DUST UP (2012)

 

In 2008, Roger Ebert wrote a piece for his SunTimes blog titled, “This is the dawning of the Age of Credulity”, in which he relates a conversation he had with Taxi Driver author Paul Schrader.  “He told me that after Pulp Fiction, we were leaving an existential age and entering an age of irony. ‘The existential dilemma,’ he said, ‘is, 'should I live?' And the ironic answer is, 'does it matter?' Everything in the ironic world has quotation marks around it. You don't actually kill somebody; you 'kill' them. It doesn't really matter if you put the baby in front of the runaway car because it's only a 'baby' and it's only a 'car'.’ In other words, the scene isn't about the baby. The scene is about scenes about babies.”

Which I feel was more than adequately boiled down by Rene Magritte in his painting, The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images, 1928–29), a painting of a pipe which he captions, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe": “This is not a pipe.” And it isn’t. It’s a painting of a pipe. “The famous pipe,” Magritte lamented. “How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe," I'd have been lying!” (Torczyner, Harry. Magritte: Ideas and Images. p. 71.)

Taking this all further, Ebert noted about the cinematic culture around him, “We may be leaving an age of irony and entering an age of credulity. In a time of shortened attention spans and instant gratification, trained by web surfing and movies with an average shot length of seconds, we absorb rather than contemplate. We want to gobble all the food on the plate, instead of considering each bite. We accept rather than select.”

Modern movies, from this point of view, are neither self-contained nor created in a vaccuum. Every movie is made of particles from other movies. “Homage” has moved beyond the in-joke, background detail or set-piece and into literal and thematic presentation. So much of this is personified by Quentin Tarantino and his contemporaries. They’re not making movies, they’re making their versions of movies that had come before. “I told Robert [Rodriguez], ‘You made your Fistful of Dollars with El Mariachi, now’s the time to make your epic, your Once Upon a Time in the West”, sez the world’s most successful fanboy on the audio commentary for Once Upon a Time in Mexico. It’s like the self-referential humor of The Family Guy: “That’s funny because I get it.” The Inglorious Basterds was neither a remake of The Inglorious Bastards nor simply a World War II adventure, but it was Tarantino’s WWII movie. Coming up is Tarantino’s spaghetti western, Django Unchained. 

For better or worse, we’re slowly coming out of the age of irony and/or credulity because the most recent crop of movie-goers, including but not limited to the Twi-hards, are simply unaware of what came before, so every movie cliché is new to them. I remember a Twilight fan swooning over Edward because, “When he says cheesy stuff, it’s sincere because he doesn’t know it’s cheesy!” And thus we get Total Recall for this generation, Red Dawn for this generation. And this generation doesn’t know that they’re cheesy retreads, thus, they’re sincere. 

All of this is a backhanded way of introducing Ward Roberts new film, Dust Up, because it lands somewhere between ironic and post-ironic. Produced through his Drexel Box production house, Dust Up at first glance is a loving send-up of ‘70s exploitation, the “grindhouse” genre that is all the rage. Ironic because it takes the market-driven selling points of gratuitous sex, violence and mayhem and embraces them. Post-Ironic because it takes the most ludicrous of these elements to their logical conclusion. And post-credulous because it does it with sincerity, honesty and a passion for all of the sources that came before it. And in the end, Dust Up is not “Ward Roberts’ exploitation movie”; Dust Up is Ward Roberts’ Dust Up. It takes all the other-movie particles and molds them into something from his point of view and his sensibilities, and those of his collaborators, and makes something that’s both familiar and outrageous at the same time, but never seems derivative. It’s a balancing act to be sure, and on either side of the tightrope lies disaster. Fortunately, Roberts and company manage the middle walk very well. 

Dust Up is about the accidental—if not destined—collision of five people. New mom Ella and her junkie husband Herman, and two opposing forces: the stoic and enigmatic peaceful warrior Jack (Aaron Gaffney) and his Indian sidekick Mo (Devin Barry) on one end; the twisted and gleefully evil narcissistic personality Buzz on the other. Jack wears an eyepatch, a constant reminder of a tortured past as a violent soldier; Mo wears a Jay Silverheels outfit and yellow-striped tube socks, to both honor and mock his Native American forebears who have gotten rich and fat off of casino living. Buzz (Jeremiah Birkett) ingests chemicals, tortures people and declares everything to be his: “This is MY house. The House of Buzz. In the Land of Buzz. In the Time of Buzz.” 

Ella (Amber Benson) is a young mother living in a house with severe plumbing problems. Her husband Herman (fellow filmmaker Travis Betz), a roadie for Hoobastank (of all things), went a little loopy after the birth of their daughter, Lucy, and is now holed up at Buzz’s in a drug-induced, debt-heavy sabattacal. In need of clean water, Ella picks Jack’s name out of the phone book—the way of this peaceful warrior is that of the handyman. This is before Ella learns of her deadbeat spouse’s debt to psychopath, Buzz. Actually, Buzz is much more than a psychopath, more than a sociopath. He’s a charismatic, amoral, self-affirming bar owner-cum-cult leader who promises those he doesn’t like—or happens to notice—with death via dismantling at the hands of his chief thug, Mr. Lizard. What’s more amoral than a sociopath? An anthropath, perhaps? Whatever, you don’t want to owe money to Buzz. 

You know what annoys Buzz more than being owed money? Owing money to someone else. In this case, the corrupt, racist Sherriff Haggler (The Hills Have Eyes remake’s Ezra Buzzington), who wants his payoff and demands it in a most demeaning fashion. The laws of physics dictate that shit rolls downhill, to Buzz calls in poor Herman’s marker, gives him 24 hours to get the money and then has Mr. Lizard eject him from the bar in a most unfriendly fashion. 

Over the course of a few scenes, Jack becomes involved in Herman’s plight because it has become Ella’s plight. Jack is cut from the same cloth as most wayward heroes on the path of redemption—particularly Shane, according to an interview with Roberts at the Daily Grindhouse—so he isn’t likely to leave a damsel in distress. Before you jump to conclusions, he’s doing this out of pure spirit. Yes, Herman is a junkie, a bad husband, irresponsible, lazy, most likely unwashed and very much an ungrateful jerk, but these facts aren’t lost on anybody. The deeper he drags Jack (and Mo) into his pit of karmic despair, the more everyone—even Buzz!—questions why they’re bothering to help him out at all. The lesson to be taken away is if you’re going to be a selfish schlep of a person, you’d better have a pretty and capable wife and an adorable baby at home. Otherwise even Mother Theresa would be inclined to throw you to the wolves. 

As can be expected, things spiral out of control, epically and apocalyptically. Jack attempts to make good on Herman’s debt by lending him half of the money he owes Buzz in a show of good faith, but Buzz isn’t one to focus on problem-solving. In a matter of minutes, the casual morning meeting results in Buzz accidentally blowing up his bar—it’s a Rube Goldberg-esque chain of cause and effect, but the end result is that Buzz accidentally shoots one of his meth chemists mid-cook and, as we all know, meth is a most volatile and tempermental chemical potion. Emotionally, it’s the fourteen-year-old-girl of drugs.

The rest of the film could be titled “Buzz’s Bad Day”, as he punishes everyone in his path for his own misfortune. He and reason aren’t even in the same time zone, and if you’re wondering if depravity has a baseline, as far as Buzz goes, the answer is ‘no’. He does know how to whip up a freak frenzy. Unfortunately, he doesn’t choose his followers wisely. Drug-addled desert-scum aren’t known for their stamina, no matter how many barbecued human bodies they’re fed. This is best demonstrated when Buzz declares, “It’s orgy time!” and receives the same dismayed reaction as if he’d announced a pop quiz. 

Dust Up was obviously crafted to be a fun time for all, and it’s one of the rare movies, indie or otherwise, that is as much fun to watch as apparently it was to make. Behind it all are smart filmmakers who know which conventions to turn on their heads and which ones to embrace. As wacky as Dust Up is it never once tries to act like it’s better than either the genre or its audience. Unlike recent “grindhouse” movies like Hobo with a Shotgun, Dust Up wasn’t designed as a party tray of excess and nihilism. It asks you to care about its characters and then gives you characters to care about. Every one of the actors is pitch-perfect in their performances so it’s hard to single any one out. Gaffney’s a terrific hero archetype, violently opposed to violence lik Billy Jack, but with the smooth vocal tones of Joel McCrea. Barry brings just enough dry wit to Mo to comment on the insanity of things—even his own actions—without becoming hipster about it all. As Herman, Travis Betz—whose amazing allegorical demon cabaret, Lo (starring Birkett as the title character), introduced me to the majority of the versatile cast—gives the jerk of a catalyst an affability that earns a little bit of redemption at the end. Birkett doesn’t so much steal every scene he’s in as he attempts to corner the market on it. Buzz could all too easily be a cartoon villain, the word “Evil” given bushy eyebrows and pop eyeballs, but Birkett hints at a humanity buried deep beneath the viciousness and drug-induced paranoia. Both he and Jack project a loneliness and sense of loss, making them each other’s dark mirror. Perhaps the hardest job was placed on Benson’s shoulders. The filmmaker/author has the dubious honor of portraying the lone sane person in this sea of multi-colored insanity. Like Bob Newhart in all incarnations, she’s the only rational one in the room at any given time, and she does it with a sense of humor that anchors all the madness together. 

Roberts, Betz and Benson not only love film but understand it as well, as they’ve proven through this movie and previous offerings like Betz’s Joshua and Benson’s Drones (which she co-wrote and directed with Adam Busch). They’re not into the popular mash-ups of movie iconography and theme so much as they are into creating new forms from previously-used clay. As far as Dust Up goes, Roberts has taken the history of movies he loves and built upon it, rather than attempt to reflect it in some mirror he fractured himself. The result is both familiar to those who know the territory and unique at the same time. A ‘70s sex ‘n death-fest with an altruistic attitude taken from Howard Hawks westerns. A salute to what came before even as it moves forward. 

As the saying goes, “This is Dust Up. There are others like it, but this one is…” Roberts’, Drexel Box’s, and now ours. 

Movie Outlaw: PROJECT: VALKYRIE (2004)

(Once again, in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I know the creators of this movie. We’ve been good friends, we’ve worked together, attended each others’ parties, family get-togethers and shared many a meal together. Director Jeff Waltrowski and I even attended the same film school together and he’s co-starred in and shot a number of my own movies. These guys even tortured me mercilessly with Trapped in the Closet...When Project: Valkyrie was first released, I contributed a number of pull quotes to the box, from reviews I’d written. So you may think this review is biased and you’re probably right. If you think this impugns my integrity, please read something else. If not…)

People raised on Hollywood blockbusters don’t often “get” the independent movie. They equate “low budget” with “cheap” or “amateurish”. “Homage” is often misinterpreted as “rip off”. The insults masquerading as criticism often include the words “stupid”, “lame” or “gay”. Which is not to say that there haven’t been independent, no-budget movies made that don’t fit the above. But Project: Valkyrie isn’t one of them.

A classic example of a “kitchen sink” movie, where the filmmakers throw everything they love against the wall to see what sticks, Project: Valkyrie begins in the U.S. around the start of World War II, where the world was black and white. The Feds come to Professor Jack Cranston, who has just completed a flight in a plane powered by a new energy source in sphere form he’d just developed. The government needs him to develop a new weapon to fight the Nazis’ new diabolical creations—metallic supermen. At first resistant, Jack accepts the job for the sake of decency and the American way. “Using science”, he creates Valkyrie, the most noble robot ever to walk the Earth, and thus the Allies win the war.

Flash forward to present day and Jack’s grandson, Jim Cranston, is a down-on-his-luck loser who owes a great deal of money to the mob. They smash his hand with a baseball bat and this encourages him to go through a garageful of his grandfather’s junk to see if there’s anything worth selling and get him out of his predicament. After selling some Nazi paraphernalia to a skinhead named Frank, Jim hits pay dirt, finding all the parts to Valkyrie including the blueprints. Upon bringing Valkyrie back to “life” Jim responds appropriately—zooming around his apartment screaming “I’m gonna be rich!” and singing “Jimmy built a ro-bot!”

Meanwhile, a mysterious fluid inside one of the Swastika-stamped artifacts turns Frank into a metallic-boned Red Skull and he sets about transforming his fellow Aryan assholes into similar monsters. When Frank’s sister Anne, a torch singer at a local club, fears the worst, she seeks out Jim—the last person to see Frank in Frank form—and demands his help. Valkyrie, of course, recognizes the handywork left behind by the neo-neo-Nazis and leaps into its own course of action.

Project: Valkyrie is dripping with both “labor” and “love”. A lot of heart went into creating the film and it shows in every frame. When it works, it excels and when it doesn’t, well the pain doesn’t last too long. As expected with this type of “kitchen sink” movie, a lot of pop culture homages can be found, not only nods to the expected Generation X favorites like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Evil Dead but to Silver Age superhero comic books (Captain America the most obvious), ‘40s serials (references to Commander Cody and Radar Men from the Moon will jump out to hardcore fans), buddy cop movies, and Terminator 2 (during a scene where Jim teaches Valkyrie a playground game that starts off funny, seems to go on too long and then gets funny again once you realize it supposed to go on this long, in a knowing dig at the pacing of lesser low budget movies). Jim’s wanna-be hardboiled one-liners don’t always work but the off-the-wall jokes almost always do. As when Anne dopes out the robot’s name as “Valkyrie” due to the “V” on its chest (and displaying a knowledge of the real-life “Project Valkyrie” that failed to assassinate Hitler, as seen in the Tom Cruise movie and every day on the History Channel), Jim says “That’s why you weren’t responding to ‘Timmy’.” As delivered in the film, it’s my personal favorite laugh-out-loud moment. (But, you know, that could just be me.)

It’s not afraid to be bizarre as well—the team stuck to the axiom of making the movie they wanted to see, so there are several very strange moments. (The first one, during the opening credits, is a love-it-or-hate-it sequence: an extended dolly-shot following one man walking through the streets of Pittsburgh, into an elevator and onto a roof, where he says “Sorry I’m late, Boss,” and then fades into the background, never seen again after this scene.) There are also a few rap songs used on the track that don’t quite fit the montages they’re used for—as well as a music video in the center that’s obviously there to pad out the running time. A key transformation scene involving the Nazis, however, is scored with a perfectly ironic little love song (though as originally screened at festivals, this scene was set to Carly Simon’s “You’re a Child Again” and it worked slightly better. Carly, however, is a bitch with her music rights apparently…).

The best part of the smart script co-written by Jeff Waltrowski (who directed and appears as a perfect Professor Jack) and Steve Foland (who stars as Jim) is that it really is a study in contrasts between the “classic” two-fisted “right is right” hero of Hollywood’s golden age, and the more cynical anti-hero of today. Jim has very little in common with his grandfather on the surface; in fact, he’s only playing hero at first to make sure his robot survives in one piece. By the end, though, he’s found his inner selflessness and fights even though he knows he’s still going to be killed by the mob if he survives! It’s an interesting thematic exploration, one that you don’t usually find in even the big budget comic book movies these days.

As can always be said of any indie, the acting and production values all vary in quality. It’s difficult to tell whether Anne Richardson—who does have a lovely singing voice s evidenced by her rendition of “A Soldier’s Things”—is giving a deliberately wooden performance to mimic the ‘40s serials or just isn’t up to the task. Foland is aces as Jim, but the movie belongs to Jacob Ross / Chris Mauer as Valkyrie. Though played by two different actors, Valkyrie is consistently the heart of the film, endearing and exceedingly heroic. Particular kudos go to Dave Droxler as the villainous Frank, who actually manages to be quite scary beneath the Red Skull mask (courtesy of Steve Tolin). Other familiar problems will strike you—the occasional bad edit, washed out shot, etc., all tragic side-effects of the run-and-gun-out-of-necessity school of low-budget filmmaking.

Of course, it should be pointed out that like so many indie movies, the cast and the crew are the same organism—Ross plays a Nazi and did all the production design and original artwork; producer Nic Pesante plays numerous roles, etc. Just think of what Avatar would have been had Cameron given his grips the freedom to play Na’vi…

Still if you have a genuine love for movies—and if you’ve stuck with this column this long, you obviously do—you’ll dig Project: Valkyrie for all the right reasons. It’s campy, it’s funny and it’s exciting. It’s not even afraid to show a little emotion when it counts. So picking up the Tempe DVD is highly recommended. And if you do dig it, keep an eye out for the prequel in post-production now: It Came from Yesterday.

Movie Outlaw: THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT (2006)

[In the interest of full disclosure, because of the nature of the independent film business, writer/director Patrick Desmond and musician/star Rich Conant are friends of ours. They have both worked on past films of ours, we've gotten drunk with them, etc. Before you cry nepotism, however, I will state that this review was written before said friendship/support group was formed. That being said, however, this is my goddamn blog and I'll plug whoever the hell I want to.]

A world-weary killer-for-hire going by the name “Puritan” (Richard Conant) swears, as so many do, that his next job will be his last. However, this famous last words “last job” turns out to be more than he expected—more than anyone could have expected. A pair of corporations—Division 8 and “The Plague”—are at war over a devious piece of sophisticated software dubbed “Devour”. It seems that “Devour” will give the user the ability to rewrite any code… including DNA. Suddenly, our jaded anti-hero finds himself in the middle of a situation he can’t possibly comprehend and if he isn’t careful, he’ll be contributing to the eradication of the human race.

A star-studded The Absence of Light is, without a doubt, one of the most ambitious independent movies I’ve seen in a long time. The convoluted and complicated plot requires multiple viewings and asks that the audience pay close attention in order to follow what is going on and what is (and is not) being said. Despite the numerous action set-pieces, this isn’t a “whiz-bang” little action sf/horror thing whipped up in the filmmakers’ back yards. A lot of thought and purpose went into the crafting of this movie.

While the majority of the celebrities were filmed at various fan conventions over the course of a year, every star serves a purpose in Patrick Desmond’s complicated narrative and seems to be giving each respective role his or her all. The presence of so many well-known actors may actually be distracting on the first watch—it’s tempting to sit and go ‘hey, there’s Tony Todd! Take a drink!’ without absorbing the reason he’s there. Hence the need for at least a second viewing, which might be asking too much of the average man-cave slug, sad to say.)

That the pros (including Toms Savini and Sullivan, David Hess, Caroline Munro, Michael Berryman, Robyn Griggs and multiple others) are top-notch actually goes without saying. The nicest surprise is that Conant more than holds his own and manages to avoid playing Puritan as a cliché. His seasoned hit man is actually quite amiable as well as three-dimensional—particularly in scenes where his actions make him a tough person to like. Savini, too, seems to be having a terrific time, giving a fun, relaxed performance in a role quite different from what his fans might be expecting. Effects man-turned-actor Tom Sullivan is, I’m not ashamed to say, delightful as a quirky scientist and Berryman plays a straightforward businessman (more or less) and not a demented freak, which should be awesome news to Berryman fans.

While the casual viewer might be quick to point out the hotel rooms serving as many of the sets, this is actually in service of the corporation ideal as well, the sterility of the compositions making perfect sense. It’s obvious that Desmond and company worked their collective asses off crafting this movie and avoiding the obvious “audience-pleasing” pitfalls of graphic gore and nudity. They were out to create something new, to please their own artistic sensibilities. Whether or not the end result is successful is, ultimately, up to the viewer and the opinions are likely to differ radically from one person to the other.

All that said, after three viewings, I’m still hard-pressed to say exactly what the hell it’s all about. Some of this confusion could be chalked up to the fact that I’ve seen multiple incarnations of the movie (Desmond re-edited the film at least three times that I’m aware of). It’s story can’t be summed up in a single sentence but it takes chances that Hollywood would never dream of (no clear heroes or villains, a Hitchcockian morass of a plot) and that might very well be the reason it took as long as it did to find a legitimate distributor, despite its who’s-who cast roster. It won’t be to every viewer’s taste. But if you’re looking to catch something thought-provoking—even head-scratching at times—that presents some interesting ideas then this movie is for you. And is, perhaps, in a league all its own.