Give Me Moore! A Documentary Round-up
THE MINDSCAPE OF ALAN MOORE
“It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.”
Shadowsnake Films’ double-DVD set of the Moore documentary was a long time in gestation and teased fans with a long delayed delivery date, but I’m pleased to say it’s still worth the wait. Beautifully packaged, the set delights the eye even before you slip the first disc into your player. Director DeZ Vylenz manages to capture both Moore’s irascibility as an artist and iconoclast, and his mesmeric abilities as a performer. “In my work as an author, I traffic in fiction; I do not traffic in lies,” Moore announces at the start, striking a note of both precision and defiance. Those familiar with his work, from the ground-breaking V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN to the more personal magical workings, expect nothing less.
Vylenz wisely makes Moore’s visage the center of the film, surrounded alternately by images of London and Northampton, surrealist imagery, the occasional brief vignette from his stories as well as art from his comics—all of it guided by the images of the Thoth tarot deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris from interpretations made by Aleister Crowley (a very influential figure for Moore). The very first card laid is The Universe, a symbol of “the essence of question itself” and of synthesis. Moore begins with autobiographical details of his early years in Northampton, the birthplace to which he remains inextricably bound, to the point of giving its 6000-year history in his novel VOICE OF THE FIRE. But even with his own history, Moore makes connections beyond the personal, tying his experiences to the broader history of the town, connecting his desire for escape from that “monochromatic world” with the magic of mythology and comic books—it was they which allowed him to transcend and escape his origins. At that point, Northampton became not a prison, but a key.
That ability to transcend characterizes so much of Moore’s work, whether it is reinventing the superhero, reinvigorating Jack the Ripper or conveying the history of Western magic in easy-to-digest episodes. What keeps the film from becoming a monumental ego-trip is Moore’s mordant humor, unflinching observation and genuine thoughtfulness. The card of the Fool signals the start of his life as a comics writer, which comes after realizing his inability to draw well enough “or fast enough” to ever make his mark as an artist. His winning awards in Britain impressed DC, but he claims that was only because the comics megalith didn’t realize the awards were “voted for by 30 people in anoraks with dreadful social lives.” The self-deprecation and the straightforward language allow Moore to slip easily between his discussion of comics and those of more esoteric topics. He runs through his major works, touching on their broader topics such as the overstated link between comics and film, which Moore suggests leads to too many comics simply becoming “films that do not move” and thus led him to make comics that are unfilmable (as adaptations of his comics to date seem to bear out).
The card of the Magus, not too surprisingly, opens the section on magic. Moore briefly tells the oft-repeated story of taking up magic on his 40th birthday (in lieu of a midlife crisis), focusing on magic as “a science of language” which has proved so fruitful for his writing, although he points out the importance of the built-in caveat that “you have to be very careful of what you say.” For many comics fans, this aspect of Moore’s work may have proved outré, but he conveys his experiences both vividly and straightforwardly. Art is magic, he explains, linking it to Dion Fortune’s famous edict, the changing of consciousness at will. However, Moore believes that the great pity of our age is that the only artists using this ability by and large are those in advertising (George Spiggot was right) who use the art not to awaken us, but to anesthetize us. The sheer weight of information itself, however, Moore believes will lead to a transformation of culture, a change he describes metaphorically as moving from a liquid state to steam.
Vylenz and the folks at Shadowsnake have done a terrific job with the whole package, particularly with the inclusion of interviews with some of the artists with whom Moore has worked closely, including his now wife, Melinda Gebbie (LOST GIRLS), Dave Gibbons (WATCHMEN), David Lloyd (V FOR VENDETTA), Kevin O’Neill (LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN) and Jose Villarubia (PROMETHEA, MIRROR OF LOVE). While the interviews don’t have the same visual impact as the film, they bring valuable insights into the collaborative process of making comics. It’s a pity that there isn’t a complete commentary from Surinam-born director Vylenz, whose interview and essay in the booklet show has a great deal to say about both comics and shamanism, but it’s a minor quibble. I look forward to more projects from Shadowsnake, particularly in forthcoming parts of the Shamanautical series.
—K. A. LaityCRAZY LEGS CONTI: ZEN AND THE ART OF COMPETITIVE EATING
There can be a madness to eating.
“Apparently,” wrote Van Gogh, referring to the ever-increasing attacks he suffered toward the end of his life, “I eat dirt.” Turns out it was worse than that. He would ingest whole tubes of his own paint.
Equally disturbing, Jason Conti, a/k/a “Crazy Legs” Conti, eats three sticks of plain old butter right in a row which even he admits is just plain gross. That's when he's not eating as many chicken wings, oysters counted by the dozen and the zenith of the professional competitive eater—hot dogs, preferably as made by Nathan's of Coney Island, NY on the Fourth of July.
Conti, a fan of professional contest eating, spends the year covered by this documentary attempting to join the ranks of the professional eating crowd. This movie covers all of the professional eating “greats” through many scenes of gluttonous food-shoving accompanied by copious amounts of what I suppose would be called “professional-grade” belching. (Yes, there's a burp montage). Surprisingly, there's not much vomiting or as the governing league describes it in an uncharacteristically delicate way: “the urge contrary to swallowing.” The no barfing rule is only in effect during the contest. After the winner is declared, participants are free to hurl.
Some may find the quest to become a professionally-ranked competitive eater pathetic. Some may find it inspiring. Nevertheless, it's difficult to discern what the filmmakers thought of it. One clue: a brief Internet search reveals one of the co-directors to have worked on MIAMI INK, the tattooing show. Conti himself has just gotten out of film production and is working as a window-washer and nude art class model as the film begins. So it's hard to tell how serious this film is. Here's a former film-production guy who chooses to do something in a subculture being filmed by fellow film-production folks who do productions on subcultures. Sometimes Conti comes off as earnest in his ambition to eat like a pro, but never terribly so. It remains to be seen if this competitive spirit will continue for him long after the cameras stop rolling. The film employs every cheesy sports documentary cliché and sometimes seems like one episode in a continuing reality show series on either competitive eating or maybe just purposefully odd young New Yorkers.
There is no denying that Crazy Legs Conti is a winning fellow, and it's always entertaining to see a documentary about some bizarre sub-ulture you never knew existed and the incredible, if pointless things we do to test our endurance whether it be shoving absurd amounts of food down our gullets like some carnival geek or just deciding to be the geek’s audience.
—Jim RandolphMIDNIGHT MOVIES: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTREAM
Between 1970 and 1977 six low budget films shown at midnight transformed the way we make and watch movies…
At least that’s the claim of this engaging documentary.
The Midnight Movie began as an American phenomena in 1970 with Jodorowsky’s surreal, metaphysical, pseudo-spaghetti western EL TOPO. Ultraviolent, sexually explicit, yet sensual and spiritual (if not downright mystifying and open to many levels of interpretation), EL TOPO was nothing more than a potential art house oddity. But after seeing a screening of the film at the Museum of Modern Art, Elgin Theater owner Ben Barenholtz decided to take a gamble and screen the movie at midnights in his downtown NYC cinema. Embraced by the counterculture and fueled by a haze of pot and other substances, the film found favor with jaded hippies, would-be revolutionaries, self-proclaimed avant garde-ists and bored youth seeking the Next High. Within weeks the word had hit the street and EL TOPO became a (literally overnight) sensation.
Screening movies at midnight was not a new idea: as critics J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum state in their book MIDNIGHT MOVIES (Harper & Row, 1983), the first serious study of this cinematic subculture, enterprising movie theater owners had previously discovered they could generate extra box office coin by programming late-night double features, “mainly diverse kinds of marginal exploitation fare, ideal for Halloween spook-a-thons or rowdy New Year’s Eve bacchanals…” As such, “ a distinctive strain of subterranean movie-going had developed, after hours and under wraps.” (Both Hoberman and Rosenbaum are interviewed in the documentary).
EL TOPO, however, created a communal experience unlike any that had come before. As Robert Shaye, co-CEO of New Line Cinema, says in the documentary: “the excitement came not only from the film but the audience.” Or as Jodorowsky says, “it was like a ceremony.” (Especially if you were doped up to the eyeballs or getting a contact high off the guy sitting next to you’s joint.)
EL TOPO and Barenholtz opened a door through which counterculture celebrities stepped inside along with the unwashed hoi poloi: Warhol and his Factory minions and other NYC Hipsters…and John and Oko, who subsequently curtailed the film’s midnight success when Lennon insisted manager/impresario/business man Allen B. Klein buy up the rights to the movie (for what happened next, see the documentary). But EL TOPO’s success after hours convinced other small distributors like New Line that there was a market for other, problematical, movies that didn’t fit the traditional exhibition mode.
MIDNIGHT MOVIES: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTREAM traces the history of this phenomena via six significant films that found cult followings after the witching hour: EL TOPO, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, PINK FLMINGOS, the breakout reggae feature THE HARDER THEY COME, that old chestnut THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (the ultimate midnight movie) and David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD, a film which defies classification other than “Lynchian.”
Seeking something that would fill the void after Lennon’s unwitting sabotage of EL TOPO, the ever-savvy Shaye and New Line found some measure of success by putting out the 1930s “dope scare film” TELL YOUR CHILDREN (1936) retitled as REEFER MADNESS, but it wasn’t until they were approached by a skinny gay hippie from Baltimore that New Line hit the gold mine.
PINK FLAMINGOS was—and still is—one of the most transgressive, taboo-breaking, totally demented movies ever made and had stoner audiences laughing themselves hoarse before throwing up at the climactic dogshit-eating scene. Thanks to John Waters and transvestite Divine, movies would never be the same again…
As written and directed by Stuart Samuels, this documentary, which originally screened on a Canadian cable channel, is crammed full of clips, archive footage and interviews with the players—not just the directors but with exhibitors, critics—and great behind-the-scenes footage. Waters, ever the entertainer, comes out with the best quotable lines (“if somebody vomits during one of my movies, it’s like a standing ovation.”)
While Waters’ early works are still transgressive and shocking—although those shocks are diminished watching them at home, even on a big screen TV—it is disturbing to realize the cultural taboo-breaking and aesthetics of these movies and others of their ilk have been absorbed, Blob-like, into the mainstream. JAWS is nothing more than a slick monster movie; STAR WARS is the old FLASH GORDON serials dressed up in new clothes; and the violence that shocked audiences in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s in films like THE WILD BUNCH, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, DIRTY HARRY, THE DEVILS (all of which were studio pictures) is so passé that it takes an ultraviolent video game like GRAND THEFT AUTO for the midnight movie generation (most of whom are parents now) to sit up and take notice. But here’s where this documentary’s premise—and subheading—falls apart: the six films focused on have never truly found mainstream audience favor, even among Generations X and Y. Nor has another filmmaker managed to capture the essence of any of the movies here. ERASERHEAD is unlike any movie ever made. A remake of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW? I don’t think so. EL TOPO? Some have tried to capture the wild vision as created by Jodorowsky, but not even the filmmaker himself has come close to regaining the delirium of that film.
Sadly, video killed the midnight movie experience, but for those of us who were there (I used to program late-night double bills as a teenager—there was nothing like watching stoned hippies rush to the bathroom during FLAMINGOS screenings or watching people freak out when they saw ERASERHEAD for the first time), this doc is a wonderful slice of nostalgia. For those of you who weren’t there, this is a crash course in what you missed. Essential viewing.
—Philip Nutman 
