Reel Girly

Director Alex Orr said, “If you’re making something for anybody, you’re making nothing for nobody.” Though his feature Blood Car, playing at SF Hole Head tonight at 9:30 (Roxie, 6/7), is uncompromising Orr and his compadres were far from abrasive. They were warm and made it quickly clear that their film was not the work of one depraved lunatic, rather the concerted effort of many who shared the deluded vision.

These guys gave a lot away in our recorded conversation - they’re fearless I tell you - so when spoilers were present in the text, I included a link to the podcast.

Blood Car could easily be confused for a spoof made by slumming Hwd bad boys. The low video quality is quickly overcome because of the film’s brilliant/fucked up, but incredibly well managed premise.

An intensely collaborative event, Blood Car is the accomplishment of a clutch of filmmakers from Atlanta. In hiatus from their “day jobs” making commercials, Alex Orr (director/writer/producer), Adam Pinney (DP/editor/writer/producer), Tony Holley (producer/1st AD), Katie Rowlett (plays Denise) and Mike Brune (plays Archie), came all the way from Georgia just to watch San Jose love up their subversive master stroke. If the value of their journey could be judged against audience response, they could have walked from Atlanta to San Jose and it still would have been worth the trip.

Where did the premise come from?
Alex Orr: We were doing what filmmakers do, working in the film industry, shooting carpet commercials and things that aren’t as much fun and we were complaining about wanting to go out and shoot our first feature. Hugh Braselton (not present), Adam Pinney and myself were riding around in the car, talking about a horror movie and what would be fun or funny and somebody said “a car that runs on blood” and we ran with that. Adam and I wrote the script fairly quickly: our only rule was it needed to be pretty retarded. You know, really silly; push the envelope. We jammed out the script and ran to production as fast as we could.

It’s interesting that when you introduce or describe your film, you never use the words “satire” or “politics.”
AO: Those words don’t make people think they’re about to go laugh.
Adam Pinney: It’s really a movie about a guy who kills people to go have sex with a girl. Overall. And the politics are there as a tongue in cheek thing. To end the movie as ridiculously as we did (spoiler available in the podcast) –it is a joke and that’s the whole point. We made it political at the end and maybe people are thinking “they’re taking this and themselves seriously” but we’re not.

I see what you’re saying but what I thought you guys were going to talk about… how did you describe it? ‘The FBI fuck-tard whose monologue should have been like Ned Beatty’s diatribe from Network?’
AO: You know the blood for oil thing is there and towards the end we come out and say it, but instead of giving you the grand speech about the evil government we like to give more jokes and nonsense.
AP: We don’t want to browbeat people with political purpose, it’s an underlying tone but it doesn’t drive the film at all, the fact that the government is evil -
Mike Brune: Blood drives the film…Heh?! Funny?!

Oh, come on, not just blood: blood and cum. That was the goopiest movie I’ve seen in a while and I’ve seen a lot!
Tony Holley: (sheepishly) Can we say cum?

I think we should be able to.
TH: Cum!
(pause)
AO: And there are some things that need to happen in that sort of movie. The main character needs to be conflicted about whether to keep killing for sex or quit and what better thing to persuade him than a giant wet spot? He should eventually get together with Loraine, the audience should expect the good girl to finally get in there, but for no other reason than to not do what is expected, we (spoiler available in podcast). We all watch a lot of movies. We’re movie geeks so whenever we’d talk about doing something, one of us would say, “No, because they did that in this.” And we’d say, “What else we got?” We didn’t want anyone to watch the movie and feel like, “Here comes A, B, and C and soon they’ll tie up that other thing.” We definitely wanted to keep people on their toes. Originally we wanted the bed to talk, to be like a vagina.
Katie Rowlett: A talking vagina. The set guy said he could do it.
AO: We were gonna do it with the computer but someone said it was a little too Cronenberg. It was disgusting! Wonderful!

You just referenced your influences and before I asked about your respective influences –
AP: You said Tokaishi Miike, Scorcese
AO: Scorcese, Allen.

Hitchcock…the shower bit.
AP: I’m obsessed with that scene.
AO: He is! Adam Pinney likes to kill women and be in a bathroom.
AP: I’ve killed three women in bathrooms, or injured them greatly. In my three films, I’ve made two short films: a girl dies in a bathroom in one of them and in another she dry heaves and is a wreck, and in this one she (spoiler available in the podcast).
AO: He loves bathrooms, how they’re small and difficult.

You talked about pushing the envelope.
TH: There’s no other way to go for us.

The way of violence on children?
TH: Yeah. But they’re all jokes and people laugh at them because they don’t expect it to go that far. And I know that’s really going to hinder us when we go out for –
MB: -Lots of filmmakers want to go for that but they have this block that says they can’t get this scene by this audience. So they never even consider the possibility past that first spark. Whereas we just said, “Fuck it.”
AO: If you’re making something for anybody, you’re making nothing for nobody.
AP: It’s catching on now. Several people have said it’s very Borat-esque just because in a movie like that they take jokes just a little too far. Based on the response it works and I hope more people do stuff like that. Every joke that was going too far people were shocked but they were clapping, they were like “Yes, you did this!”
AO: We’re not all like this. We make other films, but we don’t want to pride ourselves on something someone already did – no one wants to make the next Karate Kid.

Exceptional choice of films to mimic!
TH: Are you kidding? Get that out of my face! (Under breath) Three?!

A continuation of his 1997 opus Henry Fool, Fay Grim is a similarly off-center ode to love and human potential by indie-auteur Hal Hartley. Now following the story of abandoned wife Fay (brilliantly played by Parker Posey) the film begins in Queens and establishes the barely contained chaos that Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) left when he abandoned Fay and their son Ned (Liam Aiken) seven years ago. What made Henry enigmatic in his film was the way he balanced failure and charisma. Fay Grim similarly revolves around this sort of inept genius: cultivated by circumstance and survived by surprise. Continuing in this universe where literature is powerful and love is tenuous, Hartley again explores the vastness and absurdity of life.

Fay lives off the royalties from her brother Simon’s (James Urbaniak) poetry. As a result of Simon’s success, Henry and his confessions have become legendary, and Simon’s publisher has interest in buying them. When FBI agent Fulbright tells Fay that not only is Henry dead but he’s a secret agent wanted by every major nation in the world, her disbelief is only temporary. She immediately rises to the occasion and negotiates Simon’s release from prison. For the release, Fay is assigned to retrieve two of Henry’s black and white notebooks from Paris, and from there she finds ways of fooling many agents from the most powerful nations of the world.

One never knows how fair it is to address the implications of a film or a premise. For example, it’s unquestionably poetic to look at the world of Fay Grim as one in which literature has clout, or to see Simon Grim as a prisoner-poet who’s star rises ineffably higher than could ever have been expected from him when he was a socially awkward garbage man. And isn’t that inherent capacity something that inspires audiences? Isn’t that part of why Hal Hartley’s films have culled such a following? When it comes to the work of an auteur (and I think I can use that word here) the meaning that rises from the text seems be a value that vibrates long after the film has ended. Some of us study, some of us live easily, some of us struggle in unfulfilling jobs for the sole purpose of survival, but all of us ultimately believe we’re capable of more. It’s like human inertia or something. We all believe we’ve got something tiny and powerful in us that can alter our fate or the fate of those around us. Maybe that’s soul; maybe that’s longing or desire, but whatever it is, Hartley is interested in it and so is most everyone else.

What’s 85 years old and accepts submissions from me?!

Box Office Magazine! That’s what!

So exciting!

My first review for BoxOffice.com is up!

I’m extra grateful too because the editors there are so gracious and supportive. Amen, eh? It’s all about lovely editors!

Orange Revolution is a relatively traditional documentary about the Ukranian popular uprising in 2004, that tracks the ascension of Victor Yushchenko and his/the people’s battle against the corrupt regime that suppressed his election.

As with any movement that is popularly successful, the specifics of the politics really bog down the popular sentiment – as a result, we don’t hear much about the beliefs of the presidential elect, outside of his position of opposition to the regime. Journalists helpfully explain that bribes were the currency of the regime: you could bribe your way out of jail, bribe your way into college, bribe your way out of prior convictions. The regime’s supported candidate proved this last note as he had two convictions on his record but still considered himself “cleansed in the eyes of the law.”

This doc proves that popular political sentiments, no matter how powerful can’t be more widespread than they are broad. At the same time it’s made by an American and one can’t help feel the pangs of familiarity in the circumstances of the 2004 Ukrane election and the US 2004 election…A regime supporter even raised the question “And then did Bush get elected fairly?!” as if to suggest that one election (or fraud) somehow legitimizes the other. It’s worth mentioning that there was a good laugh at that line since the supporter was slurring and drunk. Regardless of our nation’s apparent similarities or differences, stories of such powerfully unifying belief are always inspiring and that alone justifies the efforts put forth in this film. To an extent Orange Revolution, which does make mention of the censorship and restraining of information of the press during the elections, seems to be acting as sort of proxy to the news. Not a bad proxy – there is a basic neutrality to the information though it all comes from one side of the battlefield, but the representations are largely quite neutral. Even at the end when a note alerts us that, now that the news agencies are independent, they blast all the candidates equally. À nous la liberté.