The birth of RAZOR DAYS - a fairy story about survival horror.

Back in 2002, while working at Incredibly Strange Video in Dormont, I happened to have on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As it ended, I thought to myself, “Marilyn Burns’s character is going to need so much therapy.” Then came the little post-script title about how no evidence was ever found after a massive police search of the area. My wheels started turning. While no scholar of the slasher genre, I’d seen enough of them to wonder about those surviving “final girls”, what their lives would be like from that point on.

In 2002, the endless cycle of remakes hadn’t yet reached the theaters, so there hadn’t been a major Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chain Saw “type” of movie released for a while. The indie scene was filled to the brim then—and will always be—with survival horror, homages and rip-offs of the original films. In fact, later that day I watched Carnage Road, which featured a character named “Quiltface” for his impressive mask made of multiple skinned faces. The idea that there are psychotic cannibals out there, hoping to catch, kill and eat us, was always a fascinating little terror of mine. It had grown stronger in recent months as Amy and I scouted out rural farmland for our new home. Passing one back-woods house with a gaping hole in the side, while the proud owner sat on the porch skinning…something (all I remember are clumps of blood and fur as we increased speed), I turned to Amy, indicating the “For Sale” sign on the trailer next to the lot. “If I’m going to be murdered in my sleep,” I told her, “I definitely don’t want to be raped and murdered.” So we kept looking.

 

Then I rediscovered this Berni Wrightson comic cover and things started to gel in my head. 

  Survival horror always reached an end, either with triumph, rescue, succumbing to madness, or that final surprising resurrection—that dead hand springing back to life and grabbing the final girl just as the credits rolled to the sound of her echoing scream, betraying everything she’d gone through. What these types of horror movies never addressed were the scars left behind.

The first reaction to that consideration is, of course, “Who wants to see a crying victim in therapy for two hours, telling the story to her shrink?” So skip that part too. What happens after? After the survival, after the therapy, after the investigations and allegations and accusations. One person out of four survived a camping trip. Could they be to blame? Isn’t that more plausible than Leatherface and his family? Police find no evidence—how the hell hard were they looking? Or are they in on it too? (Something that was addressed in the inevitable Texas Chain Saw remake.) But most importantly, all that convolution aside, how do you put your life back together after something like that?

Having lived in the world, journeyed out amongst other people, I have met survivors of rape and molestation. I have met people who have survived moments of horrible and random violence. I’m not referring to brutal abductions or even war flashbacks. Comparatively small things like a mugging, a bar fight, or even the prolonged illness of a friend or relative, leaves behind its echo. Even if these folks seem, outwardly, to have completely recovered, the violence is still there in scarred-over memory. And it comes out. Usually rarely, but those wounds open, sometimes with a minutia of prompting. So if its particularly shattering, how do you put yourself back together?

After a couple of turns with this germ of an idea—first as a short story and then a comic book—I found the meat of this story I wanted to tell, and the first thing to go was that image of the head hunter from Wrightson’s painting. As much as I would have loved to tell that story, it wasn’t the story that wanted to be told.

The story that became Razor Days was much more intimate and introspective. But very violent. It’s about a trio of final girls and what they decide to do after the credits have rolled.

So here we are eight years later, and I’m finally getting the chance to turn this script into a movie. There were multiple fits and starts over the years, including a nasty little few weeks where we had the film ripped away from us in pre-production by a dishonest producer who promised the world then took it all away. That was a carpet-yank moment for us because this wasn’t just a movie we could make on weekends in our backyards. It required a realism that our other movies did not. It wasn’t a ____-horror movie, either. It wasn’t a comedy-horror like Severe Injuries or a semi-futuristic zombie fantasy like The Resurrection Game. We couldn’t invent our own worlds here. Razor Days required solid ground beneath our feet. Which requires money. So we put it on the back burner, turned the fire low and let it simmer.

In the meantime, Amy and I worked on the script, refined it and brought it down closer to eye-level, working out how even the most fantastic elements could have a light shone on them and still feel solid. While we’re used to not giving up—the Happy Cloud motto is “The bumblebee doesn’t know that its physically impossible for it to fly”—we had two others in our court who never gave up either: Debbie Rochon and Alan Rowe Kelly. The pair of them mentioned that movie to anyone who would listen. Then, one day, the right listener came along.

Bob Kuiper, my long-time friend and publisher of Sirens of Cinema, who has displayed more faith in me than what is surely rational, was someone I’d worked with for over five years, but had never met. Circumstances kept us from seeing each other in person. Some of this problem was caused by distance—he in Indiana, we in the nowhere-zone of PA—and was compounded by other things, chiefly bad timing. He’d been burned by partnerships before—had a movie or two collapse around him—as had we, so our initial conversations about producing a film together required a lot of circling and dancing, resembling many of the knife fights from West Side Story minus the snapping.

Then, by chance, the planets aligned and the three of us finally met, face-to-face and over beer, at Horrorhound, Indy. We discuss plans for the future and we hint that we’d love to make Razor Days. There is much nodding and smiling and great plans for the upcoming empire.

And who is one of the first people we introduce Mr. Bob to? Alan Rowe Kelly.

What’s the first thing he says to us? “What’s going on with Razor Days? I love that script!”

It was an unscripted, unpaid for moment. But it was enough proof for me that the universe isn’t constantly out to get me. Because by the end of that weekend, Bob had provided the green-light for this movie to be made. The first project for the partnership of RAK Media and Happy Cloud Pictures will be something completely different from anything we’ve attempted before.

After all the struggling and fighting and the inherent madness of the indie film industry, after all the back-stabbing, the trash-talk, the horrific allegations and the depressing dissolution of long-time friendships, we were reminded that sometimes, this business doesn’t completely suck. There are wonderful people out there. They’re tough to spot through the guarded gauze of cynicism and self-defense, but they’re there, and they’re willing to expose themselves to your dreams and desires. And the only price is: you have to live up to their trust.

Because betrayal is a violent act as well. It can leave scars just as deep and leave damage behind. Now all of a sudden, you’re on the other side. You’re not the survivor or the altruistic hero. You’re standing on the precipice of villainy. You want to be the villain of your own life story—act selfishly, lie, cheat, and fuck your way to the top. It’s actually faster—an express elevator to success.

I’m happy that, after all this time, we took the stairs and had good friends to walk with.

At Last! Mike Watt's long-awaited opinion of the firing of Juan Williams!

At the behest of no one, I thought I’d weigh in on the Juan Williams/NPR/Fox News debacle.

As you may or may not know, Juan Williams is a journalist who, up until October 21 of this year, worked as a news analyst for National Public Radio and a paid commentator on Fox News. On Fox, he was considered a Liberal and provided a talking point against those who would criticize the “right-heavy” news-ebrities like Bill O’Reilly and the permanent post-partum depressive Glenn Beck. “See?” They could say, pointing at Williams, “He’s a Liberal! We’re not slanted—oh, he is too a Liberal! Look how not-white he is.”

From NPR’s point of view, Williams was a conservative, and therefore, a detriment. So much so that they played hockey with his title—first he was a correspondent, then a news analyst—and demanded that their call-letters be in no way identified with him when he appeared on Fox News. Since he first appeared as host of Talk of the Nation on NPR, they’ve been tugging at their collars, worried about what un-PC thing he’d say—or think—next.

On October 20, Williams appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show against every rational person’s better judgment and added the final straw to the camel’s back that is NPR. He said, right there, on TV, in front of God and everybody, that seeing people on an airplane “in Muslim garb” made him “nervous”.

He then went on to admonish himself for such feelings and decry anyone who gave in to such knee-jerk impulses, but that part got left behind during the ensuing hoopla. To NPR, Williams having such a human reaction was intolerable, and speaking his mind about it was… well, unspeakable. So out he went.

And, of course, the rest of America went crazy scrambling from one goal post to the other in order to take sides. The Right demanded that the government immediately “unfund” NPR, even though the amount of Federal money allocated to National Public Radio via the National Endowment of the Arts barely accounts for 2% of their annual budget. Sarah Palin called it “shameful” that such censorship was paid for by tax dollars. Which, as any loyal listener will attest, is almost completely untrue, of course. As John Oliver put it on The Daily Show, NPR holds fund raisers “11 months out of the year!” Tax money? Not so much. Private donations, certainly. And with every donation of ten bazillion dollars or more, you get your choice of a free coffee mug or NPR tote bag.

On the Left, folks squirmed, declaring “good riddance” to the dissenting viewpoint. How dare Williams subject them to the other side of the argument? “He’s making us see both points of view again! Make him stop!” Others were uncomfortable with the idea of such obvious censorship, without bothering to look up the definition of the word, and thought that NPR should cool their jets and offer Williams his job back. To the latter, Right opponents shouted, “Screw your apologies! This is war!”

Meanwhile, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, admonished Williams and defended her decision at a press conference wherein she said, and I’m paraphrasing, “He had no right to express such an outrageous opinion. That’s something he should discuss with his publicist or psychiatrist!”

Which seemed to translate as, “We fired this conservative schmoe for being a whoring nutjob.”

As a less-than-impartial observer, a fellow journalist, a loyal NPR listener and someone who can process oxygen into carbon dioxide as opinions with the best of them, all I was able to do over the last week or so, amidst the arm-waving and garment-rending, was shake my head.

Fox News doesn’t pretend to be anything but a Right Wing Noise Machine. In fact, that might be their mission statement. (Personally, I try to avoid more than a couple of minutes of that channel because I end up wanting to buy Glenn Beck a puppy and tell him everything’s gonna be okay, fork over my lunch money to Bill O’Reilly so he doesn’t beat me up behind the gym, or send a box of desperately-needed vibrators to Gretchen Carlson so she’ll, well, exhale once in a while.) The one thing they don’t pretend to be is unbiased.

NPR, on the other hand, prides itself on being a balanced news outfit, and, for the most part, it is. At least, they tend not to sneer too audibly when discussing G.O.P. strategies, and they’ll call out a Democrat for being a dolt just as quick as they will a Republican. My all-time journalistic hero, Steve Inskeep, has cornered such luminaries as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nicholas Sarkozy without flinching, and then sing pun-filled songs about moray eels to the tune of “That’s Amore`”. Inskeep doesn’t just call a spade a spade, he slaps it around and declares it to be a goddamned shovel. And I usually dig the shows “All Things Considered” (not to be confused with Doonesbury’s “All Things Reconsidered” with Mark Slackmeyer) and the occasional dose of “Fresh Air” and not just because I’m tired of the other Pittsburgh radio stations playing “Highway to Hell” on every rotation.

I rarely paid much attention to Juan Williams. I had heard a couple of his “Right-of-Left” opinions in the past but, you know what? Other people’s opinions don’t generally send me leaping from a car going 75 m.p.h. down I-79 (which is how and where I usually listen to NPR). If Williams thinks that Michelle Obama dresses like “black militant Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress”, that’s his right, I suppose. It ain’t particularly funny, but it didn’t make me sharpen my pitchfork either.

NPR’s position was that Williams’ conduct on Fox News, particularly making that single “nervous” statement, was counter to the company’s position of journalistic neutrality. Basically, because he worked for NPR as a news analyst, he was never off the clock. When he appeared on Fox News, he did so as an NPR representative, whether they were publicly proud of this fact or not. Oddly enough, Fox News didn’t have too much trouble with him presenting “Left-of-Right” viewpoints on NPR, when he had them. But Vivian Schiller, wringing her hands and condemning the kooky concubine, felt that Williams was way out of line, feeling the way that he did and telling people.

She gave Fox News the opportunity to play hero, riding to Williams’ rescue with a $2 million dollar job offer and some high ground on which to stand. But while Williams took the job, he squatted on the high ground and accused Schiller of racism, leftism, and elitism. “I don’t fit in their box,” he spat. Okay, said, but there was some saliva utilized. Schiller backpeddled, gave a grudging apology for having handled the manner with fists of ham, and the two turned their backs on each other, arms crossed and breath held. O’Reilly, on the other hand, wrote “NPR” down on his list of “People and Things Who Should Die Because I Don’t Like ‘em”.

And all of this brings me to the question at hand: when is a journalist allowed to express personal opinion? In the Edward R. Murrow days, perhaps, a respectable reporter did not say, “That Hitler’s a real asshole,” he simply reported what he saw, in Murrow’s case, bombs dropping around his ears and past relatives waving him on into the light. But what of such upstanding gentlemen as Walter Winchell, who had public figures so terrified of offending him that they invited the little weasel to every function and applied lipstick to his tuchis at every opportunity? Winchell had no trouble expressing his opinions to Mr. and Mrs. America, not to mention all the ships at sea.

From NPR’s point of view, Williams was supposed to be a neutral party, what Heinlein defined as a “Fair Witness” in Stranger in a Strange Land. If he is asked, “What color is that barn?”, he is supposed to answer, “The side that I can see is white. I cannot speak for the other sides.” He was to be a “Fair Witness” at all times, on and off the clock, because he is a public figure and a journalist. A reporter. He was not meant to editorialize.

Fox News, of course, has no trouble editorializing, declaring everything short of wax fruit an instrument of that Satan Obama, and it isn’t too far of a stretch to think that Williams was a bit of a pansy for qualifying his “nervousness” in the face of burqas. In fact, that he didn’t shove the Muslims and their garb out of the plane in mid-flight each and every time he encountered him was likely seen to the O’Reilly camp as tantamount to treason.

But was he wrong for expressing this very natural and human feeling of brief xenophobia? Williams, by the way, if it matters, is black. So any NPR-hurling of “racism” at him would be looked-upon as a pot-kettle issue. If you stop his opinion mid-sentence, though, that’s just what you’re doing. Without giving his follow-up statements of “but I realize that I’m being silly and not every Muslim in the world—very few of them, actually—is a terrorist eager to blow every JetBlue flight out of the air” the proper sound bite, that’s exactly the brush he’s being painted with. You can turn it into a “Left-Right” issue or a “PC-Non-PC” issue, but what it really comes down to is, a man, who works as a reporter for two diametrically-opposite news outlets, said something one didn’t like and got shitcanned for it. That he’d said other things they didn’t like in the past should, perhaps, be taken into consideration. If Schiller had indeed warned him in the past of going on Fox with O’Reilly and discussing the inherent evil of the Democrats—“do that and we’ll fire you and take away your Carl Kassel answering machine message faster than you can say “Wait-Wait, Don’t Tell Me’”—maybe he was playing with fire.

But we can’t pretend that journalism has evolved since Murrow, though perhaps not much since Winchell (though they share roughly the same points in history). In these days of the not-so-wild West of the Internet, where “Gonzo Journalism” has been taken up as the new name-calling, it’s difficult to find good, impartial reporting without some degree of opinionizing. It’s even taught in journalism classes (currently the second-most useless major after “Flugelhorn”): it is permitted for first-person commentary to be inserted into a non-fiction piece to provide the “human element”, so that the reader knows that Google just found your article and didn’t actually generate it, whether that’s actually coming sooner or later is a different discussion. In the era of 24-hour news shows, that line between play-by-play and color is even thinner.

So where did Williams trip? By accepting one job while working at the other? Thinking that bipartisanism and rationality still existed in the media-crazed human? Thinking that dissent was some sort of a Constitutional right (Dear Christine O’Donnell, show me where in the Constitution it says “Freedom of Speech” or “Freedom of the Press”!)? Or does it really come down to sugaring one employer’s gas tank too often and finally getting caught for spitting on the sidewalk?

I, for one, certainly miss impartiality in the news, but these days when actual “news” is so rare to encounter, I’ll take even the resemblance of fact that I can look up later over what Lindsay Lohan is fucking today.

I don’t feel a whit of sympathy for Williams. I mean, really, how could I? I say stupid shit every day and no one ever hands me $2 million dollars. And I have no intention of ceasing my patronage of NPR, whether they “censored” Williams or simply “censured” him. And since my own columns are read less frequently than a Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes, I figure I’ll say whatever the goddamned fucking hell I please. But if I ever go to work for NPR, I’ll think twice about applying for a night job at Fox. Or vice-versa. Because, quite frankly, if I were a vegetarian, I’d have a hard time working for Oscar Mayer.

Halloween Recommendations for the Last-Minute Procrastinators who will surely spend eternity in Hell for the idleness of their hands.

It’s Halloween! I have a few suggestions as to how you should spend it. Because, you know, without my keen insight and advice, how would you even have the motivation to get up in the morning?

For Pittsburghers, my I recommend that you visit some of the finest haunted attractions in the area, particularly:

The Hundred Acres Manor, in South Park, PA. As seen in Splatter Movie: The Director’s Cut (also perfect for the Halloween season!), the Hundred Acres Manor features a long, twisty-turny jaunt through your worst nightmares, including a pitch-black maze!

Or, if interactivity is more your style, take a trip to Castle Blood, where you become part of the spooky adventure!

But if you only have time for one attraction, because you’re obviously terrible at time-maintenance, by no means should you miss Scarehouse in Etna. Voted one of the “Scariest Haunted Houses in America” by Haunted Attractions Magazine (new issue on sale now, boasting a number of articles by yours truly), Scarehouse takes you from traditional scares (courtesy of Creepo the Clown), through the twisted mind of Delirium (in 3-D! Yes, I know it’s already… shut up and go, you’ll see!) 

and into the battleground of future past in Rampage! The lines can get very long, particularly around the holiday and since you were too lazy to go early, you should pre-order the R.I.P. tickets from the official site and skip to the front. Otherwise, you might be best-served to bring a book along for your wait (like Phobophobia, or the newly-released Suicide Machine—both of which are at least as riveting as the articles I wrote for Haunted Attraction).

If you’re one of those layabout types that likes the fright to come to you, switch over to Turner Classic Movies, hide the remote, use a shotgun to turn out all your lights, and settle down for a long marathon of Hammer and classic horror like Doctor X, The Vampire Bat and Isle of the Dead.

OR, even better, put on some new classics like the aforementioned Splatter Movie or The Resurrection Game (for the zombie fans) or A Feast of Flesh (for the lesbian vampire fans). Sure, you could pick up Bikini Bloodbath Carwash or Bikini Bloodbath Christmas (for the fans of bloodbaths in bikinis), in fact, it’s a fine idea! In fact, you should do that as well as order Happy Cloud Pictures loot. As a matter of fact, stock up on Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated, A Sea of Dust, Vindication, The Absence of Light, Deadwood Park, The Colour From the Dark, The Chainsaw Sally Show and The Blood Shed as well!

Because Halloween only comes once a year and that’s probably Obama’s fault too!

Psychology of Democracy via the Box Office

Building on yesterday’s head-shaking grief at the pervading disgust of society…

From an observer’s standpoint, I can see where society wants to go. You don’t have to listen to pundits on either side and you don’t even have to talk to your neighbors. Take a look at the box office returns.

Entertainment has always reflected society. If you want to understand the over-all attitude of any given period, study the most popular entertainment.

We, as a nation, no longer believe that “one person” can do anything to change our situation. Which is why Salt failed to perform. And they don’t feel that one “normal” person can do much of anything, which may explain the underperformance of Knight and Day. There certainly isn’t much faith in the younger generations. We need past heroes to step forward and band together. Which may explain why people flocked to The Expendables and are currently flocking towards Red.

We want the comfort of the familiar, but don’t just regurgitate. We want Piranha 3D, not The A-Team.

For the younger generation, even romance is too tricky a minefield to navigate (sorry, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), but hanging out with your friends and fucking around at least takes your mind off the problems of the world around you. And if you’re a member of the current crop of “lost generation” folks, those once referred to as “X”, you need idiotic diversion more than ever because the world today is way out of your control. (Jackass 3-D) There are few comfort zones left anyway. By the time we schlep home, all we can do is veg on the couch and see what old friends are up to. Therefore, The Social Network reinforces that we’re not wasting our time. And the younger folks even feel justified in the attention paid to Facebook.

We want to feel smart (Inception). We want to feel loved (Toy Story 3). Folks want to know that their pain and loneliness is recognized and understandable (Twilight: Eclipse).

Change by voting? Vote for who? The loudmouth on the right or the moron on the left? The guy who wants to spend and raise taxes, or the one that wants to send poor people to the salt mines of the rich? There’s no choice there! At least with American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, you get some feeling of your voice being heard. And if everyone in charge is either malevolent or incompetent, is it any wonder our entertainment super-villains are impotent too (Despicable Me, MegaMind)?

The unpredictable tastes of the audience has Hollywood, as usual, running around in tight little circles, unsure of what to do. Just like the governments state and local. But going to the movies—or not—is the only way we can exercise Democracy and actually see it matter.

Yeah, I'm talking about GLEE - what's it to ya?

Because I’m married to a heterosexual woman, I am, on a weekly basis, subjected to Glee. This would happen were I married, legally or no, to a homosexual man, so really there’s no escaping it short of a divorce or a sex change.

As far as television goes, it’s no more or less ridiculous than most shows on the air. It has an atmosphere that feels fresh and while I don’t have a favorite character, I don’t have a least-favorite either. I’m not as enamored of Jane Lynch’s psychotic “Sue Sylvester” character as most of the world seems to be, but then again the show in general will throw any character under the bus in order to propel their plots, so if she’s inconsistent from one episode to the next (in which I mean more over-the-top one week and almost-rational the next), it can be overlooked if not forgiven. Even Buffy and Angel were guilty of out-of-place characteristics once in a while to keep the story going, even if those were so few and far between and largely David Fury’s fault that they’re hardly worth mentioning.

Since I possess well-rounded and complete DNA, I actually enjoy musicals. Not all of them; I’m not a fanatic. I cannot turn off Singin’ in the Rain if pops up on TCM, but I’ll gnaw through my own leg to escape The Sound of Music. So the frequent nondiegetic intervals of Glee bother me not in the slightest and I enjoy them more often than not. As the songs are always covers, the familiarity is comforting (unless they’re singing something that came out in the past five years—or, in some cases, minutes—then I’m completely at-sea as to what that song might be) and on average I end up liking the Glee version better than the original because the actors on the show are real singers and dancers, hired away from Broadway or elsewhere due to their musical ability. True, some of them are “auto-tuned” well-beyond droid-speak, and there is the occasional electronic distortion employed that would irritate Peter Frampton. Lea Michelle is clearly the standout on the show and they make not only good use of her voice but her endearingly-insufferable character as well. On the flip side of that, Cory Monteith, who appears to be older than most of the teachers and may well have an AARP card in his wallet, is electronically enhanced for every song to the point where he might as well be singing into a fan.

While I successfully managed to avoid their tribute to Madonna and only watched the illogical Britney Spears love-in with half an eye, I was actually looking forward to their Rocky Horror episode in a perverse way. I discovered RHPS in the very early ‘90s when I was in high school myself, back when I was the age of the characters (rather than now, when I’m the age of the actors). As the ostensible head of our Drama Club, I actually pushed to perform Rocky as our Spring production, partly because I loved the music and the phenomenon, but because I knew it would upset parents and teachers and anyone god-fearing who happened along.

 

Photo Copyright 20th Century Fox Television

When you’re 17-18 years old, Rocky Horror is subversive and taboo. You feel like you’re part of a secret club, venturing out every Saturday midnight to swear and dance and yell your head off. If you were straight, you felt like a crusader for equal rights because you knew gay friends. If you were an outcast or a misfit, as you invariably were if you were drawn to the movie, RHPS was the place you fit in. A room full of freaks who accepted you as a new member of the family. At its best, RHPS is a large group of square pegs.

Granted, somewhere along the line, everything that was cool and obscure and underground has been moved into the light, placed on a display at Hot Topic next to the Twilight merchandise and had all the awesome drained from it by corporate mosquitoes. And RHPS is no exception. The minute I walked into a Spencer’s Gifts and saw a Rocky Horror lunchbox sitting right next to a Bettie Page clutch purse, each sporting $20 price tags, I knew my young adulthood was over. To purchase my first Rocky Horror t-shirt, I had to take a bus into downtown Pittsburgh, walk several blocks to the incredible and incredibly seedy Eide’s Comics and Records, run the gauntlet of the homeless outside and the seemingly-homeless inside, and scour the racks of uniformly-black T-shirts sporting band names I hadn’t yet heard of to find the one I was looking for—one lonely shirt with its silk-screened pair of lips, most likely a bootleg courtesy of one of the employees.

If I want an official RHPS t-shirt now, I go to Amazon. Two clicks and it’s at my door in 3-5 days, depending on how much postage-rape I submit to.

The same goes for any of the myriad of different soundtracks—the coveted foreign-cast albums of the stage play that we’d bootleg for and from each other, or the extremely expensive 4-disc CD set released for its 15^th anniversary. And then there were the nth-generation dubs of the movie taken either from Japanese Laserdisk or the grossly-expensive “official” VHS, from which we practiced our slavishly-replicated moves for our various shadowcast performances. We were devotees of Rocky Horror, both the movie and the play, and loved all of the incarnations, debating if the “Roxy Cast” L.A. recording was superior to the original London cast album or if the original mono soundrack of the movie was better than the stereo track that arrived on VHS and the almost-brand-new film print at the theater. This is what “cult” meant. Those who weren’t in the cult—parents, friends, relatives, clergy—didn’t get it, wouldn’t get it and refused to get it. And that made the cult that much better.

So I couldn’t help but be disappointed in the Glee take, but not for the reasons many Rocky and Glee purists seem to be. I didn’t care about the changes they made to the “suggestive lyrics” (although, for a show that depicts two cheerleaders in an ongoing casual bisexual relationship, replacing the phrases “heavy petting” and “seat-wetting” from “Toucha-Touch Me” just seemed silly). I was even able to get past the obvious lunacy of a) a Middle America high school attempting a performance in the first place (which the show addressed) and b) the manufactured hysteria of (a) about the play’s raunchy nature. Although that the ultra-conservatives who arrived to stir up the controversy were played by RHPS’s Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf was inspired casting.

(As a digression, I am not one of the legions of folks who found the Glee GQ photo spread offensive or, as the Parents Television Council put it, “borders on pedophilia”. “Tacky” is not the same as “offensive”. Neither are likely to bring about the end of civilization, either, so dial down the hysteria, Mrs. Lovejoy.)

What disappointed me the most was that, with the sole innovation of casting African American diva “Mercedes” (Amber Riley) as Frank N. Further, giving the character a Tina Turner spin that was just fantastic, the arrangement and the choreography was all directly-inspired by the movie. As versatile as the endless stage performances have proven this show to be, and for a show that more often than not thinks outside of the box when it comes to its covers, to simply imitate the movie, down to costumes and sets (with some bizarre—*cough*Columbia*cough*--exceptions), struck me not only as lazy but pandering.

If it was done simply to satisfy the die-hard Rocky purists, surely the producers would know that’s impossible. Unless the Tim Curry from 1975 was cast as a guest star, there would be no satisfying the hard core. For many of us who’d “come of age” with the movie, who found our identities—or, at least, the path to our identities—through the cult of depravity and subversive wish-fulfillment, it’s the reinvention of the show we’ve come to look forward to. If we wanted perfect mimicry of the movie, we could just leave the house on Saturday night and go to any number of theaters across the country.

For those of us already in irreparable culture shock from seeing the film broadcast uncut on VH-1 in 2005, having a mainstream television show devote an hour to the silliness of Rocky’s drag and sexual misidentity was already tragic enough to comprehend.

Yes, the argument has and will be made that the trial-by-fire of RHPS is the dead-on replication of the movie by the shadowcasts. Only after that perfection are the performers permitted to make the characters and the film their own. Non-conformity through odd conformity.

But the cast of Glee aren’t outcasts, they merely play ones on TV. So I expected a bit more innovation from this revolution. If you’re going to thrust my underground cult into the mainstream, at the very least give it a jolt that I haven’t seen hundreds of times before. 

 

Photo courtesy Molly Alvord's Facebook Gallery

Arm-waving, teeth-gnashing, chest-beating and undirected hatred

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about humanity.

Because I want to be a well-rounded person, I like to know both sides of an argument and make my mind up only after I have all the facts. Like most people, though, I suffer from the occasional knee-jerk, emotional gut reactions that shut down intellectual reasoning. I found myself taking up arms against the insensitive notion of a “Mosque built near Ground Zero” before I learned that 1) it wasn’t a Mosque; 2) it wasn’t going to be built but placed in an already-standing structure; 3) it wasn’t at Ground Zero but a couple of blocks away; and 4) there were already genuine Mosques open for worship in that area. Still, my inner Helen Lovejoy beat my inner Sherlock Holmes to the door, shrieking “Won’t somebody think of the children?!” before I knew all the facts.

But once I received more facts, I adjusted my hysteria accordingly. To some people, this is known as “waffling”; others see it as “being rational”. Some people will argue both sides depending on how it suits their needs at the moment.

Which is called “being human”.

I understand that. On an intellectual level. We, as a society, as a species, are a nervous, hysterical wreck right now. Frustrated and impotent with outrage. The global economy is a mess. Global—with a “G”. It ain’t just this group of people or that, it’s everybody. And everybody is reacting accordingly: looking for someone to blame because there isn’t anything any of us, singularly, can do about it.

We can’t just go “get a job, hippie!”—there are fewer jobs to be had than even during the Great Depression. Naturally, part of this is because that there are exponentially more of us on the planet than there were eighty years ago. The rest of it can be explained by the international market collapses, businesses playing things close to the vest to see if the economy will recover, or any number of rational reasons. On the irrational side, we have everything from the blanket “It’s Obama’s/Bush’s/Limbaugh’s/Lady Gaga’s Fault” to “the Flying Spaghetti Monster has grown angry with us.”

None of it is helpful.

Knowing intellectually the cause/effect doesn’t change the situation. Pointing fingers and screaming won’t either.

But, of course, I understand the screaming, too. At this point, what’s left for any of us to do?

The most counter-productive thing I’ve noticed—that impossible to not notice—is the bile-spewing hatred coming from both sides. Beyond name-calling and gallows humor the abject, black-hearted misanthropy is purely disturbing.

For the past few months, those that post on Yahoo news stories seem to be the angriest (not taking into account the pure right or left-leaning folks who exclusively read Glenn Beck’s site or The Huffington Post).

This in response to a story about the potential hazards of iPhones:

“Health risk?.......what about current National policies?.....that's a health risk-period!” - GNowak

This in response to a report of a Tsunami in Indonesia:

“OH NO, not again.

Now obama will come out and open his mouth about this, and we all know what it means when obama opens his mouth....there goes another 100 billion dollars or so of our tax money!” – Bob

This from a story regarding a national poll questioning whether the “system” is at fault or our elected officials:

“Like so many of Obama actions I do not understand. As reported in various press articles only 2% of the popular vote is Gay with up to 10% closet gays if you add them all together how is this going to help him be reelected. He is tearing down our government little by little makes me wonder if how much Muslims are paying him to serve. Then it make me wonder where all his money came from to run for office too.

I never understood how a man who refuses to salute the Flag so many of our brave Veterans have died to protect could be elected to office anyway. Every fundamental policy of our government has been brought down by this administration, Judges who are overturning laws that were passed by popular vote in a democracy as if this is a dictatorship. Obama support for EVERYTHING MUSLIM, Support for gay marriages after it was banned in California by popular Vote and allowing a reportedly Gay Judge to overrule the Law. This just does not make sense.

It really brings to Question his motives for it can not be to serve the American Public. Has he been paid off or sponsored by Muslims to do everything in his power to see that America Falls. It is all too much and to overwhelming to be a normal actions of a sane man who is in Political office unless there is an hidden agenda somewhere.

I advise any Democrats to distance themselves from this man or suffer for his foolishness. I mean heck there are more unemployed Americans than there are gays, he should be trying his best to assist them than supporting this unpopular policy on GAY RIGHTS. Where does it end I don't support GAY RIGHTS for sure, but I don't really care if they gay, I just don't want my children exposed to it and required by law to see it as NORMAL and I think I have more right to this than most after serving in Vietnam. I have earned the right to have my own opinion and it sure does not come close to this PRESIDENT's Policies.” - Eamo K

Posts regarding Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

“this is a BAD thing!!!! this will destroy alot of the unity and trust in units! yes servicemen/women knew they served along side gays/lesbians, but it wasnt known or spoken. this will weaken our armed services not strenghten them and cause problems just watch. and yes i served in war and am a disabled vet so i have been there!” - Dennis C Tue Oct 12, 2010 02:21 pm PDT

“This lawsuit might mean something if the bill to repeal the law weren't already halfway through Congress. It has passed the House and is now waiting for Senate to vote. Instead, the lawsuit is simply a dog and pony show by the GOP to show the world how active they are in promoting gay rights. Excuse me? It was Vice President Cheney, the person the GOP put in the office of Vice President, who lambasted gays in the military and was accutely embarrassed when his daughter came out of the closet. Where was the GOP when it was time to revamp healthcare, where was the GOP when millions of unemployed (formerly hard-working folks) needed their benefits extended, where was the GOP when Warren Buffet himself said Bush's tax cuts for the rich would do nothing to stimulate the economy or create more jobs? They were busy being the PARTY OF NO. Now that the backward Republican Party has finally realized it can not be too anti-gay or its only supporters will be fundamentalist Christians and right-wing extremists, some of its members have filed a lawsuit. Rather than hurting President Obama and the Democratic Congress, I think this lawsuit helps them. It is a clear waste of taxpayer dollars and another example of where the GOP is so out of touch, they actually file a lawsuit when the legislation has already passed the House and is currently before the Senate. People will see the lawsuit as frivilous and another GOP dog and pony show. Anybody want some popcorn???” - Victoria Tue Jul 13, 2010 01:25 am PDT

“Solution: put them on the front line” - FollowMe Tue Oct 12, 2010 02:20 pm PDT

“Another step backwards for mankind,and our country. How about asking the TROOPS, they are the ones that have to deal with this insanity, i've been there i know their vote, to us don't ask don't tell was ridiculous, they shouldn't be there period. You can thumbs down call me racist i care LESS, i'll continue to speak up for what i think is right.I care less what you fairies do, if you want to be an abomination fine, but you don't belong in our military.Liberals are leading to the downfall of one of the greatest nations ever. How tolerant do we have to be? Better learn that answer in Chinese you liberal traitors to this country.” - S

This from The Washington Times online:
g9w6 says: “another plan that will cause American deaths in the name of political correctness! why is it that everything the socialists do ends with our people being killed? i was in the military and i can promise you that the straight rank and file soldiers will never be "convinced" that the gay lifestyle is either normal or acceptable! no soldier is going to want to be associated with two guys strolling down the boulevard hand in hand! and in uniform to boot! how humiliating for our troops and our flag! thank God i'm to old to have to deal with this insult in person!”

[Grammar and spelling, incidentally, untouched.]

The invective hurled from both sides is often frightening. I posted some of the tamer ones I ran across in the hundreds, if not thousands, of spoutings. Everywhere you go on the web, inevitably you’ll run across someone invoking Howard Beale from Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”

But the only solutions seem to be “Vote ‘em out!”(referring to any incumbent regardless of party), “Send ‘em back!” (referring to anyone who isn’t, in general, white and Christian), or, not to split hairs, “Kill them!”—either by our or “God’s” hand.

Maybe the bigger question is, have humans always been this hateful and the lovely anonymity provided by the internet finally gives them endless forums to express it? The cynic will doubtlessly say yes and the cynic will probably be right. “Polite society” is nothing but a mask, apparently. If you can’t be held accountable for your words, you can say whatever you want, no matter how horrific the sentiment. Bile-spewing keyboard jockeys make members of the Westboro Baptist Church look courageous in comparison. At least those bigots have the balls to vent their spleens out in the open.

I want to by sympathetic to the frustrated. I’m frustrated too. But as has been pointed out here and everywhere else, it’s not just the country in trouble, it’s the world. We’re all sharing the same sinking boat and, as usual, those in steerage will drown long before those in First Class, but we’re still going to drown unless something is done. “Every generation needs a new revolution.”—Thomas Jefferson. By my count, and obviously by the count of many others, we’re several dozen revolutions behind. But the trouble is we have too many enemies and too many things to change.

Which brings to mind two other quotes:

“Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before.”—Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”—Pogo.

Which is to say, I don’t know what the solution is either. But the hate-fueled calls-to-arms definitely isn’t it.

“It Ain’t Over ‘Til The Fat Zombie Sings: Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera”

Just when you think that the zombie subgenre has nothing left to offer, someone comes along and proves you dead wrong. October 15, 2010 will see the premiere of Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera at the Grey Box Theater in Lawrenceville, just outside of Pittsburgh.

The creation of artistic directors, Pittsburgh natives and alumni of Duquesne University, Bonnie Bogovich and Elizabeth Rishel, Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera promises to be an exciting blend of live stage, neoclassical opera and multimedia. The Pittsburgh association is almost a given, seeing as how the former Steel City is the unofficial Zombie Capital of the World, thanks to George A. Romero and John Russo giving birth to the whole undead flesh-eating trope in the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. We’re talking about a city that hosts a fan-run “Zombie Museum”, housed within the landmark Monroeville Mall—a structure by itself that attracts devoted pilgrims from across the world due to its starring role in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Zombies are part of Pittsburgh’s DNA, something that Bogovich and Rishel recognized when brainstorming for a Halloween-themed show. “’Zombies’ [were] the obvious subject to tackle,” as Rishel told BoringPittsburgh.com. 

Joining forces with screenwriter and editor Barry Bogovich, special effecs makeup designer Arvin Clay,  Director of Photography Edwin Huang, the group put together a show to tell a classic story of a zombie apocalypse in song. “The story of Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera follows the plights of Ronnie, Izzie, and Charles, three college friends, as they navigate their way through the infected streets of Pittsburgh, PA,” reads their official press kit. “Each character must take stock of their priorities as they grapple with the living dead and each other, on their way to a military-controlled safe zone.” In the meantime, continual news footage playing on a video screen provides the Greek Chorus to the action, drama and horror.

Bogovich and Rishel proved just how versatile the zombie mythos could be even within their own structure when they gave convention attendees a sneak preview of the show at the October Horror Realm con. Dubbed “A Zombie Cabaret”, the cast performed a stripped-down highlights version of Evenings in Quarantine in a small but nearly-packed conference room. Keeping the gore to an impressionist minimum—utilizing crimson scarves for spraying blood in a way that would make Puccini proud—and switching up the costuming to that of ‘20s and ‘30s garb, the company’s presentation was inventive and, dare we say it, even cultural. They turned the hordes of walking dead (represented by a trio of extras in removable masks) into a black-tie affair.
But make no mistake: the full production is bloody, gory and everything you’ve come to expect from a full-fledged zombie outbreak. “Liz came up with this break-away corset,” Bogovich gleefully told me at Horror Realm, “so when it comes apart, innards and intestines can spill out on stage.” Combined with the professional props created for the show by the Pittsburgh-based costuming house, Specter Studios, this ingeniousness should make for a grotesquely high-brow evening.

For ticketing information and more about Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera please visit http://www.thezombieopera.com/

Tomorrow: Think, Don't React.

Hi, I’d like to take a moment to talk to everyone, if you don’t mind.

We all know what tomorrow is. It’s a day of mourning for some. Others will use it as an opportunity to espouse whatever point of view they have. Others will treat it like any other day. I hope that everyone takes even just a moment to reflect about 9/11/2001.

9/11 is not about politics, ideology, religion, left, right, wrong, or whose god can beat up someone else’s. If we strip it to its essence 9/11, as an anniversary, should be about remembering that nine years ago, 2,000 people woke up, got dressed and went to work. And then a handful of evil creeps killed them.

I don’t care what flag you wave. I don’t care what religion you follow or what your politics are. Taken to its essence, more than two thousand people were murdered on what was shaping up to be a beautiful day.

And we’re all complicit. We are all accessories.

Not “Americans”. Not “Muslims”. All of us.

The human race committed this crime against itself and we, as members of the human race, allowed it to happen.

Not politically because of who we did or did not vote for. Not geographically. Not ideologically. We humans, we hateful, jealous, petty creatures, have been unable to treat each other with basic decency and respect for hundreds of thousands of years.

Going further, for the past nine years, have used this horrible tragedy as an excuse to enact more hatred, fear-mongering, jealousy and pettiness against everyone else. We’ve gone out of our way to demonize each other for the most minor of reasons. Skin color, who we love, what we worship—it all boils down to “I am better than you. And if you dare to think you’re better than me, I hope you die.”

“Can’t we all just get along?” has been a punch line for decades. But if we’re all complicit in the tragedy, we are all, equally to a person, responsible for putting things right. All we have to do is put the idiocy aside. All of these ideologies are ultimately pointless, meaningless to anyone but ourselves. So all we have to do is stop occasionally and ask ourselves, “How does what that person is doing hurt me? How does it affect me in any way?” Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the answer will be: it doesn’t.

I have to believe that we’re all, at base, decent, loving people. And just as in high school, what clique you’re part of does – not – matter. Put it aside.

Let’s all try to start fresh tomorrow. Leave the garbage at home. All your identifiers: Democrat, Republican, Christian, white, black, brown, gay, straight, short, tall, Aquarius, pianist—set that stuff aside.

Tomorrow, think about those people who looked up from their desks and saw the planes coming right at them. Think about the people who leapt from the windows rather than die burning. The legions of people who trudged through the dust, the debris, shell shocked and devastated. Let’s give ourselves a moment to remember how we all felt. How all of us knew that the world had changed. Forget the politics and the arguments. Think about the people.

And then, if you’re out, hold the door for someone. Let someone merge in front of you on the road. Smile at your cashier. Say “please” and “thank you” and try to remember all those manners that you learned as a toddler.

It’s so simplistic it’s almost insulting. If someone offends you in any way tomorrow, let it go. Don’t get angry; just stop and think, “This person is another human being.” Let’s honor the memories of the people who died by being worthy of life.

Or else, we’ve learned nothing in the last nine years. And Ground Zero is simply a giant hole in the ground.

The ALL ABOUT EVIL Precision Screenings - Part 1

Originally, this was meant to be the second part of the “I Love New York in June (July and August) – How ‘bout you?” article, but this past weekend changed my mindset. Last Friday, Amy and I both left work early to get on the road to Maryland in order to catch our second showing of Joshua Grannell’s All About Evil! The Peaches Christ Experience in 4-D. Having caught the premiere in NY at the beginning of the month, we were excited to catch it again with a new variety of friends and venues. The movie is that good and, plus, it has come to symbolize what we’ve started to think of as our summer of “Hell no! We’re not old!”

For those out of the know, Joshua Grannell is better known as the supremely fabulous Peaches Christ, host of the San Francisco horror show, Midnight Mass. Peaches isn’t another Elvira horror host follow-up, though, don’t make that mistake. Peaches Christ is part showgirl, part lounge singer, and all spectacular. Think a glamorous Dame Edna taking over Bette Midler’s Vegas show to show B-movies. A rabid horror fanatic, particularly of the H.G. Lewis and Ted V. Mikels oeuvre, Grannell wrote and directed All About Evil as an homage not only to those gleefully gory movies, but to the phenomenon of cult filmmaking itself. (You can read my review of All About Evil HERE for a plot synopsis.) And the “4-D Experience” is not only an offshoot of Midnight Mass, but a tribute to the lost art of showmanship, ala William Castle or the Ray Dennis Steckler spook shows. All of this is coated with ample coats of glittery fabulousity.

I had first heard of the film around the time of its completion, via an anecdote by Alan Rowe Kelly. Alan’s film, The Blood Shed, was in post-production and while we were discussing its virtues, he mentioned casually that he’d recently spoken to an LA filmmaker who had completed a completely different project under the same title. Alan had dropped Mr. Grannell a line and the two discussed whose film should undergo title surgery for the sake of audience, distributors and over-all artistic piece-of-mind. Ultimately, Josh stepped back and found the much more appropriate Betty Davis-esque play on words and the two artists remained friends to this very writing.

All About Evil proved to be a far more fitting title as the movies created by its main character, Deborah Tennis (Deb-or-ah Te-nees) have fantastic punned titles as well—The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, Gore and Peace, The Maiming of the Shrew, The Slasher in the Rye—serving the camp of the entire film. (Alan’s The Blood Shed isn’t campy so much as it is deliriously deranged and if you haven’t seen that one yet either, your priorities are obviously in need of reordering.) As Josh’s movie began to gain steam, I remained peripherally aware of it until it was thrust right beneath my nose when one of our best friends, Ultra-Violent Magazine journalist Michael Varrati, signed on as All About Evil’s “Tour de Fierce” co-ordinator (or similar such title; as in all things indie, it’s hard to tell from the multiplying hats who is doing what job). All About Evil was set to have a year-long nationwide tour followed by a similar jaunt to the U.K. Through sheer chutzpah and the contributions from a few very loyal followers, this little independent slasher comedy riding the modest recognition wave of its creator’s drag diva alter-ego was going global.

When a low-budget movie gets a legitimate DVD release, that alone is cause for confetti and parades. Something like this was just one small step down from a full-on geekgasm. I don’t want to give the impression that something like this is unprecedented, but the likes sure as hell haven’t been witnessed in my neck of the woods in recent memory!

Following very successful screenings in Los Angeles, Seattle and Austin, Texas, the first sorta-close premiere came our way via the Landmark’s Sunshine Theater in Tribeca, NY, at the end of July.

Now, long trips are not on our list of phobias, but having already driven from Waynesburg to NY twice this summer, we sought alternative modes of transportation. Flying was out for obvious reasons. Amtrak wasn’t particularly attractive since the trip would take five or so hour longer than driving. Finally, we came upon the Megabus—round trip tickets from Pittsburgh to NY for less than we would spend in gas and hotel. Deal! And to make things more challenging on ourselves, we would make the trip there and back in just 24 hours. Okay, that part wasn’t as well thought-out, but we just didn’t care to spend extra on a hotel and we weren’t about to infringe again on the couches or floors of our many hospitable friends. We could sleep on the bus, read, work (Megabus offers Wi-Fi!), whatever, and not have to worry about crazed morning drivers trying to kill us across three states.

Oddly enough, the plan worked just as well in practice as it did in theory. For a big fat change. The only drawbacks were the other people. Amy couldn’t get comfortable in the narrow seats to sleep for any great length and add to that the aforementioned hell of the human race, the trip was a bit more trying than we’d anticipated. The first group of hellions were comprised of a small number of giggly high-schoolers on their way to Penn State for a campus visit and/or orientation. Very loud they were at six in the morning. They were replaced by a pair of what can only be described as “Mexican Yentas”. Two tias who spoke Spanish in an unmistakable Jewish whine—I swear it was like listening to a Telamundo coffee klatch.

The second thing we hadn’t anticipated—or, rather, under-anticipated—was the length of time we’d have to kill once we arrived. All About Evil was a midnight premiere. The Megabus dropped us off at Penn Station a little after 2:30 in the afternoon. Most of go-to New York friends were otherwise occupied so we had a good eight hours or so to travel approximately ten blocks. Even at the peak of rush hour, it doesn’t take eight hours to travel ten city blocks on foot.

After meeting Mr. Varrati and Ryan Neill for lunch in Brooklyn (in the much nicer coffee-house-and-deli section than our previous trip to the auto-parts district), we still faced a good stint of time before us. Oh, if only there was something to do in New York City! (Lament! Woe!)

No matter what part of that magnificent city of millions we happen to find ourselves in, invariably, miracles occur. Call it synchronicity, call it luck, call it fate, lucky shit happens to us in New York. After a lengthy side-trip to Kim’s Video—our first, despite many years of NY visits!—to giggle like nerds at the sight of A Feast of Flesh in the “Sexploitation” section (and to buy a used copy of Samurai Zombie), Amy and I made our way back towards Tribecca for the screening. Lugging around an overnight bag packed with Amy’s own stash of fab, we sought a place to chill and for her to change.

So, of course, we settled on a midtown McDonalds. Not wanting to Morgan Spurlock so late in the evening, we split a single Coke like the big spenders we are, and I chilled and watched Amy transform herself into a goth diva. Not ten minutes into our repose, we were startled by a loud knock on the “restaurant’s” window. There before us were two muscular, shaved-headed gentlemen gesturing at us in excitement. Seeing this, I steeled myself for a righteous mugging by a pair of goth-phobic skinheads right there beneath the Golden Arches.

But the forthcoming ass-kicking never arrived. Instead of vicious nogoodniks, we realized our non-hirsute suitors were none other but Bart Mastronardi and David Marancik (both of the exceptional Vindication—another title to add to your list). We had been set to meet the pair with Alan Rowe Kelly at the theater, but the gods were gracious that evening. Bart and David generously allowed us to invite ourselves to dinner with them. Dinner was held at the extremely posh and lovely Three of Cups, where the owner Santo Fazio, a friend to Bart and David and a co-star of The Sadist (aka Jeremiah Kipp’s Swine) (as well as Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral), treated us like stars. Once Alan arrived, I was briefly overwhelmed by a sense of… what’s the word? Opposite of depression and rage? Happiness! That’s it. And not chemically-induced for a change. Sitting at the table with people I consider not only friends but artists that I respect and admire and, at times, am in complete awe of, I felt like I was part of the independent film community for the first time in years. 

Over the years, the “indie film” world has changed drastically. Some of the filmmakers we started with are no longer working in film, for a variety of reasons. Others are no longer friends. Still others are out-and-out enemies of (who we consider) our people. The disease of ego infected a great deal of us in the mid-2000s. For the better part of five years, many of us teetered on the delusion that we were all on the cusp of breaking through, of leaving “indie” behind to be embraced by the mainstream for our magnificent and unique visions. Little did we know that we weren’t on Hollywood’s radar at all. And lacking this knowledge, we allowed the beast to devour us from inside out. For many, many of us, it wasn’t enough for one to win—the rest had to lose. And the “community” crumbled upon itself. That reality haunted me during my tenure at Sirens of Cinema, particularly during the final issues where fewer of the “staples” of indie cinema appeared. Moving on is fine; forced death march away from the core is devastating.

So toasting to All About Evil with some of the most talented men and women I’ve had the fortune to meet, in a city home to some extraordinary talents (Scooter McCrae, Jim Mickle, Justin Wingenfeld, Lloyd Kaufman), that unfamiliar happiness was nearly impossible to process.

Then came the show. “The Peaches Christ 4-D Experience” starts the minute you receive your tickets. A quartet of velvet-uniformed ushers (including a pair of androgynous twins) hand you Dixie cups emblazoned with the Peaches Christ logo and tell you to hold on to it for a “special toast” later. Mr. Varrati, also encased in the red crushed-velvet suit, manned the merchandise table. Peaches was near the back of the lobby, surrounded by real paparazzi, the camera flashes almost strobing. 

The excited and generously-numbered crowd filled the auditorium and electricity filled the air. Before long, out came Alan in his resplendence to introduce Peaches, referring to her as “The Queen of the Barbary Coast” and “The Most Important Person in the World”. If you think those are large shoes to fill, you should see Peaches’ actual shoes! Suddenly, the lights dimmed, music poured from the speakers and there was Peaches in all her glory. Accompanied by the usherette twins, an alien girl with a green Mohawk, a Yeti-esque werewolf and a bizarre little woman in a Troll mask, Peaches sang “I’m a Gore-Gore Girl” with her monsters mashing beside her in choreographed madness.

After introducing her back-up slashers, Peaches then intro’d the one and only Deborah Tennis (played in the film by Natasha Lyonne, but on stage before us by Trixxie Carr), who performed the film’s closing song, “Star Quality”, and invited us to join her in the toast. The usherette twins hauled out a Gatorade cooler, only to be interrupted by Peaches who felt the toast would be in “bad taste”. Deborah rushed behind stage as Peaches introduced Martiny, her Midnight Mass co-host, but Miss Teeny did not emerge. Suddenly the screen lit up with security footage: there was Miss Teeny, tied to a chair, about to be slaughtered by Deborah! Deb raised a butcher knife, Peaches screamed, the lights went out!

And that served as the transition into the third part of the show, wherein Peaches “brought things down” and did a Dick Cavettesque intro with special guest Natasha Lyonne (an interview complete with an edited highlight reel of the actress’ career). It’s as if each section of the show was merely a warm-up for what was to come and it built beautifully. Extravagant dance number leading to outrageous meta-fiction followed by a brief Q&A with a cult star familiar to even the most “out of it” attendee. The audience was so hyped that each and every title card (each a tribute to an infamous B (or Z) movie of the past) of All About Evil received applause.

The simplistically-brilliant structure of the “4-D” event struck me as the movie unfolded. All movies, of any budget, are hit or miss according to taste. You can’t say that an independent movie is more of a gamble than a blockbuster any more because crap is crap and gold is gold. You can’t cover one with the other and make it less than what it is. Transformers will always be empty spectacle. Night of the Living Dead will always be effective, low-key chiller. All you can do prior to any screening is hope and pray that the movie will be enjoyable.

What the “4-D Experience” does is amp up the audience. Like any warm-up gig, the songs and dances and clever video all worked to get the audience excited. And an excited audience is always more receptive to the main event. Even if the movie fails to live up to the amping, the amping itself staves off disappointment for that much longer. But Joshua Grannell loves the movies he’s celebrating in All About Evil and loves the spectacle that Peaches Christ brings to screenings of these movies. None of this showmanship is phony. There’s none of that disinterested attitude you receive at radio station press screenings. Peaches Christ opened with a pow and gave you zazz. All those nonsensical vaudeville words took on meaning again. There’s nothing insincere or misdirected about the 4-D experience or All About Evil itself. Josh and the theater already had our money. They could have simply shut off the lights, abused us with ads for Coca-Cola and previews for forthcoming dumb and then big farewell to us with a swift kick in the ass following the end credits. But that’s not what we got. We got a movie and we got a show.

We hung out for a bit afterwards, mercilessly annoying the theater employees who just wanted to go home. Both Peaches and Mike were gracious enough to introduce us to Lyonne, who was as gracious as possible while being extremely exhausted. Finally, it was time for everyone to go their separate ways. Alan intro’d us to a pair of documentarians—Paul and Julie Hunt—who allowed us to join them at a Greek Diner for… what’s the meal between “Midnight Snack” and “Breakfast”? “Mid-Snackfast”? Whatever. I got a milkshake, Amy got something entirely too healthy made predominantly of fruit. Anyway…

Eventually, we made our way back to Penn Station as the sun rose. I do not, under any circumstances, recommend this experience for anyone over the age of “going out into the world, searching for adventure”. Penn Station is a bit of a cesspool at the best of times, but at 4:30 in the morning, it’s a stew of bacteria and human refuse swarming over, around and from displaced travelers and those descended from The Crazies in Escape from New York (no, the appropriatety is not lost on me). Desperate for a slash, as they once said in New Zealand (according to old movies I’ve seen), I used my elbows to nudge open the inexplicably sticky men’s room door. Immediately inside, I was greeted with a sight I’ll never forget. Ever. It trumped even the sparkliest of drag showgirl showmanship.

In the stall immediately facing the door, with the stall door wide open, a man sat on the commode, pants around his ankles and belt around his bicep, shooting the contents of a milky syringe into his black-marked brown arm. In my nearly-forty years of life, this was the closest I’ve ever come to having a Herbert Selby, Jr., moment. The image was but a millisecond on my retinas (as I immediately one-eightied back into the waiting area), but it was a scene that will haunt me forever. This man, dear friends, by simultaneously ingesting and excreting, was the Ultimate Multitasker. And I bow to the wisdom behind his yellow-glazed eyes.

Getting back on the Megabus was less efficient than boarding from PA largely due to the fact that the NY side of Megabus seems to employ a higher degree of crackheads who simply shout: “Everyone to the left!” when what they mean is “Please form an orderly line for the bus to Pittsburgh.” All the “Everyone to the left!” succeeded in doing was encouraging synchronized shuffling, as eighty or so exhausted and miserable people bound for the Land of Sports and Zombies shifted their weight in a unified clump from one ten-foot of sidewalk space to the other.

With another seven-or-so hour trip ahead of us, we settled down in more-or-less comfort and willed ourselves to drift off to sleep. We’d survived our 24-hour military-grade entertainment excursion with Myrmidon proficiency. Take that, rapidly-aging body!

Next up: ALL ABOUT EVIL, PART II: SILVER SPRINGS, MD! (Or, “I love New York in June (July and August) Even Though I’m Not in New York and It’s Almost September… part III