Independent Movies, a listing....

It must have been an election year, huh?

I mean, really, look at this filth.

Angry this; angry that.

Thank the Fates for freedom of speech, ya know what I’m sayin?

It’s time for a kindler, friendly blog post of sorts. See? Like here’s my buddy, RahRah over at Rahrahpancakeeater, probably one of the best writers I’ve ever met. Seriously. He’s not one of those jarred up cuisine-lusters who only writes about sparkly vampires; he’s not one of those poets who hurls mustard at documentaries while screaming about Death to Petrie Dishes! He’s an honest-to-Fate poet who does something well and does it over and over again. And then, I noticed, well, his blog fell. Like crusted over fell. I suppose he fell in love or that one of myriad of cats took him hostage, but it became the time to chat with him again about blogging and, therefore, writing SOMETHING again.

To boot, I’ll join him, if you don’t mind.

However, I’m going to ask that if you visit this post, you visit his as well, over at RahRahPancakeeater.blogspot.com.  Give him a shout out and let’s see if we can get him to write. Heck knows, he’s helped me make a tale or two. In fact, it was with him that I created my “Best Books” and “Best Movies” listing from long ago (and didn’t let him include the Bible as part of his listing, sorry, he needed to work, just a little, and using the Bible is filler, IMHO!).

He made a list.

I made a rant.

So, if you could, should you catch him listing his favorite movies, just give him a nudge. No. Not with a sharp stick, but digitally. Ask him the simplest of questions.

“Why did you choose that movie?”

Otherwise, he’ll just go on listing. No explanations.

He is a poet, after all. And you know those poets!

Nothing like we authors, I tell you.

Alright, he and I elected to do a few lists of movies, if that’s okay. We bonded over the flicks, so long ago. Me, as a former movie critic for various newspapers; him, as a movie theater manager.

So, in place of whining over politics and the generalized stupidity at the world at large, here we go.

LIST THE BEST INDEPENDENT MOVIES

Okay, I gave myself some rules for this list. This is far, far, far from a comprehensive listing. In fact, this list sucks very large elk penis. The reason for this? I’m going to list movies that were good to ME. Fuck the heady shit. I’m all about those movies that hit the right spot, like a decent spicy burrito after a hard night of drinking or glass of wine of an undiscovered homicide. Something that just ‘worked’ for me. You know what I mean? Everyone’s like On the Waterfront is the best movie ever and, well, that may all be good, but I’m going to what caught my eye at the time of viewing.

Now, understand, we’re talking independent film here. Stuff that might have been distributed by the big studios, but that’s not who made it. I was lucky to be at that tender age to appreciate this stuff when it started to become popular.  Fresh from college in the early nineties, I was idealistic and eager to displease the status quo (as writers are prone to do). So any place where I could drink coffee and wine with my flicks was okay. I liked to find those movies that didn’t follow the Hollywood blockbuster formula. Movies where the story shifted to the front and, very rarely was carried by star power. Movies that played at film festivals like Sundance and made people do something else than cheer.

I will admit, some of these movies are rarities. Please note, we’re/I’m saving documentaries and foreign films for a later listing.  And, also, many of these movies, the line between ‘indie’ and “mainstream” is massively thin. That’s okay. A professional movie is just that. Independent movies, since the early nineties, has also maneuvered itself to awarding acceptance. Movies like The Hurt Locker, American Beauty and Sideways, believe it or not, are independent movies.

But then again, so was the Star Wars prequels.

 

You can claw your eyes out over your coffee later. Enjoy. And be hip. Might help if you smoke a cigarette when you watch these movies, you know, so you feel more independent and artiste-like!

I probably should mention why you see so many titles with something ‘gay’ about them. Think about it. I rarely, if ever could find gay characters in a remotely positive light outside of independent movies. It became my refuge, so, hence, my slant on these titles.

 

10. Pink Flamingos--art is art. You have to be creative to get it. Art is something created (at least, to me) to give an emotional response to some kind of audience; it’s the communication between an artist and viewer of some kind.  I’m starting here because, if there was ever a film to show how indie and indie movie can be, it would be this piece of crap. Literally, a piece of crap.

And I love it. Jon Waters, a closeted young man, angry at the world growing up in Baltimore went ahead and made the movie to piss off everyone he knows. His communication?

Fuck you.

Every business decision made by a big budget studio was getting the big finger at its front face. This was not a movie made for the masses. This was a movie, not unlike porn, made for sheer exhilarance. It starts with the main lead, a drag queen, eating dog shit and then licking her lips.

There’s an image that just sent shivers down your back while your stomach clenched. I bet your face just ratcheded up too. You got it, Mr. Waters has communicated with you. A movie that doesn’t make you cheer or cry. It makes you wince.  

And not wince in pain. That’s easy. Show you a picture of a surgery. Or someone getting cut up into little pieces. He’s going for the gut. But through the gross-out section. He wants you to be sick, but unexpectedly.

His goal? To be as subverse as possible. And he succeeded. What’s cool? He’s actually an awesome guy! His conversations during interviews illustrate a highly intelligent man who gets it, but doesn’t celebrate it at all. He reminds me of light-hearted Hunter S. Thompson.  Mr. Waters would be pissed I paid him such a complement. He’d be pissed I even included it here. But I’m using this wondrous drivel to show you the indie spirit.

In fact, his movies matured from her (this is the guy who gave us “Hairspray,” in fact) to show you the importance of thinking as freely as possible. 

That, in the end, is the true behind art.  Even disgusting art.

9.  Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles-- Stop laughing. It is an indie picture, believe it or not. Jim Henson made it to see if could do it. He read the comic books, went to Hong Kong to hire martial artists so good, they could do all the karate moves with large helmets and blind.  He cobbled together a kiddie martial arts flick that actually comes off as slightly horrific.

It fits no genre, to the point that you could see the Disney company, who eventually distributed it, finding a way to market it. The comedy is there, but the violence cuts out the younger viewers.  But the movie was begging to be made. The popular comic book was too fun to ignore. But how? Jim and his crew (yes, I can call him Jim, frankly) basically made a Jackie Chan movie. Not only that, they didn’t use special effects. It’s all done live.

This gave this little movie an immediacy that I’ve loved of every Hong Kong chopsocky picture. There’s no avoiding the flips, jumps and footwork. You are experiencing the movie on a totally different level than you would if you saw this movie coming out of Hollywood. It’s beautiful.  I saw it thrice in the theaters!!

8.  Memento--  art imitates life? Believe it or not, I totally already wrote this review and can’t find it anywhere! Where is my memory? Oh wait…memory is a fickle bitch goddess.

A mystery tale from the man who would bring us the Batman Begins trilogy, this is a story that can only exist in the movies. Editing  so that the entire narrative opens backwards—and I mean figuratively, not like, rewinding and talking Swedish—with a man who knows his wife is murdered and is trying to find out who did the deed. He remembers that only because he has it tattoo’d on his person. But he had sustained a blow to the head and his short term memory is totally nuked.

Like him, we experience the movie in bits and snippets and have to figure out what is going on as much as he does. There’s not special effects, there’s violence, but not profusely so. But the sense of darkness is palatable and, in the deft hands of Guy Pearce (probably one of the better character actors ever…), you feel for the man, no matter how stupid you realize he is to the situation around him. You’re glued.

And it makes sense why the BigWig studios would avoid this one like the plague. Too heady. Doesn’t have mainstream appeal.

But it got the writer/director noticed. And he went on to change superhero movies forever, by making them legit. Consider this a quick artist’s sketch, where the genius of the student shines through.

 

7.  Clerks—Ahhh, my man, Kevin Smith. Is there ever a more indie spirit? This is the guy who basically yanked his last title he made due to the fact that the advertising campaign cost more than the actual production of the movie. He got it. That’s not the purpose of a movie. The purpose of the movie is to tell a story.

And he did, right here, with this little movie. He couldn’t even afford color-but it made the 3-D characters even more colorful. This movie is like a Woody Allen picture, where the comedy is so sublime and true that you feel like you’re listening in on actual conversations. You’re almost afraid to laugh, because you might interrupt! From this point on? It only got better and better. He reminded me that all stories start with one thing. Writing. His actors? Terrible. But with a decent authorship behind them…they could work together for the tale.

 

6.  Sex, lies and videotape—I heard recently that this fantastic director is retiring. He’s like a little energizer bunny, making titles left and right (Ocean’s 11, Traffic) but you never hear from him. He is not the story, the movie was. I saw this my freshman year. I was scared, all those years ago, that I’d die without my art movie and foreign title intake. I was living outside of Fargo, North Dakota, and I knew that movies might as scarce as most of the life on that tundra.

This movie actually opened in a mainstream theater! I took my bombshell of a date (she was a cheerleader, go figure) and, here’s the tic, that airhead of a woman suddenly got all intelligent on me! She not only loved the movie, she went to Sher’s for coffee afterwards and we talked for hours about the implications of the film. A delicious drama about a man who videotapes women for his own sexual needs-and when he videotapes his old friend’s wife, the mess that occurs.  My date dusted off her stereotype, showed her true colors and restored my faith that, no matter where I went in the world, I could, somehow, find the Artists’ Way in film.

 

5.  Blair Witch Project—My dad and I had very little in common. My mother did her best, but getting me to connect with my ultra masculine step father provided difficulties.  He just couldn’t seem to get over my artist’s side and my need to write everything down. When I did anything with sports, he’d not go.

Then coffee happened. We both discovered our love for coffee. But movies? That was a few farther years down the road.

And this was the movie. He had heard about it through his employees, a group of glorious young car geeks (yes, I was crushin’-hard on those dudes, I might add) who actually liked the same things I did. And they were muy macho.

Suddenly, his stepson wasn’t a doofus as much anymore.  He wanted to see this movie. I wanted to see this movie! We bonded! 

The premise of the film was awesome—and didn’t require any writing whatsoever (quelle domage!). I know, me, liking a movie that didn’t have writing in it at all!

But the filmmakers took advantage of popular culture to the point where they made a movie so scary that it would change the face of late night films forever. Reality television was taking over every channel possible on cable. So? Why not make a horror movie mockumentary?

It worked. Three kids making a documentary for a college class go into the forest and die, one by one. All filmed voyeuristically.

What was better? They used the interwebs to bring the tale alive in a marketing campaign that I’ve not seen used since.  They created a fake college and posted about the filmmakers demise; they invented an origin story to get an audience that would like such a movie.

And it worked. 

 

4.  Gods and Monsters---sure, I could take the easy route and just say we get to see Brandon Fraser as an exmarine mowing lawns. That, in and of itself, should be enough.

But it isn’t. Now, I give you this might be more along the lines of a mainstream title-given the fact that one of the best English speaking actors alive right now is in the world—Sir Ian McKellen. In this movie, he plays another out person, a rare fact in the 30s as it seems right now, James Whale, the maker of the movie Frankenstein.

If we are to believe the auteur theory, whereas, the art reflects the point of the man making it, then “Jimmy” Whale’s picture of a tortured monster alienated from the society he wishes to join clicks for us. Here we see a brilliant director alone in a huge house, wishing for just a bit of companionship and longing for a love he had so long ago. But in the hands of a masterful performer, instead of coming up as a dirty old man, Ian’s version of Whale is totally sympathic.  You understand his loneliness in his waning years-and pain he doesn’t deserve just because he’s gay.

And not a happy movie at all. Something mainstream Hollywood would have a hard time selling.

3.  Fargo---No one would believe me until this movie. When I moved to outside of Fargo to begin undergraduate, I kept calling home and insisting, “these people, here…they’re just different.”

They used words like ‘maleficence’ and ‘snippy.’  They had a sense of humor so deep in their core, you weren’t sure if they were making irony or it was happening organically. This movie became a documentary. It captured a world that I had experienced and yet my Colorado family didn’t believe.

And, not only was that irony deep—not many people realize this is a comedy! A comedy about a kidnapping and murder!

That explains why it lives on as an indie. No major studio could even understand this movie about crime gone really, really badly.

 

2.  Night of the Living Dead—made on a shoestring budget, a group of college kids in rural Pennsylvania got together and said, “dude! Let’s make a horror movie!”

But then went a step further. They took gothic horror to a new level. Now? Simple black and white (saved on special effects) and zombies (don’t need THAT much make up) and create a tale in ONE STINKING HOUSE. George A Romero started the Walking Dead, basically.

The film is a small microcosm of the world, with representations of different icons.  A woman. An African American. A family. A Caucasian.

And who will survive? 

Of course, on the outside, it’s terrifically scary, with all the dialogue happening with continued moans outside the boarded up windows. Power is cut off. The crowd of zombies grows outside. Oh…what…to…do.

And without the studio there to tell you to make the ending happy or to leave room for a sequel to earn more cash off of it, well, the story could go, literally, anywhere. Good stuff.

 

1. Brokeback Mountain---this movie changed me in several ways. I wanted to mention the title because I finally learned, after all my years of watching and reading and writing about movies, what it meant to really ‘get’ a movie. For years, I watched women sobbing at movies. I’ve cried at movies, don’t get me wrong.  The Champ had me dissolved for hours.

But up until that point, I looked at movies like a doctor sees the human body. Detached. They see the pores on the skin, not the beauty it holds up; I saw the boom mike and the camera not twenty feet away and knew these were actors on a stage.

With this movie, I lost it. Being a gay man, I connected on a level that I never had before. I understood every single one of the emotions those two men were feeling on the screen.   There was no hiding from it.

I was so happy this movie was made, for it went mainstream and changed audiences forever. A romance between two men that was so universal, nongays could click with it. In fact, the night I saw it, four young men came in with their boots on and cowboy hats. I shit-you-not, the rodeo was in town when it opened that night in Colorado Springs. And this was the movie those men elected to spend their Saturday night watching.

And they were straight.

And teary eyed.
 
The movie crossed several genres of drama, romance, gay literature and westerns. And was made with such compassion and style that it moved like a good book.

I GOT the movie. And proof that the independent spirit of movies MUST be maintained. Movies, like all art must continue to push boundaries to the point we cannot watch any more. We must discuss them like they are dying out, so that more can be made. We must never be afraid of the story, just the ramification of them. It was quite an experience for me as a cineast.

And it changed my life. It changed how I saw movies from that point on, truly. 

Peace,

Roo

PS:  I keep wanting to write a gay version of “Lolita” but have a feeling I’d be burned at the stake…but the movies are both considered indies…