video trivia track to touch on all of the hints that Russell drops in Lisztomania.

He opens with a mirror covered metronome ticking away in a fantastic ornate room, and then Liszt making love to a woman by alternately kissing her breasts in time with the metronome. The woman adjusts the metronome to a faster pace, and Liszt speeds up. The woman moans, and paces it faster, and Liszt speeds up to a manic pace with ecstatic results...when a guy bursts into the room with an epee intent on killing the lusty Liszt. Liszt defends himself by climbing onto the chandelier, and we are barely 3 minutes into the movie. By the end of this single scene, we'll have Franz Liszt engaging in a dual, wrapped in a Tarzan-esque sheet-as-loincloth, with a bluegrass musical number detailing what is happening, and why. Finally, the husband abandons his wife, nails both of them into the body of a grand piano, sets the piano onto a train track with a train coming, and lets that that train explode the piano. And, we're about 6 minutes into the movie.

While this all seems like a hell of a lot of silliness, there is a lot of real life information to be parsed from this one scene. Liszt is said to have had perfect time, resulting from being forced to train as a pianist set to a metronome by his father. The woman he is making love to is the Countess Marie D'Agoult, and the man challenging him to a dual is her husband Count D'Agoult. Franz had been teaching the Countess how to play piano well before he became famous. The Count divorced the Countess, took away her money, and allowed Franz to marry her but basically forced them to live in destitution.

And, that's the way Lisztomania goes. It crams as much information as one can possibly cram into every scene while also making these factoids as obtuse, fantastical, and entertaining as possible. There is no direct information offered in Lisztomania. Instead, Russell gives an incredible fountain of information in a movie that is seemingly intent on making sure you don't know what is going on.

Franz Liszt is shown to have been a contemporary and good friend of Richard Wagner, who is running around in the second scene wearing a sailor suit with Nietzsche adorned on his cap. Of course, this is letting us know that Wagner was a disciple of Nietzsche, who later rejected Wagner when Wagner got too big for his britches. Wagner, later in the film, is shown as a literal vampire who leaches support from everybody, including and especially Franz Liszt who frequently wrote letters praising Wagner when Wagner was exiled. Even later, Wagner is shown stealing music from Liszt (it is still claimed that he totally trainspotted from Liszt for Parsifal), and also creating his anti-Semitic race of proto-Nazi supermen with his "Wagner societies."

Liszt, meanwhile, can't stand domestic life, ditches his wife and kids for a Russian Princess, whom he had tried marrying. In the end, he wasn't able to marry the princess because the princess couldn't get her marriage annulled. With this setback, Liszt goes to Rome to work in peace, but is interrupted by the Pope after he writes a piece dedicated to him. Wagner is sent out into the real world again to work up against Wagner Vampire, who was creating his supermonster of The Ring Cycle, which Russell likens to a Frankenstein Monster.

Add in that Wagner was forced to get the stink of Russian politics on him via a room of ceramic asses, has a musical number that includes him riding a 12-foot giant cock, his eldest daughter first marrying one contemporary then Wagner before he became a vampire, a visit from Ringo Star as the Pope, and you begin to get an idea of just how cracked of a lens Ken Russell is using. Also, his eldest daughter is pissed off at him for leaving her mother, and uses a voodoo doll with his likeness to inflict pain and a series of illnesses on him. This is symbolizing just how intent she was on hurting him, and how he caught a fatal case of Pneumonia at a festival that she had organized.

Lisztomania is a vastly entertaining movie. If you want to directly learn from Lisztomania about Franz Liszt, you'll learn absolutely nothing because everything is so steeped in metaphors and symbolism that you'll probably not get everything that Ken Russell ever was implying. It is a bit frustrating if you want to know what is going on and you're not willing to just go with it. It is intensely rewarding to watch this film accompanied by the internet trying to figure out what is going on at every single point.

Is Lisztomania successful?  Hell yes, and fuck no. Both. Neither. I don't know. You'll be transfixed. It's never boring. But, as a traditional movie, or even a traditional musical?  Well, it doesn't spoon feed you anything. At all. Ken Russell is relentless in this movie, far more than in any other film he's ever made. Lisztomania is a bombardment of dissonance, metaphors, musical numbers, biography, famous musicians, symbols, and historical figures. And, it works so beautifully...yet it doesn't work at all. I'm in complete love with it, but almost nobody will like this movie at all.

Forbidden Zone (1980): The end of an era; the foretelling of the next

Forbidden Zone (1980)
dir: Richard Elfman

Forbidden Zone serves as an ode to The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, just as everything about The Mystic Knights was completely changing. The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo was the original incarnation of the Danny Elfman-led new wave band Oingo Boingo. Throughout the '70s, under the leadership of either Richard or Danny Elfman, The Mystic Knights served as a form of musical-theater or cabaret where the band played either old school big band music or Danny Elfman compositions. The plan had been to play things you couldn't hear live anywhere else at the time.

Richard Elfman conceived of Forbidden Zone to be a cinematic equivalent of seeing The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo live in concert. It is an attempt to preserve a band whose main point was also preservation. But, Elfman didn't just want to preserve the band. He also was trying to recall and preserve an era which had been long gone: that of the early 1920s and 30s cartoons.

In the 1920s and 30s, there were a whole slew of black and white, hand-drawn cartoons that were pushing boundaries, and also engaging with some of the musical artists of the generation. The most well known of these were the early Silly Symphonies, before they were taken over by Mickey and the gang. For instance, Ub Iwerks' The Skeleton Dance was a playful, hand-drawn Halloween cartoon about skeletons dancing at midnight set to a minor key foxtrot. Less widely remembered are the cartoons featuring Cab Calloway, like the Koko the Clown/Betty Boop cartoons, or a cameo in 1944's Swooner Crooner. Elfman took everything from these cartoons. Everything. Not just the visual style, but the racism, sexism, and stereotypes.

Forbidden Zone is a silly movie about a bunch of weird cartoonish caricatures who discover that there is a door in their basement that leads to the 6th Dimension, the Forbidden Zone. The door was first discovered by a heroin dealer/smuggler. The next to go through the door was Rene Henderson (Matthew Bright), who became imprisoned by the King and Queen. Then, one by one, the other characters head down the rabbit hole in an attempt to rescue Rene and each other.

Of course, the plot is just a conceptual excuse on which to hang the musical numbers and the bizarre characters. There is Frenchy, a woman with a bizarre French accent (Mrs. Elfman). Squeezit Henderson, Rene's brother and also a chickenboy (Matthew Bright). Flash Hercules, a 12-year-old boy scout played by a 70+ year old man. King Fausto (Herve Villechaize) and Queen Doris (Susan Tyrrell), who rule the Forbidden Zone. The ex-queen who was overthrown for Queen Doris (Warhol superstar Viva). The Princess, a woman who runs around in her underwear whipping people. Satan, who leads the Mystic Knights (Danny Elfman). And, the Kipper Kids, whom one may recognize from UHF as the fill-in act after Stanley is kidnapped.

The musical numbers range from Cab Calloway to Freddy Martin's Pico and Sepulveda. The Three Stooges-originated Alphabet song makes an appearance, as do a few original pieces from Danny Elfman. All these numbers have high concept psychotic staging, and most of them have little consequence to the film itself. Pico and Sepulveda, for instance, is a worker song whose main purpose is to get Pa Hercules to the Forbidden Zone.

The influences of the look of Forbidden Zone also range widely. The sets take inspiration from German Expressionist sets of the UFA era (see The Cabinet of Dr Caligari), and the cartoons are from the Fleischers and Iwerks.

Elfman manages to offend everybody throughout the course of the movie. Everybody is a caricature of everything, which includes use of blackface, topless women, and a Jewish financier. Given that Elfman is Jewish, and he used his grandpa for the financier, it's hard to say that this is casual racism, but more just a crass sense of humor representative of the dark American subconscious. It's a movie whose belief that "I'm an equal opportunity offender" it a very valid defense (your acceptance of this will vary from viewer to viewer).

Forbidden Zone is a roller coaster into a twisted cultural history of America. It looks at the multimedia pop culture we started from, and creates something entirely new and wacky from it. In a sense, it is almost proto-hipster in its reuse of various American eras to subvert and also appropriate. But, Forbidden Zone isn't about appropriating only the powerful and good parts of the culture, but also acknowledging all the bad parts as well.

Of course, since I said it was proto-hipster, Forbidden Zone feels somewhat ahead of its time by like 25 years. It would foretell when pop culture started to truly eat itself. When we would be looking not just to reuse the culture of old, but to recreate it and reappropriate it to cleanse our past while also being casually racist in a chummy we're all buddies here kind of way.

Forbidden Zone is hilarious and original in the way it created something surreal and almost dada out of the culture of the past. It wasn't content just to reuse, but it created something new out of the pieces of America's past. It's pacing is, at times, a little plodding (even for a 73-minute movie), but the big set pieces are worth the time. From the Kipper Kids in jock straps shaking their booties (proto-Twerking) to Susan Tyrrell singing in a glittery impressionistic dress with her breasts being thrust out, Forbidden Zone is a movie guaranteed to entertain and, probably, to offend.

Final Note: Originally filmed in Black and White, Forbidden Zone was intended to be a colorized version, and sent to China upon completion for hand-colorization. Its ultra-low budget restricted this until 2003 when Legend Films gave Richard Elfman the money to do it. The colorized version looks amazing, and realistic, and should not be missed.

Sextette (1978): When Mae West bagged James Bond

Sextette (1978)
dir: Ken Hughes

Today, Last Vegas is released to theaters around the country. I support seeing Last Vegas over Ender's Game, but why not try out this...er...classic!

Last Vegas is a movie about a 69 year old man going on one last bender with his other old male friends before he marries some young 20-something girl. Sextette is about the attempted honeymoon of an 83-year-old woman just after she marries a 32-year-old future James Bond. Last Vegas is about four old men who are recapturing their youth by completely objectifying women and viewing them exclusively as sex objects. Sextette is about one old woman who seems to think she never lost her youth and views men as sex objects. Last Vegas deals in cliches that had been worn out 20+ years before it had been made. Sextette deals in cliches that had been worn out 30+ years before it had been made. Last Vegas is a star-studded event. So is Sextette.

The parallels are astounding.

Sextette is a one-last-fling vehicle for Mae West, who really wanted to recapture the innocently risque style that defined her career. Supposedly inspired by Mae West's 1926 play Sex, for which she had been arrested, Sextette has nothing in common with that earlier piece of then-provocative work. Sextette casts Mae West as the Hollywood sex symbol Marlo Manners, whose theme claims her to be the "female answer to Apollo!" Marlo just got married to British Lord Barrington (Timothy Dalton, 2 years before Flash Gordon, and 9 years before James Bond) and is trying to have a peaceful sexy honeymoon in a busy hotel that is hosting top international diplomats and a generic American athletic team.

Of course, Marlo hasn't retired yet. Dom Deluise is her semi-agent who whores her out to politicians and arranges things with the "Studios." She has to go through wardrobe and do screen tests, and hook up with an ex-husband while also trying to save a cassette tape of her memoirs. Oh, and fawn over the athletic team.

The thing is, Sextette is a Broadway musical with trampy jokes that play to the cheap seats. And, it is also a zany screwball movie with very little energy for screwball. Think Oscar, but slowed down by a factor of 20. The opening theme is just a theme, but then it launches into a big grand happy-as-hell number of Hooray for Hollywood, where Mae West is not singing or dancing, but merely answering questions like "How do you like it in London?" "I like it any place I can get it."

Several of Mae West's ex husbands are also in the hotel. Her 3rd ex husband Sexy Alexei is some Russian consulate played by Tony Curtis. Her fourth ex-husband is also the director of her new film, who is present for her screen test...and is played by Ringo Starr. Her 5th (and last husband before James Bond) is presumed dead, but ends up played by George Hamilton.

Keith Moon plays the gay dress designer on speed. Alice Cooper plays a feel good piano-playing bellhop. Regis Philbin cameos as himself. Yeah, I can't make any of this up.  The casting is as mind-bogglingly strange as you can imagine.

But, what makes this movie so adorably bizarre is that everybody is throwing themselves at Mae West, much like everybody throws themselves at the old dudes in Last Vegas. And, I mean, everybody. The American Athletes are fawning over themselves to pose with Marlo Manners. All of the politicians have had sex with Marlo. Her ex-husbands are still obsessed with Marlo. She has an outrageous duet with James Bond singing Love Will Keep Us Together. She's the woman every man wants for their own.

Unfortunately that is somewhat of a disconnect because poor Mae West has had gallons of makeup plastered to her that gives her face an unnatural ghostly pale look that even is contrasted to the rosiness of her neck and bosom. Mae West is constantly deathly pale and shot in focus soft the sets frequently looks blobby.

Is Sextette good?  Not in the traditional sense. It's something that must be seen to be believed. Mae West has done much better work in her youth, and even her turn in Maya Breckinridge is much more inspired than this swan song vehicle. But, at least Mae West has agency to sleep with anybody she wants...unlike Last Vegas, where women only exist to be fucked.

Peaches Does Herself (2012): Rock Show as Meta Examination

Peaches Does Herself (2012)

Dir: Peaches

Fuck the pain away...

So goes the chorus of Peaches' most famous song. Couple that with the knowledge that the frame next to this paragraph is the closest I could get to a provocative image without featuring frontal nudity, and you have an idea of what you're probably in for when you see Peaches Does Herself.

Peaches is an electroclash musician who is a provocateur and sexual pioneer and exploiter.  Her sexuality has always dominated her art, and her persona has always been about the liberation and acceptance of sexualities from all sexes and all walks of life  She's also lewd, crude, and in your face.  And, her fans wouldn't have it any other way.

In Peaches Does Herself, she doesn't disappoint with shock value, message, or music.  It's chock full of full frontal nudity, sex toys, simulated love and sex, giant vulva costumes, strippers, transexuals, and gender crossing.  Even as you're done being shocked, it still manages to give you one last twist of the knife.  It's a full on art show posing as a concert, or a concert posing as an art show.  And, Peaches Does Herself is the concert film of that show.

Peaches Does Herself is Peaches' life story.  She tells the story of her sexual and musical development from when she was a teenager learning how to diddle herself to the end when she's destroyed all her experimentations to become something new to show the world.  Along the way, we meet all sorts of people, from an aging stripper comfortable in her brazenness to a transsexual who had top surgery but not bottom.  All of these people have profound influences on how Peaches develops.

At one point, Peaches, in her discover, tries on a giant gold cock, and makes it part of her self.  She dons an outfit of gold, with a gold phallus, and exposed golden breasts.  She takes on this masculine and feminine sexuality in order to give possess the agency that she, and culture, perceives men as exclusively possessing.  She wants to be the objectifier.  She wants to be the one in control.  Peaches, thus modified, meets her mirror, the slim and graceful Danni Daniels, whose height is accentuated by exceedingly tall heels, giving Danni an even greater difference of appearance.  She's the model for Peaches to embrace, until she isn't.

It's these combinations of breasts and cock that makes the most interesting commentary on society.  But, addressing female sexuality, male sexuality, and trying to give women the sexuality that men have without denigrating men or women is something profound.  It shouldn't be.  But, Peaches is saying that women have the power to embrace their own self and give themselves everything they see men as having, if they want it.  It's empowering without destroying.  Even in the ultimate scene of demasculinization, Peaches seems to be saying that one doesn't need to look like a man to have the agency of a man.  And, she hits the road, leaving the theater, while changing "fuck the pain away" showing off her new self to the wilds of Berlin.

Peacher Does Herself is hilarious, and rude.  And, it's everything you expect with a greater message of accepting non-traditional walks of life.  Its also of being comfortable and owning your own personhood and sexuality.  And, it's generally a blast.

But, it isn't perfect.  For a show that seemed to have amazing visuals designed for the stage, the cinematography only showed flashes of genius but was otherwise amateur to inept.  Most of the camerawork is flatly presented with the framing of a high school student.  Once in a blue moon, it has flashes of striking genius, but it really falls flat in a show that is designed to be heightened in visuals.  It ultimately distracts more than it stays invisible (which I think was the goal), and it definitely doesn't heighten the experience.

In the end, Peaches Does Herself is more like a purer, undiluted, less commodified, less commercial Lady Gaga that isn't ready for the masses, despite its need to be seen by the masses in its purest form.