Trash

Paul Morissey, more or less Andy Worhol's liscensed filmmaker, made interesting exploitation/arthouse films in the late 60's and 70's. The complete lack of classical aesthetic give his work an amateur feel, but he uses it to his benefit - exploring the bottom layers of society with fearlessly and boldly minimalistic flair.

His 1970 film "Trash" isn't a professional film by any measure. There is little (possibly zero) attempt at sound mixing, the acting is mostly bland (hacking the nuance of the script) and the editing and pace have no rhythm. However, the subject matter itself has an energy of its own and the film is able to shock and suprise despite being restrained by the production values and acting.

"Trash" is structured around a hustler named Joe (who was in Morrissey's previous film "Flesh") and his various encounters with different women. The first element anyone will notice is the graphic nudity used in the opening sequence. Used throughout the movie, the nudity is both provocative and absurdly comical, adding to and helping to create its tone of equal parts satire and drama. With Joe's aimless conversations, Morrissey is able to aim a critical eye towards Joe and the people he spends his time with. One particularly memorable moment of the film is when Joe stays with a strange couple who are clean of drugs, but not of other social/sexual perversions. We see that drugs are far from the only factor which inhibit and corrode dysfunctional modern lifestyles. Morrissey, supposedly anti-drug himself, does poke fun at and judge substance abuse, but in this film he uses them to show an intoxicated society, fixated on self-serving, shameless pleasure.

"Ticker"

Albert Pyun's films fill me with a weird sort of glee. The typical atrocity of the acting, generic scores, disconnected, usually hard-to-follow narratives, and stock footage are painted over with stylish, sometimes strikingly unique cinematography. The un-storyboarded compositions are sometimes dead on and other times aesthetically inept. He creates confusing, disoriented worlds - albeit in a very distinctive, memorable way. There is so much to look at in Pyun's more ambitious films, if one can bare the lack of substantial narrative quality.

"Nemesis" is my favorite of his films that I've seen. It has a bold visual style that transcends its "Blade Runner" meets "Terminator" script. The dialogue may as well be in a different language - the real treat are the gorgeous action scenes. "Nemesis" is Pyun at his best, staying on track with almost every unit of production. Even the acting is a step above crap, with stone-faced Oliver Gruner and some recognizable faces like Tom Jane and Pyun regular Yuji Fujimoto.

Pyun's 2001 film "Ticker" is him on autopilot, which is a dangerous place for him to be. Some directors make perfectly entertaining films with their hearts clearly not in them (i.e. Spielberg's "Lost World: Jurassic Park"), but most others simply can't afford to fluff their way through a picture. "Ticker" is a mess, a pure paycheck project featuring either talented actors turning in half-assed performances or bad actors doing absolutely nothing for the movie. Dennis Hopper has never proved himself to be a worse actor, this time attempting an Irish accent in some scenes and completely forgetting about it in others. Peter Greene, who was terrific in the classic indie "Clean Shaven," is given little to work with. The rest of the interesting cast include Nas, Tom Sizemore, Jamie Pressley and a weird cameo from Ice-T, who is underused having delivered an impressive performance in Pyun's bizarre "Mean Guns."

Rumor has it that Steven Seagal had considerable control in the final product. His role as a bomb squad leader/zen philosopher is at least an attempt at making his character slightly different from any of those he has tried to play before. No matter what hand he had in this film, or how interesting the writers tried to make his character, he struggles with his performance. This movie has absolutely no effort, and is predictable despite the surprising potential.

For such a large cast and a sprawling story, Pyun does manage to keep things together in a linear fashion. The problem is that there are no memorable scenes or characters or anything. The special effects suck (look for the worst rear projection in movie history at the end, where cheap background video is used for hilarious contrast) and everything else is painfully mediocre.

Most people, no matter what profession, have dry spells of uninspiration and boredom. Every member of this film's cast and crew seem to be simultaneously experiencing such things in "Ticker."

a reflection on independent film

I am a big fan of premium cable movie channels - Cinemax, HBO, Starz, Showtime, Encore, they all have their charms. My favorite is Cinemax. I grew up with it and probably developed my interest in movies because of it. It helped me discover the, at the time, emerging world of independent film. I. film in the early to mid-90's was at its heyday of underground art, before the concept of independent film was commercialized by IFC, Sundance Channel, and eventually Hollywood conglomerations, who somehow found a way to buy out what started out as a counter movement to them. Almost every big studio has an indie production house. Look at last year's Best Pic Oscar nominations. The new American classics seen with PT Anderson's wonderful "There Will Be Blood" and the Cohen Brothers' masterwork "No Country For Old Men" were a product of indie subsidiaries. I can't criticize the fact that such unbelievably great films didn't go overlooked, as would usually happen to films of their nature. But I do think that the "Independent Spirit" seen with 80's and 90's mavericks like Jim Jarmusch has been forgotten about. Brilliant directors like Tom Dicillo are now having difficulty finding an audience for their films possibly because their charm as alternative filmmakers has become lost among mainstream-seeking tastes. The big indie films are all about auteurs and actors. Emerging voices, and truly independent voices of the past, are at a period in film history where content is either commercial or extremely diversified.

What does that say for the current film school generation of the 2000's? Its truly hard to tell. We've grown up watching auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Wes Andersen, PT Anderson and Harmony Korine find large-scale success at very young ages. We all want what they earned, and the competition has never been so fierce. There has never been a period with more content providers and we have created a large mass with a very uncertain future. The technology is at our fingertips and we have never had greater access to influential films, which the advent of DVD and preservation societies like Janus Films are making widely available. As the future of exhibition is so clouded, there is no way to tell what kind of an industry us film students will be working in. All I know, is that it seems to be heading in a quickly rising new wave, putting independent film at ground zero once again.