Okay I like quirky stylish movies as much as anyone else, but found the style over substance of Repo Man diverting but… This had got to be the most self-indulgent, “fuck you” movies ever made. Repo Man is quite visually stunning, a bit of goth rock opera drenched in blood, drugs, and lots and lots of beating, pulsating body parts and steaming intestines. In fact the plot is fairly traditional, family betrayal, innocence vs. evil, lies and cover-ups, diverging and converging plotlines. It’s probably one of the darkest movies you’ll ever see (I mean literally) the whole movie is dingy shadows and back alleys, sordid nightclubs and darkened secret rooms.
There is some plot, kind of, most of the main characters have been trapped in this spiral of revenge and betrayal, very operatic, out of it all came a child though, Shilo, and now that she’s pretty much all grown up and everything about to come full circle. There are incidentally some redeeming themes a send up of consumerism, vanity, and the price we’re willing to pay for looking good. Paris Hilton has a part as the King/CEO’s daughter, a drug and plastic surgery addict. Actually Paris is fairly harmless in the part, her vapid self-centeredness, and shallowness a nice bit of type casting.
The company (Genco) has come to power after the world faces an epidemic of organ failures (never really explained) and Genco is more than happy to provide new ones at a price, but fall behind on a payment and the Repo Man is liable to track you down and hack out your defaulted organs. But not stopping at replacement organs, Genco has created a world where people can get plastic surgery at the drop of a hat, new addictive and expensive drugs allow you to slip on a new face, as easily as putting on makeup.
I kept wondering though how did they get this cast? Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag, Paul Sorvino as the corrupt King/CEO, did these people really know what they were signing up for? One blessing for Sarah Brightman is that under her heavy makeup and trippy contact lenses you don’t even recognize her. Paul Sorvino doesn’t get off so easy, he’s definitely playing a typical mobster and indulging his flair for opera – I hope he got a good paycheck. Having such a good cast though for this film just gives it a sense of being even more a vanity production than it probably is, but it makes you wonder.
The person who carries the move though is Anthony Head, who most would remember from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Rupert Giles the Watcher/Librarian. He’s the title character and father of Shilo, he used to be friends with the King/CEO who was about to get married until his wife met his friend then she dumped him for the new guy. There’s another wedding, but it soon goes tragic when the ex slips some poison into the brides medicine so that the new husband/ex friend believes he’s killed her. He has to slice open his wife, sacrificing her life to save the baby. The King/CEO then guilt trips him into working as his Repo Man. So the Repo Man lives this double life killing people and ripping out innards by night and being an overprotective smothering father by day. He seems torn, but gets off on it all a bit too much. To top it all off there’s blind Mag, ex-best friend of the bride, who was given new eyes by Genco, who now owns her soul. She never knew about Shilo, and feels bad since she was supposed to look after her and be her god mother. When Blind Mag decides to retire, the CEO/King decides to execute the fine print and call out his Repo Man to take back the eyes. Blind Mag rips them out herself on stage during the nightly “Genetic Opera” and is still killed.
I won’t give away the ending here -- but it’s unsatisfying.
This movie owes a LOT to Rocky Horror picture show, the sense of sexually charged high style, the bawdy rock music driving the action. Even though it’s supposed to be dealing with events that affect the globe, it feels claustrophobic (it was a play first). Even the final climatic scenes in the Genetic Opera are borrowed heavily from the final theater scenes in Rocky. This movie really wants to be this generations Rocky Horror. But the problem with cult movies is that they’re not made, but just happen. But to delve too much into the movie is to give it substance that isn’t really there.
The real star of this movie is death, blood and guts. People are often casually dispatched just to give the actors some blood and guts to role around in. There’s a fondness for sticky gooey organs, and removing them while people are still alive. It’s so desensitizing though and so over the top you soon get used to it. When you get to the final daughter/father scene at the end, you almost don’t even realize they’re covered in blood and guts in a sea of gore. As an attempt at some sort of street cred, it uses several graphic novel devices, especially in flashbacks to tell back stories. It’s almost as if they’re trying to convince you that it was actually based on something. There was a play first, and perhaps the obvious artifice of the stage gave it some balance, but the movie is unrelenting in being gritty and real – but totally unbelievable.
There is some talent behind the camera, the Director is Darren Bousman from the Saw series, but where this sort of thing works as hyperrealism, it gets a bit much as musical goth dinner theater.
Overall though worth seeing just as a cultural event, and the yuck factor, a big bonus though too is getting to see Paris Hilton embarrass herself as a singer on stage, when her face falls off in the middle of her song.
Actually this musical number by Sarah Brightman is a highlight:
Here’s a feel for the whole movie:
... and yes that is Joan Jet, she does a cameo on one of the numbers.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Cultural Icons and Phone Sex
It was one of those evenings,
Socialites with lap dogs,
All red wine and crackers.
A noted cultural icon,
Against a museum timeline.
A modern clear plexi podium
Professional lighting and sound
It was ultimate intown urban chic.
Cameras recording for prosperity
The usual suspects on the scene.
Then book signings and niceties.
A new signed book for my
“When I can get to” it pile.
But I was Achilles dipped in
A river of cultured civility
And now my heel itches.
Once in my car I was tempted.
Bookstore or bathhouse?
Needing some antidote,
Some sleaziness some sin,
To balance it all out.
All this refinement and culture
Too rich, needing something
To dirty my palate.
I settled for phone sex,
Felt much better. All in all;
It had been a very good evening.
Socialites with lap dogs,
All red wine and crackers.
A noted cultural icon,
Against a museum timeline.
A modern clear plexi podium
Professional lighting and sound
It was ultimate intown urban chic.
Cameras recording for prosperity
The usual suspects on the scene.
Then book signings and niceties.
A new signed book for my
“When I can get to” it pile.
But I was Achilles dipped in
A river of cultured civility
And now my heel itches.
Once in my car I was tempted.
Bookstore or bathhouse?
Needing some antidote,
Some sleaziness some sin,
To balance it all out.
All this refinement and culture
Too rich, needing something
To dirty my palate.
I settled for phone sex,
Felt much better. All in all;
It had been a very good evening.
Good Sex
I was all set for rough sex
Sweaty bodies and poppers
“Yeah baby” and “Yes Sir.”
Then you flashed that smile,
Those sparks lit your eyes, and
Suddenly I was all school boy,
All caresses and wet kisses,
Sex became suddenly
All about your face
Watching your reactions
Getting you to smile again.
Swimming into each others eyes
A long slow summer swim
In warm deep waters.
Sweaty bodies and poppers
“Yeah baby” and “Yes Sir.”
Then you flashed that smile,
Those sparks lit your eyes, and
Suddenly I was all school boy,
All caresses and wet kisses,
Sex became suddenly
All about your face
Watching your reactions
Getting you to smile again.
Swimming into each others eyes
A long slow summer swim
In warm deep waters.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
I-95, Kenly NC
A new poem from my "Goldleaf" series, growing up in the tobacco belt in NC.
+++++
I-95 Kenly, NC
Even as a boy without a license
Barely seeing over the dashboard,
I knew my mother never understood
How to properly use the interstate.
She’d pull down the long ramp,
Then obeying some invisible sign,
Come to a full dead stop, look both ways
Then pull out when the coast was clear.
Maybe I could tell it was all wrong
By her agitation and anxiety,
Or maybe the tell was in horns blowing,
Or the Screeching tires behind us.
The interstate was new back then,
We’d gone from rural dirt roads
To gooey asphalt, pavement and concrete;
To these highways known only by numbers.
My Mom was intimidated by the speeds
The sheer size and scope of it all,
The feeling these roads somehow belonged
Only to vacationers and rough truck drivers.
I remember getting my hands on a map:
DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, to New York;
Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, to New Orleans;
Nashville, Memphis all the way to L.A.
While other boys traced fingers over
Daddy’s forbidden busty centerfolds
I traced my escape route, having faith in the
String of unseen cities like rosary beads.
When I could drive, despite mother’s cautions
I accelerated to merge, itchy for speed
Threw myself onto the interstate, cause
These things, these things can take you places.
+++++
I-95 Kenly, NC
Even as a boy without a license
Barely seeing over the dashboard,
I knew my mother never understood
How to properly use the interstate.
She’d pull down the long ramp,
Then obeying some invisible sign,
Come to a full dead stop, look both ways
Then pull out when the coast was clear.
Maybe I could tell it was all wrong
By her agitation and anxiety,
Or maybe the tell was in horns blowing,
Or the Screeching tires behind us.
The interstate was new back then,
We’d gone from rural dirt roads
To gooey asphalt, pavement and concrete;
To these highways known only by numbers.
My Mom was intimidated by the speeds
The sheer size and scope of it all,
The feeling these roads somehow belonged
Only to vacationers and rough truck drivers.
I remember getting my hands on a map:
DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, to New York;
Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, to New Orleans;
Nashville, Memphis all the way to L.A.
While other boys traced fingers over
Daddy’s forbidden busty centerfolds
I traced my escape route, having faith in the
String of unseen cities like rosary beads.
When I could drive, despite mother’s cautions
I accelerated to merge, itchy for speed
Threw myself onto the interstate, cause
These things, these things can take you places.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Hope Lost and Found
You may have noticed that for someone so political my blog has been quiet since the election of Barack Obama. It's something I've had to really wrap my head around and work through.
Here's why...
+++
President Elect Obama –
It’s been some time now since the election, soon November will have come and gone. I’m a writer and poet from Atlanta Georgia, so had often written about everything working up to the election. I’m very much a son of the South and have often written on race relations and growing up in a conservative, rural, southern Baptist family in North Carolina. A family where casual racism and bigotry were so ingrained in our history and upbringing as to be invisible in plain sight. No one saw or realized its impact, realized the lessening of humanity it inflicted on both sides.
In past months, I’d written a lot on hope and change. I wrote about standing in line for early voting for hours to make sure my vote counted, how everyone in line regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation had bonded in this hopefulness of a new day in the United States. I still pray now that that day is upon us.
However, after the election, I found that I could not bring myself to write about this hope, this new day. For with the news of your win, also came the news of the passing of Proposition Eight in California and the passage of other anti-gay laws across the country. So while election day delivered so poignantly on your promise of hope and change it also delivered a cold hard slap in the face to members of the LGBT community. In California a persecuted group won the civil right to marry, then had it taken away. They celebrated the wins, the vows, celebrated with family and friends, only to have their happiness come crashing down around them.
I’m sure you’ve seen the protests around the country, the anger, the commitment, the renewed resolve of our community. Forgive us if in your moment of glory and celebration, of needing to concentrate on so many dire crises and issues that plague our country, forgive us if you have a large constituency that is really, really pissed off. For some of us the honeymoon from this election was much too short lived, we were somehow left outside of the big reception.
Many in the LGBT community would like to blame the African-American community for voting in large numbers against our civil rights. We thought we would have more sympathy. It is more disappointment than anger that we feel, a disappointment that there is such a lack of understanding. I like to write letters to the editors here at our local Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and years ago when the great Hosea Williams had made some unfortunate off-handed casual comments about the gay rights movement, I wrote a letter to the AJC basically saying that he just “didn’t get it”. To his credit he actually called me at work the day after my letter appeared, called me at my office, I was as shocked as anyone when the president of our company who had just happened to have answered the phone handed it to me and said that “Hosea Williams wants to talk to you”. I think his intention was to call me to the carpet, he went right into his stock speech on his years in the service of civil rights, and how he’d worked tirelessly for civil rights, and done this and that. That some of his best friends were gay, but there was also a measure of condemnation. I think to him I was some privileged young white boy with a good job that had dared to question his credentials. I finally stopped him and had to ask him a simple question. “Mr. Williams, do you know where I’m having to talk to you from? I’ve had to pull the phone into our supply closet, I’m having to talk to you in whispers, my boss is going to ask me just what Hosea Williams was calling me for – and I’m going to have to lie to his face, so I don’t face losing my job.” That seemed to make an impression, and we actually had a serious and meaningful conversation after that, I’ll always remember that phone call.
There are differences between our communities. Blacks literally wear their minority status on their sleeves, there’s no way to hide from it, no way to escape it. LGBT people are often an invisible minority it’s easy for us to blend in, to disappear, to dance around the details – aren’t we lucky. That’s something we have to struggle with and work on within our own community. But though our minority statuses are based largely (but not totally) on how we look vs. who we love, we still share many of the same stigmas, the same discrimination, the same violence, the same dehumanization by the majority. Senator Obama, you’ve shared so much about your family and upbringing, what positive reinforcements you received, what encouragements, God bless you and your family. Now I ask you to imagine that you weren’t so lucky, that you were born white, in a “typical” American household. That there was always that tone and hint of disdain whenever your family talked about the black family down the street. That at school, it was much less subtle, friends beating up black kids, calling them names. You may have even thrown a punch just to show you were one of the guys. That you saw the stereotypes and prejudices even on TV and in the movies with no filters or explanations. Then imagine that you’d always felt different, always apart. Imagine that one day you’re careless and fall and scrape your knee to find a darker pigment underneath, that you were showering and found the white rubbing off. You’d be ashamed, wear long sleeves, because all you’ve ever been taught is that being black was wrong and shameful. Welcome Senator Obama to every gay and lesbian teen’s nightmare. We are taught by our own families to hate ourselves, and turned away for who we are. We are despised second class citizens even among our own families and communities. Thank god we have been able to form our own families in exile, our own communities for support, our own loves and commitments – This Senator Obama is why marriage is so important to us.
In thinking about why it’s taken so long for me to write about this past election. I finally realized after the Proposition 8 protests and vigils here in Atlanta, I had become afraid to hope. Hope is a wonderful, marvelous thing, but can be a sharp double-edged sword. It’s like love, when we give it freely and get burned we get gun shy, we become afraid to hope. So forgive us as you take on the daunting duties of the Presidency, if one of your key support groups seems a little reserved, a little less than forthcoming, with it’s dreams and hopes shining not so bright. You see we’ve been neglected, we’ve been ignored, and we had even gotten used to that. But then California laid this dazzling jewel of a dream in the palms of our hands and we held it all too briefly before it was snatched away. We have lived with dreams deferred and dreams denied so long we’re used to it. But we had dared to hope, dared to dream of change, held it in our hands and gotten slapped across the face. Nothing wounds so deep the heart as a soaring moment of fragile hope snuffed out as easy as a candle, where once there was light, now only darkness.
Senator Obama, we still hold hope in our hearts, if maybe a little closer more cautiously than before. We still hope that whatever slight ember is left will be awakened and blaze anew. That this jewel of marriage and commitment we so desire will be placed in our hand and shine even more brightly and sweetly for the struggle. That is a promise.
Cleo Creech
Atlanta, GA
Here's why...
+++
President Elect Obama –
It’s been some time now since the election, soon November will have come and gone. I’m a writer and poet from Atlanta Georgia, so had often written about everything working up to the election. I’m very much a son of the South and have often written on race relations and growing up in a conservative, rural, southern Baptist family in North Carolina. A family where casual racism and bigotry were so ingrained in our history and upbringing as to be invisible in plain sight. No one saw or realized its impact, realized the lessening of humanity it inflicted on both sides.
In past months, I’d written a lot on hope and change. I wrote about standing in line for early voting for hours to make sure my vote counted, how everyone in line regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation had bonded in this hopefulness of a new day in the United States. I still pray now that that day is upon us.
However, after the election, I found that I could not bring myself to write about this hope, this new day. For with the news of your win, also came the news of the passing of Proposition Eight in California and the passage of other anti-gay laws across the country. So while election day delivered so poignantly on your promise of hope and change it also delivered a cold hard slap in the face to members of the LGBT community. In California a persecuted group won the civil right to marry, then had it taken away. They celebrated the wins, the vows, celebrated with family and friends, only to have their happiness come crashing down around them.
I’m sure you’ve seen the protests around the country, the anger, the commitment, the renewed resolve of our community. Forgive us if in your moment of glory and celebration, of needing to concentrate on so many dire crises and issues that plague our country, forgive us if you have a large constituency that is really, really pissed off. For some of us the honeymoon from this election was much too short lived, we were somehow left outside of the big reception.
Many in the LGBT community would like to blame the African-American community for voting in large numbers against our civil rights. We thought we would have more sympathy. It is more disappointment than anger that we feel, a disappointment that there is such a lack of understanding. I like to write letters to the editors here at our local Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and years ago when the great Hosea Williams had made some unfortunate off-handed casual comments about the gay rights movement, I wrote a letter to the AJC basically saying that he just “didn’t get it”. To his credit he actually called me at work the day after my letter appeared, called me at my office, I was as shocked as anyone when the president of our company who had just happened to have answered the phone handed it to me and said that “Hosea Williams wants to talk to you”. I think his intention was to call me to the carpet, he went right into his stock speech on his years in the service of civil rights, and how he’d worked tirelessly for civil rights, and done this and that. That some of his best friends were gay, but there was also a measure of condemnation. I think to him I was some privileged young white boy with a good job that had dared to question his credentials. I finally stopped him and had to ask him a simple question. “Mr. Williams, do you know where I’m having to talk to you from? I’ve had to pull the phone into our supply closet, I’m having to talk to you in whispers, my boss is going to ask me just what Hosea Williams was calling me for – and I’m going to have to lie to his face, so I don’t face losing my job.” That seemed to make an impression, and we actually had a serious and meaningful conversation after that, I’ll always remember that phone call.
There are differences between our communities. Blacks literally wear their minority status on their sleeves, there’s no way to hide from it, no way to escape it. LGBT people are often an invisible minority it’s easy for us to blend in, to disappear, to dance around the details – aren’t we lucky. That’s something we have to struggle with and work on within our own community. But though our minority statuses are based largely (but not totally) on how we look vs. who we love, we still share many of the same stigmas, the same discrimination, the same violence, the same dehumanization by the majority. Senator Obama, you’ve shared so much about your family and upbringing, what positive reinforcements you received, what encouragements, God bless you and your family. Now I ask you to imagine that you weren’t so lucky, that you were born white, in a “typical” American household. That there was always that tone and hint of disdain whenever your family talked about the black family down the street. That at school, it was much less subtle, friends beating up black kids, calling them names. You may have even thrown a punch just to show you were one of the guys. That you saw the stereotypes and prejudices even on TV and in the movies with no filters or explanations. Then imagine that you’d always felt different, always apart. Imagine that one day you’re careless and fall and scrape your knee to find a darker pigment underneath, that you were showering and found the white rubbing off. You’d be ashamed, wear long sleeves, because all you’ve ever been taught is that being black was wrong and shameful. Welcome Senator Obama to every gay and lesbian teen’s nightmare. We are taught by our own families to hate ourselves, and turned away for who we are. We are despised second class citizens even among our own families and communities. Thank god we have been able to form our own families in exile, our own communities for support, our own loves and commitments – This Senator Obama is why marriage is so important to us.
In thinking about why it’s taken so long for me to write about this past election. I finally realized after the Proposition 8 protests and vigils here in Atlanta, I had become afraid to hope. Hope is a wonderful, marvelous thing, but can be a sharp double-edged sword. It’s like love, when we give it freely and get burned we get gun shy, we become afraid to hope. So forgive us as you take on the daunting duties of the Presidency, if one of your key support groups seems a little reserved, a little less than forthcoming, with it’s dreams and hopes shining not so bright. You see we’ve been neglected, we’ve been ignored, and we had even gotten used to that. But then California laid this dazzling jewel of a dream in the palms of our hands and we held it all too briefly before it was snatched away. We have lived with dreams deferred and dreams denied so long we’re used to it. But we had dared to hope, dared to dream of change, held it in our hands and gotten slapped across the face. Nothing wounds so deep the heart as a soaring moment of fragile hope snuffed out as easy as a candle, where once there was light, now only darkness.
Senator Obama, we still hold hope in our hearts, if maybe a little closer more cautiously than before. We still hope that whatever slight ember is left will be awakened and blaze anew. That this jewel of marriage and commitment we so desire will be placed in our hand and shine even more brightly and sweetly for the struggle. That is a promise.
Cleo Creech
Atlanta, GA
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