The Sharon Tate Murder: Waters-style

MULTIPLE MANIACS (1970)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia (Originally written in 2003)

I recently watched one of John Waters's first films, "Multiple Maniacs," and all I can say is: he may have bad taste but he sure is funny. "Multiple Maniacs" may be well my favorite John Waters film by far, a film that aims low and delivers high notes. It is a gross-out comedy but not in the same vein as today's equivalents, and it is certainly not as putrid as "Pink Flamingos." I sense Waters is having fun here without getting mired in tastelessness or mean-spiritedness.

The film stars Divine as herself, as she is the queen attraction of something called "The Calvacade of Perversions." These so-called perversions, which include two gay men kissing, a man known as the "puke eater" and other indecent acts, are introduced by Divine's boyfriend, the late David Lochary. He stands outside a tent overlooking suburbia with a microphone and invites people in these tents to see the perversions for free. All the people are shocked by what they see yet they can't stop looking (one even comments about a fat woman's hairy body). Divine is quite an attraction already, but she wants nothing more than to rob and kill people! She claims responsibility for Sharon Tate's death and for having scribbled the word "PIG" with her bloody fingers. David is understandably shocked since he has no memory of ever killing Sharon Tate.

The paper-thin plot has David having an affair with a wannabe blonde perversion named Bonnie (Mary Vivian Pearce). Meanwhile, Divine has a fling with a lesbian (Mink Stole) inside a church! Here is where we are privy to the "Rosary" sequence that is as revolting and sacrilegious as you can imagine. I do not have go into details but this is a scene that must be seen to be believed. When Divine catches wind of David's affair, she prepares to kill with utmost relish. And before the end of the film, we are treated for yet another infamous sequence involving Divine getting raped by a lobster!

Now then, how the heck can I recommend such garbage? Well, quite simple really. "Multiple Maniacs" is crude and irreverent and it knows it, and makes no apologies for it. I found this film funnier and more personal than "Pink Flamingos," and I think Waters lost his edge ever since this cult classic and "Flamingos." Today, Waters could scarcely do anything to offend or shock people unless he found something personal to say, albeit with the religious iconography of his upbringing and the late, great Divine. Other merits are the choice of rock and roll music on the soundtrack (including Elvis's "Jailhouse Rock"), and choice excerpts from Gustav Holst's "The Planets." Any film that ends with "God Bless America" while Divine preens and struts her stuff is worthwhile in my book. Divine is simply charming and suitably creepy at the same time. Kudos also go to Cookie, Divine's daughter (played by the late Cookie Mueller who walks around naked in her apartment) and her boyfriend who despises David (their conversations are hysterical).

What separates this mondo trash from other trash films of the period is its compassion. Waters is willing to listen to these perverts and see them as people, not as caricatures. Consider the scene where David is making love to Bonnie and discusses getting away from Divine. There is a touch of humanity here that makes it all worthwhile, and you actually feel sorry for David.

Yes, "Multiple Maniacs" is badly shot and composed with a horrendous number of overexposed shots. There are also numerous jump cuts and largely asynchronous sound (I think Waters was still learning how to edit). The film was shot for $5,000 in grainy stock black-and-white film, and it shows but so what. Jump cuts do not bother me, nor does asynchronous sound (both have become part of film grammar). What is most hilarious is seeing Divine parading around the town of Baltimore, carrying all her weight around and stepping into trouble every step of the way. Disgusting? Perverted? Yes, it is all those things. And damn funny too.

The Greatest Music Video Ever Made

SCORPIO RISING (1964)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(On my top ten list of greatest films ever made)

Kenneth Anger's "Scorpio Rising" is one of the most revolutionary films of the past fifty years. It set a whole new precedent for filmmaking in general, in terms of its fast-cutting style, rock n' roll music montages, rebellious allure of motorcyclists, sex, death, and so on. In fact, I may be so bold as to say that this is the first sex, drugs and rock n' roll movie ever made. And Anger did it all in less than half-an-hour of film time.

As director Anger recently explained (in an interview with Professor Kinema on his cable access show) about his most famous (or infamous) short film, "Scorpio Rising" is an ironic take on "The Wild One," the latter being a fairly tame motorcycle movie next to this one. In fact, "Scorpio Rising" is all about irony, and yet it says something rather disconcerting about the world in America before the love generation and the decadence of the 1970's set in. At times, "Scorpio Rising" seems to be an ironic take on the 1950's yet commenting on the growing motorcycle cult of the late 1960's. Anger even dedicated the film to the Hell's Angels.

"Scorpio Rising" begins with average men in their late teens or early twenties polishing and fixing their precious bikes (or as Anger referred to them as "Christmas tree versions of motorcycles".) The men are inside their garages, and we hear lovely pop songs in the background as the camera tracks back and forth between the bikers and their bikes, wind-up toys of motorbikes, and a prominent visage of a skull in the background. Later, we see the bikers dressing up in their uniforms, a combination of leather jackets and straps to the tune of Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" (long before this version become iconized with David Lynch's film). The irony begins again, as the song has the lyric, "She wore blue velvet," yet we see a blonde biker dressing up in a blue shirt and a black leather jacket. As photographed in close-up, along with subliminal shots of a barechested biker, there is a definite homoerotic subtext occurring here (unintended by Anger), as there was with Anger's first film "Fireworks" where Anger played a 17-year-old kid who dreams of being sodomized and beaten by Navy officers. There is one shot in "Scorpio" of the barechested biker standing over a cone pointing to his crotch. Most of "Scorpio Rising" has sexual connotations in every shot, especially the Halloween party where costumed, masked guests stand around mimicking sexual gestures, though not with their genitalia clearly exposed as I had initially thought (the version I saw had such moments seemingly blotted out since it was a copy of a copy from a Japanese laserdisc).

"Scorpio Rising" combines elements of teen rebellion, popular culture, Nazi ideology, the motorcycle cult, sex, rock n' roll, religion, and death and it twists such elements around to form a rather haunting collage about the inevitable decline of the western civilization as we know it. And every sequence has a rock and roll song or some sentimental ditty playing on the soundtrack. "Scorpio Rising" is the first film to ever build a montage of shots with songs, and to do so ironically. If you are wondering where Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson and any filmmaker since, not to mention MTV, got their ideas for their famous use of ironic pop songs as subtext or montage, look no further back than "Scorpio Rising." Another ironic fact is that the film was brought up on obscenity charges back in 1964, yet no one noticed the use of songs in the soundtrack which Anger had no permission to use. Since then, the film has been tough to find in video stores because the rights to such songs are still in a legal tangle. (UPDATE: Apparently, the use of the songs was licensed by Anger by way of an attorney and it cost Anger $8,000. On video and Japanese laserdisc, the legal tangle may have been initiated, as is the case with most films with songs in their soundtracks, i.e. "Yellow Submarine"). 

"Scorpio Rising" is a frenetically charged, highly potent piece of cinema and it is guaranteed to still provoke anger (especially the use of the swastika symbol). It was a sign of things to come, long before the advent of the post-60's youth rebellion in films such as "The Graduate," or youth violence in "A Clockwork Orange." There is of course the nineties equivalent of both in "Natural Born Killers." It all began with Anger's film, and we can either be grateful or unforgiving. 

Lumet's canny, crafty lenses

SIDNEY LUMET (1924-2011)

The former Dead-End kid who created some indelible films

By Jerry Saravia

Sidney Lumet passed away at the age of 86 on Saturday, April 9th, 2011. One of the great film directors of all time, Sidney Lumet was an accomplished craftsman and an actor's director. He wanted the performances to be the attention-getters, not the visual style or the camera movements. He has been called a director with no signature style but I beg to differ. His style may have been invisible but it is a style. He didn't simply set up a camera and record actors in front of it in a stagy, non-confrontational manner. Not so, in fact, Lumet was all about the lenses. The relationship between the spaces confined to the actors and the spaces surrounding them, especially in tighter and tighter corners as in his amazing film debut, "12 Angry Men," is accomplished by the choice of lenses to tell the story. "Different lenses tell different stories," as he remarked to host James Lipton on the "Inside the Actor's Studio" show.

That brings us to his seminal film, the best damn media satire ever written, "Network" from 1976, which is cold and abrasive, spectacularly funny and darkly serious, and about as prescient a film as it was when it first burst onto to the cinema screens. "Network" is about how the television news organizations have become sullied and demoralized by executives looking for a fast buck - to show the old network geezers that it can make money and be a ratings climber if it just became a "whorehouse." It is not about peddling news, it is about peddling trash or turning something genuine into a freak show minus integrity. The fact that a veteran anchorman, Howard Beale (brilliantly played by the late Peter Finch) has a meltdown on the air in his last show ferments and necessitates a talk show of his own, where he can speak about the truth and tell everyone what they are already thinking -  "I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore." The reason he gets the show is because a soulless programming director (Faye Dunaway) foresees a ratings hit, considering that Howard Beale's own supposed meltdown became the top story in all the newspapers, easily eclipsing world events (sound familiar?)

Lumet's color and lighting palette in "Network" is subtle, so subtle that it is virtually unseen. As Lumet describes it, the opening scene is virtually shot with very little light when it begins with William Holden as a news producer and Finch joking about an old news story. As the film progresses, more and more lighting patterns emerge - as Lumet had put it, he corrupts the camera ("The movie camera is the fourth star.") By the end of the film, when a decision is made to (*spoiler alert*) assassinate Howard Beale on his own show (still one of the most shocking endings ever seen in a film, no matter how jaded you are), it is all lit as if it were a Ford commercial complete with Robert Duvall slicking his hair back.

Sidney Lumet is known for many other films, all of them primarily set in New York City, yet he has often deviated from police dramas and robbery flicks set in the thick grit of the Empire state. His sole musical, "The Wiz," is a dazzling, entertaining take on "The Wizard of Oz" with just as many memorable songs as the Judy Garland classic. He also crafted a sweet love story called "Lovin' Molly" with Anthony Perkins and Beau Bridges; "The Group" which was a feminist satire saddled with controversial issues from the late 60's; the Eugene O'Neill play that has some of the strongest acting turns in recent history in "Long Day's Journey Into Night"; the highly suspenseful "Deathtrap" with Christopher Reeve in possibly the only performance I've seen of his where he played an insincere manipulator; the tricky and enlightening Agatha Christie melodrama "Murder on the Orient Express"; a 1970 documentary on Martin Luther King, Jr. called "King: A Filmed Record...", among others.

My favorite Lumet pictures would have to be "Network," "Prince of the City," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict," one of the best courtroom dramas ever made with the stellar Paul Newman, "Running on Empty," which is certainly Lumet's most overpoweringly emotional film, and certainly "The Anderson Tapes" which features a spectacular debut by a young Christopher Walken. I admire "Serpico" but it is not nearly as revelatory as it was in 1973, if for no other reason than the fact that police corruption has grown more complicated than the film shows. "Q & A" has an awful soundtrack (songs by Ruben Blades whom I don't think much of) and is far less enticing than Lumet's other police dramas, including the improbable yet diverting "Night Falls on Manhattan." "Family Business" is simply improbable all around with an even worse soundtrack by Cyle Coleman, though the film is saved by the memorable performances of Sean Connery (a frequent Lumet collaborator), Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick. "The Morning After" and "A Stranger Among Us" are simply bad pictures with none of the magic of Lumet - his remake of John Cassevetes' "Gloria" is a horrendously and unintentionally campy joke of a movie and worth seeing for that reason alone (nothing wrong with watching Sharon Stone running around the NYC streets in high heels).

"Network," though, is the film of Sidney Lumet's career, showcasing him at the height of his directorial powers with a fantastic script by the late Paddy Chayefsky. It is a masterful film, bleak and funny, with William Holden, Robert Duvall, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway giving the performances of their lives. More than that, it is a scary, angry picture about how the news became corrupted and transformed into trashy entertainment, for the sake of ratings. The film itself is the very definition of satire, and I think Lumet was the only director that could've made it. Sidney Lumet - an accomplished craftsman, an actor's director and, yes, he had a signature style. The former Dead End Kid had a style all his own after all. 

A Room with a Greenscreen View

THE ROOM (2003)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"You can cry, you can express yourself, but please don’t hurt each other. And that’s basically the theme of the movie. It’s a lesson to do better. Because we are better. We are much more intelligent." - Tommy Wiseau

I cannot give "The Room" a rating of any kind. Reasons are aplenty but the most singularly good reason I can think of is that this is not a movie. It has no real story, no narrative structure, no sense of style or semblance of anything resembling something you would pop in your DVD player or run through a projector. I've seen the late Stan Brakhage's own experimental, non-narrative films that confound many, but they seem to take place on Planet Earth and they are about something! "The Room" is nothing - a vacuum of nothingness. A Hoover vacuum cleaner has more to say. Throwing out the trash is an actual action a human being commits."The Room" is inactive, and inexcusably nothing. And yet it is so damn watchable, like a guy wearing rags, dragging a shopping cart and screaming about socialism! (Thank you, Woody Allen).

Tommy Wiseau is the actor-writer-director of this thing we call a movie. He looks vaguely Eastern European and speaks or rather warbles lines of dialogue like "You are tearing me apart, Lisa!," only with less conviction than Bugs Bunny. Tommy plays Johnny, a successful banker who lives in a condo of the "Red Shoes Diaries" variety with his fiancee, Lisa (18-year-old Juliette Danielle). He buys her roses and they have lots of sex. Sometimes a kid next door named Denny (Philip Haldiman) wants to get in bed with them...so they can all throw pillows at each other! When Johnny doesn't get his promotion at the bank, things go awry with Lisa and the movie. Lisa has relations with Johnny's best friend, Mark (Greg Sestero), and she occasionally sweeps the floor when she isn't having a romp in the hay. Johnny gets wind of what is happening and records Lisa's phone conversations. Then we have endless scenes on the roof of the condo that looks like a studio; more soft-core sex scenes; inarticulate and unintentionally funny lines of dialogue; some football passes; an elongated party sequence and a shocking finale. This is the "kind" of movie where someone gets shot in the head and all a character can exclaim is, "are you okay?" This is also the "kind" of movie where a psychologist is almost thrown out of the roof of a building and the person who attempts the murder says, "I'm sorry."

Wiseau is the unusual case in most independently financed features - he spent close to 6 million to finance this picture, including buying two cameras (one 35mm, and the other a high-definition camera) and his own studio (Most indie filmmakers would dream of such an opportunity). However, Wiseau still shoots scenes on a mock-up of a San Francisco apartment rooftop with greenscreen! Amazingly, "The Room" first sought life as a play and a novel (neither of which became a reality) culminating in a screenplay that Wiseau spent five years writing. I am surprised it didn't take him five minutes.

I'd almost rate "The Room" as a good-bad movie but I can't. I don't know what it is. To me, it is the equivalent of an artist, from a while ago, who crafted a blank canvas and called it "The Rose." He may as well have called it "The Room."