Film Review - "Happiness" (1998)

Happiness
1998
Todd Solondz

Based on tons of recommendations, I sought this one out for a while. Once I got it, I was so afraid that I would be disappointed, because hype always gives me unrealistic expectations. I finally got a copy of this, and lo and behold, it’s every bit as awesome as I thought it was going to be.

The film is an ensemble piece. The central characters are three upper-middle-class suburban sisters, but we focus on pretty much everyone related to them in some way. The first sister is an acclaimed novelist. She’s a cold, spoiled bitch, and spends most of the movie lamenting about how much she hates being admired, and eventually throws a damn hissy-fit because she wasn’t raped as a child and therefore can’t write about it effectively. So, she goes from there intentionally putting herself into potentially dangerous situations, namely with her middle-aged drunken pervert neighbor who also happens to be an obscene phone caller. The neighbor also has a story arc, mainly about his quest for sex while endlessly rejecting/ignoring his other neighbor, a lonely, overweight girl who obviously has a massive crush on him (pun not intended). The next sister is an over-emotional, aging single woman, and while she claims to be unloved, miserable and desperate, she’s actually dumping men just because they don’t fit her high standards. Eventually, she begins a relationship with a Russian student at the community college she teaches at, and even after he turns out to be a pimp and an abusive kleptomaniac, she stays with him happily simply so she can say she's in a relationship and that she feels 'needed' (and since I've been there, her situation is all the more bitterly humorous to me). The other sister is just a fucking stuck-up busybody bitch, plain and simple, who is always silently gloating to her sisters that she’s happily married with a wonderful husband, wonderful kids and a wonderful double-income that makes them practically rich. Unfortunately, she’s blissfully unaware that her perfect husband, a therapist, is actually a pedophile. This sister’s husband actually has a bigger role than she does, and he deserves it. Also, there’s a subplot where the oldest son (11 years old) is depressed because he isn’t able to reach orgasm when he masturbates, and has these creepy-yet-hilarious, completely deadpan conversations with his dad about these sexual customs. Oh yeah, we also get a look into these ladies’ parents, who are separated; the dad loves it because he was cheating all the time anyway, but the mom is upset because people keep forgetting that ‘separated’ and ‘divorced’ are not interchangeable terms, and whenever someone brings up divorce, she gets extremely emotional.
This is one of my very favorite examples of what a dark comedy should be; it’s funny in its own way, and it’s just so full of vitriol – I refer to it as ‘the anti-romantic comedy’ because of its extreme cynicism and pessimism. Basically, every single character in the movie is a contemptible piece of shit that deserves a slow death. Even the ones you almost feel sorry for find ways of making themselves utterly unsympathetic, usually through their own selfishness. And the one character who is successful in eliciting pity, who you want to see succeed, gets royally screwed in the end, moreso than any other character. The whole thing is a great study on the human condition, really – everyone is a selfish little thorn in everybody else’s side, and they all feel that the world owes them something, they’re all so high-and-mighty and constantly looking down upon others… Sometimes it can kinda make you step back to take a look at yourself.
The single most interesting character in this movie is without a doubt Bob Maplewood, the pedophile therapist. I applaud Todd Solondz for writing a character so well; basically, he’s not portrayed as the inhuman shadow-creature that other movies and TV shows have their kiddy-fiddlers as. Instead, he is, much like in real life, a flawed human being with emotions and guilt and everything else. So, he’s actually sympathetic, but at the same time, still a horrible monster that deserves harsh and severe comeuppance. To say that it fucks with your head is a massive understatement. Any movie that can make you think that much is truly great in my eyes.
The humor in this movie is very distinctive; it’s extremely, extremely dry and bitter, and pretty darn dark, too, so it’s definitely not to all tastes. So, if you want a top-of-the-line dark comedy that will also make you think (and very likely make you depressed), this is an excellent choice.

RATING: 9/10

Dreams #1

I know that nobody gives a shit, but that's never stopped me before - this is the first of an indefinitely running series where I describe some of the bizarre, disturbing dreams I have, selected from my massive journal of dream transcriptions, for your personal enjoyment. Each post in this series will have five or so dreams described in as much detail as I can remember (or, in some cases, care to post). Here we go...

While visiting friends out of town, I go to a mall perched atop a mountain. While browsing Hot Topic, I have a quick, dirty roll in the hay with a Goth girl I meet there. Later on, when I try to leave the building, I set off the security buzzer; apparently, during our little tryst, the girl dug her nails into my back and created a pattern that coincidentally has an uncanny resemblance to a barcode. The mall staff concludes that I am, in fact, merchandise, and cannot leave the store unless I am bought. I spend a few days in the store until I am bought by some kid who wants companionship. After one day at his house, I can’t take it any more, and start acting out. The kid returns me, on the grounds that I’m ‘defective’. The staff turns me loose into the store again, where I am trapped until the Goth girl returns and shoplifts me. We are chased by a hardass mall security guard (played by Steven Seagall), in an epic battle (in a water park, no less) that ends with us knocking him into a pool, killing him.

I get sent to the Wal-Mart to pick up some laxative, and it turns into a huge misadventure involving me having to fight pirates (led by my father, who I haven’t seen in over ten years in real life), escape from the Incredible Hulk, get blackmailed into bed by an unattractive, bitchy clerk who’ll only help me find the stuff if I sleep with her, get turned into a cat and have to find a way to change back while foiling an evil gene splicing project (eventually having to battle a shark-man), and help the store stock their new Goth section because all their redneck religious clerks are too scared to go in the area – and, when I finally get the stuff and get it back home, I get yelled at for buying the wrong kind.

My mom was having an affair with David Bowie, who was married to Josie Packard (a rich woman from the TV show “Twin Peaks”) and living in a mostly-empty palace. A new guy joins my therapy group (which is inexplicably filled with alcoholic ten-year-olds), and he quickly becomes my best friend. My grandfather goes completely broke and loses his house. Everyone in my family blames me, and I get kicked out so he can move in. I find a want ad from William S. Burroughs, who is offering room & board in his very large upper-class house for a reduced price if the tenant would do some fix-it work and generally assist around the house. So, me and my friend from group pool our money and both move in with the old man. The three of us bond quickly, with us having a great time having deep discussions with Burroughs, who is obviously a very wise and worldly person. After a while, Burroughs commits suicide, and leaves his house and money to us. I use some of the money to start my college classes, and on the first day I catch and calm down a girl who is on a drug-induced freak-out. The class takes a trip to a Willy Wonka-type chocolate factory, but with Marilyn Manson taking on Wonka’s role of owner/inventor/etc. (like in the video for his song “Dope Hat”). He gives us a tour, and several kids sneak off and/or disobey his rules just like in Willy Wonka, but instead of ironic punishments, Manson just flat-out kills the kids then and there. Later on, me and my friend, out of fear of being found out by our families, started hacking the fetish websites we visited regularly and temporarily taking them offline so that our families wouldn’t see them if they went though our ‘favorites’ on our computers that got left at our respective homes. We started hanging out with this drug-head who sold to Burroughs, but at one point, he steals some ideas that my friend and I had written. So, we go to his house late at night and snuck in. There was a “Star Wars Party” going on; in each room there were some absurdly massive female fans cosplaying as Jabba the Hutt. Guys would watch a Star Wars movie in each room while smoking opium (and/or drinking booze and taking all kinds of other drugs) and having threesomes with the girls. The guys would progress from room to room, with the goal to watch all six movies in a row without passing out or dying from the drugs. My friend had been to one of these parties before, so he knew exactly where to sneak and at which times to stop and hide. We found the writer’s computer and smashed it. Then, we decided to stick around and join the party. We left as the sun was rising, and went home. Then, I ‘woke up’ in my ‘real’ house, and found a package on my counter. I opened it to find a DVD. I watched it, and it was camcorder footage of the Terminator destroying me and my friend’s mansion and killing us both.

The sinister man working at the music store in the mall (he suspiciously resembles Rasputin) informs me that I can trade in souls for store credit. To test this, I sell him the soul of a stray dog, which is worth $20. I get psyched, so I start buying the souls of people I don’t like (kind of like that episode of The Simpsons – they decide to humor me, so they sell me something to symbolize their soul – only it turns out that they really have lost their soul) and buying tons of stuff from the store.

I’m living in the town from Mississippi Burning, and after having to watch all of the disturbing racism for all my life, I become a masked vigilante and kick some Klansman ass. At one point, I pose as a Klan member so I can get into the local leader’s house and kill him. I’m eating dinner at his house, and afterwards, he takes me to his basement, where he wants me to participate in Klan rites of passage, involving bizarre sexual acts with a headless (yet still living) chicken and a black girl who he has chained in his basement and tortured. As soon as I see the girl, I grab the headless chicken and beat the Klan guy to death with it. I set the girl free, and she becomes my sidekick. We travel the world as a superhero team, at one point going back in time to beat the shit out of Hitler and stop the holocaust. While we’re doing this, we create a tear in the space-time continuum, which throws the whole universe into a tizzy, causing reality itself to totally fuck up. The result is a world where Ronald McDonald is the one behind the holocaust, but instead of going after Jewish people and homosexuals, Ronald’s targets are lazy, obnoxious Americans, and his plan for the final solution involves catapulting them into a giant rubber kiddie pool and filling it with tar and concrete.

That's all for now, boils and ghouls! Ehehehehehe! Tune in next time for more terrifying tales of torment from the nefarious, nihilistic nightmare that is my subconscious!

David Lynch's "A Goofy Movie"

This is my favorite stupid YouTube vid, by far...



As a huge Lynch fan and probably the only person in the world who actually liked A Goofy Movie, hats off to the dude who made this.

The Agonizing Bliss of the Angry Coconut

This is the short film I shot and lovingly stitched together over the course of a day for my art class midterm project (which I got an A on - woohoo!).

It's not supposed to be good. It's not supposed to be poignant. It's meant as a stream-of-consciousness type thing, with me filming whatever imagery and composing whatever annoying music came to mind first. It's sort of a loving, ameteurish piss-take on the pretentious art flicks that I adore so much.

Every aspect was handmade to be as irritating as possible, because here at Eternal Headache, we care. So, enjoy!

One of the most awesomely bizarre things I've ever seen...

...yeah. There have been some weird crossovers before (I can't be the only one who remembers the Sonic the Hedgehog/Image Comics crossover where Sonic and his pals team up with the likes of Savage Dragon and The Maxx, and in a particularly disappointing scene, Knuckles spends exactly one panel arguing with Spawn), but none of them have ever reached the pure what-the-fuck level of this. It's something that would just fail to work on every fundamental level (have we ever even seen guns in Archie?), and that is where the genius lies. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during the meetings where they discussed this.

Soon, I hope to acquire this gem and maybe do a breakdown/review-thing on here. Until then, however, we can only speculate... At least/too bad this isn't the Garth Ennis version of ol' Frank...

Film Review - "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" (1992)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

1992

David Lynch

This movie is a real mess. Not in a bad way; I really like it. But… Damn, is it frustrating. See, the Twin Peaks TV series is probably my favorite TV show, period. When I finished it up, I was excited about seeing the movie; I was expecting a resolution to the cliffhanger that the show left us at, plus a proper venue for some trademark grotesque Lynch weirdness. Well, we got one of those things in an overabundance, and it’s not the first one.
This is a prequel to the television series. The movie begins on a murder several months prior to Laura Palmer’s. The significance? It involves Bob and the Black Lodge, and therefore the circumstances, MO, and so on of Laura’s death are practically identical, which is why Cooper was sent to Twin Peaks; it is, as Gordon Cole designates it, a ‘blue rose case’, which is theorized to mean something involving the supernatural. So anyway, we start with Gordon Cole (God, I love that guy – David Lynch is a hilarious actor, and he was probably my favorite character of the show) sending two agents down to a different small town to investigate this other murder. These two agents are played by Chris Isaac and Kiefer Sutherland, and they’re pretty good at getting down the buddy-cop dynamic, given their minimal screentime. With these guys, things are pretty straightforwardly like an episode of the show, just with a few extra sprinkles of weirdness here and there. Then, we go to the FBI offices, and in addition to seeing more of Gordon, we check in on Cooper (who, despite being the main protagonist of the show, is completely absent from the film outside of this one scene) and my favorite pacifistic asshole, Albert Rosenfeld. Here, we have one of the most baffling events in the movie: a long-missing FBI agent just walks into Gordon’s office, and starts speaking, extremely cryptically, about where he was, and warning Cooper. Apparently, he’s been trapped in the Black Lodge, just as Cooper is in the final episode of the series. Then, the agent just disappears into thin air. This small part is played, with a great deal of creepiness, by David Bowie. After an oddly specific dream-based prediction by Cooper, we travel to Twin Peaks, where we spend the rest of the film watching the final days in the life of Laura Palmer.
This movie completely and utterly failed in the box office (even famously drawing booings and en masse walkouts at its premiere), for several reasons. First, unlike most TV-to-film adaptations, there is no space in the audience for newcomers; if you’ve never seen the show, then to say you’re up shit creek is an understatement (heck, even if you’ve just finished watching the entire show, you’re still up shit creek – and the movie came out well over a year after the show ended, too, so it wasn’t exactly fresh on the general public’s mind). Second, there were a lot of people who loved the show, but were new to Lynch. They enjoyed the quirkiness of the show, and how it handled dark subject matter and still had a wonderfully bright-eyed, lighthearted sense of humor about it. The movie is totally different; the only laughs are the awkward chuckles elicited by Lynch’s trademark awkward ‘what the fuck’ moments, and other than that, the movie is completely, utterly hopeless and depressing. It’s just plain dark. Adding to this, while the show was pretty straightforward, only getting into the abstract stuff with Bob and the Black Lodge, the movie is more along the lines (which are barely visible and, upon closer inspection, are actually a flaming bowl of dog biscuits and a record of the soundtrack to Flashdance) of Eraserhead or Lost Highway – it really fucks your head, and doesn’t even use lube. In fact, having seen all of Lynch’s feature films, I can say that this is probably the most disturbing of the bunch; this is one of those few movies that actually scared me and rekindled my fear of the dark. So, with all of that in mind, it’s no wonder why the general moviegoing public took a large, collective shit on this movie, and the critics followed suit.
This is actually one of my favorite films from everyone’s favorite crazy-haired mental ward escapee. We get to see a whole lot more of the Black Lodge and its residents, and they’re scary as hell. Despite being a prequel, we get to see some time-warped Cooper and Annie Blackburn, warning Laura in her dreams, which is cool. Without network restraints, the movie gets to go balls-out, and it mostly works – demon-possessed Leland is really fucking scary, and I was effected by it ever-so-slightly worse because I have a good friend who resembles Laura in every possible way, and it just pains me to envision these horrible things happening to her. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see all that many characters from the show – where are Pete, Josie, Ben, Audrey, Jerry, Blackie, The General, the whole Twin Peaks police force, and most of the other characters? Even the Log Lady, who one would have expected Lynch to make great use of in the movie, only has one line and about twenty seconds of screentime (granted, it’s a pivotal moment, but it’s still short). It also pisses me off that Leo Johnson is so watered down from the way he was in the series. He was a truly hate-able antagonist in the show; he was a wife-beating, teenage-girl-raping, motherfucking motherfucker, and I applauded when he got his brains blown across the room in the show (and I also thought it was a terrible move when they opted for a stereotypical moustache-twirling villain in Windom Earle afterwards, and got the even worse idea of creating ‘Franken-Leo’ as his obligatory brainless henchman). Here, it just seems like they… I dunno, ‘pussified’ him – he’s almost comic relief here. It’s not like he’s gonna upstage Bob as the villain of the movie, no matter how evil they make him… Whatever, though. It’s great to see a lot more of The Arm… I swear, that man scares the fuck out of me. Mike is a weird old (well-meaning) bastard, as always, and he also gets developed a lot more in this movie as the antithesis of Bob.
The imagery in this movie is great, but even better are the drawn-out, disturbing scenes with Leland and Laura, which add to the dark mood and creepy, squirmy feeling that’s there for the whole movie and makes you feel like you need a shower afterwards.
This is one of those movies where I’m pretty much the only person who liked it, and didn’t just like it, but loved it. However, in this rare occasion, I can very plainly recognize what made others hate it so much. That said, it’s still a fantastic movie, and one of the best Lynch films (and also serving as a sort of bridge between the 80’s Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart style, and the more sleek late 90’s/early 2000’s style from Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire). I recommend it, but only (and ONLY) if you’ve seen every single episode of the series beforehand. So… What are you waiting for? Go for it!

RATING: 10/10

Throbbing Gristle

Throbbing Gristle, how I love thee. Is it because you make good music? Not necessarily. Granted, some of it is just plain good music, but the reasons I have for loving and being inspired by this band are oftentimes misunderstood.

EXHIBIT A: "Hamburger Lady"
This song... Jesus Christ, this song scared the crap out of me, and it still does. This terrifying sound experiment stands as probably the scariest piece of media I have ever been exposed to. I still remember the first time I heard it - I was high, listening in total darkness, and I actually broke down crying because this song hit me so hard. It's based on a letter one of the band members got from a friend who was a hospital orderly or something;

"...by far the worst is the Hamburger Lady, and because of the shortage right now of 'qualified technicians', e.g. technicians who can work with her and keep their last meal down, Screwloose Lauritzen and I have been alternating nights with her, unrelievedly. If you put a 250-lb meatloaf in the oven and then burned it and then followed that by propping it up on a potty-chair to greet you at 11pm each night, you would have some description of these past two weeks. Which is to say the worst I seen since Viet napalms. When somebody tells you that there is a level of pain beyond which the human mind cannot retain consciousness, please tell them to write to me. In point of fact this lady has not slept more than 3-5 minutes at a stretch since she came to us - that was over two weeks ago and, thanks to medical advances, there is no end in sight; from the waist up everything is burned off, ears, nose, etc. - lower half is untouched and that, I guess, is what keeps her alive. I took one guy in to help me change tubes and he did alright, that is alright till he came out, then he spotted one of the burn nurses (pleasant smiling zombies) eating a can of chili-mac at the desk, and that did it: he flashed on the carpet. It's fucking insane is what it is."

Take a creepy, robotic reading of parts of the letter in cut-up fashion, mutilated by a vocoder and set against a hideous, roaring atmosphere that sounds like the auditory personification of pain, and you get a scary fucking song.



EXHIBIT B: Wreckers of Civilization
I don't like punk music. I've never liked punk music. I don't know why, but it never clicked with me, even though I like the idea of sonic anarchy. Throbbing Gristle basically holds the same ideals as punk, but the sound is more to my liking - computerized, experimental, glitchy. The fact that none of the members of the band had any kind of experience with music in any way, shape or form (aside from vocalist Genesis P-Orridge doing some avant-garde stuff in the past) and that their shows were almost entirely improvised intrigues me. For reasons such as these, their output is really kinda split down the middle - some of it is genuinely good, trippy, experimental proto-industrial. The other half of it is so profoundly god-awful that it's like some beautiful train wreck that people have gathered around because the charred remains have melted into the shape of the Virgin Mary - it's unbearable, and an extremely important development in the ideals of music and the artist-consumer relationship because of it. It's really something that must be heard to be believed.

EXHIBIT C: Influence
The band has had a massive influence despite its relative obscurity. TG has most notably been an influence on Skinny Puppy, who themselves would go on to pretty much invent 'industrial' as it is currently known (or rather, refine the sound that came from many differing sources). After breaking up, the band splintered into several, including Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil. Coil was perhaps one of the most influential electronic/ambient bands out there, with some of the more notable followers including Aphex Twin and Nine Inch Nails, both of whom would go on to collaborate with Coil. Through that small web, an enormous trickle-down effect (or in this case, fuckin' waterfall) has come into play, with TG at the top of it all.

I could go on for quite a bit longer, but to cut out the faux-intellectualism for a minute, I'll state some basic opinion: I adore TG's output from their '77 debut up to '79, but after that they kinda went on a decline until the breakup. However, they've recently gotten back together, and their 2007 reunion album is one of, if not the strongest piece of production they've released thus far. Frankly, I can't wait for what comes next.