INQUISITION

     Friday the 14th

     Friday, the 14th (sounds like a bad sequel), I caught The Target Shoots First, a documentary by Christopher Wilcha. In Target, Wilcha's punk band breaks up and until he decides what to do next, he takes a job at Columbia House, a monthly music club. If you've ever gotten one of those mailers offering you a dozen CD's for the price of one (then later buy a dozen more at full price in a year's time), you've probably been curious as to how these clubs do business. In the early 90's, Wilcha's hired as an assistant to a marketing executive and takes his video camera to work everyday, catching on tape everything from corporate planning meetings to company picnics. What starts as a day job soon becomes full time corporate drudgery as Wilcha's promoted and becomes a participant in the commercialization of alternative music.

     The documentary finds satire and humor in the day-by-day politics within the company. We see how the executice branch is totally clueless as to the aesthetic value, or lack of, of the music they push to the public. We see the subtle line of demarcation and struggle between the dissafected marketing department and the under-appreciated creative department who provides graphics as well as written copy to fill the company's monthly CD catalogue. Wilcha takes his camera to an Aerosmith record signing and asks the band if they've ever heard of CD clubs--none of them had a clue. The events trail along the rise and fall of the band Nirvana, and ends with a despirited Wilcha having realized his punk-artistic values had been deeply compromised sometime after Kurt Cobain's suicide.

     Target Shoots First was preeceded by the short Black People Hate Me And They Hate My Glasses, a film referred by the fest program as "constantly hilarious, it is the definition of short film entertainment." Whatever. Humor's relative and in here, a comedian with an spastic hairdo tells a story to a group congregrated around him on a New York street. The story and its racial implications are nothing we haven't seen before better done so the film felt like a cheat.

     My friend Brian and me caught Harmony Korine's latest effort, Julien Donkey-Boy. Korine's known for being the screenwriter of Kids, a controversial film from about 4 years ago. He directed Gummo afterwards-- Julien's his third film. The film opens with a certificate of authenticity from the Dogma '95 school. Dogma '95 is a filmmaking movement recently forged in Northern Europe by a handful of filmmakers, Lars Van Troer (Breaking The Waves) the best known. The movement professes to make films without the use of artificial processes such as fancy lighting, artificial sound and special effects. Basically, what you see is how it was. Dogma '95 films look like documentaries shot on the spot, with little concern to lighting, staging, or screenwriting for that matter. The Blair Witch Project could be a Dogma film for the exception that Dogma rules prohibit genre subject matter. Oh well. The results of these films vary and the only two films I know are Breaking The Waves and The Ceremony.

     Despite the artistic philosophy applied in the making of Julien I found the film to be overlong and lacking. Julien takes us in the lives of a dysfunctional family in which things are twarted and go unresolved. Julien suffers from a mental disorder. He comes across as mildly retarded and somewhat schizo. The rest of his family is in less of a predicament than he is but is not alright. Julien's brother Chris is pushed to become a successful High School wrestler but the only thing he can beat down is the family's trashcan. Julien's sister, played by Chloe Sevigny, (Korine's real-life girlfriend) is several months pregnant and seems pretty normal, until the film infers the baby she's carrying is Julien's and therefore an incestuous relationship is uncovered. There's Julien's grandmother, played by a Korine relative, probably his own grandmother. At the head of the strange household , there's the father, an overbearing, verbally abusive, screws-loose figure who's played by famous German director Werner Hertzog (!). The father constantly berates the children, hosing Chris down to instill thoughness in him. He spends his days jobless, dancing to strange music and drinking rubbing alcohol, or something generally toxic.

     Though Julien Donkey-Boy is moving and comical at times, the film's aimless and has no plot to talk about. Korine simply rolls film on family scenes such as the family having dinner together, or Julien and Chris wrestling. Julien Donkey-Boy is effectively a feature-long experimental film which demands muc of the audience. I found the film overlong at 90 minutes. And add to the film's dysfunctionality its mystifying opening and ending. The film opens with Julien killing a boy who refuses to share a turtle he's found in a swamp. This sudden muder is never again acknowledged or mentioned in the film. Later, the film closes with Julien running away with the body of his stillborn son, craddling it and singing to it under the covers of his sister's bed. Korine comments on how Julien has no meaning on the concept of death. Julien Donkey-Boy is an ambitious experimental film with major issues at heart but a confusing execution.

     Friday was capped off with a sensationalistic screening of vintage porn trailers from the 70's and early 80's. It was amusing to see the likes of John Holmes (who was also the subject of Wadd, a documentary also shown at the fest) and Ron Jeremy in these old porn reels; Jeremy was actually thin and very boyish on his early years. The trailers were funny in their campy acting and absurd premises, and yes, they were also quite graphic. For some reason, fisting was very big during the 70's--most of the trailers featured women with arms up to the wrists in their vaginas. Wacked stuff. At this point the audience of mostly (drunk) college students was very vocal and I think, somewhat rude. But it was a way to smack the audience from their stupor after the aenesthetic Julien Donkey-Boy.

     And so it went on Friday the 14th.