Cinemad

Unlike many of my high school chums, I did not take part in a European backpacking adventure following graduation. At the time and in the years since I was busy making lil’ movies, with the hopes of eventually getting accepted into a festival abroad. My sibling Nathan and I work together, and last fall we eagerly submitted our most recent film “Redemptitude” to The Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale to Non-Amuricans). And low and behold…we got rejected.

We did however get accepted into the Berlinale Talent Campus, a sidebar of sorts to the festival itself, where five hundred chain-smoking filmmakers from over one hundred countries convened, attending panels during the day and seeing the festival films at night. Not as cool as actually being in the fest, but they covered a good portion of your travel expenses so it sounded great to me. Due to an error we made on the application [I heard you filled out “Zellner Brothers” on a single application –ed.], only I was accepted, so unfortunately Nathan stayed stateside.

My knowledge of Berlin was fairly limited. Most of the historical factoids I had to memorize in school had long since leaked from my brain, and I was too busy prior to the trip to give myself a refresher course. I knew there was a wall, called “Die Mauer”, that separated East and West Berlin until 1989 when David Hasselhoff encouraged everyone to tear it down as he gleefully sang atop it. My rudimentary understanding of the language itself stemmed from an Apple II videogame I had in the early 80’s- Castle Wolfenstein, which featured threatening digitized phrases in garbled German.

I took this photo in the Berlin Wall Museum. Along with history factoids, the place was cluttered with really ridiculous art, and this was my fave of the bunch, a depiction of Rock Biter from “The Neverending Story” eating The Wall.

I saw a handful of films screening at Berlinale, and the Talent Campus was fine, the highlight being a cinematography panel with Anthony Dod Mantle and Christopher Doyle. What started out being insightful devolved into Doyle shuffling around the stage in a drunken stupor mumbling and chuckling to himself. I thought this was a unique and novel spectacle on his part, but when I excitedly told people about it they informed me it was the norm. Burst my bubble.

[I, for one, enjoyed hearing of Doyle’s rants, his questioning of Mantle doing big budget films - while Doyle shot the remake of PSYCHO, his shoes with no laces and the tongues pulled out, the way he only took questions from women, and when he dropped a full bottle of beer on the floor and then dramatically ran away. The best imagemaker on Earth in a couple of ways. –ed.]

The most exciting part of the trip was exploring the city itself. The architecture, the history, the museums, monuments, culture and street meat were all incredible. A cranky old British guy named Terry showed me the nondescript, unmarked remnants of Hitler’s bunker- a metal panel disguised with shrubs in middle of a parking lot for a snazzy prefab apartment complex (right beside the complex’s playground).

I journeyed with Mike Plante, Mr. Cinemad himself, to the Kinski Bar, a tiny hole in the wall that served as a shrine of sorts to all things Klaus Kinski (and Werner Herzog, for that matter). Being the unabashed Herzog fanboy that I am, I was in absolute heaven.

While there, Mike had learned that the one and only Bruno S., unique star of Herzog’s “Stroszek” and “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser”(I much prefer the alternate title “Every Man For Himself And God Against All”), was to be performing at that very place later in the week, playing his trademark accordion and xylophone.

HOLY SHIT. Bruno S.! I’d forgotten that he was from Berlin, and assumed he was dead since he’d been out of the public eye for close to thirty years. When Mike shared this information with me I was a pathetically giddy sonofabitch, not quite as giddy as an eight-year-old Mexican girl meeting Menudo, but close. Unfortunately for Mike he had to return to The States before the concert took place, so I’d have to venture alone for the return visit a few days later.

On Friday night I took a thirty-dollar cab ride back across town to the Kinski; I arrived there extremely early to ensure a seat up front, one of the first times I’d been early to anything. I sat there alone, and eagerly waited, sipping my Afri Cola since I didn’t feel like drinking. I kept checking the camera in my pocket to make sure it still had enough battery power. Then I checked my watch. Then I looked around and started over again. I was the only foreigner, and I appeared to be the only GaGa McFanboy, since most everyone else was doing what you’re supposed to do at a bar, drinking, socializing, etc. I wanted no part of that, I just wanted Bruno.

Two hours later he arrived and I was instantly starstruck. Most of the folks either didn’t know who he was or didn’t particularly care. I made up for it though, watching his every move, waiting in anticipation for the show to begin. I’d been afraid he’d be decrepit or senile, fortunately he was neither. He appeared healthy enough, hair now grey and a bit heavier, but other than that he was the same old Bruno from the movies. He was very shy but seemed happy enough to be performing for us.

While he played they projected Stroszek on the wall behind him. Occasionally, in-between verses, he’d trail off, sporadically playing his accordion as he turned toward the wall and watched himself in the movie with a dazed-like trance. So wonderfully surreal.

After the gig I got a bilingual bartender to ask Bruno if I could take a picture with him, he graciously complied and then I called it a night.

The only thing that could remotely compete with my Bruno adventure took place the following evening at a tiny, no-frills cabaret called Kleine Nachtrevue, another place loosely recommended to me by Mr. Plante. I arrived shortly after one A.M. in a drunken stupor. With me were a handful of friendly Canadians as well as my longtime chum and fellow filmmaker John Bryant, who was coincidentally in town for a screening unrelated to Berlinale. The place was dead before we showed up, maybe one or two folks in the audience, tops. Then this hoard of Ugly North Americans storm in just as the entertainment is set to begin. The staff consisted of three people- a tall, skinny blonde woman who switched back and forth between waitress, bartender and cabaret singer; a zaftig, extremely buxom woman who also juggled those duties; and the emcee/bartender/manager/occasional performer, a classy, older gay man who was extremely friendly and accommodating to our group.

The place was dead before we showed up, maybe one or two folks in the audience, tops. Then this hoard of Ugly North Americans storm in just as the entertainment is set to begin. The staff consisted of three people- a tall, skinny blonde woman who switched back and forth between waitress, bartender and cabaret singer; a zaftig, extremely buxom woman who also juggled those duties; and the emcee/bartender/manager/occasional performer, a classy, older gay man who was extremely friendly and accommodating to our group.

Not only was there no cover charge, but they gave it their all and actually seemed to really enjoy performing, regardless of the fact that the place was mostly empty. The skinny girl and big girl took turns performing various musical numbers in their native tongue, but we got the gist of it. Their costumes were elaborate, crazy and inspired, everything from a breakaway nun’s habit to a tattered fishing net ensemble complete with plastic crustaceans covering the private areas.

The emcee performed a couple tunes, including All That Jazz, accompanied by backing music on a worn-out cassette player. At various points in the song the audiotape would begin to warble with wild irregularity, catching him off guard and screwing with his timing, speeding up/slowing down. Afterwards he ran over and rewound the jammed cassette with his pinky.

By this point they’d run out of material and invited anyone from the audience to perform a song. Selection was limited and random, just a couple of karaoke CD’s to choose from and their lack of a karaoke screen meant you had to know it by heart. Of course I leapt upon stage and thrust myself through the shiny metallic curtain. I sang Jambalaya by Hank Williams, which I did fairly competently. Then I attempted the German version of 99 Red Balloons by Nina, which I completely bastardized except for the part where she talks about Captain Kirk.

The ladies were so accommodating that for my final song Those Were The Days, they welcomed me into their well-stocked dressing room and suited me up in drag. Out of nowhere they pull out size twelve (in Men’s) spiked heels, complete with fishnet stockings. This is not my normal cup of tea, but I like adventure and was always a fan of Bosom Buddies, so I said to hell with it. I capped off my sloppy, drunken performance with my sole athletic/dance move- the splits, all the way to the ground. Both the Krauts and Canucks seemed impressed.

I don’t think I could’ve had more varied, adventuresome experiences during my stay there, Berlinale itself was just the tip of the iceberg. I loved Berlin and ate it all up like the big jelly donut that it is. -David Zellner

Top photo taken from Zellners’ MySpace page, I think David is on the right. Chris Doyle photo from the internet. The rest from Zellner.

DVD magazine
Wholphin/McSweeney’s
Reviewed by JonKorn, someone who wants to write for McSweeney’s

There is a moment, perhaps two minutes into his ambiguously titled film PATTON OSWALD STARES INTO THE CAMERA FOR FIVE OR SO MINUTES, where the eponymous comic’s face morphs from a hideous, Boschean leer to an expression of complete and utter happiness. We’re talking unadulterated fucking joy. It’s almost enough to make you think that Patton has, under exceedingly fortuitous circumstances (Given the camera and crew are sitting, like, right there), just discovered the meaning of life. But Oswald’s mug never rests - within seconds his features shift, the light drains out of his eyes, and his joy turns into mindless, unthinking bliss.

When was the last time you watched a person just make faces into a camera for three minutes? Or sat in slack-jawed awe as a nice Scandinavian man sang the greatest song in the world backwards? These and myriad other delights are all available on Wholphin #1, the newest wing of Dave Eggers’ all-encompassing empire of wit and good intentions.

Wholphin does for short films what McSweeney’s has done for short stories, namely, let the general public see what delightfully guilty pleasures can be derived from something with a limited scope (at least in the temporal sense). There are issues that feature length films can explore more fully than any short, but, at their best, the briefer works approach something much purer and, irony aside, artistic. (Yes, irony is a sticky subject here, as the whole disc has received a liberal basting in McSweeney’s trademarked glaze of unapologetic, wide-eyed sincerity. In fact, the mission statement I was able to gloss from Editor Brent Hoff’s ‘Welcome to Wholphin’ can basically be summed up as ‘intelligent films for people who will get them’. So, long story short, natch.)

Ostensibly the first of many such compilations, the DVD offers twelve films of various lineage and three ‘menus’ that are full-fledged shorts all by themselves, including both the aforementioned Patton Oswald opus and Jeroen Offerman’s haunting, backwards karaoke, as well as THE GREAT ESCAPE, another Offerman piece that documents what may be the luckiest moment ever captured on film.

In fact, these menus may be the best and most consistent things about Wholphin, which might have been a necessity, given the means by which they work. Basically, the films play in the background for thirty seconds before the text of the menu fades and suddenly you are watching something that you weren’t intending to see. The whole experience would be a little heavy-handed and, well, insulting — if these films weren’t so much fun.

The other offerings don’t always get to this same place, a delirious intersection of intelligence and creativity that occurs when short films, or stories for that matter, just get it all right. There are some high points, like Carson Mell’s THE WRITER, which explores the bitterness behind one sci-fi author’s pulp fantasies. Just as captivating is MALEK KHORSHID, an animated Iranian film from the seventies that is presented without subtitles. Not only is the animation oddly beautiful, but it also employs numerous devices that, while they may have been conventions in the world of Persian cartoons, are virtually Avery-esque in their flouting of physics, decorum, and sanity. (Can an Iranimation craze be far off? Might it be just the bridge our societies need to close their ever-widening and, frankly, terrifying gap? Let’s hope so on both counts.) [I credit you with the invention of that term, yet I copyright it –ed.]

Brian Dewan’s THE DEATH OF THE HEN is an excellent example of how specific the short format allows a filmmaker to be. The gentle, almost stately pace of the piece all but masks its inexplicable and undeniably intentional weirdness. Dewan admits in the booklet that there is no moral in sight and his choice to not only present the tale as a slideshow, but also to actually say ‘Boop’ to indicate when the picture should change, only gives us an inkling of what was actually going on in his head.

Some of the other films are less successful than these three, but all are worth watching at least once, which, take it from someone who has watched many, many shorts that make even the worst on display here look like freaking CHINATOWN, is quite the accomplishment in itself.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it feels like the two documentary films, which are both weightier and longer than their fictional counterparts, are meant to be the centerpieces of the disc. Certainly Hoff’s ‘Welcome’ indicates that one of them, Spike Jonze’s UNTITLED AL GORE DOCUMENTARY, was the catalyst for Wholphin itself, going so far as to argue that had it been seen during the 2000 election it might have tipped the scales in the former Vice-President’s favor. The emphasis on Jonze’s film feels slightly misguided, as is it a mostly forgettable puff piece notable only for a hilarious scene in which Al guides the Gore family through a Byzantine selection process for Movie Night that serves very nicely as both a visual summary of the American public’s view of ‘Al Gore: Politician’ and a somewhat damning indictment of Hoff’s contention that ‘this film might have wiped away, in twenty-two minutes, Gore’s reputation as a robot.’ More deserving of praise is SOLDIER’S PAY, a vague ‘excerpt’ from a presumably longer film by David O. Russell, which chronicles an incident that occurred during the current Iraq War and almost perfectly mirrors the plot of Russell’s previous film THREE KINGS. In a delightful inversion of cliché, this is a case of Truth being exactly as strange as Fiction. It also begs the question: where is the rest of this film?

Much has been made of the Internet as a new and exciting forum for short film. And, to certain extent, this is totally true. But the Internet is also controlled, like most of our culture, by a stupefying mix of huge corporations and 15-year-olds. Thus the variety of options on display, while often hilarious, leaves more than enough space for an outfit like Wholphin to stake its claim to an entirely different stratum of entertainment. Let’s hope that the discs continue to feature filmmakers who aspire to create moments of unadulterated fucking joy, which, though brief, are no less worthy for it. –JonKorn

www.wholphindvd.com

SO WRONG ITS RIGHT
Directed by Russ Forster

Other Cinema DVD
Reviewed by Ryan, an audiophile

This film is about 8 tracks and 8 track collectors. For the benighted (presumably anyone under 21) 8 tracks are the white frog mutations of audio formats; they’re cumbersome, ugly, and were guaranteed a short life span. They epitomize the ‘70s like cocaine does the ‘80s. They died a gruesome death. For these very reasons, I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog 8 track. Nevertheless, I remember seeing Combat Rock by the Clash on 8 track and I didn’t buy it. I’m an audiophile and that speaks volumes of the 8 track’s appeal [I’m shocked to hear this –ed.]. And while the compact disc may be the worst invention since mustard gas, the 8 track is just a hair better. After seeing this film, I’ve come to like 8 tracks more, but that’s only because I’d like to [meet and buy an ice cream for] seventy-percent of the females represented in this film. See, these people are total dorks. Not the ironically cool dorks you see at hipster bars, but the kind of dorks you read about in obituaries, the results of gun shots to the head and hangings. They’re my kind of people: chronic masturbators, loners and depressives; they probably go the library a lot and read Celine. Anyway, the girls in this film are totally hot and like Lou Reed (Jesus Christ, what more can a guy want?). I watched this movie with a semi-chubby, induced by the hot girls who like 8 tracks, the Sparks flowing through me, and the constant references to Lou Reed’s albums - yet another highlight of the film.

The filmmakers try to hammer home the point that these buyers and supporters of 8 tracks don’t follow the capitalistic status quo. Okay, I kind of see that, but it‘s a bit of a stretch. These people are not revolutionaries; they’re just dorky audiophiles with no lives. That’s cool; I am too! In fact, the very reason I’m watching this film is because my friend Mike suggested I review it (he knows what a helpless record collector I am and suggested I review it). So while I’ve never reviewed movies - and in fact do not like them - this movie pertains to me and my people. The impression left on me after viewing this film was not the anti-consumerist one the filmmakers tried to push on me, but just how sad and pathetic being lonely can be. These people are on the periphery of the periphery. And while some of these goof balls are just that, some of them - specifically the girl who yearns to move to New York - probably gravitated to 8 tracks and music out of sheer desperation and depression. A few of the people in the film remind me of Lester Bangs - amiable, erudite eccentrics with no chance of ever fitting in (one guy even has a similar Metal Machine music story as Bangs). Some of the older guys and gals are just semi-luddites who never picked up on the newer formats. Others are just out to make a few dollars off of 8 track revival. However, it was the morose undertones and feelings of alienation - the guy who doesn’t fit in at his job - that, again, stuck with me. Being a fan of esoteric music (Lou Reed, the Stooges and Nico) and music formats (8 tracks and to a lesser degree vinyl) is a special thing. That music is yours not by choice, but out of some emotional connection you can’t put your finger on. Unfortunately, this catch-22 is a double edged sword of deep love and alienation.

This film was made in the late ’90s and a lot has changed in music since then (internet music, etc). This movie, although recently released, is dated. You’ll have to take that with a grain of salt.

Some of the technical aspects of the film: the film stock used reminded me of late ’70s porn (I had visions of Linda Lovelace sucking dong throughout this film; of course, this didn’t help my chubby at all). The audio synching at the beginning of this film is completely off. It gets better later, but it’s fucking atrocious at the beginning. So not only did the film remind me of late ’70s porn, it also reminded me of imported Japanese kung-fu movies from the same era. That’s cool, ’cause I’m sure the makers of this film had a Ramones first album-like budget. While the film might be lacking in the technical area, the filmmakers love permeates this film. Some of the footage is kitchy and superfluous, but what do you expect from a couple of 8 track lovers; certainly their execution of the film mirrors the subject of it. If you like the Velvet Underground, you’ll probably like this film. It you don’t know who the Velvets are/were (RIP Sterling Morrison), you probably won’t. And while that might not be the fairest measuring stick, you have to have a love for music and its formats to get through this film. It wasn’t made for everyone. –Ryan

DVD Special Features:
-Director’s Commentary
-Celebrity Interviews with David Byrne, Tiny Tim, and T-Bone Burnett
-Episodes from 8-Track Mind Videozine
-Behind The Scenes Slide Show
-8-Track History Slide Show
www.othercinemadvd.com