TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS: The Interview (1977)

© Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 1977/2022
Images from the Internet unless indicated

There have been very few interviews where the people involved have just annoyed me right off. One was the great guitarist Chris Spedding  (although I was just an observer; he was obnoxious to both the interviewer and about the topic, rock’n’roll); another was Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.

I had never heard of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks until I saw an ad that they were playing at Max’s on a Monday night. I said to myself, what a great name for a band, I gotta interview these guys.

Going upstairs to the dressing rooms, I found the band, passed out copies of FFanzeen No. 1 to them, and asked for the interview. I did not yet know anyone playing in the band at that time. If I had been a bit more of a scene-hanger-outer, I probably would have known of the exploits of Lydia Lunch, another of the Max’s groupie collection (e.g., Nancy Spungen). I later heard the stories of her famous taxi ride with the Dead Boys, who named at least two of their songs after her (“Caught With the Meat In Your Mouth,” and “I Need Lunch”). I was obliviously innocent.

As well, I had no idea who James Siegfried was – who would later turn up variously as James Chance (of the Contortions) and James Black (and the Whites) – or the late Bradley Field (who worked at the Strand Bookstore). Bass playing Reck, from what I gather, was recently from Japan and was not well versed in English. At least, that was the impression that was presented to me.

In an interview for Playboy, if I remember correctly, Marlon Brando once said that the reason he hated doing magazine interviews was because in print, you can’t tell when someone is joking. I fully understood that statement, especially after interviewing this band. The reader cannot tell the contemptuous tone to which the band answered my admittedly unprepared questions (remember, I hadn’t seen them, nor heard of any of them, having gone in totally blind). In hindsight, I should have interviewed them afterwards.

As the interview – if you want to call it that – proceeded, I was getting more and more put off, to the point that a “whatever” feeling finally took hold of me. It was published in FFanzeen No. 2, dated October 31, 1977.

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks

At first, I was seriously thinking of not printing this interview with this bunch of poseurs, but the way I figure it, because a group grabs me the wrong way is no reason to deny you, the reader, the pleasure of learning to feel the same.

It is not that this band is obnoxious, but that it is bullshit obnoxiousness. Their “attitude” is their gimmick. People like to be assaulted, as long as they know there is no physical threat (i.e., fans of Ruby and the Rednecks).

Oh, yeah, if you read FFanzeen No.1, you may have remembered I mentioned that some of the Cramps interview was drowned out by people telling dead baby jokes. Well folks, these are those people (along with Jim Marshall, editor of New Order fanzine).

The band consists of lead singer / guitarist Lydia Lunch (Teenage Jesus), saxophonist (?) James Siegfried, bassist Reck (who quietly sat tuning his bass during the whole interview), and drummer Bradley Field (not present at the time). Also in the room were two of their female roadies who got into the action.

You will note, towards the end, I more or less gave up and let them go on by themselves. This interview took place in the Max’s Kansas City dressing room on August 8, 1977.

(ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

Roadie 1: Ask them what they think about God?
FFanzeen: What do you think about God?
Lydia Lunch: My father, you mean?

FFanzeen: I take it you’re Teenage Jesus.
Lydia: You take it. And you know what you can do with it.

FFanzeen: How long have you been together?
Lydia: Two and a half months.

FFanzeen: You’ve been gaining a lot of popularity ...
Lydia: Who wants popularity? I don’t care if we have popularity. We want unpopularity.
James Siegfried: We were really mad that people liked us. We wanted them to hate us.
Lydia: They don’t have the right idea if they’re outright fans. I don’t care if they don’t like us as long as they don’t like us for the right reasons. I’d rather have them hate us for the right reasons than to like us for the wrong reasons.

FFanzeen: Why do you want to be hated?
Lydia: I don’t want to be hated, but I don’t want mindless assholes to like us so we can have a KISS army, a Teenage Jesus army, no. We’re annoying. We have annoying sounds. If you like to be annoyed, you should love us. Otherwise stay home and listen to Dictators’ records. Because everything is so boring.
James: We make that normal stuff obsolete.
Lydia: We don’t play chords. I never played guitar before but I wrote all the music and all the words, except for the two that (Siegfried) wrote.

FFanzeen: What type material do you do?
Lydia: Factory, mechanical, and military.

FFanzeen: What’s the purpose of getting a group together if you ...
Lydia: Because I was bored with all the other bands. We have to entertain ourselves.

FFanzeen: Does that include the Cramps?
Lydia: Don’t bring band politics into this interview.

FFanzeen: What do you consider the ultimate goals of the group?
Lydia: The ultimate goal of the group is to annoy. We just want to show the other bands how bad they are. New Wave is dead wave. There’s no such thing because all the New Wave bands are re-hashed Who. We have one influence: I live in front of a factory. That’s the only influence.
James: Wait until you hear the music.
Roadie 1: Their music is comparable to riding the IRT.
Roadie 2: During rush hour. It smells the same.
Lydia: It’s smell for the ear. It’s stench for the ears.

FFanzeen: If you have no influences and you don’t listen to any of the new bands, what do you listen to?
Lydia: Nothing. I don’t even have a stereo or a record player. I don’t have a TV, and I hate bands and I hate music.

FFanzeen: And what do you do to amuse yourself?
Lydia: I play with myself. I have my band to be amused by, (and) the asinine audiences who’ll sit there and applaud for anybody. How are you amused?
James: He amuses himself by asking dumb questions.
Roadie 2: Why did you start your magazine?

FFanzeen: Well ...
Lydia: We really don’t care. Just ask your questions and get out. [laughs] [breaks character – RBF, 2022] Who’s the grouchiest band you know?

FFanzeen: What songs do you perform?
Lydia: [Back into character – RBF, 2022] You want the titles? Forget it. You can listen to it when we play. We don’t even announce the songs. If you want titles, forget it. Wait until our album comes out.
Roadie 1: I want to turn your brain to mush so it will be soft enough to touch.
Lydia: That’s not one of our songs.

FFanzeen: If you come out with an album, are you going to listen to it yourself?
Lydia: That’s the only thing I’d listen to.

Roadie 2: Ask her some of the questions you asked the Cramps. [Looking through FFanzeen No. 1] “What’s your favorite song in the set?”
Lydia: No comment. They’re all my favorite.

Roadie 2: “Is there such a thing as punk rock?”
Lydia: I guess. That’s what my mother listens to.
Roadie 1: Don’t they play that on WABC or something?

[ffoto by Robert Barry Francos]

Roadie 2: “How was the group formed?”
Lydia: I said, “Do you play anything” to (Reck) the bass player at CBGB. He couldn’t speak English. I knew Bradley, and he never played drums so I just got him in the band. I won’t mention how we got (Siegfried).

Roadie 2: “How did it pass that there would be no bass?”
FFanzeen: That one won’t work. You can ask some of the other questions, from the other interviews.
Lydia: Why don’t you (roadies) ask questions. You probably think of better ones than he does.

Roadie 1: Does your feet smell?
Roadie 2: OK. “How do you like playing CBGB” [from the Tom Petty interview – ed., 1977]?
Lydia: We hated it. We hated playing Max’s. We hated playing out. We like rehearsing.

Roadie 2: “Do you like playing the Bottom Line?”
Lydia: We loved it only we never played there.

Roadie 2: “Are you on tour now?”
Lydia: Yes, we are. We’re touring all the local washrooms.

Roadie 2: “What was it like playing with the Runaways?”
Lydia: Playing with the Runaways is equitable to playing with dead babies, only not as much fun.

Roadie 2: “How did you meet the Heartbreakers?”
Lydia: We never have and never wanted to. Why don’t you ask us what we think of certain bands in particular?

Roadie 2: OK. What do you think of the Dead Boys?
Lydia: They’re dead.

Roadie 2: What do you think of ... .
Roadie 1: The Erasers?
Lydia: Erase the Erasers. That’s what I say to all bands.

Roadie 2: OK, I like this one: “What single?”
Lydia: We’re going to do a single at the end of the month for Ork Records [this record was not released on Ork’s imprint – RBF, 2022]. Who cares. Big deal. We’re gonna get ripped off like Richard Hell and Television, and all the others who did singles for Terry Ork and didn’t get a penny.

Roadie 2: “What is your ultimate goal?”
Lydia: To die. To live and die.

Roadie 2: “Do you see yourself branching out into other media, like television?”
Lydia: I’m gonna be a movie star. Or an attraction. I already am.

Roadie 2: “Do you have any hobbies?”
Lydia: No.

Roadie 1: Don’t you basket weave?
Lydia: I used to. Don’t you want to know how old we are?

FFanzeen: No. I don’t think it matters.
Lydia: I think it matters.

FFanzeen: Alright, how old are you?
Lydia: Eighteen. The bass player’s nineteen. The rest I guess it doesn’t matter.
James: I’m twelve.

FFanzeen: You don’t want a following, but do you have one?
Lydia: Yes.

FFanzeen: What kind of people ... er ... follow you?
Lydia: Scary ones. Only in the dark. Usually big and black.

FFanzeen: Where are you from originally?
Lydia: Why do you ask these questions?
Roadie 1: Originally she was from her mother.
Lydia: That’s unoriginal.
Roadie 1: Originally she was from her father. They had a weird family.
Lydia: You might as well let the tape run out since we don’t have anything else to say.

While the band would be at the forefront of the whole No Wave movement, it was doomed to fail because there was nothing to determine what was interesting. Very little of it was, though the sub-scene would later transform into the industrial / noise movement. Reck would eventually go back to Japan, and form the punk band, Friction.

Lydia, of course would re-emerge in various incarnations in multimedia, including music (with the likes of Beirut Slump, Eight-Eyed Spy, Queen of Siam, Devil Dogs, 13.13, Honeymoon in Red, Stinkfist, The Drowning of Lucy Hamilton, Shotgun Wedding, and Lydia Lunch Retrovirus), a written word performance artist (sometimes in cahoots with X’s Exene Cervenka), and acting in a number of independent films (often by director/writer Richard Kern), many of which helped spearhead the whole transgressive DIY movement. So, in a way, she did get her wish and become a movie star.

Later on in the 1980s, she would turn up on Alan Abramowitz’s cable access music/interview program, Videowave, on which I worked as a crew member. When she walked in with her manager, she made a snarky remark, and the manager said she should cool it. I think the manager knew how low-budget we were and how hard we were trying. After that, Lydia was pleasant to everyone. I’m not sure which of the two sides was the honest one, but it was easier to deal with her in this private incarnation than her public one.

Currently she has a podcast, co-hosted with experimental bassist Tim Dahl (the band Child Abuse, among others), called “The Lydian Spin.” 

Lydia has a very large and strong following, and people who really like her personally, but for me the turning point of the FFanzeen interview that pissed me off more than anything else was when Lydia says, laughing, “Who’s the grouchiest band you know?” On some level, I could have respected the group if the band had truly believed what they were saying, but to put me through all that and then for it to actually be bullshit posturing, well, that puts it into another territory.

 

Review: Punking Out (1978)

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2021
Screenshots from the film

Punking Out
Directed by Maggi Carson, Juliusz Kossakowski, and Ric Shore
Punking Out Producers
25 minutes, 1978
Full film HERE 

While undergoing a “procedure” in a hospital a few short years ago, the doctor suggested I think about a “happy place,” such as a beach or a mountain. My mind instantly went to sitting at a table at CBGB, around the time this documentary was filmed in 1977, waiting for the Ramones to come on. This was something I did a lot back then. Made me happy at the time, and during the biopsy (it was negative, for those who care).

I remember seeing this black and white documentary when it first came out, and a few times since then, be it at a revival theater (e.g., the Thalia) or online. And like my mental image before the doctoral slice and dice, the film makes me smile. And, on occasion, sneer.

There are so many familiar faces in the crowds (such as Terry Ork) and those interviewed, some whose names I have since forgotten, and others I never knew, but I was a regular at the club and have seen all the bands represented here numerous times, and can say the live shots of – in order of appearance – Richard Hell and the Voidoids (the only band not interviewed for the film), the Dead Boys, and the Ramones, capture their early fire, as all the songs represented would come from their first albums, such as “Blank Generation,” “I Need Lunch” and “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” respectively, among others.

Helen Wheels

From the first time I saw it, one of the moments that stuck with me is singer Helen Wheels commenting (though not identified in the film) that she is never bored, as she fidgets around. I would interview her when she opened for Iggy Pop at the Brooklyn Zoo half a decade later, but even then, in the short moment she’s onscreen, she is riveting. Also memorable for sheer obnoxiousness, as is her style, is Lydia Lunch, happily squealing that she had slept with all of the Dead Boys. It comes across as forced and full of pretentiousness (reads as “I’m cool and insufferable. Aren’t I precious?!”). When I interviewed Lydia at Max’s Kansas City with her band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks around the same time this was filmed, she was an absolute asshat full of self-importance that would eventually achieve her C-level fame.

Joey Ramone (back), DeeDee Ramone (foreground)

The interviews of the bands are fun, as DeeDee of the Ramones stumbles over his words describing a song he wrote, and Jimmy Zero of the Dead Boys scarily and amusingly runs off with the interview, invoking his mom numerous times. Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGB, comes across with dry, fatherly advice about violence and how loud music helps quash it (I never saw a fight occur in the bar).

Lydia Lunch

Other fun interviews include a couple of non-regulars in cardigans who swear they will never come back (but I bet they’re bragging they went even to this day if they are still on this plain), an over-amped bearded guy who I believe was a member of the Helen Wheels Band, and a couple of thick New York accented women who have menial office jobs and go out to see bands to blow off steam (I can relate to it).

The directors wisely don’t stay on any one person too long, just enough to get the gist of personality, which they disperse with the live footage and band interviews. It is only 25 minutes long, but it flies by quite fast and I definitely wanted to see more.

Office drones enjoying the music

This came out a couple of years after Amos Poe and Ivan Kral’s Blank Generation (1976), which focused more on the music and the bands (i.e., playing their records over unmatched footage of the bands playing live). Punking Out is more of a deeper dive into not only the music, but those who were there to experience it. It was just before punk became more codified in dress codes and styles, and is a flash of a time capsule of a Camelot-like moment of joy.

IMDB listing HERE 

DVD Review: GG Allin – (Un)Censored: Live 1993

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015
Images from the Internet

GG Allin – (Un)Censored: Live 1993

Produced by Merle Allin
MVD Visual
110 minutes, 1993 / 2014
www.mvdvisual.com

Iggy Pop’s infamous glass on skin and self-peanut butter smearing was outrageous in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The next step up was Suicide’s in your face aggression and Transistor’s Von Lmo chasing his audience out of clubs (usually Max’s Kansas City) with a running chainsaw. They all paled in comparison to what GG Allin had in store for his audiences. His shows (and arrest records) were notorious.

This DVD is a collection of four shows during the Murder Junkies’ Terror in America 1993 Tour in the spring of 1993. GG would be dead less than a month later from the last one here, after an extremely wild and violent show at a New York club called the Gas Station.

If Allin wore any clothes at the beginning of a show, odds were good he was stark naked at the end (not counting the dog collar, boots and gloves), and somewhat lighter than when he came in, as he was known for both peeing and crapping on stage (and on occasion throwing said releases into the audience). Words to describe him have been transgressive and disgusting, but the first word in my mind is fearless.

The first show is from New Orleans at the RC Bridge Lounge, on May 16, 1993 (22 minutes long). Starting with his iconic “Bite It You Scum,” this actually ends up being the closest to a real show of GG’s I’ve seen in quite a while. Other than the occasional foray into the crowd, he stands his ground on stage and there is actually some quite agro moshing by the audience.

Here is also something I don’t see very often when watching these shows, and that is the audience gives as much violence at they get, if not more so. There is one fuckin’ huge inked and shirtless mofo (the bouncer?) who stands on the stage with him occasionally before diving off. The crowd is hyped, and when GG starts swinging at them, they don’t run away, they actually fight back. Props. I would like to believe that GG acknowledged them in return by actually keeping with the songs. Unlike some later, more theatrical shows (see the Chicago one, for example) where he’s brought props to the stage, here he keeps his jacket and jockstrap on for the whole show, though he does pull it down and do some yanking on his surprisingly micro-member (this was even discussed at his funeral, from the 1993 video I've seen called GG's Last Ride).

While the lighting is questionable due to the lack of decent illumination from the stage, and it seems the only brightness you can see is from the video cameras, the action is mostly viewable other than the occasional near “blackouts” when the floodlights from the videos are off. As with all the shows on this DVD, the entire gig is single-shot-camera, with no editing.

Next up is in Houston at the Catal Huyuk on May 17 (26 minutes). Funny, but the most eye-opening part of the show for me is when his microphone inevitably dies about a third of the way in, and as the techs work on it, GG goes into the audience and says, ‘How ya doin’?” and then sits down with them on some wooden, joined bleacher-type fold-down chairs. Someone hands him a plastic clear cup with beer and he drinks it down. It’s a very calm moment, and something I’ve never seen before at an Allin show, even when there are technical problems.

This is, in fact, a pretty sedate audience. Even as he prowls among the throng, they seem to be just standing them. When he whacks one or two along the way, they either duck or get hit and laugh. It is hard to explain just how surreal this all is. It is for this reason that a sudden fierce fist-led gang-up attack by a group occurs, it is also a shock. Still, this is one of the better musical shows of the four.

The Chicago show is from the Medusas club, on June 5 (33 minutes). It’s kind of fuzzy and the sound is terrible, also shot on a handheld camcorder in VHS. For over half an hour you get balls out (literally) GG, and the Murder Junkies pile drive their sound.

During “Bite It You Scum,” the opening number, GG removes his overcoat, which revels that all he’s wearing is tall leather boots, black gloves (I am assuming leather as well), and his spiked dog collar. As his brother Merle leads the band with his bass, GG rolls out an American flag onto the stage floor, gives himself an enema with a turkey baster, poops on the flag, pees on it and into a cup (which he flings out into the audience after a swig), and then uses lighter fluid set the flag alight (after wiping his butt with it, of course). In between all of that, he takes physical swipes at members of the audience, who douse him in beer from those omnipresent red cups. I’m not making an opinion, just relaying the action. And this is only the first song.

GG roams the crowd, occasionally being herded by the club’s bouncer to behind a fence between the front of the stage and the people in attendance. As many times has he climbs over, or tries to breach it (including breaking the separator’s metal braces which he wields as a weapon that someone grabs out of his hand), he is thwarted, sometimes not to daintily.

My major complaint about this quarter of the film is more in the line of how fuzzy the picture and sound is. If I didn’t know “Bite It,” I would not have been able to make out any of the song.

The last show is at the Marquee in Detroit, on June 6 (32 minutes). This one starts off a bit freewheeling, with fewer props at the start. Yes, “Bite It” is the first number, but no flag.

So what’s an artist to do? Crap on the stage and fling it, of course! He continues to roam around with a big, brown smudge on his rear, like someone with lack of sphincter control who did not wipe himself. However, none of this is as gross, to me, as when he does a “Pink Flamingos.”

There is no barrier between the man and his crowd in this place. He roams and with the exception of people taking pictures of him, people tend to avoid him and scream out verbal abuse. He spends more time off the stage than on, but that’s not too unusual.

Also not unusual is that his microphone keeps going in and out. Nearly every show I’ve have seen (recorded; was always too much of a wuss to see him live) the spotty mic has been an issue, but it’s hardly surprising with all the abuse it goes through, between his hitting his head with it until he bleeds, or shoving it up his anus. I think about the modern remote mic, and how that might have made a difference (not to mention HD video).

The club is kind of a cavernous  warehouse setting with pool tables, but the audience doesn’t seem to be that extensive; either that or they are staying way far away from him, and possible (make that probable) genetic projectiles. However, it’s the audience who is the most violent here, throwing either objects or oral confrontations. Yes, GG definitely confronts the occasional audience member, but it’s the macho jock assholes that just seem to be there for no other reason than an excuse for violence that had me scratching my head. At one point, GG screams at them, “Say that to my face!” but the chickenshit cowards never do, preferring to insult him from a safe distance. Some of what GG does on (and off) stage is not pleasant, but he’s the real deal. These guys doing the hollering are bully posers, and far more disgusting in my eyes. And I bet some of those same pussies smugly went home and said, “Yeah, we showed him.” Yes, you showed the world that you’re not even worth having poo flung at you.

What is interesting to me is that no matter what is happening by or to GG, the band just keeps playing, as if they were in another room. Singer’s microphone doesn’t work? They play. GG is in the audience beating someone? They play. Someone or a group is beating on GG? They keep playing. It really was an interesting social experiment.

When I see GG being interviewed in other places, like on the infamous Springer episode, I see theater. When I see video recordings of him perform, I see theater. Yes, I believe he believed in what he was saying, I also believe there is some narcissistic element that underlied his way of thinking that he is supreme, and I know people who have taken his message of “no PC as I envision it” that translates as just another way of either self-aggrandizement or the degradation of others (from the interviews, I believe GG would agree with that): “I can say whatever shitty thing I want, be it racist, sexist, homophobic or genderist, and if you don’t like it, you’re just being ‘PC.’ This is the same mentality of those hyper-Christians (and other religious groups as well) that state that if they discriminate against others, it’s religious right, but if someone complains about it, it’s a War on [Religion]. I could rant on for a while on this, but I will stop as I digress…

Whether you agree with GG and his stage performances or not, as a media theorist, I admire that a musician at his level has as many shows available as he does – thanks in large part to his brother Merle, who controls his estate – and remains a strong presence in the likes of social media and YouTube.

Songs list (in total from all shows):

Bite It You Scum
Cunt Sucking Cannibal
Expose Yourself to Kids
Highest Power
I Kill Everything I Fuck
I Wanna Rape You
Kill the Police
Live to Be Hated
Look Into My Eyes (and Hate Me)
Outlaw Scumfuc
Terror in America

 

DVD Review: The Advocate for Fagdom

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015
Images from the Internet

The Advocate for Fagdom

Directed by Angelique Bosio
Le Chat Qui Fume
91 minutes, 2011
www.thedavocateforfagdom.com
www.lechatquifume.com    
www.mvdvisual.com

Usually it’s the second wave that is more adamant, and more militant that what preceded. For punk, the British scene blasted through the American predecessor; in feminism, the second wave presented the angry side with the likes of Andrea Dworkin as its poster child. For transgressive media, the roots of this documentary had its nascent rising with filmmakers Richard Kern and John Waters, and the No Wave movement of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and the Contortions.

From the foundation of transgression came Bruce LaBruce, blasting out of the furnace of a place that started building by breaking through fear, and into the face of society in a way no one could have predicted. In many ways, one of the focal points that made LaBruce such a powerful force was his consolidation of many difference scenes and genres, and laser focusing them out through a queer prism.

Hailing from Ontario, LaBruce started making small films with gay themes that were grainy 8mm, which somehow made enough of an impact that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain (from whose quote the title of this film was taken) was known to have said that LaBruce was his favorite filmmaker. LaBruce also produced a Queercore (aka Homocore) fanzine in the ‘80s that promoted a scene that didn’t exist, with enough energy that an outburst of the style arose from it. A hardcore fan (or, as is commented here, a fan of hardcore boys), he wanted to acknowledge a level of queerness that was in the music that was not being noted because of the scene’s violently homophobic element. At this point, I believe it would have been good to interview members of the Pansy Division , or MDC (Millions of Dead Cops, or Multi-Death Corporation), who could tell stories about being on the road with some of those gay-bashing bands (e.g., Bad Brains).

However, it is his cinema of transgression that has made Bruce LaBruce not just famous, but infamous. They look a bit like real-life aspects of ‘60s Warhol mixed with the bizzaro unexpectedness of John Waters. Using both script and improvisation, LaBruce shows a world of hustlers, S&M/B&D, and a copious amounts of graphic M2M sex; it should be noted here that he also shocks his regular audience by having W2W, on which some of the audience walked out). And, please note, that this documentary has some of these clips included in this doc, so if you are a right wing religious nut, you may not want to watch this or it may recruit you to making the choice to go to the other side. Yes, that’s sarcasm.

Okay, back to the serious review. As someone points out in the doc, this isn’t just anti- to be different: having studied deconstructionism via Foucault and Derrida, he uses it to express his agenda, in what seems like crude attempts, but is actually quite astute. And as Waters says in one of the interviews, LaBruce also having fun (Waters tells quite the amusing and telling anecdote about when he stayed at Waters’ house).

I believe it’s true, as is noted on the DVD, that when you make a hardcore gay porno film – especially if you star in it like LaBruce has done numerous times – it probably is harder to get funding to reach the level of Waters or especially Gus van Sant. Even Richard Kern, who directed a number of violent and (straight) experimental films is acknowledged as an auteur and somewhat respected on a cult level, probably will never reach the A-Line. That being said, there probably would be no Shortbus (2006) or arguably The Brown Bunny (2003) without people like Bruce LaBruce breaking the barriers on the micro-budget end. And I would like to point out that the directors of both those films, John Cameron Mitchell and Vincent Gallo, respectively, have not done much feature-length film directing since those releases over a decade ago. For LaBruce, however, his biggest budgeted film came after this documentary.

The third act here is an in-depth look at his insertion of – er – insertions, blow-jobs, and what makes this art with some pornographic images rather than being dismissed as porn. This is, to me, an important topic that deserves to be discussed, especially in today’s world of right wing religious fanatics around the world, and in the West, who are intent on going Biblical and - Koranical? - on all things gay, explicit or a quarter of an inch beyond the ken of their interpretation of “moral.”

But that is not what makes LaBruce so interesting to me. What I find fascinating is a two edged sword that he wields so sharply and intensely. On the one hand, he is bringing homosexuality to the forefront in a way none of the other directors have before, even with Waters’ touchstone being the amazing Divine (d. 1988), mixing transgression with usually leftist politics.

At the same time, he holds up the gay lifestyle to the queer population themselves, showing their own weaknesses by focusing on explicit lesbian sex in The Raspberry Reich (2004), or cultural and material consumerist mentality (borrowing Romero’s zombie = consumer from Dawn of the Dead [1979]) in Otto; or, Up With Dead People (2008). By wagging his finger at both sides, his statement becomes all the louder.

Angelique Bosio keeps a very balanced film going here. There are clips from many of LaBruce’s films, including the explicit scenes; we see the action from his public photographic art performances, and interviews with most of the writers and actors in this film to talk about both LaBruce what it means to them to be involved in a hotspot political movement. There are also a number of directors, including those mentioned beforehand, like Waters, Kern and van Sant, writers such as Bruce Benderson, and even performance artists, including Vaginal Davis. Susanne Sachsse also gives some pointed feminist notes as being one of the few females in the group.

The world is swinging ever further to the Right, and it’s good to have a strong voice pulling in the opposite direction in a way that is so extreme to make its point. This film is both exquisite and at times anguish to watch, which is to say, that it represents Bruce LaBruce and for what he stands. This should be in Gender, Queer and Film Studies departments/programs around the world.

 

Trailer HERE

 

Bonus video HERE