SupermasochisticBobWithCysticFiiiibrosis

Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997)

As the title implies, this movie is not for everyone. That is unless everyone likes to see supermasochists drive nails through their penises, have balls inserted in...tight places, and veritably watch a man die through a series of gut wrenching photographs. But in all reality, the S&M aspect is only part of the story that Bob explains and elucidates in the most fascinating and blunt ways. Sick is about an artist/performer/masochist named Bob Flanagan who also happens to be struggling through the last years of Cystic Fibrosis. His body is emaciated, he's always on oxygen, and is constantly coughing up phlegm, but he is still completely devoted to being pierced, strangled, cut, whipped, burned, slapped, pinched, and all the lovely pain(and to him, erection)-inducing tropes of masochism. The following song is Bob Flanagan in a nutshell. He's able to have a sense of humor about who he is and his mortality.



Bob's lascivious and exhibitionist lifestyle is captured in video of public readings of his "Fuck Journal", a daily diary his loving dungeon master Sheree has assigned to him. He reads aloud intimate details of their sex life to a small S&M audience. Sheree doesn't mind, in fact she encourages his exhibitionist lifestyle by documenting and then displaying various crude sex acts. They're both performance artists. Bob had a show at the Santa Monica Museum of Art where he laid in a hospital bed in the middle of gallery only to be hung by his feet, nude, from the ceiling with Sheree manning the rope and pulley. His artistic style is very confrontational and grotesque.

Throughout the film we are constantly aware and reminded of Bob's impending death and that he likes to do rediculous things to his wang, but at some point 3/4 of the way through I was really sick of the"I'm gonna die, chuckle chuckle" and the ironic "isn't it funny how much my body hurts me and how much I hurt my body". He just got a little redundant after a while.

In the end, all the jokes, songs, and performances seemed to be moot forms of expression with what was actually happening to Bob. The penultimate videos are painfully serious as he talks to Sheree about the pain he's feeling and how he can't psychologically submit to her. The last videos are of Bob completely incoherent in the hospital, gasping like a fish out of water, eyes unfocused and blank. Sheree comes to visit and tries to console him. It then cuts to a series of photographs (taken by Sheree) of Bob's nude body splayed out on a hospital bed. He's not moving. We are affirmed in our assumptions when the next picture is a lumpy white sheet and then an empty bed. Sheree's documentation almost seems inappropriate, but at the same time befitting of their life together. Sick is wonderfully funny, sad, and at times really disgusting, but definitely worth every dry heave.


4.75 out of 5 rubber fists

The King of Kong

As far as setting up clear protagonist/antagonist rivalry, The King of Kong (2007) strives to make this the main prerogative of the film from the get-go. We meet Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, both avid gamers, specifically Donkey Kong, and in many ways, prototypes of the all-American man. However, where they differ, as the director makes evident, is that the former is the marginally successful everyman with the marginal wife, job, and kids who's just trying to do something better than everyone else for once in his marginal life. Whereas the latter is the deceptively enterprising, suspiciously successful entrepreneur of hot sauce whose suspiciously chesty and bronzed wife signifies his showman tendencies (not to mention his 3 letter handle is "USA"). From the beginning the disparities between the two are highlighted, underlined, circled, and thrown in our faces, a rivalry which was later said to be partially constructed for entertainment purposes. However, making Billy Mitchell seem like a complete douchclaw doesn't take a lot of effort. His haughty remarks about gaming integrity (of which he speaks but does not subscribe) and obnoxious patriotism along with his carefully coiffed business mullet separate him from any sort of coolness.

The main squabble of the film revolves around which man has the highest Donkey Kong score accepted and recorded by Twin Galaxies, an Iowa-based gaming organization founded by Walter Day, also a main character in the film. In the 80s Billy Mitchell had set the world record for highest score, but the humble house husband Steve Wiebe submitted a video some 20-odd years later breaking the self-assured Mitchell's record. Teen gossip drama ensues as we see a clash of egos and ethics. For certain reasons Wiebe's video score isn't officially accepted so he performs for an audience and still beats Mitchell's score. This is followed by a backhanded upset when Mitchell mails a video to Walter Day whereby he beats Wiebe's high score, all, of course, over-dramatized for the camera.

Dramatized or not, the most interesting aspect of the film was the implicit politics in the gaming world and how people ally or separate themselves from certain individuals. Mainly, the small ring of flunkies Mitchell used to keep tabs on Wiebe throughout the entire film, from lurking over his shoulder while he was playing to sneaking into his garage to dismantle his DK machine. Also, Wiebe's association with fellow gamer, Mr. Awesome, was enough to stigmatize his legitimacy at breaking the DK world record. It all seemed like high school pettiness, like they were still stuck in 1982. However, despite everything, the final moment of the film informs us that Steve Wiebe had the all-time high score as of 2007.

4 out of 5 DK kill screens

Stevie

We are all responsible for everyone else--but I am more responsible than all the others.

--The Brothers Karamazov



Stevie (2002) <---- watch this

It's hard to take a lighthearted view of Stevie despite the mixed sentiment in the trailer that, upon watching after seeing the film, reminds me that the entire movie wasn't as disheartening as I'd thought it was when it ended. What starts as a Big Brother trying to reconnect with his former Little Brother turns into a discourse on the consequences of letting a person slip through the cracks and become a victim of their environment and society. Stevie's story is a complex one, beginning from the moment we see his pudgy, smiling 11 year old face in old photographs with a twenty-something Steve James (former Big Brother mentor/ director) to a final scene of his girlfriend cleaning out his trailer after being sentenced to 10 years in prison for molesting his 8 year old niece.

The film chronicles and implies explanation of how Stevie's psychological development was impaired by his abusive mother and volatile family situations, being handled poorly by the state in terms of education and foster housing, and insufficient positive personal relationships and guidance, of which Steve James had sought to give. We get the sense that Steve believes he's failed in some way or that he owes something to Stevie, some type of retribution for leaving his life.

Steve James began filming in 1995, 10years after his Big Brother stint had ended. The beginning shot is a pastoral scene of hills and open country slowly being traversed by Steve's minivan--the epitome of the white middle class American of the mid-90s. The initial visit to Stevie's home is somewhat startling, in the way that happening upon an old classmate you haven't seen in 10 years is startling. The ghosts of smaller facial features and baby teeth are overshadowed by harsher adult skin and hair. Meeting Stevie had a similar effect, but gradually, you begin to grow comfortable with this person you've just met. As we (the viewers) expect the story to go on after we see the same minivan shuttle toward whence it came, the director informs us that another 2 years has passed before he returns to Stevie's story. In the time of James' absence Stevie had been arrested several times as we're shown the time-lapse mug shots chronicling variable mullets and chops, but always with his signature Dahmer eye wear. James picks up nearly where he left off, this time spreading the focus to Stevie's sister, mother, aunt, and fiance.
His family life has been difficult since he was born, with contradictory stories from his mother and grandmother about how he was treated as a child. Both sides recount beatings of varying degrees depending on who you ask. Stevie and his mother have a bizarre loving hatred for one another that neither can explain. She would visit him every day after Stevie was imprisoned on an allegation his mother helped put forth. The familial bonds are complicated, but they are still a family that tolerates one another enough for each to live within a 500 ft. radius.

The difference between this film and most other personal portrait films that makes the story more engaging is the active role Steve James plays in the story. He doesn't simply record video, but participates in the action and has real relationships with the people he's interviewing and conversing with. He doesn't seem obligated to become engaged, but does so out of curiosity and concern. In this way James is very self-conscious about how he represents his actions, others' words, and meaning. The film is carefully articulated to combine a spectrum of emotions, but does so at a distance as to not seem sentimental. Stevie is a portrait of the network of relationships that help shape and mold a person's life, for better or worse; in Stevie's case, the latter.

When filming ended in 1999 Stevie had begun his 10 year sentence in prison. Being 2010, I was curious to know if Steve James had made a follow up after Stevie's release which was scheduled for Feb. 15 2010. The search was fruitless.

3 out of 5 PBRs

Being Shat On From A Great Height: The Short Film

I've checked out every book at the library on documentaries multiple times and despite thinking most of them are filled with theoretical bore and redundant recounts of Nanook of the North, they each have a suspiciously small portion of their pages devoted to the ethics of non-fiction film making which I find very interesting. How and why a subject is portrayed can be a slippery slope. Representation can border on exploitation (as Dave thought of Billy the Kid) or misconstrue "the truth" to fit the director's needs. As every story is taken out of its original context and placed in a newly constructed one, the documentary short Cheeks (2003) about a small New Jersey family defies tactful representation in a semi-exploitive way.

The 20 minute film is structured around a teenaged Jimmy Cheeks who lives with his mentally distraught and eccentric parents Joe and Paula, the former being a "paranoid schizophrenic" and the latter a "manic depressive" who's no stranger to suicide attempts and mental break downs. The moments when Joe is speaking to the camera are ramblings religious incoherencies clearly taken out of context to illustrate his "craziness". Paula came off as heartbreakingly depressed as most shots of her were in a dimly lit room filled with her cigarette smoke as she spoke of her mental instability. The parents were being used to highlight relative normality and sanity of their son who spoke mainly to the camera, half smirking, about his bizarre parents and his way of coping by playing music. There is an overly dramatic and awkward scene of him playing a feverous piano solo. There was too much effort in making this film look and feel tragically poetic; a goal of which they failed. The story was so disjointed and bluntly taken out of context as to leave the viewer with nothing but fragments of supposedly candid and "complex and disturbed family dynamics". The director's statement on the Moxie Films' website begins, "CHEEKS is not out to judge or exploit this unique family situation but to explore the power of a family as a structure and its dynamics under these circumstances" yet how can this film be completely objective in its representation? Is exploring familial structure a completely neutral endeavour? The film makers obviously had to make a judgement on whether the Cheeks were "interesting" enough for film and if they would make a darkly quirky human interest piece that would give a false sense of insight into "complex psyche troubles" of a seemingly average family. With the conflicting video and director's statement I'm not sure what to think about Cheeks other than the directors' poor taste in editing.

Mr. Death + 48minutes of Mr. Boring

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
Directed by Errol Morris



I just started following Errol Morris on Twitter. This is a bad thing for 2 reasons: 1) his amiable and charming personality make it difficult to say how I truly feel about Mr. Death and 2) after another glass of wine I'm bound to tell him exactly how I feel in the form of belligerent haiku. As I've alluded to my "real feelings" you're correct to assume they aren't the most generous, but let me explain.

Mr. Death begins with an electric light Tesla coil orgy done to the utmost Sci-fi degree. Fred Leuchter's bespectacled face is illuminated sporadically by flashes of blue light as Dr. Frankenstein on a stormy night. The theatrical mad scientist trope sets the mood for the rest of the cinematic style of the film which consists mostly of talk-to-the-camera shots and home video spliced with dramatically lit studio shots of scientific experiments. Overall, the style was smooth and well paced if not slightly overly theatrical.

The first 40 minutes or so the film focused on Leuchter's line of work as an engineer concerned about the humanity and dignity of capitol punishment. His job was to make electric chairs, lethal injection devices, and (most surprisingly) gallows more effective in their ability to kill faster, cleaner, and do so with precision as many devices worked improperly resulting in eyeballs flying across rooms, flesh falling off the bone like from an overcooked chicken, and cranial conflagration. With these hazards eliminated inmates would die speedier, "more dignified" deaths. All of this was very interesting within the context of the American judicial system, but the second half of the film departed from this into bizarre territory.


Once the background was laid out the story took an unexpected turn in the direction of revisionist history and Holocaust denial. The rest of film was Leuchter's involvement in a case against Ernst Zundel for publishing a "historical" book on the "myth" of the Holocaust. Zundel used Leuchter to investigate the likelihood of the usage of gas chambers at Auschwitz. Because, of course, there was so much doubt. Leuchter ended up chipping pieces of brick and stone from several buildings and concluding that there was no cyanide residue to found, therefore there were no gas chambers, therefore there was no Holocaust. All of this is then coupled with factual rebuttals from trained scientists and legitimate historians thus proving what the audience has already gathered--These guys are fucking insane. As much as I love seeing them disproved, albeit not to their faces, the director dwells on this back and forth of the crazy/non-crazy dialogue. In other words the second half was boring. The classic switch and drag. The director moves the story to what initially seems like an interesting sidenote but spends way too much time repeating the obvious and making the audience sit through an over-analyzed defense of the Holocaust. Thank you. We get it.


3 out 5 dead elephants

New brand of exploitation

February 22, 10: 52 pm. Sitting in the kitchen riddled with spray paint fumes and sticky pasta, Erin asks Dave what he thought of Billy the Kid.

Erin: What did you think of Billy the Kid?

Dave: I didn't like it. It was really boring. It didn't go anywhere. You weren't learning anything. It was "hey, remember that kid with the wolf t-shirt and the fucked up mullet in school?" It was kind of a guilt trip movie. It goes with midddle class white people saying "oh isn't this taboo." There was nothing thought provoking. Very fishbowl; tapping the glass watching the fish swim around. I felt gross watching it. He was in the boiler room class with all the other miscreants and social outcasts pushed to the side by society. You're putting the spotlight on them like you did in school.

Erin: But didn't you find it charming at all? The kid's a performer, he seemed to enjoy the attention and worked with the camera. Everyone is acting for the camera to a certain extent.

Dave: No I didn't find it charming. I was questioning the validity of the subject matter the entire time. These are the people who used to come in to my store. They're people not spectacles. They make them out to be sideshows, freaks because we have chosen them to be for our elitist groups. We're talking about people who can't function in society. "oh look, they have feelings too." Fuck that.

Erin: Why do you think we make and watch these movies?

Dave: To feel better about ourselves, to seem interesting, to win awards, to educate others.

People fortunate enough to have an education are the only ones watching. He's smart for his age, but so what. He's not gonna have the same opportunities. He's going to have to fight his entire life. I hope he becomes happier or a performer.He's a spectacle for privelaged people to look at.

Erin: Do think all documentary film is spectacle?

Dave: It's entertainment. Especially the documentaries you are watching. Not many of them are educational. We're not watching any on the Sahara, space, or penguins; those are cut and dried. Factual. In your documentaries science and art is convoluted. Are we learning something? Is this the real world? If so what do we take from it? Why is it that the miscreants of our society are really what brings the Pulitzer home?

A transparent plea for time

If my goal was to induce some kind of neurological malfunction from watching too many documentaries, I'd say I'm well on my way (despite the lack of writing about them, but I will eventually, really. I've been busy, okay. All six Leprechaun movies don't watch themselves). This next week I will try to devote most of them to text and possibly say something intelligent and thought provoking (albeit a stretch). I keep coming across lists and lists of documentaries that I want to watch. Here are a few that I'm really looking forward to writing about:
Please accept the minimal picture and link to trailer.

The Cruise

Billy the Kid

Speedo: A Demolition Durby Love Story

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

Belarusian Waltz