Archive for the ‘Documentary’ Category

Hated: G.G. Allin and the Murder Junkies

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Supposedly this is the highest grossing student film of all time. It’s only about 50 minutes long and it’s a documentary about one of the shittiest and most unlikable rockstars who ever lived. But it’s great entertainment. The film was directed by Todd Phillips, who went on to do a controversial HBO documentary called Frat House and then the teen comedy Road Trip. In that one there was some dude who put a mouse in his mouth and that was supposed to be the ultimate grossout. Well obviously the individuals who said that haven’t heard of Hated.

You see when I said GG Allin was the shittiest rock star who ever lived I meant that literally. One of this dude’s trademarks was that he would take a shit on stage and then wipe it all over his face and ass and throw it into the audience and etc. Or one time he takes a banana and sticks it up his ass and then mushes it up and throws it out there. Basically, he is like the most mentally illest motherfuckers you ever come across in the correctional system, but with a microphone.

Now this guy had a small but very dedicated following of troubled alcoholic punks. And obviously they weren’t in it for the lyrics. But he was able to tour and do small shows and live his life as an outlaw. Personally I think he gave the lifestyle a bad name but what can you do man. He kept his one pair of pants and one shirt in a paper bag and must have crashed on people’s floors but god only knows how he bought food and drugs.

The documentary takes place when GG has just been released from prison and he agrees to break parole to go on tour so the film can be made. Every show he does seems to break into chaos in under ten minutes and end with this maniac pulling on his underwear and running from the cops or security guards all covered in blood and shit. Sometimes the fans jump on stage and kick the shit out of him. More often he attacks them, grabs some girl by the hair or punches some dude, then rolls around on the floor and starts shoving things up his ass. He says, “My mind is a machine gun, my body is the bullets, the audience is the target.” Which means, “I throw shit on people.” In his “spoken word performances” he does the same shit, he attacks people and cuts himself and then just starts calling everybody motherfuckers and robotic puppets of society. (more…)

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Pumping Iron

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

I couldn’t tell you what made me decide to rent this one. I’m not a Schwarzenegger fan, I don’t like looking at gigantic veiny muscles, and I’m not really interested in finding out why some people are. And yet, for some reason, I bring this one home and watch it. And it’s pretty fuckin good.

First off I gotta warn you, there is some horrible fuckin music in this movie. It starts right at the opening and it’s hard not to turn it off. Once you get past it, you basically see a story about a bunch of blond oafs lifting giant metal things, grunting, sweating, making ridiculous faces, not knowing what else to do with their lives. A young Arnold Schwarzenegger turns out to be the star of this professional bodybuilding world, sort of the Michael Jordan who everybody talks about, hopes to meet, doesn’t think they can ever beat. They interview him and he talks about how he is really an artist, making a sculpture, only instead of clay he’s using his body. You know, like Michael Jackson or that french gal in the upcoming cronenberg picture. Or that guy that pounds nails through his dick.

The movie gets interesting when it moves to the big competition in south africa. Schwarzenegger is expected to win. But there is a young underdog, a Rocky figure, who the movie also focuses on, named Lou Ferrigno. Remember, the guy who they painted green for the incredible hulk show. NOT Eric “Chopper” Bana, but the muscleman on the tv show. Lou Ferigno. (more…)

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Pimps Up, Ho’s Down

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Ever since I first saw American Pimp I have been meaning to see this competing “pimpumentary” which came out the same year and was covered in the same articles. Someone even told me it was way better because the pimps are crazier and flashier. But now that I’ve finally seen it I gotta say, I disagree. This is the poor man’s American Pimp. The made-for-tv American Pimp. This is the Carnosaur to American Pimp’s Jurassic Park. If American Pimp is The Beatles, Pimps Up is a Monkees cover band. When they’re older and less inspired, and thinking of breaking up.

The filmatics in this one simply is not as good. American Pimp was finely sculpted in such a way as to explain the pimp culture, how they are viewed in society, what is important to them, how their job works, etc. Pimps Up doesn’t explain shit. It’s just a bunch of interviews, some of them very entertaining, but thrown together pretty much at random. Since I saw it on dvd it is the director’s cut, which I think just means they added in about 30 minutes of extra ass shaking. Alot of it takes place at strip clubs or at pimp conventions where they just have strippers shaking their asses alot. Which, sorry fellas, but it gets old. There are other documentaries which cover that territory better, many of them from companies like Vivid or Hustler.

Speaking of porn, American Pimp had classic blaxploitation era funk and soul, but Pimps Up has cheesy fusion funk straight off of a bad porn movie. And I say a bad porn movie to differentiate from the good porn movies, which in fact have classic blaxploitation era funk and soul. (more…)

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A Perfect Candidate

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

How’s this for a horror story: this is a documentary about the time Oliver North ran for senator. It follows him on the campaign trail, with full access to the men operating his campaign. You see inside his bus, on the podium, and backstage. You see his opponents, particularly the democrat Chuck Robb. You see a journalist from the Washington Post who seems sort of shocked by the support for North, but seems to eventually be charmed by it. And you see his supporters.

So in a way this movie is like a way scarier version of TREKKIES. It’s one thing to fantasize about a gangbang with Chewbacca but it’s quite another to want Oliver North in a position of power again. The sad thing is that these are not just a few isolated freaks, there are hundreds of them in Virginia. Old ladies who defend the confederate flag, and complain that blacks see racism in everything. Middle age guys who sing right wing anthems in the style of Talking Heads. Young people who chant “Ollie! Ollie! Ollie!” instead of “Ali!” like they’re supposed to.

The feel of the movie is alot like BOB ROBERTS, but with less singing. It’s pretty good.

It is really weird to watch these political fuckers do their damndest to portray North as a hero. They produce one of the hostages he traded arms to the ayatollah for, to show that he saves lives. Sure, along the way maybe he brought crack into our country to finance an army in Nicaragua that he trained to kill and torture civilians. That may have cost a few lives here or there. But in general, he saved lives! (more…)

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Dogtown and Z-Boys

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Okay so you’re familiar with skateboards, right? Well what this documentary is about is a specific team/subculture of the skateboarders, in the ’70s, in a wasteland of a beach resort in california. The team starts up around the Zephyr surf shop, a shop apparently known for its unique shaped boards and handpainted graphics inspired by hispanic gang grafitti around the neighborhood. The shop plucks up young street kids who know how to surf. During the off hours, when the waves aren’t good for surfing, they practice on their skateboards, going up concrete embankments, putting their fingers on the ground the way their favorite surfer did on the waves.

Eventually they get so good at the skateboards that that becomes their main thing. Their surf inspired style is completely different from what everyone else is doing, and the archival footage does a good job of showing that it was a more visually appealing style. Then they come across the idea of sneaking into mansions, emptying swimming pools and skateboarding up and down the sides of them until the police come. The movie shows how this group of Kids From Broken Homes took their hobby (that nobody ever saw as a profession) and turned it into a whole culture with magazines and movies, inventing all the elements that would grow into many of the things we have today in professional skateboarding, “extreme sports”, “action sports”, Sobe Adrenaline Rush beverages and of course Vin Diesel in XXX coming this summer to a theater near you.

The story is really pretty interesting even for those of us who couldn’t give a mouse’s balls about skateboarding or surfing or rollerskating or what not. There is alot of old footage of the kids surfing and skating and the setting is real interesting. The private beach where they surfed, full of potentially deadly posts and pylons from an abandoned amusement park, is like something out of a Mad Max movie, and the city looks like the rotted corpse of a dead tourist attraction. The kids all look like Hanson brothers or the kids from the ’70s summer camp movies. So the movie has a raw, ugly look and feel real different from anything we’ve seen in a while. And watching the kids skateboard you can see why they were so influential. (more…)

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Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

This is Richard’s standup film from 1985 and like you damn well oughta expect from Richard, it’s some funny shit. It is interesting to contrast this one with his 1979 Live in Concert because Richard has gone from being a genius to being a superstar. The opening credits play this ’80s style funk and show giant billboards advertising the show. Then a spotlight comes on in the back of the theater and Richard struts his way through the audience, and you see this cockiness on his face that is almost like a different person. Everybody loves Richard when he’s on stage being funny but this is something else altogether as you feel the outpouring of love from the audience and you see how it gives him strength.

Alot of the shit Richard talks about he wouldn’t have known before he was a superstar. He mentions groupies, a trip to Africa (and how’s he gonna do that before he was rich?), filming a movie. But he doesn’t ever come off as a sellout, he’s letting you in on his life, exposing his flaws, making it all something you can relate to. He also talks about some of his early days, like when he was 19 working at a club run by the mafia. There is a story he tells about trying to get money from the mafia that is a scene in his autobiographical movie he directed Jojo Dancer Your Life is Calling, and I had no idea it was something that really happened to him but I guess it must be. (more…)

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Richard Pryor: Live and Smokin’

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

This is a video I have seen on the shelfs alot but I never got around to renting it on account of it is only 45 minutes. And who the fuck wants to pay 3.50 or what not for 45 minutes of standup when you could just watch scrambled Def Jam Comedy Jam for free.

But now I finally saw it and it was interesting but hell boys I gotta warn you, this is for Richard Pryor experts only. It is not a good introduction to his works, in my opinion. I don’t want you to watch this one first unless you promise me right here and now that you will watch Richard Pryor Live in Concert and Live On Sunset Strip even if you don’t like this one too much.

According to his autobiography this was his first concert film, originally titled just Smokin’ and filmed at the Improv in New York in April 1971. It was at a time when he was really considered to be breaking new ground. For a long time in his career he was just imitating Bill Cosby but then he decided to start talking about the type of shit he really thought about after growing up in a whorehouse in Peoria, Illinois. (more…)

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American Pimp

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Those of you motherfuckers who read me regularly know that my column this week is about the great pimp novelist Iceberg Slim and the attempts by “hollywood” to turn his autobiography into a major motion picture starring Ice Cube. Well shit, if I knew about this movie I might not have been worried. Even if Pimp: The Story of My Life: The Movie turns out to be a bust, we do got this excellent documentary which also looks into the seductive, charismatic and fucked up world of the pimping industry.

The film is directed by the Hughes brothers. Now I can’t remember if these are the brothers behind Fargo, or the ones behind Dumb and Dumber, or possibly the ones who did the Matrix. WHO the fuck knows. But whoever they are THESE are the individuals who ought to be doing the Iceberg Slim movie! They are a-class type filmmakers and obviously after this movie they know a thing or two about pimps. Now in my opinion there are a LOT of directors in hollywood who have intimate knowledge of the prostitution industry, however not necessarily the pimp part. Yes it is important to understand prostitutes in order to do Pimp: The Movie however please keep in mind hollywood these are street hoes we are dealing with, not callgirls or escorts. The Hughses know these pimps. Hell I’d like to see some of these individuals in small parts in the movie. Philmore Slim would DEFINITELY fit right in in the world of the book.

Anyway, let’s talk about American Pimp. This is of course made up mostly of interviews with real pimps, talking about their profession and their experiences. Dudes with names like “Rosebudd, with two d’s for a double dose of pimpin’.” There are many different types of pimps here. There’s an old legend who must be 70 years old. There’s a short little guy who seems more like a graduate student than a pimp, who talks about how his dad was a pimp but he didn’t ever push him into the industry. (more…)

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The Real Cancun

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Well somebody loaned me a RUN RONNIE RUN screener and it happens to have THE REAL CANCUN on the same disc. Not sure what happened there but somehow accidentally I dropped the disc into the player and pressed a combination of buttons that caused it to play the movie and then also I watched the whole thing. It was weird.

What the movie is: the producers of The Real World tv show cast a bunch of rich kid morons in their early 20s and then paid them to go drink jagermeister and high five each other in front of cameras. I thought it was funny that they called this a “reality movie” since they apparently are going for an audience that does not know that there is such a thing as documentaries. But after seeing it I realize that it’s actually better not to call this a documentary. A documentary you find real people who are already doing something (pimping, selling bibles, living in subway tunnels, living in a house infested by raccoons, etc.) and you attempt to follow them with minimal interference in their actual life. This is the opposite where you find people and make them go do something. For example I do not believe that these kids, if they had gone to Cancun on their own, would’ve paid money to go bungie jumping and have a dolphin encounter and that type of crap. That was for hollywood. The only major difference from The Real World is that they don’t make them have a job and they use cameras that look more like film.

I wouldn’t really recommend this movie but not because I’m embarassed or appalled, just because it’s not all that exciting. If you’re just watching it for titties and what not I definitely would recommend many fine pornographical works over this. But it does have some interest as a horrifying cultural artifact. Not of authentic american culture as far as I can tell but of that bizarre virtual culture that only exists in the matrix of cable television. (more…)

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Walking with Dinosaurs

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

This was my final destination for VERN’S DOCUMENTARY WEEK, the BBC series that got so much attention a few months back when it played on the discovery channel. But who the fuck watches discovery channel, how was I supposed to know.

Anyway you may be thinking, “This is not a documentary you asswipe,” in which case you’d be right. But it IS stylistically based on the documentary type form and “thus” is appropriate to discuss in context with other fine discovery channel type works such as American Pimp and Hated: GG Allin Wiping Shit On Himself.

Now I know there’s gonna be some tightass out there yanking his hair out at the very thought of me lumping this in with documentaries. There are some people who are very sensitive about the line between documentary and fiction being blurred. If we can’t trust the movies to reflect life exactly as it is without interjecting a point of view or entertainment factor, who CAN we trust? Obviously not the news! I guess there are many ethics involved in the documentarian code of honor, so some morons were even trying to make it a controversy when they found out that the Hughes brothers had paid money to be able to film the Player’s Ball Pimp Awards for their fine aforementioned pimpumentary.

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THINK, asshole. They’re pimps! That’s what they do, they pimp. Jesus fucking christ you fucking backseat documentarians. (more…)

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