"You Live in a Liberal Country!" - Michael Moore Occupies the Michigan Theatre

It was appropriate that Michael Moore end his three month book tour at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor, landing in his home state on December 1st--a day that celebrates another Michigan native, Rosa Parks.  Moore drew a comparison Thursday night between the Occupy movement and Parks' occupation of a particular bus seat that has since become a landmark gesture of the Civil Rights era.  Reporting that 59% of the American population were now behind the values of the movement, Moore tried to convey the significance of the movement to the portion of the audience who lived through that era of civil disobedience:  "Old people!  Work with me here!  11 weeks after the Civil Rights era, were there 59% of the American people behind it?  How about 11 years after...?"  Moore was certainly fired up, as he wiped his forehead clean with his UM cap, griped a bit about the malfunctioning fan they set out for him, and continued a rant that ran the gamut from the death of the independent bookstore (the original Borders now an empty shell across the street) to his progressive frustration with the Obama administration.

Michael Moore at the Michigan Theatre - 12/1/2011

I'm not sure I would have ventured out to see Michael Moore in a public speaking engagement like this in the past decade or so, but having experienced first hand the Occupy movement sites in Chicago and Philadelphia over the past few months, I was curious to re-assess Moore's role as a public figure.  Moore was definitely riding high on the wave of the Occupy movement, and although I applauded much of his enthusiasm for the momentum of Occupy in the last few months, I tend to get a little nervous around mass displays of political fervor, especially in an arena where the bi-partisan nature of the rhetoric is so pronounced.  With that said, I care a great deal for the films of Michael Moore, and even give his efforts as an activist artist credit for paving the way for the 99%.  Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) in particular, though seemingly marking a downward slope in Moore's career at the time I saw it, with it's exasperated conclusion and weak box office impact ($231,964 opening weekend, compared to Farenhiet 9/11's $23,920,637), was on the money, so to speak, with the way in which it framed the financial crisis.  Certainly more successful in it's immediacy than Oliver Stone's W (2008), Moore's Capitalism now carries a different weight than it did upon it's release (and the same might be said for W), punctuated by Moore's suggestion Thursday night that young activists might want to download ten copies illegally and deliver them door-to-door to those who might have missed it.  As the outdoorsy nature of the Occupy movement is now being challenged by the onset of winter, it is clear that what Moore was trying to expound on in Capitalism is more in the open, though the enormity of it all is still hard to wrap your mind around, at times.  

Capitalism:  A Love Story

Having grown up in the rural outreaches between small cities with dying manufacturing industries, about an hour south of Rockford, Illinois (the Flint, MI of Illinois), I share many of Moore's anti-war, anti-corporate views, and have always felt connected to Moore's causes.  Simultaneously, as a film studies and speech communications guy, I have developed an increasingly critical view of his tactics, whether they be in his public speaking engagements or as a film maker.  Frankly, I prefer him much, much more as a film maker than I do as a public speaker.  I'll refrain from dicussing much about Moore as a "short story" writer.  This tour was in support of his new book "Here Comes Trouble," a collection of stories based on his life as a boy and young adult, which were entertaining enough as read by Moore, but nothing I would have any interest in reading for pleasure, though for hardcore fans they may offer up some insight into Moore as an artist and activist.  The stories he did treat us to at the end of the night were entertaining enough, but, as is suggested by the book's hokey title, they all seemed to be oddly infused with a winking sense of the public "troublemaker" Moore would become as an adult, which made the stories seem like kind of a cheat on a literary level.

Moore reading from "Here Comes Trouble" at the Michigan Theatre

Some of the most interesting aspects of Moore's presentation Thursday night came from the audience, a mix of aging hippies and young activists, primarily white, given to their own brand of half-volume call-and-response.  Although there were microphones set up in the isles for people to come down and ask questions, that portion of the evening never happened;  as Moore explained correctly, "It's Ann Arbor!  There's no such thing as Q&A in Ann Arbor!  It'll just be a series of 30 speeches!"  In one of his most faux-hesitant theatrical moments, Moore explained Obama's ties to Goldman-Sacks, a point he had already begun to make in Capitalism, and then posed the idea that the corporate wealth that is truly pulling the strings of government may not give a shit what the Republicans do this election, as he leaned into the mic and asked:  "What if they already have their man?"  A hush came over the crowd.  Then, an unimpressed response rose from the middle of the Michigan:  "That was worth ten bucks!"  Chuckling at the perfectly timed jab, Moore casually sauntered down-center, pulling a $10 bill out of his pants, fully refunding the happy heckler who quickly made his way to the edge of the stage.

Michael Moore at the Michigan Theatre

The bravado of Moore's public persona has always existed in a space that just breaches the boundary of his rather fragile, mundane personality.  I think that part of this tour was operating in service of making that point, as he even took a moment to reveal some things "we didn't know" about him, like how he has to sleep at a diagonal (not interesting in and of itself, but curious in what it reveals about where Moore is at in this point of his career).  As with the recent appearances of a fellow documentarian (and fan of Moore's) Werner Herzog, the negotiation of identity that happens in these public forums is, in part, becoming a case of the snake eating it's own tail (or tale, even).  But, all in all, I find Moore's message consistent, and his attempts to remind us of our history, both recent and past, crucial.  His reference to the Women's Suffrage movement and the Civil Rights era were concise and essential to the rhetoric of where the country is at right now.  Above all, Moore made it clear that he was standing on stage at the Michigan to remind us, as subverted and mired as he finds the term itself, that we "live in a liberal country."  In Moore's world view, the influence of the Tea-Party-Fox-News-saturated contingent is an optical illusion, pointing out that if the opposite were the case, then the "O'Reilly Factor" would currently be opening every broadcast with a "Zippa-dee-do-da"...as opposed to the nightly display of grumbly distrust and paranoia.  Moore followed this observation by laying out his own "10 Point Proposal" for consideration by those who associate themselves with the 99% (copied here from his blog):

10 Things We Want

                                                       A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street
                                                           Submitted by Michael Moore

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation's spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives.

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the time.

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can't run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a "second bill of rights" as proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Michael Moore among the Wall Street Occupiers

Curiously, there were no questions or comments on Thursday night about the next Michael Moore film, but it would seem the momentum toward that would be building, now that the book tour is over.  Perhaps I can take time on "Ecstatic" to get a bit deeper into reviewing and assessing Moore's work when that happens, as my perception of his films has traveled an interesting trajectory over the years, as has his aesthetic.  At their worst, Moore's films bite off a bit more than they can chew politically, leaving me wishing that Moore had more of a talent for showing, especially in the moments where his mopey voice-overs become overbearing in their attempt to tell the story.  At the same time, I don't think Moore's films get their due aesthetically, creating true insight in their most thoughtful moments of juxtaposition.  At their best, Moore's films are some of the most effective works of art operating as tools for social change since the late 80's, paving the way for the last two decades of the documentary film revolution, as Moore's call to action merged with the increasing proliferation of digital film making technology. When I reflect on the "Rise of the Doc," I'm always reminded of Coppola's comments in Hearts of Darkness about the "little fat girl" in Ohio having the means to make a movie as his "great hope."  Well, here we are.

Sadie Benning's If Every Girl Had a Diary

"Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait" dir. Douglas Gordon/Philippe Parreno, 2006

Originally conceived as a video installation piece, Gordon and Parreno's 2006 experimental sports documentary Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is a significant work that seems to have faded quietly away (as far as I know, there is currently no US DVD version of the film).  Of course, American audiences have never been too keen on soccer, much less avant-garde cinematic examinations of soccer, but what Zidane reveals in it's minimalist approach to the overblown spectacle of modern sporting events is perhaps most crucial in relation to the increasingly bloated and excessive nature of the American commercial sports machine.

Zinedine Zidane - Zidane:  A 21st Century Portrait

Watching Zidane is a bit like staring into the perfect campfire; repetitive, undulating, hypnotic.  The meditative state induced by the rhythms of the film are enhanced by the intricate use of scoring, performed by Scotish band Mogwai, whose tensive use of space in their music meshes perfectly with the pacing of the sport itself, as well as the particular pace of Zidane himself. Gordon and Parreno fixed 17 cameras on Zidane over the course of one soccer match (Real Madrid vs. Villareal - April, 23, 2005) without much regard for capturing the progression of the match, but rather the entire kinetic make-up of one stoic, impeccable player.  Occasionally, sequences are subtitled with transcribed interview text from Zidane, but aside from that, we only get a sense of the man's voice through his mostly monosyllabic grunts and shouts during the match.  Not once in the 90 minute running time of Zidane do we see a score board, and only rarely do we escape to a vantage point that exists outside of Zidane's severe intent.  With that said, the unique choices the directors make when they do sever their focus from the cold physiognomy of their subject are what elevates the film from a cool experiment to a film with something important to communicate.  For instance, Zidane is book-ended by images of the event-as-televised, pulling in so close to the screen that we are left with only uniform sets of brightly colored pixels.  It is this remarkably telling image that frames the entire experience, showing us something that we spend so much attention on, but rarely see in it's reduced form.  Contrasted to the brilliant "half-time" of the film--a montage of world events as packaged by network news sources--the visual scope of Zidane is expanded to a revelatory degree, for a film whose focus might seem relentlessly singular to some.  It may be true that my recent reflections on Werner Herzog's works have me continually returning to the same frame of reference, but Zidane is particularly interesting in contrast to Herzog's recent films, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss, as all these films achieve lofty goals under very limited conditions.  Also, Zidane brings to mind Herzog for the way in which it allows us new access to something that is part of our every day experience, turning the stale, repetitive (this time in a negative sense) nature of the sporting event into an ecstatic visual poem.  As I play Zidane off of Herzog in this way, it begs an important question about the transformative, even subversive, capacities of cinema--which is more important?:  The ability to give us access to the unseen (the life on the ocean floor of Antarctica), or the ability to reveal what is all around us that we continually fail to see (sports).

Encounters at the End of the World

Zidane:  A 21st Century Portrait

I'll take both.  Of course, with a film like Zidane my biases against commercial sports tend to come to the fore, and I see a particularly powerful subversive value in the way in which it reveals the pointlessness and hollowness of the sporting act as commercial spectacle.  Don't get me wrong:  I have no problem with sports in and of themselves--exercise, teamwork, and all that good stuff--but I'm disheartened by how our cultural existence has been so heavily branded by our affiliation with sports teams.  As I'm writing this roughly 11 weeks into the Occupy movement, as the excesses of corporate greed are being dragged out into the light, it seems that the ways in which we excuse major sports figures their absurd salaries by heaping more and more attention and bucks on them in a (negative this time) hypnotic fashion could stand to be examined.  Unfortunately, I fear a film like Zidane has a limited audience in the United States, most likely because it has artistic ambition, refined and specific goals, and patience, patience, patience...everything sports culture is a stand against.  So, I read Zidane as an anti-sports film, regardless of the intent of the film makers.  In the moments where the film makers take you out of the thick of the action, the careful dance of athleticism abruptly replaced by a vantage point that rests in the muffled roar of the packed stadium near the low hum of a light fixture burning high above this solitary match, the effect is jarring, quieting, reminding us, perhaps, of the futile nature of it all.

Zidane:  A 21st Century Portrait

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait can be seen in sections on You Tube, and is available in an excellent Region 2 DVD, which includes interviews with the film makers and Zinedine Zidane. 

"The wisdom of the snake"- An Afternoon with Werner Herzog in Tampa

My annual Thanksgiving trip to Tampa included a special pilgrimage this year to the University of South Florida's Interdisciplinary Science Department for a special (and free!) presentation from the seeker and purveyor of Ecstatic truth himself, Werner Herzog.  The event was sponsored by USF's Department of World Languages and the German Consulate of Miami, and included a screening of Herzog's latest release, Into the Abyss, and was followed by a lengthy Q&A session that provided an insightful look into Herzog's process in making Abyss, which delightfully veered into such unexpected topics as his recent foray into acting (a "bad guy" opposite Tom Cruise--a role he feels suits him well), his obliviousness to the music of The Talking Heads, and his deep dislike for rooms full of Wisconsin housewives doing yoga.

A packed house for
 "An Afternoon with Werner Herzog" at USF

Having seen Into the Abyss at the Chicago International Film Festival, I think a small part of me was hoping for a DVD malfunction--not because I didn't want to see the film again, but, rather, because Herzog made an announcement before the presentation that he was not able to check the DVD he had brought, and therefore was not sure if there was even anything on it, but, if that turned out to be the case he had brought DVDs of four other films he had completed since making Into the Abyss, and if all else fails we could watch one of those, all of them hour-length films about different death row inmates.  I think it goes without saying that I left my first live engagement with Herzog with the same thought that I often take away from reading or listening to his interviews:  "Good God, I'm lazy."  In any case, the first 10 minutes of Abyss were marred by technical issues, and I kept my fingers crossed, but Herzog managed to correct the problem, then sat down in the front row, and watched the film along with us.  Ultimately, I was pleased to discover that I liked Into the Abyss even more the second time around.  Not unlike Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Herzog manages to craft a precise, in depth study of his subject with incredibly limited access.  In Cave, confined to a metal walkway and a limited amount of time to explore his subject, he managed to illuminate a profound message from the past in a way that allowed us access to the unseen, and created a space for us to meditate on the idea of historical memory in a way that posits primitive cave art as a possible genesis of cinema itself.  In Abyss, Herzog manages to spark similar expansive insight through another situation of limited access, as he assured us that everyone he included in the film (which is, perhaps, the film of his most dominated by "talking head" interview material) were people he had only met on the day of the interview, and, in the case of the imprisoned subjects--Michael Perry, Jason Burkett, and his father, Delbert Burkett--he was allowed only one interview with each of them, which constituted the first and last time Herzog would meet them.

Michael Perry - Executed on death row, Huntsville, TX, July 1, 2010
for the murder of 3 people

Upon second viewing, Herzog's abilities as an interviewer in Into the Abyss struck me as particularly remarkable.  In the past, Herzog has taken on more of a "narrator" or "commentator" role in his films--in the case of Lessons of Darkness going as far as to play a sort of "alien" interrogator in his voice over--but in Abyss Herzog shows us an interview technique that, in it's most fruitful moments, yields reactions from his subjects that cannot be mistaken for anything other than genuine surprise at Herzog's depth of insight.  If you haven't seen this ability in action, it would be almost laughable to hear a film maker respond to a question about his interviewing technique with a statement like:  "You must have the wisdom of the snake."  But, I have to say, few people earn the daring nature of their claims like Herzog, be they lies, truth, or the lie that reveals the truth.  So, for all you aspiring documentary makers out there, there is a very simple trick to getting interviews of great depth--as Herzog puts it:  "The key is knowing the hearts of men."

Wulf Hein and Werner Herzog shooting Cave of Forgotten Dreams

After the success of Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World (although Herzog informed us that the latter was "disliked by the network" for it's lack of appeal to a female audience), it seemed that Herzog's increasingly mainstream invention of himself was turning in on itself a bit, punctuated for me by his embarrassingly sensational appearance on the Conan O'Brien show, pitting one of the worst interviewers in history against one of the best, and leaving us with nothing more than giddy questions like "Did you really eat your own shoe?!"  Oh well...Herzog didn't seem to mind, and I can only assume his television exploits, which now include a guest spot on the Simpsons, will all be rolled up neatly into his ongoing narrative (I imagine appearances where he proclaims "I know not of these "Sampsons" you speak of ...but, yes, I appeared on their television show). 

Herzog, Simpson-ized

Though his USF appearance did lead him a bit toward indulging in his pop-Herzog persona ("Pop-zog"?), there seemed to be more of a tendency in the questioning toward trying to tie his films together thematically or stylistically, which Herzog immediately denied as facile "film school" rhetoric.  When asked about the work contributed by David Byrne on the score of Into the Abyss, he informed us that he did not know who this "David Bird" was, which prompted an exasperated shout from an audience member seated on the floor behind me:  "The TALKing HEADS!";  Herzog did eventually recognize the musical contribution of Mark Di Gli Antonio to the film (though I'm guessing Werner is not a big Soul Coughing fan).  Into the Abyss does, in fact, greatly benefit from the contribution of both Byrne and De Gli Antonio, creating a more seamless meld of sound and image than many of Herzog's pictures, only occasionally allowing the music to be the aggressor.  And, as I started to get at in my previous Ecstatic article on the film, Abyss is important as an antidote to the trivialization of death and murder that occurs every night on TV shows with some of the highest viewership in the country, from "Law and Order" to "America's Most Wanted."  Herzog's scoring choices, the scant but effective moments of visual poetry he achieves in the film, and the choices he makes in the editing (a process, he confided in us, that got he and his editor smoking again) are what set Abyss apart from the commercial television treatment of these same types of crimes.

A Texas Death Row Graveyard - Into the Abyss

What stays most with me through this opportunity to listen to Herzog speak at this point in his career is how clearly compassionate his position as an artist is, as well as the maturity of his world view, always evident in his films, but remarkably tempered by an enthusiasm for discovery usually associated with film makers 1/3 his age.  The attempts to reduce his films to a consistent stylistic preoccupation, or to analyze them in relation to their recurring motifs, were met with disdain, unapologetically, as Herzog reminded the audience that no one gets upset about playwrights trying to write poetry, or novelists attempting the occasional essay.  If Herzog wants to make a sequel to Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant without having seen the film, or even knowing who Abel Ferara is, he does.  If he wants to collaborate with David Lynch, despite his disdain for meditation as yet another form of privileged escapism, he does.  Upon the release of Into the Abyss, Herzog claims to not be working as an activist through this film, and warns us not to read it as a "message" piece.  As with all of his work, he continues to capture, augment, and share the grandeur of his continued discoveries, whether it be from the edge of an active volcano, or inside the darkest, narrowest halls of death.

Encounters at the End of the World

Into the Abyss

Special thanks to Michael LeVan, Melissa Freeman, Julie Garisto, Dave and JB for being my 

Tampa hook-ups for this event.  (Now, go READ!) 

   

    
   

DOUBLE FEATURE: The St. Louis International Film Festival 2011 - "Confidence Man" dir., Bob Streit + "The Interrupters" dir., Steve James

I was only able to see two SLIFF films while in St. Louis last weekend, both screened in Edwardsville, IL at The Wildey Theatre, an old fashioned music and film venue with impeccable sound and projection.  Aside from seeking out new experiences in film, one of my great passions is experiencing new venues, and the Wildey was an unexpected find in this regard (check out their upcoming music and film events here).

The Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville, IL

The St. Louis International Film Festival had put together a great weekend of documentary programming at the Wildey, including Edwardsville native A.J. Schnak's Kurt Cobain About a Son, Rockford, IL film maker Daniel Lindsey and T.J. Martin's football documentary Undefeated, and two excellent docs existing on opposite ends of the production and distribution spectrum (and created in opposite ends of the state) Bob Streit's Confidence Man and Steve James' The Interrupters.  For Streit (an old friend and film/theatre collaborator of mine from Southern Illinois) the opportunity to screen at the SLIFF is huge, and Confidence Man, the story about a down-home band and it's internet scamming leader, is a perfect fit for the festival circuit.

Hugh DeNeal - Confidence Man

Having lived in Southern Illinois between 1995 to 2001, I count myself among the number of music fans from that time and place who often wondered why Hugh DeNeal, the subject of Confidence Man, and his band The Woodbox Gang weren't bigger than they were; at the same time, I was among those that counted it as a blessing that their live displays of quirky, comedic dark bluegrass and multi-instrumental Americana were all our own, so to speak.  For me, watching Confidence Man was literally an opportunity to glimpse re-contextualized clips of my past experiences with the band, and I was fully aware that my critical lens was being muddied by the wash of nostalgia that came along with the screening.  I had some great times in the late 90's in SoIll, and The Woodbox Gang was one of the primary soundtracks to that experience.  Beyond the nostalgia trip, what makes Confidence Man so intriguing is that Streit has so thoughtfully laid out the lyrical content of DeNeal and his band mates as an almost musical-like commentary to Hugh's haphazard journey into online high-risk investment scams.  As DeNeal himself writes:  "It's a confidence game/I'm a confidence man...genuine I am/honest I ain't/stab you in the back/smilin' like a saint."  Streit wisely jumped at the chance to tell DeNeal's story, and has made a film that not only pays tribute to a great underground band, and will no doubt turn much of it's audience on to the music of the Gang, but also serves as an interesting reflection on our current economic times.  Confidence Man is not the story of a big time scam, but rather the story of a small time musician perched on the verge of fame (Jason Ringenberg compares him in the film to Dylan and Van Zandt as a lyricist) who makes some hapless choices within an economic climate perched on the verge of collapse.  The film is an endearing, hand-made portrait of The Woodbox Gang that evolves into telling DeNeal's story in some clever ways, given that Streit and editor/cinematographer Dan Johnson were limited to working collage-style in many sections of the film, pulling together fan video from many different formats into a narrative whole.  This piece-meal presentation is one of the most charming aspects of the film, and Streit and Johnson merge much of the footage beautifully.  The screening at the Wildey was followed by Streit answering some questions from the audience where he informed us that although Hugh DeNeal is now on parole and staying in a halfway house, coming out to play at the Wildey that night was not exactly within the boundaries of his release.  Fortunately, we were treated to a rollickin' solo set of Woodbox Gang tunes performed by Gang-member, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Alex Kirt, who played a number of fan favorites, including "God Box Wagon," and "Never Kissed a Girl."

Alex Kirt of the Woodbox Gang

As I noted in my last post , Confidence Man is a film that sits comfortably on the shelf alongside other great underground music docs such as The Devil and Daniel Johnston and Half-Japanese:  The Band Who Would Be King.  For fans of alt-country music who want to discover the sub-genre of "trashcan Americana" the film is a must.  For more information on upcoming screenings and future distribution go to the Confidence Man Facebook Page, or check out Woodbox Gang fan Jello Biafra's label Alternative Tentacles for Woodbox Gang merch.

Ameena Matthews in Steve James' The Interrupters

From the new and emerging documentary film makers of Southern Illinois to the area's legend of the genre, Steve James was honored at this year's SLIFF, receiving the Maysles Brothers Lifetime Achievement Award for Documentary Film Making (the award is named after the seminal figures in American documentary film, Albert and David Maysles, the directors of Salesman, Gimme Shelter, and Grey Gardens).  The SLIFF also screened  James's excellent 2002 film Stevie (a film Bob Streit reminded me was the "other film to come out of the Pomona, IL area"), and his new film, The Interrupters.  James and Interrupters subject Ameena Matthews were in attendance at the Wildey screening of the film, and answered questions afterwards about the ongoing endeavors of the Chicago-based anti-violence group, as well as the difficulties of capturing such an intimate portrait in the tumultuous streets of Chicago.

Ameena Matthews and Steve James at The Wildey Theatre, 2011

Based on the book by Alex Kotlowitz (who I was fortunate enough to meet at the Chicago Film Fest this year, covered here), The Interrupters follows the CeaseFire organization of Chicago, a group dedicated to saving lives and stopping gang violence by developing strategies that "interrupt" the causes of violence.  Though the film follows a number of dynamic and brave individuals over the course of a year, Ameena Matthews, daughter of notorious Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort, stands clearly as the star of the film.  Matthews is a motivated and tireless community organizer who has clearly played a large part in trying to bring down the numbers of Chicago gang-related deaths in recent years.  James captures Matthews interventions, which play like a kind of theatre for social change that would make Augusto Boal's head spin, with an intimacy that has become the trademark of James' work.  Perhaps most known for having made one of the greatest American documentaries of the last couple of decades, the recently Criterion-released Hoop Dreams, James brings his compassionate and skilled storytelling abilities to subjects and issues that might seem familiar to the realm of television, but are so often presented with less attention to detail, and with a far less patient and humane lens.  In this sense, not unlike Werner Herzog's recent Into the Abyss, The Interrupters stands in stark contrast to the kind of sensational preoccupations we have grown numb to in modern commercial media.  

Hoop Dreams

Stevie

The Interrupters

James is another one of those directors, like Malick or Cassavetes, who has managed to assert his mastery as an artist in his genre with a relatively small filmography.  The three films pictured above are really at the core of what you need to know about his work.  If you organize a triple feature, by the end you might be convinced that James could shoot someone reading the phone book and manage to come out with something compelling.  Don't get me wrong--the subjects of his film are compelling enough as it is, but surely his adept hand in shooting and editing make the difference.

Congratulations to James on receiving the Maysles Award, and to Bob Streit for a triumphant entrance into the festival circuit.  I look forward to seeing more from two great Southern Illinois artists.

Goin' Down South...

In anticipation of seeing my friend and former Greylight Theatre collaborator Bob Streit's new documentary about Hugh DeNeal and the caustic acoustic cacophony of the best band to ever rise from the deep south of Illinois, The Woodbox Gang, I thought I would recommend a few other like-minded musical docs that are worth seeking out.  Streit's latest film, Confidence Man (screening this weekend at the St. Louis International Film Festival), traces the career of DeNeal and his band, weaving "a cautionary tale about how playing dark bluegrass, hosting High-Yield Investment Programs online and touring with a mortgage to pay can land you in Leavenworth Prison."  

When the Woodbox Gang were just beginning, they were the house band at a coffee shop called Mungo Jerry's in Murphysboro, IL where yours truly was a frequent barista.  The band was just a three-piece then, armed with little more than acoustic guitars, washboards, and spoons.  From the moment they broke out the didjeridoo and reved up a tune called "Showdown," to this day one of my favorites, I was forever a Woodbox Gang fan and a devotee of the Trashcan Americana genre, of which they were the sole purveyors.  

The Gang "back in the day" at Mungo Jerry's Coffeehouse

In the spirit of great musical journeys, and the hardships that come with making great music, here are a few music doc recommendations that will compliment Steit's accomplishment in uncovering this great piece of music history through film:

Wilco - I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

1.  I Am Trying to Break Your Heart:  A Film About Wilco, dir. Sam Jones, 2002 - If you want to flip back a few pages in the  history of the Southern Illinois and Eastern Missouri music scene, you will find the band that is often sighted as the progenitors of alt-country, new Americana, cow punk, or whatever you want to call it:  Uncle Tupelo.  The band famously covered the song "No Depression," which became one of the monikers for their progressive genre of music, as well as the name of the music mag that covered other Americana musicians, new and old.  One of the singer-songwriters in Uncle Tupelo was Jeff Tweedy, who would go on to be the continually and restlessly evolving front man of the band Wilco.  I Am Trying to Break Your Heart not only tells a jaw-dropping tale of one of the greatest American bands in recent history, their record company woes, and their ultimate triumph in being able to put out their music their way and get paid in the process, but also marks a unique transitional period in the history of the music recording and distributing business.  The film is an engaging portrait of a hard-working band taking creative risks, and emerging with what may be remembered as the finest album of their career, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  A rare music documentary that balances being a great concert film with an unfolding narrative through line.  The Palm Pictures dvd also includes some really worthwhile extra concert footage on a second disc.

Daniel Johnston - The Devil and Daniel Johnston

2.  The Devil and Daniel Johnston, dir. Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005 - Some consider this film in the same group of "outsider artist" documentaries as Jessica Yu's In The Realms of the Unreal and Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol, and although there are some criticisms of the audiences who appreciate those works being elitist, derisive art snobs who are simply in search of the next weirdo to praise and then forget about, the fact of the matter is that they are all great films.  And, in the case of The Devil and Daniel Johnston, it is hard to walk away from it without humming a few lovely melodies, and without understanding that there is some real musical genius at work with that strange and troubled man.  An insightful study of the relationship between mental illness and creativity, this is a great documentary that puts a fringe musical phenomenon in proper perspective.  Feuerzeig also directed the equally essential documentary Half Japanese:  The Band Who Would Be King (1993), which contains the greatest rock-geek talking head moments in the history of rock-docs.  Check it out...if you have the intestinal fortitude to really check these bands out, that is.

Jason Isbell and Patterson Hood
Drive-By Truckers:  Dirty South Live @ 40 Watt

3.  Drive-By Truckers:  Dirty South Live @ 40 Watt, dir. Eleanor (aka Shawn Foster), 2005 - Although I anticipate seeing the 2009 documentary on the Drive-By Truckers, The Secret to A Happy Ending, which evidently chronicles three tumultuous years of the band's career, I have to say that it will be hard to beat Live @ 40 Watt for documenting the band at their peak, bringing the house down with the triple front man assault of Isbell, Hood, and Cooly.  This really doesn't fit into the same category of documentary film making that the aforementioned films do, as it is primarily just concert footage cut together with the occasional backstage banter.  But, as a chance to be in a room with one of the great American rock bands, playing what will most likely be the finest set-list of their careers, Live @ 40 Watt is an exceptional gift.  Impeccable songwriting, and a pure, honest guitar assault that will rectify all the bad experiences you've ever had with less than adequate guitar wanking.

INSTANT 3: Genre Defying Film - The Avant-Garde on Netflix

I can see myself 15 years ago in Carbondale, IL, searching the back room of rare VHS rentals in an indie shop called Rosetta Bookstore, or flipping through the bootleg-heavy bins of Plaza Records, digging up a bizarre array of selections, tipped off by a variety of sources, ranging from Videoscope magazine (The Phantom of the Movies!) to the excellent "Experimental Film" course I was taking at SIU with a guru professor of the avant-garde, Lilly Boruszkowski.  I miss those days of the independent record and book stores, the musty smells of immovable bargain records and cds mixed with the herb and incense wafting in from the backrooms.  Nowadays, I can watch the Brothers Quay on my laptop from any Starbucks, and although the films themselves still inspire sweet delirium, the overall experience lacks a certain something.

The Brothers Quay - Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1988)

But, hey! - we have some great access in the internet age to films that, back in the day, would be lucky to get distributed in a decent VHS format.  I can recall taking a Fillm/Philosphy course in my grad days just to get access to some of Bresson's films (particularly, Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, and Pickpocket) and then skipping the second half of the course, which was on Yasujiro Ozu (not that I didn't love Ozu, but I'd already seen those films!  It was just that difficult to see Bresson!)  Of course, we should celebrate the ease of venturing more easily into art house and avant-garde territory these days, although it is still difficult to know what you're getting into, and just how to situate your ass in the cushion, so to speak.  Here are some essential experimental offerings available with the mere click of a button in the "Watch Instantly" section of Netflix:

Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg

1.  My Winnipeg (2007) - Guy Maddin's aesthetic is one of the most recognizable and uncompromising in modern cinema, and although he has numerous past shorts and features that I could recommend just as highly--the top of my list including Archangel, The Heart of the World, Cowards Bend the Knee, and Brand Upon the Brain!--I have to say that My Winnipeg is as good a gateway as any to Maddin.  My Winnipeg seems to be the perfect confluence of Maddin's silent film sensibility, warehouse set design, and autobiographical fantasia.  Also, the film features the greatest of Film Noir femme fatales, most remembered for Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 classic Detour, Ann Savage...who Maddin somehow convinced to play his Mother.  Maddin has a tremendous ability for balancing his sense of humor with an unsettling and poetic film style that will not soon leave your memory.

Christos Stergioglou in Dogtooth

2.  Dogtooth (2009) - An unlikely candidate for the Academy Awards, Giorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth was nominated in 2011 for the Foreign Language Film category (losing out to the Danish production In a Better World, which I haven't seen, but from the looks of the trailer it seems like more typically Academy-friendly material).  Still, Dogtooth is one of the most wonderfully surreal modern satires I have seen in a long time, connecting it's ideas through imagery that is often violent, tempered by an absurdist humor that builds gradually in it's impact.  Lanthimos' work has been highly anticipated after Dogtooth (check out my brief report on his recent Toronto International Film Fest entry here), which tells the story of an uncommonly isolated family, the patriarch of which is working very hard to maintain his family's perceptions of the world, language, sexuality, and everything, really.  Recalling the touchstone of Absurdism in the American theatre, Edward Albee's early sixties play "The American Dream," through the way in which Albee similarly combines gruesome imagery with musical, comedic language and archetypal characters, the tension in Dogtooth between what is horrifying, hilarious, and true might tend to confuse your sensiblities at times, but it's Lanthimos' ability to create these tensions that makes the film one of the year's best, avant-garde or otherwise.

Jan Svankmajer's Virile Games

3.  The Ossuary, and Other Tales (2006) - Getting back to those independent book and record store moments of triumph, one of my favorite finds in those days was the work of Jan Svankmajer, the Czech born film maker/animator who is commonly cited as an influence on Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, and the aforementioned Brothers Quay.  An entire collection of Svankmajer shorts, The Ossuary, and Other Tales is available for instant viewing, bringing together a great overview of the stop-action genius's work from the mid 60's to the late 80's.  I am partial to the two films from the 80's collected here, Virile Games (aka Manly Games) and Darkness-Light-Darkness, films that I dubbed and screened repeatedly upon discovering them the first time (even appropriating images from Virile Games for an original multi-media performance piece on Free-Speech issues a few years back).  If Svankmajer's shorts appeal to you, his excellent feature length take on "Alice in Wonderland," Alice (1988), and his tale of child rearing gone awry, Little Otik (aka, Greedy Guts - my particular title preference) are equally wild tales that utilize his signature animation style.

(Then, if you're still hungry for more weirdness from that area of Europe, you can start hunting down Walerian Borowczyk's Goto, The Island of Love...)

And, don't forget to make the occasional detour through your local bins and backrooms--enjoy them while we still have them!

    

Film-adelphia (Part 2)

Not to stray from the topic of film too drastically, but some of the best parts of my recent visits to Philadelphia have been within the incredible theatre scene there, with much thanks to my friend and Philly stage actor Amanda Grove.  While in town for the Philly Film Fest this year, I was able to see Grove in a new play making it's Philly premiere, Mistakes Were Made by Craig Wright (a frequent writer for Lost and United States of Tara).  It has been oft noted that some of the best film of the last decade has been happening on television, and Craig Wright has been a significant part of that, writing for the show that, as far as I can tell, set the standard for the television reformation of the late 90's and early 00's, Six Feet Under.  Wright's new play, Mistakes Were Made, is a sort of in-joke for the theatre world, portraying a desperate, 3rd-rate producer who is trying to make a last ditch effort at making it big on Broadway, his office plastered with particularly hilarious faux-playbills, including "Tom Selleck in The Elephant Man" and "Ice-T in The Piano Lesson." Grove was terrific in the primary supporting role, though, in terms of Wright's writing, I much preferred his script produced at Philly's Luna Theatre in 2009, also featuring Grove in a role that allowed her to express her true gift for intense and refined character work, Orange Flower Water.

Damon Bonetti and Amanda Grove
in Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water

In even more film related Philly theatre news, Grove was also featured in a premiere production this summer for the Madhouse Theatre Company, Playing Leni, where she portrayed one of the most simultaneously revered and despised film makers in cinema history, Leni Riefenstahl, director of the most famous of Nazi propaganda films, The Triumph of the Will, and subject of the 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. Given the excellent reviews, and the tie-in with one of the most fascinating and confounding figures in the history of film, I am sending out a plea for a remount that takes place when I can be in town!  Or, dare I hope, a possible film production?

Amanda Grove and Robert DaPonte in Playing Leni, 2011

Leni Riefenstahl in her own directorial debut,
Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light), 1932

Aside from getting the opportunity to experience her skilled work in the Philly theatre, one of my favorite aspects of spending time with Amanda is her mutual love and respect for the horror genre, and given that the Philly Film Fest overlapped the Halloween weekend, we not only created our own in-house horror marathon, featuring Wes Craven's despicable debut delight, The Last House on the Left (1972), Eli Roth's nearly successful torture absurdity, Hostel (2005), and Ti West's completely brilliant exercise in the early 80's satanism genre, The House of the Devil (2009--covered here in my "Instant 3-Buried Treasures" recommendations segment), but I was able to top off the marathon with a late-night Philly Fest screening of British director Ben Wheatly's new genre-bending brutality, Kill List.

Michael Smiley in Kill List

Aside from a naturalistic acting style that makes the intimate and dense intonations of the dialects in Kill List a bit tough to decipher, the film is a completely engaging character piece that consistently surprises in its narrative structure and character arc.  The less you know going in, the better, as Wheatly is relying on the surprise effect of the shift in genre.  Although this sounds like a scheme that could succumb to gimmickry, Kill List succeeds by virtue of its impeccable and surprising performances, expansively considered and riskily executed.  Also, Wheatly's writing here shows a tremendous patience, as well as a propensity for creating gaping holes of mystery that recall the best aspects of David Lynch.  To compare/contrast the film to Lynch's Lost Highway, which uses negative space, slow journeys and fades into black spaces as a visual reminder of the spots of indeterminacy inherent in all narrative interpretation and construction, Kill List employs quick, black-out flash edits that play in a similar way, while creating a perfect stylistic fit with the film's unflinching and abrupt violence.  As we reach the end of the film's literal "kill list," the editing becomes even more frantic, employing jump cuts to great effect, allowing the swirling questions of the audience and character to converge in a frightfully effective manner.

Neil Maskell in Kill List

Kill List is maybe not entirely successful based on the criteria of it's genre predecessors, but it emerges as essential viewing for the way in which it confounds those genre expectations, in part by rooting it's characters in relation to some of the bloodiest and most corrupt conflicts of recent history, with mentions of the professional killers in the film (there may be more than you think) being involved in both Iraq and Northern Ireland.  On one level, Kill List seems to be operating as a sort of payback directed at the murderers involved in the last decade of atrocities committed under the guise of military action.  It may take another viewing of Wheatly's new film to decide whether he is successful in seizing all he is grasping for here, but stumbling upon it in mostly blind fashion was a blissful treat on Halloween night.  

Ben Wheatly's Kill List

Speaking of films surprising in their ambition, Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter (though not a part of the Philly Film Fest) is one of the most critically acclaimed films of the moment, though certainly a movie that divides audiences, which most likely has to do with it's tenuous relationship to the horror genre (not unlike Kill List).  Take Shelter, though certainly unsettling due to it's excellent and sparse utilization of horror film technique, is not a horror film.  And, although Take Shelter's lead actor Michael Shannon is just waiting to knock a perfectly penned creepy caretaker role out of the park (ala Tom Noonan in The House of the Devil), his recent work in this film is most definitely the peak of a rather remarkable and short career, which dates back to his 1999 role as Dundun in the excellent Allison Maclean-directed adaptation of Denis Johnson's darkly humorous junkie parables, Jesus' Son.  

Michael Shannon in Jesus' Son 

Michael Shannon in Take Shelter

It was Shannon's previous work that had me entering Take Shelter with caution, not knowing what to expect from Nichols since I hadn't seen his sole previous film, 2007's Shotgun Stories, also starring Shannon.  Although I had no expectations director-wise, I was mostly worried that this film might be the death knell of typecasting for Shannon, who had definitely been to paranoid weirdo territory before, with great success (i.e., William Friedken's Bug, 2006; Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road, 2008; the Herzog/Lynch joint My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, 2009)  Fortunately, Take Shelter proves to be the most seasoned, and perhaps the most challenging, of all of those performances.  This is due in part to Shannon, but also to the precision of the script, which ties our perceptions to a character who is both grounded and honest, but dealing with a unique and gradual onset of delusion.

Take Shelter

The pacing of Take Shelter is very deliberate, threatening to crush the film under the weight of it's own patient storytelling.  Although I imagine many will give up on the film before it reaches the emotional and visual components that truly succeed in making the film a transcendent experience, I can't stress enough how important it is to allow the film it's detailed and risky game with cinematic time.  Take Shelter makes some brilliantly subtle moves in how it masks the passage of time, playing with the audience's perceptions in a way that mirrors Shannon's character, Curtis.  Nichols ties your perceptions so effectively to Curtis that you can't help but empathize when Curtis leaves his sleeping wife and his hearing impaired daughter in the car, steps out onto the road, and gazes in horror at the oncoming storm, the centerpiece of his increasingly frequent hallucinations.  Shannon's intonation is chilling, as he speaks words only we can hear:  "Is anybody else seeing this?"

Michael Shannon and Trova Stewart in Take Shelter

Take Shelter is far from a one-man show though, featuring a terrific supporting cast, particularly Jessica Chastain as Curtis's wife Samantha, Trova Stewart as his daughter Hanna, and Shea Whigham as his best friend Dewart.  Although I may have wanted more of Kathy Baker as Curtis's mother, and Katy Mixon as one of Samantha's social clique, every piece of the puzzle snaps into place perfectly here, with Nichols getting exactly what he needs out of each performer.  It is particularly refreshing to see Chastain being used so well, as we have so often seen similar roles to Samantha's slighted in lesser films.  For a film that is so rooted in the psychology of it's central character, it is amazing the degree to which we come to empathize with Samantha's confusion.  Chastain skillfully allows us access to the progressive unfolding of Samantha's perceptions of Curtis's condition, knowing how essential our access to her emotional journey will be in the film's final frames.  (I could use this as a way to criticize Malick's use of her in Tree of Life, as I have heard a couple of critics do, but although she is more of a "prop" of a female character in that film, I think Malick's goals in relation to character, not to mention his drastic propensity for minimizing/maximizing/dropping altogether entire performances, puts him on a whole other level of discussion).  

Jessica Chastain in Take Shelter

Jessica Chastain in Tree of Life

Just when you begin to read Take Shelter as a film that may be solely about a man struggling with a mental illness, of which he is frighteningly aware, Nichols slowly allows the context of current blue collar hardships to creep into the drama, and the storms in the distance, whether imagined or real, begin to carry a shifting metaphorical weight.  As I wrote in Part 1 of this post in regards to apocalyptic film making, from Roland Emmerich to Lars von Trier, there is an ongoing preoccupation with the end-of-days, whether it takes the form of a big, sad, blue planet deciding to turn around and crash into the earth, or the current fear of the potential irreversible nature of the economic collapse.  I am not an apocalyptic thinker, and I often read doomsayers as naive and egotistical, but I find the variety of ways in which this phenomenon has risen to the surface of screen culture worthy of ongoing analysis.  It seems to me that the storm in Take Shelter is as much about a world being increasingly saturated with post-apocalyptic, zombie-fied play-station visions and PG-13-ized CG raptures as mental illness, as it is about one man's battle with mental illness.  What makes Take Shelter a great film is how well it works on the sole level of being an important film about mental illness; but, as the ending of the film shifts our subjectivity, and the viscous, oily rain begins to fall as it did in the opening, this time being felt by different skin, the ways in which it resonates may surprise you.