Uncut (Canada, 1997,
92 minutes, directed by John Greyson)Back
Uncut (Canada, 1997,
92 minutes, directed by John Greyson)John Greyson is best known for Zero Patience, a rock musical film about AIDS, or Lillies, a controversial film about childhood, religion and memory. However, he has also done some more experimental works, such as: Urinal, about washroom sex (when it showed in my town, the theatre had to get people to sign age statements - I must confess I got all uptight and refused to, because, personally, I don't believe in restricting anyone from making intelligent, informed choices about their own viewing material...); The Making of Monsters, a film I have not seen (for reasons to be detailed later); This Is Not A Death in Venice, a music video that presaged much of Zero Patience; and, now, this film.
On the purely dramatic level, it is about three men named Peter in 1979/80 (one is obsessed with typing and former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau; another, the youngest, with circumcision; and another with video and, it would appear, Michael Jackson). Because of one of them stealing another's photographs of Trudeau and using them in a video, the shock of which puts Trudeau in a coma (sadly, not reality), the three are sentenced to prison for copyright violation and invasion of privacy (two get twenty-six years (one for each letter of the alphabet); the youngest gets twenty-six weeks). Giving away the ending would be cruel, but it does tie in the themes of circumcision, Trudeau, copyright, ownership and privacy very neatly for a surreal/experimental film.
Along the way, there are documentary commentaries that are tied in to the drama as well. The rumours about Trudeau's sexuality and his own attitudes towards proper societal behaviour are examined by interviews with various gay theorists/artists and the woman who did the stage play Maggie and Pierre; issues of censorship and ownership are addressed by the problems of John Oswald, a tape manipulation artist who did a re-configuration of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' and was told that the cover and the music were violating copyright (he gave the copies away, but was still told the same thing), although, according to him, Jackson himself found it funny; of Greyson himself, who did a video, 'The Making of Monsters', that used the tune of Kurt Weill's 'Mack the Knife' and was told by the estate that he could not have the rights, even though he offered to pay and could pay (conversely, while homesteadonald's also did not seek the rights from the estate when it did 'It's Mac Tonight' (which, to my mind, is a far more obscene twisting than Greyson's, which turned it into an anti-gay-bashing song...I mean, Weill worked in musical theatre in Berlin in the 1930s...how anti-gay could he have BEEN!?), it only had to pay an out-of-court settlement, while Greyson was ordered not to show the video again; and of Tom Waugh, compiling a book on gay porn from the 19th century to 1969, who was told by publishing lawyers that the faces of people who were presumably dead and also, one must assume, INTENDED to be photographed had to be changed or obscured (with the resulting changes of meaning and inflection in some pictures, which surely violated 'copyright' far more severely than the originals...).
This is, as I have said, a rather experimental and surreal film; however, its meditations on corporate power, copyright, privacy and celebrity are razor-sharp and unmistakable (to my mind, only a rather lengthy opera segment on crime-through-the-alphabet did not quite work - it lagged slightly - though the punch-line at the end about OTHER thefts of the opera piece used was amusing).
According to Greyson, this should be out on video in roughly the summer of 1999. Until then, if you should see it coming to your town, please don't miss it!
And remember...if you haven't violated a copyright today, you haven't truly interacted
with a living, breathing world...so make copies of this review...bookmark it...paste it on
your own pages...I give you free and generous permission, and you don't have to give me
any credit (or cash)... :)
Pecker (US, 1998, 87
minutes, written and directed by John Waters, with Edward Furlong,
Christina Ricci, Lili Taylor and Patti Hearst)Everybody grows up sometime - even John Waters. Of course, he's not 'grown up' in the sense that no-fun conservatives would want - but who HAS by the standards of those puling old infants anyway?
This movie is the story of 18-year-old Pecker, a photographer/sandwich shop worker in Baltimore, and how he rises to fame in the art world, but then turns his back on its pretensions when they result in great hardship and problems for his family, girlfriend (Christina Ricci) and Baltimore itself.
It is also perhaps the only John Waters movie so far that features an actual functional family (again, it is likely that conservatives would not consider a family 'functional' that features a sugar-addicted child; a grandmother who uses a Virgin Mary doll as a ventriloquist dummy (though it actually does speak independently at the very end...); a mother who runs a thrift shop; a father who runs a bar and a sister who works as an MC in a gay club - but, so what? Unlike the families in 'Polyester', 'Female Trouble', 'Pink Flamingos', 'Serial Mom', 'Cry Baby' and even, to some extent, the very 'family' picture 'Hairspray', they seem to be genuinely loving and concerned for one another...the last thing you'd expect in the average John Waters movie...not to mention how comparatively kind to Catholicism this film is, considering how merciless he has been before...).
The message to this film is, by John Waters' standards, very sweet indeed: that success is nothing without one's friends and family, and that one must pursue one's artistic vision on one's own terms, rather than get tangled up in heartless commerce.
On the subject of conservatives - one of the delights of the last three John Waters movies has been the cameos by Patti Heart, who, despite her past as a revolutionary bank robber and criminal, is now apparently a good little Republican - though obviously not above shedding that conservative image (her blonde hair is truly outrageous on a woman with the colouring and complexion of a typical redhead - oops, the hairdresser gene popped out of me...down!). In 'Cry Baby', she was a ludicrously sweet crossing guard - In 'Serial Mom', she was the last victim of Kathleen Turner, for the crime of wearing white shoes after Labour Day (with the classic line 'No! Fashions change!' as famous last words...) - here, she is an art dealer, Lynn. There is a hint of sexuality in how she greets Shelly, Pecker's girlfriend, but, for the most part, she seems to be here to be a larger-than-life trash-slumming character (her strip-tease dancing at the end reveals that she doesn't dance very often... :) ). She's still fun, but not as good as in the last two films.
Come to think of it, lesbianism is a major feature in this film, as opposed to vicious parodies of heterosexuality or a queer male subtext. There is a bar in the town featuring lesbian strippers, and there is even drag king content (and this is the first John Waters movie I've seen that reveals female genitalia - so THAT'S what it looks like... :) ).
I really liked this film - I thought it was sweet and kind and family viewing (again, if your idea of family programming is 'Leave It To Beaver' (no pun intended), STAY AWAY!). In fact, I liked it more on video than I did on the big screen - it seemed more intimate that way (like all John Waters movies except Hairspray and Cry Baby (the latter because of Johnny Depp's participation, I'm sure), it just roared through town, and I saw it on its last of nine days here...). A real keeper...
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