Review: Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground

Text © Robert Barry Francos / Indie Horror Films, 2020

Images from the Internet

  

Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground

Directed by Chuck Smith

Juno Films / MVD Entertainment

78 minutes, 2018 / 2019

www.facebook.com/barbararubinfilm/

www.junofilms.com

www.mvdb2b.com

It is interesting that they used the expression “the Exploding NY Underground” for part of the title of this documentary. I know it falls under the banner of “transgressive.” In cinema, transgression would be the equivalent of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” compared to Frost’s “On a Snowy Evening.” It was stark, sometimes opaque, and didn’t follow narrative rules of the mainstream. Usually names like Nick Zedd and Richard Kern tend to pop up, but it was the women who were the most experimental and interesting, such as Beth B, and especially one of the pioneers, Barbara Rubin.

The title is also quite a nice play on words, considering Rubin’s associations with the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, who often showcased happenings he called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. It has been told that it was, in fact, Rubin who introduced the band to the pop artist. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Rubin was a troubled child of the ‘50s who was an early experimenter in drug culture, winding up in the psych ward for a while. When she got out in her late teens, it was pretty obvious that she was not going to be (or possibly capable of) living a “normal” life for that time. Through some connections, she found herself as an apprentice to underground filmmaker Jonas Mekas. It was through him she saw what is now considered a transgressive grandfather of cinema, Jack Smith’s 1963 Flaming Creatures (Mekas was the cinematographer), which could almost be seen as a sexualized interpretation of Stan Brakhage’s works (e.g., Cat’s Cradle in 1959 or possibly Dog Star Man, started in 1962). With that impact, she began her own film, Christmas on Earth (1963), now considered a classic in the non-narrative genre but seen as pornographic at its time (the film focuses on explicit pan-sexual acts projected over closeups of naked vaginas).

This certainly was a door opening to the avant-garde Beat culture for her, where she befriended the likes of poet Allen Ginsberg. In return, she helped introduce him to others. While still considered a filmmaker, she possessed a new role as a matchmaker, or go-between on the scene, introducing Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground to Andy Warhol, whose Factory scene she became not only a part of, but worked for by filming some of his infamous 5-minute “audition” reels. She also appeared in a few of Warhol’s (i.e., Paul Morrissey) films like Chelsea Girls (1966).

She was a mover and a shaker and who knows how the scene would have been less interesting or infamous without her involvement. The problem with this role though, is that some people who are at the beginning of a “scene” find themselves left behind as the movement gains momentum, turning into synergy. This was the case for Barbara, who obviously (though the film doesn’t really deeply focus on this) had some issues to work on, including the mind altering chemicals.

This part of Rubin’s life is pretty well known, and it’s fascinating to see it in more detail and hear her friends of the time talk about what it was like to not only know her and the scene, but her place in it. What I found particularly fascinating is what happened after the honeymoon phase of the Factory, when she discovered her “Jewish” identity through the Kabbalah, the mysterious mysticism end of Judaism that so fascinated/enthralls the likes of Elie Wiesel and – of all people – singer Madonna Louise Ciccone.

After a stint at an Upstate New York commune (I’m assuming in the Catskills) she helped found with a bunch of poets including Ginsberg, after a heartbreak, she had a strong conversion to Orthodox/Hassidic Judaism. As others do when trying to change a direction of a life that feels without purpose and filled with drugs, this is hardly a surprise in the same way people in trouble and filled with angst often come to rely on the Jesus myth.

What I find interesting is that through her entire adult life, Rubin took gender politics roads that previously were expressly open only to men, such as that particular style of filmmaking and the Kabbalah, and essentially blew the hinges off of those doors, and yet here she was subjecting herself to a life of religious servitude to religious men (as is true of all Judeo-Christian-Muslim orthodoxy).

There are only two extras on the DVD, one being the film’s trailer, and the other is a 6-minute documentary centered on Jonas Mekas called “Keep Singing: A Tribute.” Interviewed for this documentary, he passed away at age 97 in 2019.

Of course, decent music is disbursed throughout, including some cuts by Dylan and the Velvet Underground (“Heroin” is played in part twice) of course, and also notably by Melanie Safka and Lee Ranaldo, among others.

Two quick comments about what I wish would have been incorporated. First is more information about her second film, Emunah (1972; the title is translated from Hebrew as “Faith”). There are some clips from it, but unless I missed it, it is not really discussed. Also, I was kind of hoping they would have included the complete Christmas on Earth in the extras section, rather than just clips throughout (which I also appreciate).

The documentary is full of images, especially films, taken by Rubin, or have her in them. There are also tons of stills showing a life full of action and meaning, especially before it essentially passed her by on its own thing. Also, there are recordings and letters by her interspersed throughout, giving a better picture of who Rubin was, both to herself and to others, until her passing in 1980.

Review: Alan Vega • Martin Rev • Suicide: Five Films by Marc Hurtado

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2019
Images from the Internet

Alan Vega • Martin Rev • Suicide: Five Films by Marc Hurtado

Written and directed (etc.) by Marc Hurtado
La Huit / MVD Visual
113 minutes, various years / 2018
www.mvdvisual.com

When the term Transgressive (capital “T”) is used for art, most are going to think of it in relation to cinema, with films created by the likes of Richard Kern, Scott and Beth B., and Lydia Lunch. When it comes to other forms, such as music, at best it tends to be considered transgressive (small “t”). This is not fair, especially for a period of the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s, when there were combative bands like Red Transistor (led by Von LMO, who would chase patrons out of bars with a chainsaw) and especially Suicide. It makes sense to combine art forms of film and music, perhaps to make something new: TRANSGRESSIVE (all caps).




Suicide in concert

I had the… pleasure to see Suicide play once at CBGBs in the early 1980s. Knowing their reputation for confrontation with the audience, I sat near the bar, but that didn’t help. As singer/provocateur Alan Vega (d. 2016) roamed the club while keyboardist Martin Rev stuck to the stage sending out punkabilly pulse waves. I’d been a fan of the band since their first eponymous album in 1977 on Red Star Records. “Cheree” caught my attention first, but one listen to the 10-miniute plus “Frankie Teardrop” was what reeled me in.

Suicide should have been everything I hated back in 1977: it was pure electronica, and to this day I mostly find that to be, well, musical suicide. But there was an artistic intensity that Vega and Rev brought to the minimalism that was different than, say, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks’ factory-like clunky and metallic rhythms. They were not just musical terrorists, they also were seducing the audience at the same time, like a snake charmer coaxing a cobra, except if the reptile was the safer choice.

Morocco-born director Marc Hurtado filmed a bunch of mostly shorts with Suicide before Vega’s death, and these are collected onto this dual DVD set. Both discs contain the same films, but one is in the original French, and the other in English. I’ll let you guess which one I chose.

First up is the 16 minute-long The Infinite Mercy Film (2009). Here is a mixture of an artist’s muse and its outcome. The locus is on Vega’s use of light and lighting as a paradigm in his paintings, as the camera focuses in and out of various mixed-media, while Rev’s rhythms wind their way around the image in a reflexive way to match Vegas’s use of cords, twine and light bulbs. Interspersed is Vega himself, as he describes the origin of his use of light and what feeds his influences. The level of avant-garde artistry used to mix the music, the artist, the filmmaker and the synergy they create together should come as no surprise.




Alan Vega posing oddly

At 6 minutes, we are given Saturn Drive Duplex (2011), which is essentially a music video for a collaboration of Vega’s speak-sing voice and Hurtado’s music. Where the first film was focused on light, this one is on motion. We follow the clips as they zoom along traffic in Manhattan (often on the side of the East River), close-ups of boxers sparring, and Vega posing oddly in his studio. Hurtado also uses shadows and, yes, light, to highlight his focus both in high contrast and subtle ways.

Saturn Drive Duplex Redux (2014) is 4 minutes and artfully combines and condenses the three previous films, using light, travel, and art into a different Vega/Hurtado music video for a remix. We also get to see b-roll images of Vega on stage added to the recipe. Perhaps it’s the shorter length, but this feels like the most rewatchable of all I’ve seen so far, and this material is the kind you really need multiple viewings to let the whole Zen of it wash over the experience.

One could refer to Infinite Dreamers (2016) as the main feature, due to its 82 minutes’ length. Essentially, this is Martin Rev’s film: a stream of consciousness from the mostly silent member of the duo with a mixture of clips of Suicide playing in various venues, such as Frioul Islands, France, and of course lots of B-rolls. This makes total sense, as they are considered cult heroes in that part of the world, and Vega even had a solo hit in the area with “Jukebox Babe” in the day. It’s quite obvious that the sound is camera-oriented, rather than through the mixing board, so it is kind of rough, with lots of echo and reverb, even beyond the band’s normal tone. It’s also way less confrontational, with Vega looking very frail as it was close to his end; he stays on stage rather than rampaging through the crowd.




Martin Rev

But like I said, this is Rev’s turn to step into the spotlight. Despite his talking, I would never use the word “narrative” to describe the whole thing, but it is as close to a storyline as we have seen so far. It is, rather, various clips of Rev speaking – both on camera and off – and discussing the history of the group, and Suicide’s role in the artistic world; especially their philosophy as far as art is concerned. It’s deep and meaningful, and while these monologs doesn’t seem to follow a particular path, it still all falls together into a transgressive (small “t”) pattern that can be put together as a whole in the end in the mind for the viewer.

The fifth film is Saturn Drive (2016), at 5 minutes, which was released posthumously after Vega’s passing. Essentially, it’s a one-camera shot of Vega in the Hospital after a bad fall where he did serious harm to his hip. He looks drugged out of his mind on pain meds. He talks about being in “Saturn Drive” (heaven? hospital? stoned?), his religious affiliation, and seeing 9/11. I’m willing to assume this is the last footage of Vega before he went over the rainbow bridge, and it’s touching.

So, overall, Hurtado seems to model himself a bit on filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who used the media form as his easel to let the film itself tell the story (a true “Medium is the Message” kind of mindset that would have made Marshall McLuhan proud). For Hurtado, the visual scape is as important as to what he is trying to convey to the audience, that art is multi-layered, and should be addressed as so. While I have always preferred the narrative framework over the stream of consciousness kind of art in various modes, I enjoyed the films and getting to see some of Vega and Rev at work is always enlightening.

Bonus video:

DVD Review: The Electric Chair

Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen, 2010
Images from the Internet

The Electric Chair
Written, produced and directed by Mark Eisenstein
Wild Eye, 1985 / (rereleased) 2010
105 minutes, USD $16.95
Wildeyereleasing.com
MVDvisual.com

Whether Mark (Marcus) Eisenstein’s work could be put into the transgressive film category is borderline, but he does have an aggressive style that has a large dose of religion (mostly Jewish), confrontation, and imagery.

His The Electric Chair, from 1985, has long (well, for 25 years) been considered a piece of “lost cinema,” directed by this film professor from Jersey City State College. Fortunately, Wild Eye Productions has not only seen fit to release this piece of unorthodox cinema, but has also added in a whole bunch of Eisenstein’s shorter pieces as extras, along with some trailers and a track commentary. But more of that later.

Written originally as a play that was mounted but once, Eisenstein (okay from now on I’m just referring to him as ME…deal with it) decided to make a film out of it, and offered the lead role to Harvey Keitel, who actually wanted to direct it as well. ME was all for it, but due to prior commitments, Keitel backed out and offered up his pal Victor Argo in the lead. Yes, the heavily Jewish role was handed to an actor of Puerto Rican heritage, who just nailed the role perfectly. There is a lot of dialog in long bursts, and being trained as a stage actor, Argo was more than up for the part. After filming for no pay, the film sat in the can in minimally edited form for years, even after Argo’s death in 2004.

Though filmed in the ‘80s, ME finally finished the black and white film by editing in some footage he took of decrepit buildings on Block Island in the Long Island Sound (or would that be considered the Atlantic?) in 1971, in splashes throughout the narrative, effectively adding a layer of mood to the zeitgeist of the story.

The basic premise of the plot is centered around a shoe salesman, Arnie Schwartz, a lonely man whose marriage is grown as tired as he is, and who spends nights doing a stand-up comedy and music show at a local bar in New Jersey (where most of ME’s films are located). An electric chair appears on the stage as he is bombing, and in front of an audience that represents his whole life, he is warned not to achieve several levels of intimacy with the object.

As the gig does on, the comedy act turns into a rant about the philosophy of comedy, and bit by bit focuses in on his life, God, and schtupping, which uses up most of the film. It takes a strong actor to be able to portray this level of anger and still remain somewhat sympathetic (though in the commentary, ME states that he was not going for sympathy, just the anger), if not pathetic. In front of his mother, himself as a young man dominated by her, his kid sister, a sax playing rabbi, a couple engaged in their own intimacy, and others, Arnie rails right to the climax, which comes as no surprise. However, it is the last shot of the film that I found the most effective and unnerving.

The time goes quickly, and Argo is more than up for the task of possibly his only starring role in his long career. Keitel would also have done well, but Argo brings some depth to his emotions, and can punch out the lengthy gunfire dialog, while in close-up, without ever making it redundant or boring. It’s hard to turn away as he gives his all, which is even more impressive considering, as I said, he wasn’t even paid for it. That’s dedication to a craft.

The images of the super 16mm film (except for the Block Island footage, which is a grainy 16mm) is exceptionally sharp, giving a near German Expressionist pastiche, with high contrasts and an occasional glow, with Argo’s white suit against a black background. It’s the facial close-ups where the shadows are the most effective. My only qualm is the editing, sometimes a bit too sharp and jarring, or perhaps that was the meaning (the other Eisenstein filmmaker, Sergei, was famously noted for proclaiming that “editing is motion”).

This is definitely not a date movie, nor is it a backdrop film. It needs special care and attention from the viewer to see the slow build-up to the finale, and all the subtlety in-between as the tone of the film changes.

The commentary was interesting all the way through, though I felt like I wanted a second one. ME is paired up with indie filmmaker Peter Crocker (I may have this name wrong) and Rob Hauschild of Wild Eye Productions; Crocker is an “expert” on the film, and runs off with the conversation a number of times I just wanted to say “shut-up, this isn’t your film” more than once. A lot of technical questions are discussed about the film, the “hardware” as it were (pre-production, production, and post-production), but not enough, I feel, on the “software” (plot, meaning, intentions). I would have like more insight on what ME was trying to “say,” and at key moments, such as the ending, I thought, “why are you talking about that instead of what’s on the screen?” Don’t get me wrong, the commentary is full of fascinating facts, it just left me wanting more than it offered.

The shorts by ME that are included, and there are several of them, run from the “mini-feature” of “The Roach,” which lasts more than 20 minutes, to a couple that are just a few minutes.

“The Roach” is an interesting set piece of a waterbug that suddenly becomes human, but still scuttles about, played well by 20-something hipster type Eric Mednis. He has no dialog, and flops around when he’s on his back. The Roach is as confused about the human world as it is about him. He keeps following a profane exterminator named Mr. Acme, played by Nick Taylor, and is nearly seduced by a lonely woman (Joan Moossy, who is in many of ME’s productions), before the film ends, Nero-and-Poppaea -style. The film is simple and smart, and obviously a reversal of Kafka’s infamous “The Metamorphosis,” and is one of his few works here in color.

Some of the shorts are extremely esoteric, such as “The Smog” (1967; 6.5 min.), where people are filmed talking in a smog while their voices are re-recorded; “Eight Tragedy Term Papers Plus Three by Maggie Murphy” (1967; 15 min.) in which a real-life poetic term paper by a student who passed away is read by ME as a typewriter types out newswire stories; and in “Mark Eisenstein: Inventor of the Frame” (1982, 1.5 min.), the director explains how he “invented” the frame for cinema (before, supposedly no one knew where to look). There are a couple of others of varying success, but interesting to help put The Electric Chair into a larger picture of Eisenstein’s process.

There are also some trailers put out by Wild Eye Productions, though there is also one for an unreleased Eisenstein film called “God Is On Their Side,” an (I am assuming) allegorical tale of trying to get God on one side or another during a war, while all he wants to do is sing, dance, and smoke cigars. Why am I so interested in this? Simply because God is played by (and credited to) Buster Poindexter, also known as New York Dolls’ vocalist and Staten Island’s own David Johansen.


Bonus video:

GOD IS ON THE OTHER SIDE - rare UNRELEASED movie trailer - New York Dolls from Wild Eye Releasing on Vimeo.