Andy Warhol Presents Trash

It was back to the 40th Chicago International Film Festival for this 1970 U.S. film, which was showing as one of the festival’s “revival” screenings.   I’d never seen any of the “Andy Warhol Presents” films so I thought I’d better check this one out.   These films are not to be confused with those that Warhol made (such as the eight-hour six-minute shot of the Empire State Building).   The pop artist had little to do with the “Presents” movies except to nominally act as “producer”, with Paul Morrissey often filling the director’s seat and the casts comprised of denizens of Warhol’s Factory.

“Andy Warhol Presents Trash” is interesting because although it’s a product of the late 60s New York counterculture, the film is actually quite anti-counterculture.   Morrisey was a notorious right-winger and “Trash” features an unsparing look at the counterculture on the wane.   The irony is that cultural conservatives would strenuously object to this film based on its degenerate subject matter and extremely explicit content.   The hero, Joe (Joe Dallesandro), has a raging heroin habit that has left him dysfunctional in a rather personal way.   Holly Woodlawn plays Holly, Joe’s live-in “girlfriend” (see explanation of quotations below).    

The film is actually a very funny comedy as well: Joe’s encounters include a vacuous hip bourgeois couple whose home he breaks into, whereupon the woman proceeds to hit on him and the man treats him like a junkie lab specimen.   He also meets various abrasively moronic, stoned hippie chicks and a crooked social worker who wears a peace pin on his lapel.  

This screening was a treat because Holly Woodlawn was in attendance!   Students of Warhol’s Factory scene will know that Woodlawn was the cross-dressing “superstar” (Warhol’s term for the “actors” who appeared in the films he produced) who is immortalized in Lou Reed’s 1972 tune “Walk on the Wild Side”:

“Holly came from Miami F.L.A/
Hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A/
Plucked her eyebrows on the way/
Shaved her legs and then he was a she”.

Woodlawn still appears in drag 34 years after “Trash” and though suffering from spinal stenosis, he/she is still an amusingly abrasive character: honest and, in her own weird way, endearing.   She looks something like a warped Barbara Streisand.   Her performance in “Trash” is actually quite affecting.

This one’s out on DVD but I would certainly NOT recommend it to anyone who’s not a fan of underground film or who doesn’t have an interest in the late 60s New York counterculture.   I think it’s an important film, though: Morrissey was a fiercely independent filmmaker and “Trash” is an example of truly independent film as opposed to the commercialized “Hollywood independents” that we often get today.   It takes us places mainstream films fear to go and stays with us after they’ve faded from memory.  

- Oct 22, 2004  

Nelly

The 40th Chicago International Film Festival is on!   Disgracefully, I’ve only attended one screening so far, a French film called ‘Nelly’.   The director, Laure Duthilleul, was in attendance, which was a treat.   She’s also an actress although she doesn’t appear in this, her directorial debut. Sophie Marceau plays Nelly, a woman living in a small village who comes home from a trip to the beach with the kids to find that her husband, the village doctor, has died of “natural causes”.   When the buriers arrive, she turns them away in a huff, thereby allowing the family and villagers to spend some time with the body before they put it underground, with ensuing developments that are alternately wacky and poignant.   In the Q&A after the film, Duthilleul pointed out (in extremely halting English, with help from bilingual folks in the audience, so I’m not sure I entirely got it) that we in the West don’t have rituals that involve spending time with the deceased’s body, so she wanted to do a film about interacting with the body.   The film didn’t completely work for me in that Nelly’s behavior is often too unrecognizable to generate much empathy.   You wind up thinking she’s a bit of a nutter.   The film wants us to laugh and cry, however you’re not entirely sure which response is appropriate (actually, this is similar to my reaction to the fact that W. might win re-election.   Although in that case you’ve really got to end up crying). However, I liked Duthilleul’s use of the moving camera (there’s a dog’s point-of-view shot as well as a soaring overhead view of the village after a bird takes flight).   I also liked the glimpse the film affords of life in a French village in the forest.   The cinematography captures the lovely fall colors of the kids’ world in the woods, to which they retreat when things get a bit heavy at the house, to play near the brook and in their secret tunnels.   It struck me as a wonderful place for kids to grow up. - Oct 15, 2004

Shaun of the Dead

This is an instant classic!   The title is a play on Romero’s classic zombie film “Dawn of the Dead”.   It’s a British comedy (the best kind) concerning a bloke named Shaun (Simon Pegg) who at first can’t be bothered to notice that his London neighborhood has been overrun by zombies, seeing as how he’s on the outs with his girlfriend Liz, but then rallies with his slacker buddy Ed (Nick Frost) to lead a motley crew (which includes Liz and Shaun’s mum) in a stand against the undead.  

I heard a radio interview with the filmmakers (Pegg was co-writer along with director Edgar Wright) in which they spoke of being influenced by Mike Leigh, the director of all those great social realist dramas of everyday life (“Secrets and Lies”, “Naked”).   They said that they thought it would be interesting to see how it would work to plop some zombies down in a Leigh-esque milieu.   They also spoke of being influenced by comedic “mockumentaries” like my beloved “The Office”.   These influences have produced a very interesting mix of realism and fantasy, wherein the rhythms of everyday life are established so that the appearance of the zombies in this context is all the more startling.  

Plus “Shaun of the Dead” is a great laugh, which we all need.   Not to mention that it features Lucy Davis, the actress who played Dawn in the afore-mentioned “The Office” (also a treat for “Office” fans is that Martin Freeman, who played Dawn’s long-suffering admirer Tim in that great program, makes a cameo appearance!).   This is also one of those rare films that it’s actually fun to see with a general audience, to hear the shrieks alternating with laughter.  

One caveat: this movie is not for you if you can’t abide gore, as there’s zombie-ific mayhem aplenty!  

--Oct 4, 2004

Hero

This Chinese action film starring Jet Li has been oft-compared to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.   I’d wager that if you enjoyed that movie then you’ll dig this one as well.   I did spy some illiterates stumbling out of the theatre when they discovered that this was a subtitled film.

The film is sort of a creation myth concerning the unification of China over 2,000 years ago, when the warlord of the Qin province was able to unite six warring provinces to create one Chinese nation (and piece together the Great Wall out of what had until then been individual provinces’ sections).  

However, the story doesn’t relate those events but takes place in the tumultuous period that led up to them.   An assassin played by Jet Li is summoned for an audience with the grateful Qin warlord (who would go on to become the emperor) to tell the tale of how Li killed three seemingly unstoppable assassins who had long been thorns in the warlord’s side.   Li tells him what happened…or does he?   As the warlord questions Li’s account and offers his own conjectures as to what really happened, we get several different versions of the story.   Each version of the tale is illustrated by a color (reminding me actually of Joyce’s Ulysses, in which each section has a corresponding color).  

Sometimes the story seems to be only an excuse for moving from elaborate fight sequence to the next, but said scenes are pretty dazzling: beautifully choreographed and photographed displays of movement, sound and scrumptious color.   They're surreal and dreamlike.   Directed by Zhang Yimou.

- Sep 24, 2004 

Garden State

This is one of my favorite films of the year so far.   It’s the directorial/writing debut of Zach Braff, whom I am told appears in the sitcom ‘Scrubs’, which I’ve not seen (my parents recommend it).   The film is a good laugh, but it’s also moving; the overall tone I’d describe as “bittersweet”.   Braff plays the main character, a minor actor in L.A. who comes back to his Jersey hometown on the occasion of his mother’s funeral, reconnects with an old friend and meets a new one (Peter Sarsgaard and Natalie Portman, respectively, both excellent).   Because of a childhood tragedy that we learn about midway through, he’s been on a pharmacopoeia of meds for most of his life.   He decides to go off them for his trip home.  

The film does show some signs of Braff’s first-timer status, in that it sometimes goes for effects that it doesn’t quite pull off.   But at least it dares to go for such moments.  

- Sep 17, 2004