Nut Magnet Parking Lot: the documentaries of Jeff Krulik

The final 2016 filmgoing experience I wanted to write about is a mini-retro that occurred at the Anthology Film Archives (still the most adventurous rep house in NYC) a few months back. It was a tribute to the great documentarian Jeff Krulik, who was present to speak after his best-known video, “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” (which had its 30th anniversary this year), a group of his shorter docs, and his latest film, a feature that you will not be seeing online.

I will stress that last aspect, since Jeff Krulik has been incredibly generous with his work and has posted for free online nearly every video he's ever made, from the sublime to the ridiculous (and some that are sublimely ridiculous). I've enjoyed his videos since I first saw “HMPL,” but the thing I most admire about him is the fact that he is clearly interested in sharing his passions, and moments from the lives of the eccentric folk that he encounters (and so clearly loves).

That generous instinct means that you can take in most of Krulik's filmography (more properly titled a videography, since he has worked, to my knowledge, exclusively on video) for free online. Before I talk about his work, I would heavily advise, exhort, urge you to see Jeff when he appears live with his films in your part of the country, since he is a great advocate for his work and a good speaker, but also because he likes to spice up programs of his old work with new docs no one has seen, and depending on the venue, sometimes even snippets of really great material he couldn't find a place for (or source material he couldn't afford to clear the licensing for) in his finished works.

So what are his documentaries about? Well, he gravitates to certain topics over and over. The first, best-known are gatherings of, let's say, eccentric or rowdy fans. The second is most definitely collectors and their insular (but very content) world. The latter mostly involves fan-geek males — there are many women in Jeff's videos, but the most memorable individuals are always the eccentric men, with the major exception of the girl who says she would like to “jump Rob Halford's bones” in “Heavy Metal Parking Lot.” (Halford responded to her sexual interest in him, “Didn't you know yet…?”).

Krulik doesn't make “fly on the wall” slices of verite. His personality is felt throughout his videos, and he doesn't shy away from interviewing his subjects on-camera. He clearly enjoys their obsessions and is a fellow fanboy (although generally not in the same areas as his subjects). His work captures a very weird strain of Americana, namely the obsessions of the average gent in the suburbs (his interview subjects usually seem to own houses in which they store their carefully curated collections — or from which they're trying to escape into rock 'n' roll heaven….).

The filmmaker who Krulik’s docs seem closest to is Errol Morris, for whom he worked as an archivist (on The Fog of War). What's interesting here is that Jeff has always been heard or seen in his docs, while Morris maintained a Herzog-like distance in his early works. Throughout the years Morris has become very “present” in his films, to the extent that some of his work now seems like Krulik's work — most notably Morris' “It’s Not Crazy, It’s Sports” shorts about sports fans for ESPN, which play very much like Jeff's videos.

Two other elements strike me about Krulik's work. The first is his “local” focus — he's specialized in showcasing the unusual folk from his part of the country, the Maryland/D.C. area. Thus, while he's got a “micro” stage upon which to draw on, he's actually wound up getting a broader view of American obsessiveness than he would've if he'd travelled around the country, looking for roadside weirdos.

The other aspect I admire about Krulik's work is his generosity with his work. I haven't yet written about Joni Mitchell on this blog (long may she reign, hoping her health improves), but one of her lyrics that has always affected me the most is “For Free,” in which she sings as a professional, admiring the virtuosity of a musician who “plays real good/for free...” This may sound like hyperbole, but I believe that Jeff is in that category, as he seems compelled to share his discoveries, as so many of us who work in access love to do. Thus his “giving away” the bulk of his filmography online for free (with a “101” of his best appearing below).

Krulik, "HMPL" codirector John Heyn, and some fan of their work.

The mention of access is intentional on my part (and not intended as self-promotion). From 1985-90 Krulik ran the public access studio at MetroVision Cable in Capital Heights, Maryland (there's fascinating video of him giving a tour of the facilities here). He thus was working on access programming (which even to this day has made YouTube and other online portals look like places “where the sane people go”) and has collaborated with many souls who were happy to share their work for free.

In an American corporate culture where money is valued above all else, I find it incredibly refreshing and noteworthy to discover the work of someone who wants to share new discoveries, even at the “price” of not earning cash off their creations. That is why I encourage you to see Krulik when he visits a rep house or museum/university near you — attendance is the original form of “crowd-funding”!

There are many interview clips of Krulik available online (check out his website), but this is perhaps the most interesting, as he openly talks with the interviewer about clearing music in his documentaries. He discusses how, if he uses a song he knows is ideal but couldn't afford to clear, that “I can't sell [the film], but I can share it.” He also addresses the “gray area” that many documentaries inhabit and offers very pertinent and helpful advice to the aspiring documentarian while also advising them “don't follow my lead.”

Before I get to Krulik's own creations online, I must offer up at least one of the items he's posted that he didn't make. This is a music-video made by a woman named Ilana Sol, and it is quite… unique. It also captures the home-made, pre-computer-editing quality that distinguished access at its best in the Eighties and Nineties. You just know Ilana had a burning need to share this video.

There are four YouTube channels in which you can find Krulik's work, all of them posted by the man himself.

This YT channel is a good starting point.

This channel is for a “deep dive."

This channel is all Borgnine all the time. (See below.)

And this channel has videos that all relate to Krulik's best-known video, “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” (1986) “HMPL” (as it is known to abbreviation- minded fans) was made by Jeff and John Heyn, and like many beloved cult items, wasn't made to be anything special. The pair behind the camera just thought it would be fun to record the concert-goers tailgating on the day of a Judas Priest concert.

The result is a very funny and weird slice of history. To those who knew this kind of head-banging metal fan, it's like a trip down memory lane. To those of us of a certain age, we avoided these people in real life but are perfectly fine with watching them preserved forever on video (cue the John Waters review of the video, “Thanks for letting me see it, it gave me the creeps”). To younger generations, this is like a message in a bottle from the past, from a generation that liked to “party” with no political or even cultural aspect to what they were doing. Plus, the fashions, those insanely tacky Eighties animal-print fashions....

"HMPL" is, as of this writing, the subject of a museum exhibit at the gallery of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the University of Maryland. The film was never intended as a time capsule but it is one, without a doubt. The more I see it, the less I laugh at it; when I rewatch it these days I'm just mesmerized by how Krulik and Heyn captured something that they themselves weren't a part of — they weren't scientists studying creatures under glass, but they did provide these kids with a video soapbox. These stoned Priest fans thus decided to scream, talk nonsense, and ego-talk themselves into history.

The video was such a cult item (dubbed endlessly on VHS and given from friend to friend) and has such a devoted following that it spawned countless “sequels” where Krulik and Heyn (and other people ripping them off) chronicled fans in different places. In some cases, the results were odd because they clash with the original (“Harry Potter Parking Lot” [which should be titled “Harry Potter Bookstore”] contains the smartest bunch of people in any Krulik/Heyn fan movie — and they're all under 14 years old!). But sometimes the disparity is pure genius, as here in the 1997 short “Neil Diamond Parking Lot”:

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Krulik's docs is that many of them are short and in fact leave you wanting more. Jeff seems to have a good idea of how long certain concepts should run onscreen and frequently has made short-shorts out of his docs.

Any good collection of his work has to emphasize his videos about fans whose devotion to their subject is indeed fanatical. Krulik has referred to himself as a “nut magnet” in one festival of his work — while these people aren't nuts in the usual sense of that word, they are… a bit strange. One of the best of these video portraits is “King of Porn” (1996), in which we are introduced to a man with an incredibly large archive of porn, kept in a spectacularly organized fashion around his house.

Another Krulik “discovery” is Richard Wilson, a dealer in costumes and personal clothing worn by celebrities. The short, called “Celebrity Underwear,” was shot in 1998 and edited for screenings in 2013.

The last and possibly best collector in Krulik-world is Neil Keller, a man who wants to know which celebs are Jewish and which are not. The ones he is sure of he puts in his many (many!) binders of autographed pictures, letters, and sports cards. “Obsessed with Jews” (2000) is a truly wonderful portrait of a guy who has pretty much one driving force in his life — from his pride at being a Jew, Keller (who is an accountant by trade) has constructed a world in which he MUST know which celebrities are or aren't Jewish (and even when they tell him they're not, he still wants to include them in his collection as if they were).

There has been no sequel to “Obsessed by Jews” (yet), but I was surprised to find an entire Neil Keller YT channel that has segments shot by Krulik about Keller's later adventures in collecting.

The three preceding docs are thoroughly entertaining, but “The Saddest Collector in the World” (shot in '93) is a wonderful in-joke for those of us who collect. It follows a sad-sack gent as he walks around an Atlantic City toy show, glumly eyeing the items on display, seemingly knowing he can never afford them and yet wanting them. I think what Krulik gets at here is the underside of collecting — you can never get enough of your favorite topics, but often your budget is the final arbiter of what you can and cannot have….

It follows that one of Krulik's more conventionally structured docs is about one of the strangest kiddie shows ever, Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. Jeff's “I Created Lancelot Link” (1999) profiles comedy writers Stan Burns and Mike Marmer, who created and ran the Lance Link TV show. The men hadn't met in person in years at the point that the doc was shot. As could be expected, the resulting video has plenty of stories about monkey actors getting rambunctious as they acted out Burns and Marmer's really, really oddball scripts.

Though it's not on the plane of sheer surreal bliss on which My Breakfast With Blassie exists, Krulik's Mr. Blassie Goes to Washington (1995) is a lovely tribute to the late Mr. Fred Blassie (a part of my interview with “the fashion plate of wrestling” can be found here). In this fanboy fantasy, Jeff and a friend take Fred on a tour around Washington, D.C. Fred lectures the passersby and tells anecdotes from his long wrestling career. The best moment is when one lone woman he encounters knows who he is and she reacts to him as a “heel” wrestler, to which he responds perfectly.

One of the more “personal” pieces that Krulik has done is The Legend of Merv Conn (2007). A profile of a beloved D.C.-area accordionist, the doc has the feel of a piece by Les Blank (minus the food aspect — Blank was big on food prep and eating). It's a charming little piece that offers another face of Jeff's work (which he shares with Blank), the performers who keep alive old and classic forms of entertainment.



The same theme is present in Krulik's slickest doc Traveling Sideshow: Shocked & Amazed! (2003), made for the Travel Channel. The program offers a mini-history lesson of the sideshow, while focusing on the contemporary “freaks” and carnies who do in this century what folks did for decades before them. It's fun and informative — because who doesn't like info about freaks and carnies?

Perhaps the most serious of any of Krulik's docs is Hitler's Hat (2003). It is the model of a well-made documentary, in that it has an anecdotal premise and then moves beyond the initial anecdote to explore historical incidents and the theme of memory (more on that below).

The film focuses on the titular top hat, which a member of a division of American soldiers took from Hitler's apartment in Munich. What is more important here is that this squad had just come from liberating Dachau, so the soldier's appropriation of Hitler's chapeau is seen as an act of rebellion. The fact that that soldier happened to be an American Jew (and, later, a stage magician) lends the story a very emotional undercurrent — and yet the silly aspect of the hat story is underscored by anti-Nazi humor from Chaplin, the Three Stooges, and (natch) Spike Jones and His City Slickers.

One of Krulik's best-known videos is Ernest Borgnine on the Bus (1995). It chronicles a road trip taken by Ernie B. in his custom-built RV — each summer when he was bored, Ernie would take a road trip across America and hang out with average Joes and Janes.

It's a strangely touching piece on celebrity, since Ernie was indeed a face known to everyone in America, and yet by the time the doc was made, his name wasn't on the tip of the tongue anymore. You can see that everyone recognizes Borgnine, but only the older folk would seem to know exactly what movies and TV series he was in. (This is supplemented by Krulik asking him questions about his career as he is driving.)

The full doc can be seen below, but Krulik has created an entire channel for the raw footage of the road trip, so those who dig Ernie (or just enjoy seeing the sites of roadside America) can travel along. You can find the channel here; it's another example of Jeff's emotional connection to his subjects.

The final film I'd like to spotlight can't be seen online — it can only be viewed at Krulik's screenings in rep houses and museums around the country. It's his only full-length feature — the closest thing before it was Heavy Metal Picnic (2010), an entertaining doc by Jeff and John Heyn exploring a rock festival “farm party” held on private property in Potomac, Maryland in 1985.

I will confess I was wary before seeing Led Zeppelin Played Here (2013, final version completed in 2016). As I mentioned above, one of the things I prize in Jeff's work is that he has demonstrated time and again that he knows how long each topic deserves, and in some cases has left us wanting more (that's a good thing, since many docs leave us wanting much less).

I was very pleasantly surprised by how good ...Played Here is. Its premise is, again, anecdotal, and in this case the film begins with the anecdote and then researches its veracity in a journalistic fashion, while also offering a meditation on memory (a fave topic in the Funhouse, thus my love of Chris Marker and Alain Resnais), aging, and the period before Woodstock when rock acts on major labels played to small audiences at high schools and youth centers around America.

The anecdote in question is the fact that Led Zeppelin played a Maryland youth center in January of 1969 as “the New Yardbirds.” People who attended the concert swear it happened and have vivid memories of seeing this band that wasn't yet known in the U.S., but there is no proof whatsoever (no tickets, photos, newspaper mentions, etc) of the concert having taken place.

Krulik explores the basic issue of whether or not the concert happened (I won't give away the film's conclusion here). As he does so, though, he moves off on tangents that prove to be far more interesting than the initial premise. The first involves the fact that our memory of performances we've seen is faulty to begin with — watching the people who *swear* that something took place several decades before, one is left to wonder how much any of us can really remember of the live shows we've seen, especially after several decades elapse (and especially having seen a band that was “up and coming” — or, in this case, a “new” version of an old act).

The second tangent that is fascinating is the notion that Woodstock drove up the prices that rock acts could charge for gigs, and so the local, small-venue concerts by acts on major labels pretty much stopped entirely in 1970. Krulik interviews concert promoters and reviewers who talk about how stellar acts played tiny little venues in the late Sixties — in these moments Led Zep is forgotten and Krulik focuses on memories people have of small gigs in the Maryland/D.C. area by acts like Spirit and most especially the Stooges. [Quick confession: I am not a fan of Zep at all, but really, really love Spirit and the Stooges.]

So Led Zeppelin Played Here is a film for rock fans and concert-goers (who may or may not really remember what the hell they've seen), but it's also a great piece of research and a fine mediation on memory (and, again, aging!). Here's the website for the film — check it out when it comes to a theater near you!

Those of us who follow Krulik's work await whatever else he has to offer us. It's a strange world his characters inhabit (mostly in the universes of their own homes — or parking lots) and it should only grow bigger as the years move on.

Xmas Misery Megamix — to the max!

It’s been a rough year for everyone. There were countless tragedies around the world, most Americans finally understood that our political system is broken (whomever they supported), more jobs and industries just disappeared (never to return), many of us had our personal sadnesses, and a bunch of much-beloved cultural icons kicked off.

And now it’s Christmas. In an ordinary year, the holiday is burdensome enough — with its many obligations and simultaneous message that “time has passed, another year is gone, the clock is ticking, kids!” This year the Yuletide means that the crapfest that was 2016 is finally at an end, but another crapfest is on its way, right after this short break….

So I think it’s only right to once again get control over the emotions that the holiday produces and turn the whole thing on its head. DIVE into the misery and enjoy it! You ain’t getting’ away from it, so why not listen to talented tunesmiths, great vocalists, and rockin’ bands commemorate the emotional overload that is the holiday season?

Thus, I draw your attention my “Xmas Misery Megamix.” I started creating this, with the help of many friends (all thanked in the individual posts), well before Thanksgiving of last year, since Xmas music now starts to crop up after Halloween. I have waited this year until we are only a few days away from the Xmas holiday (and its less oppressive, but still gift-driven, Hanukkah cousin) to revisit this trove of gorgeously depressing music.

The first post I did about this topic was a super-survey of the saddest ditties that mention the holiday or are identified with that time of year. The selection here ranges from pop and classic r&b to novelty records and punk songs. A special section is devoted to incredibly sad Xmas country tunes and one of my fave candidates, submitted by a friend, a well-known and well-loved Xmas carol from the 16th century that was written to commemorate a massacre of children.

The artists included here include the Everly Brothers, Lawrence Welk, Miles Davis, Tom Waits, Fear, Wall of Voodoo, and a host of country music legends. 

READ THE POST HERE.

After I wrote the initial piece I found a few more choice candidates and a few friends nominated their own favorites. Thus this second entry, in which (for no particular reason) the miserable-mas songs are done only by bands with one-word names. READ IT HERE.

In the third and final piece, I showcased the final two sad songs, jumping from James Chance and the Contortions to Willie Tyler & Lester. For some reason unknown to me, this shorter blog post was only a slight bit behind the very lengthy first entry in the series in terms of views. Perhaps all those Lester fans out there? 

READ IT HERE, and please accept my wishes of a hap… er, miserable holiday season!

‘Shakes the Clown’ at 25

Before the year closes, I wanted to mention two particularly enjoyable moviegoing experiences I had. The first is chronicled in this piece. In the time since this event occurred in Cambridge, there was a celebration of the same film in L.A. with not only the director/star present, but also nearly all the living cast members (including one who is now a big movie star on his own, although his movies are dreadful). Since I live on the East Coast of the U.S., I’m happy that there was a Shakes celebration closer to home….

The majority of cult movies were, on their initial release, complete flops at the box office and trashed by critics. Such was the fate of Shakes the Clown (1991), Bobcat Goldthwait’s uncommonly dark, and at times downright nasty, first film as a director/writer/star. The film’s best review, by Betsy Sherman in The Boston Globe, took the right tongue-in-cheek approach and contained the priceless line dubbing it “the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies.”

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the film, which, thanks to cable showings and the blessed medium of VHS (later DVD) now has a diehard cult of fans who appreciate its imaginative nastiness and terrific cast of then-fledgling comedians. Shakes received its due at a 25th anniversary celebration on Sept. 22 at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Bobcat was in attendance and the event reminded yrs truly of how grimly funny the film is, and how it definitely led the way to Goldthwait’s subsequent indie features.

Bobcat onstage at the Brattle

Shakes was a very odd move for Bobcat, who was the better “screaming comedian of the Eighties.” (Bobcat’s was a comic persona, whereas Sam Kinison’s rage and jokes about minorities seemed way too real.) Bobcat’s onstage character was a nervous wreck who would shout out Tourette’s-like outbursts of non-sequitur humor. With Shakes he abandoned his strangulated standup voice and chose to play his character as a sarcastic, hopeless drunk in a surreal clowns-only version of show biz (with the much-loathed mime populace living on the fringe).

Bobcat spoke before and after the screening at the Brattle, and was quite open about the film’s box-office failure — it put him, he says, “in comedy jail” for several years afterwards, as his management (and audience) had hoped he’d make a vehicle picture for his onstage persona (he had played essentially the same character in three Police Academy movies).

The film remains rewatchable because of several random elements that stay in the memory, among them some wonderfully mean lines of dialogue and the sheer absurdity of a serious “drunk at the end of his rope” plot thread being situated in a world of colorful yet embittered clowns. The 35mm print shown at the Brattle had added “nostalgia value” since it was slightly scratchy (much better in this reviewer’s opinion than the spotless 4K restorations, which resemble high-def videos more than film).

The most interesting revelation that Bobcat was more than happy to share was that some of the funniest moments in the film were ad-libbed by the cast members. The performers in Shakes range from then-unknowns (Adam Sandler, Kathy Griffin, Tom Kenny) to Eighties comedy stars (Bobcat, Julie Brown, a pseudonymous Robin Williams) to old pros (LaWanda Page, Paul Dooley, Sydney Lassick, and a seemingly game-for-anything Florence Henderson). Bobcat maintained that he had a lot of surprises as he directed the film, since the lines the cast were coming up with were better than the ones in his script.

For example, perhaps my favorite line in the picture appears in this scene with LaWanda Page who, according to Bobcat, made up her own dialogue.

Indeed many fan favorite moments in Shakes were created on-set by the performers. Julie Brown gave her character a speech impediment. The two comics playing plainclothes detectives came up with the random weirdness their characters talk about (they’re my least-fave part of Shakes, but they do have some great lines, including a consideration of what the hell a “Shondell” might be — as in “Tommy James and the…”). Tom Kenny — best known these days known as the voice of Spongebob Squarepants — steals the film outright, though, as Binky, the cocaine-dealing party clown who is the film’s villain. Wearing makeup that Bobcat said was based on John Wayne Gacy’s clown facepaint, Kenny is creepy and funny as a character who seems like a hyper cousin of the Joker who happened to wander into the cranky world of Shakes.

Bobcat did the intro to the film by himself but invited a guest up for the Q&A after the film — his friend Tony V., a Boston standup who appears in Shakes as one of the nasty rodeo clowns (the film is indeed set in a world populated by different sorts of clowns). Tony agreed that Bobcat’s original script was very unlike what finally reached the screen. Which might explain the two strange sequences in which Shakes can suddenly fly (which must’ve been leftovers from the original script).

Bobcat and Tony V. at the Brattle

A question from an audience member about a scene in which Shakes juggles led to one of two great stories about the time that Bobcat and Tony spent on the road together, touring as standups. Tony was teaching Bobcat how to juggle, and an airport security guard detained them because of the juggling pins found in their luggage. The guard wanted to be reassured that the two weren’t terrorists, so he ordered them to juggle for him — which they did, entertaining the other passengers waiting to get through security.

The other story they told about airport security was an even more convoluted (and funnier) tale of a cop ingesting something that had been in Tony’s nether regions (he tasted it to see if it was cocaine). One got the impression that the two have been close friends for quite a while — Tony also has a role in Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad (2009) — and their life on the road was filled with very weird events.

Here are the two pals appearing on the local TV show “Charlestown Live”:

But back to the film: Its cult status has been underscored by the fact that some of its lines of dialogue have shown up in other contexts. REM’s song “Binky the Doormat” (from the 1996 album “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”) was titled after one of Tom Kenny’s lines, and it was noted that an odd “code” phrase used in the film — “The dolphin is in the Jacuzzi.” — was used by certain dealers selling black-market Cuban cigars (!).

The most interesting story about unexpected publicity given to the film concerns the time Bobcat was invited onto The Today Show to promote the picture and was informed that he was going to have to debate a clown — his answer to that, he informed us, was “I know the deal… I’ve seen your show…”

But it was a real clown he had to debate, an angry representative of the clown community who felt that Shakes was adversely affecting the image of clowns around America. This entire event being red meat to a polished standup comic, Bobcat then had to remark that the clown seemed to lack a sense of humor. We were informed by the very proud Goldthwait, that derider of clowns, that Katie Couric enshrined this ridiculous segment as her worst-ever interview in her memoir.

Clearly Bobcat is still very proud of his debut as a filmmaker, but he did note — having watched it again, sitting amongst the cultists — that the film is poorly edited at points and he wished he could re-edit certain sequences, including a car chase in which he had noticed that the car being chased was behind the pursuers.

Although Shakes is indeed the broadest comedy Bobcat has yet made a screenwriter-director, it definitely paved the way for his later indie features, each of which could easily be described as “dark” (or grim, depending on the sequence and the picture). Unlike Paul Feig or (god forbid) Dennis Dugan, Goldthwait is a “comedy filmmaker” who has made a different sort of film each time out of the box and has avoided the “kooky” formulas that rule American movie comedies.

His next two features after Shakes, Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006) and the Robin Williams-starrer World’s Greatest Dad, were comedies that blended dark humor with surprisingly moving messages about honesty. The first film indicates that too much honesty can wreck intimate relationships; the second conveys the message that too many lies, even ones that “mean well,” can wreck your whole life.

Both films are very funny and very smart — this last aspect shouldn’t be a surprise, but in a landscape filled with incredibly bad, cookie-cutter American comedies (most of them vehicle pictures for ex-SNL cast members), it is indeed rare.

The most encouraging thing for those of us who’ve been following Goldthwait from the time he was the “screaming comedian” on late night talk shows, was that he left behind comedy in his last two indie features. The first, Willow Creek (2013), is a found footage thriller (along the lines of The Blair Witch Project) that had satiric aspects in a few scenes — about odd “Bigfoot” merchandising — but is primarily a low-key horror flick. Call Me Lucky (2015) was entirely different, as it’s a documentary portrait of comedian Barry Crimmins, which explores his hard-edged left-wing comedy, his mentoring of younger comedians (including Goldthwait), and the sexual abuse he suffered as a child that has haunted his adult life.

So while Louis C.K. has been getting much attention (and rightly so) for making tragicomedies that are unlike mainstream comedies, Goldthwait has also continued to carve out a very unique niche for himself, without casting himself in the lead (or even supporting) roles of his films. The sharpest and nastiest satire he’s made, God Bless America (2011), is an incredible time capsule that is both very funny in its mean (but entirely accurate) depiction of America’s love of lowest-common-denominator culture and sympathetic in its depiction of two “normal” souls (a middle-aged man, played by Joel Murray, and a teen, played by Tara Lynne Barr) who get fed up with the mediocrity that surrounds us.

If the film consisted of this one scene alone, it would already be a significant work:

As for the fact that he chooses not to act in the films he’s made since Shakes, Goldthwait explained this in the Brattle Q&A when he noted that both Robin Williams and Joel Murray said to him at one point in their respective shoots, “I get it… I’m playing you…”

After the Q&A was finished Bobcat hung around the Brattle to talk with audience members and take pictures. When I asked what his next film would be, he spoke with enthusiasm (and a characteristic note of self-deprecation) about a new series he is making for the TruTV network, to be called Bobcat Goldthwait’s Messed Up Stories. If the series is anything like his films, it will be delightfully unpredictable (the key virtue in the Funhouse philosophy). All he would say is that it will be his very own Twilight Zone and will be (no surprise) “dark.”

And while I rarely would ever bug a celeb to take a picture with him/her, Bobcat was hanging out with the fans afterward. Thus this image of myself and the man, shot by my friend Paul G.

I look forward to seeing what he comes up with — any man who starts his filmmaking career with an antisocial act of provocation like Shakes deserves our attention.

"Not a just image, but just an image...": Deceased Artiste Raoul Coutard

Although his obits emphasized the fact that Raoul Coutard, who died in early November at age 92, pretty much stumbled into being a cinematographer — he thought he was being asked to take on-set stills for the film in question by his old friend Pierre Schoendoerffer — he wound up crafting some of the most beautiful images and kinetic camerawork in the films of the French New Wave and related filmmakers. He is best identified with Funhouse deity Jean-Luc Godard (aka Uncle Jean), who turned 86 last week. The pair collaborated on sixteen absolutely perfect films, all of which feature gorgeous and vibrant imagery.

Coutard was indeed a photo-journalist who had specialized in war photography (he lived for over a decade in Vietnam) before he entered the film world. His greatest claim to fame — and it is indeed a credit to be reckoned with — is that he innovated ways to shoot “on the fly” with JLG on A bout de souffle. His work with Godard is unassailable, as it is a building block of modern cinema.

He worked with other filmmakers as well on what were some of their best and most beautiful-looking films. He ran the gamut from pure verite to stylized fantasy, doing camerawork for both Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s landmark documentary Chronicle of a Summer (1961) and Jacques Demy’s lighter-than-air romance Lola (also ‘61).

Besides Godard, the filmmaker he most frequently collaborated with was Francois Truffaut (Godard’s best friend, and later nemesis). The quartet of films Coutard shot for Truffaut are among his very best. Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and Jules and Jim (1962) were trendsetting tragic romances. The Soft Skin (1964) features some of the most beautiful images in all of Truffaut’s filmography, and The Bride Wore Black (1968) is one of the finest-ever adaptations of noir-master Cornell Woolrich’s work.

Coutard had arguments with Truffaut over the last-mentioned film that ensured they never worked together again. Coutard claimed responsibility, saying he was trying to stop smoking during the shooting and that made him impossible to deal with.

Costa-Gavras has been making sharply political films for the last half-century. Two of his finest, and most successful, films were shot by Coutard, Z (1969) and The Confession (1970). The latter was quite controversial, as it showed the authoritarian excesses of the Soviet Union; it was therefore perceived incorrectly by reviewers as a right-wing film by an iconic left-wing filmmaker. The film is a haunting and memorable tale of unjust imprisonment. 

Z is one of the all-time greatest political thrillers, an unforgettable mixture of plot, message, and characterization — made even better by Coutard’s camerawork and the music of Mikis Theodorakis.

Coutard kept working up until 2001. Unsurprisingly, the filmmaker who used his talents best in his later years was a “younger brother” of the French New Wave, namely Philippe Garrel. His The Birth of Love (1993) stars Sixties icons Jean-Pierre Leaud and Lou Castel, and perfectly captures the look and tone of the French New Wave.

Coutard’s first film as a director, Hoa Binh (1970), received good reviews, won the Best First Film prize at Cannes, and was up for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The film offers a Vietnamese boy’s perspective on the Vietnam War. His third and last film as a director, S.A.S. Malko (1983), was unfortunately a tacky-looking action flick that went straight to video in most countries:

The only proper place to end this tribute is, of course, to discuss his sublime collaboration with Godard. Coutard was selected to shoot A bout de souffle (1960) because of his documentary background, and what he devised for Uncle Jean were several clever, innovative ways to “steal” shots on the streets of Paris.

Aside from secreting the camera in a mail cart and shooting in (and from) moving cars, Coutard was, of course, the cameraman in the wheelchair (above) whom Godard pushed along the street to simulate a tracking shot.

From those gritty beginnings Godard and Coutard moved on to make some of the most perfect and sophisticated films of the decade, including Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Two of Three Things I Know About Her… (1967), and Weekend (also ’67). In each case the film was excellent to begin with (as was the case with Masculin-Feminin, the only non-Coutard Godard feature of that era). But Coutard’s visuals, lighting, and work with colors (or stark b&w, as in Alphaville) made the films even more perfect.

My choice for the finest of all would be Pierrot Le Fou (1965), the “lovers on the run” drama-comedy-musical that covers so much territory in its 110 minutes that it seems like a summation and/or primer for those who are curious about Godard’s way of assembling a film, crafting characters, framing his actors, and exploring the themes that he’s still obsessed with today.

Godard’s films with other cinematographers are still marvelous, but there’s something very special about the rapport he had with Coutard. This is proven by the fact that the two best films Godard made in his Eighties “comeback” period were both shot by Coutard. 

Passion (1982) is an exquisitely beautiful film that counterpoints activity in a factory with that in a nearby movie studio. Stars Hanna Schygulla, Michel Piccoli, and Isabelle Huppert all have some great moments, but the most gorgeous sequences are the ones in which we watch the film-within-a-film being shot.

As is usually the case in Godard’s films about artistic creation, the “interior” work is an unlikely prospect in which famous paintings are recreated as live-action tableaux vivants. What results are some stunningly beautiful images.

Godard's last film with Coutard is another masterpiece that serves as a good “portal” to Uncle Jean's work. First Name: Carmen (1983) is Godard's funny and bittersweet take on the Carmen story. In the Eighties Godard crystallized a visual style that found him frequently cutting to landscapes and the sky as punctuation to the actions of his characters. (He had started doing this in the Sixties but it has been used a lot more in his work in the last 35 years).

Coutard's contribution here is incalculable, as these shots are gorgeously composed and lit, adding a sense of inevitability to the doomed love affair that is at the core of the film. There are many moving sequences in the film (and many great comic ones), none more so than this beautiful image of impotence and lost love, set to Tom Waits' “Ruby's Arms.” 

That sequence is only present in a small shard on YT (I'm not sure if that is because of copyright troubles involving the music, or "obscenity" troubles with the glorious nudity of Maruschka Detmers — America can’t deal with the human body…). One of the only clips found is this fragment from early in the film:

M. Coutard's beautiful images will most certainly live on well into the future. Here is his most famous sequence, from Contempt. He is, of course, the man behind the camera:

Breaking news: Deceased Artiste mocked by clowns

Sometimes two events collide in the Funhouse. This year the most interesting collision is the fact that Thanksgiving has arrived once more *and* the gent who represents that holiday for me (and, I believe, many Funhouse viewers) happened to die just two weeks ago at the age of 83.

Yes, Robert Vaughn has left the building. A man who was best known for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. but who did have much more serious roles in films, theater, and television. He took his work very seriously, even in the worst of times (which was pretty often, let's be honest).

He did a series of law-office commercials that were so vague and ambiguous that he did the same pitch for numerous firms around the country (one assumes he just went to a studio one day and shot a bunch of ads for law firms in different cities).

He also did ads for "The Helsinki Formula," a somewhat dubious (I'm being kind) form of hair restoration. The years after U.N.C.L.E. were indeed lean ones, so Vaughn could be seen all over the place.

I pitched a serious interview to him (I have never, and would never, make fun of my guests on the show) at the Chiller Theatre convention several years ago and got the strangest reaction — he said he wouldn't be interested and continued to read Scarlet Street magazine, putting it right up in front of his face so that he could completely ignore me and make me go away.

So, all right. He didn't want to do an interview (even though I brought out what I thought would be my ace in the hole, I had read his book about the theatrical blacklist, Only Victims). A friend of mine said he'd probably seen me showing the clip you see below — I knew he hadn't, he hadn't lived in NYC for years, and there was essentially no way to see the Funhouse back then (no online streaming or YouTube — or this blog!) if you lived outside of Manhattan.

In any case, when I posted about his death on Facebook, a friend noted that he too had gone over to Vaughn to talk at Chiller Theatre. He says it was clear he just wanted to ask Mr. Vaughn (who was incredibly not busy, both when I spoke to him and my friend attempted it) some innocuous questions. In this case, Vaughn put The Wall Street Journal up in front of his face, to ignore my friend.

Two other FB friends noted that Vaughn had been rude to them. This was countered by two people who said he had been a delight (in both cases those people had spent money to meet him — first, to get an autograph at Chiller Theatre, second, a ticket had been bought to a play he was doing, so he was magnanimous enough to talk to the audience afterward in a Q&A set-up).

So Vaughn was not someone who would be friendly to those in the public. He did have a very long career in show business (it was noted that, with his death, all of the original "Magnificent Seven" are now dead). I will single out one crime drama produced by Gerry Anderson, which wasn't very good -- The Protectors -- but had a killer theme song (a catchy song that became a big hit for Tony Christie in the U.K.).

In closing, I must of course once again fulfill a ritual I began years ago on the Funhouse TV show (first airing of this: 1994; I recorded it off the air in '86). In this moment when America is in transition, and we have a rabble-rousing, seat-of-the-pants president-elect that many people voted for and love, and other people loathe with a passion, I can only point you again to the clip that is America to me.

I will continue to feature Mr. Vaughn on this blog. At least once a year.

Happy Thanksgiving to all -- feast!

 

John Zacherle's memorial service

One of the Zach photos on display
at his memorial.

As a little update on my Deceased Artiste tribute to Zacherle, I wanted to briefly write about the memorial service held for him today at the Plaza Jewish Community Chapel (it was noted that Zach was actually a WASP, but the Chapel was very convenient to where he had lived for so long). It was a quiet but informal affair — it is rare indeed to walk into a funeral home and hear “Happy Halloween” and “Dinner With Drac” being played through loudspeakers.

The service was webcast and can be found for the next few days after this blog post appears at this URL on the Plaza website (which was not working properly when I wrote this, but perhaps will be able to be viewed in the coming hours). For those who are seeing this after the Webcast is down, or who simply would rather read about the proceedings, I offer the following review.

The actual memorial was short — in the vicinity of 30 minutes — but it was heartfelt and moving at points. There were five speakers. His close friends talked with much fondness about taking trips with Zach to Bear Mountain in his beat-up yellow VW convertible (which apparently worked so poorly it was a standing joke amongst his pals). The host, Jeff Samuels, spoke about Zach’s “wonderment at small things” and love of nature.

Both Jeff and David Chidekel spoke about the fun they had on those trips — when they’d be in the car listening to Pink Floyd and “doing things we can’t mention here.” (I’m presuming we’re talking pot.) It was noted that the 98-year-old Zach died as he had wanted to, at home amongst his stuff (don’t we all want that?) and that he was taken care of by five caregivers, who became an important part of his life in his final years, when he was suffering memory loss.

His neighbor Gene Dunham spoke affectionately about Zacherle the man, since he noted he hadn’t ever seen the “Cool Ghoul” in his prime. Gene and his husband also traveled with Zach, who frequently would simply show up on a nice day and ask if they’d like to take a drive. When they went on vacation, they wanted to bring him back keepsakes, but instead of tacky souvenirs (knowing his love of nature and oddities) they brought him rocks or stones from different countries.

Zach’s collection of odd artifacts given to him by fans was mentioned more than once — he did keep all that stuff, except one rare American flag from the 1800s that his neighbors sold for him on eBay (it fetched $1,000!). Samuels noted that Zach had an odd kitchen — with a small bed and a TV in it, not for guests but so he could watch TV late at night (his shifts on radio found him returning home quite late) and not wake up his neighbors. Dunham also mentioned that Zach would talk about his past in show business and before — he served in the military during WWII in Italy and South Africa.

His niece Diane Hanson spoke about “Uncle John” and his joyful visits with his relatives, with whom he spent every holiday. The final speaker was Perri Chasen, who spoke quite briefly and beautifully about their relationship and the love she shared with him for 45 years. As a close to the service, she read a poem by George Santayana.

And, quite appropriately, at least one of the speakers closed out by saying farewell to Zach, “whatever you are!”