Down with it
A trapped whale, a missing musician and a garage musical
A sampling of selections from the 2003 Downstream Film Festival displays the eternal struggle of aspiring filmmakers: to make something out of next to nothing. The more than 140 documentary, experimental and narrative shorts and feature films to be screened Sept. 12-21 at the 2-year-old film festival show that cash-strapped, would-be filmmakers often have more ambition than resources.
Perhaps the most pleasant oddity on the program is “Petunia,” (Sept. 16, 9:30 p.m.; Sept. 19, 9:30 p.m.) director Steve Levy’s locally-filmed 36-minute “garage musical.” A quirky work with hints of John Waters and David Lynch, “Petunia” begins when a henpecked old slob (Ted Manson) sees his nagging wife (Suzi Bass) drop dead in the midst of the opening song, “It’s Always Something,” a haunting number with jangling guitars.
The old man seems unmoved by her death until he suspects that she’s returned to life in the form of a flower. He rekindles his old romance — with the flower — and changes his attitude about housekeeping as he sings, “I’ve been baptized with bleach / I’ll wipe the slate until it’s clean / I’ll dust the shelves and sweep the halls / And roll the socks in little balls.”
Levy cleverly places “Petunia’s” diverse tunes in incongruous settings. Suburban birthday party guests launch into an angry song about stifling domesticity, and in the final act Kenny Alfonso leads an upbeat, Latino-inflected dance number in a drab, wood-paneled police station. Better than some Oscar-nominated shorts I’ve seen, “Petunia” makes both a fine tribute to the late Suzi Bass and an intriguing introduction to a new talent.
Michael Wolk’s documentary You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Story (Sept. 18, 6 p.m.; Sept. 21, 5:30 p.m.) has an even stranger soundtrack. The documentary shares the title with a beloved but little-known album by enigmatic musician Gary Wilson. A label interested in reissuing the record tries to track him down, although he sank into obscurity two decades earlier.
You think the film will be about the search for Wilson, but in fact he emerges about 20 minutes into the film. He’s working at a California adult bookstore and playing in a lounge band. The album’s reissue sends Wilson on a mini-comeback, capped by a concert in the hometown he hasn’t visited in 20 years. The film uses his songs (think Steely Dan meets the Eraserhead soundtrack) and clips from his low- budget experimental film to give Wilson the mystique of a basement recording genius.
Wilson’s compositions and bizarre on-stage behavior are appreciated more by other musicians than civilians, but Wolk’s film shows how seemingly “failed” art can have lasting impact. Disparate pop-culture figures forge connections through Wilson’s music: Former child actor Ross Harris (the one Peter Graves propositioned in Airplane!) played the album for alterna-rocker Beck who in turn gave Wilson a shout-out on his hit song “Where It’s At.”
If Wolk’s film is a labor of love, Lolita: Slave to Entertainment (Sept. 16, 6 p.m.; Sept. 20, 4 p.m.) is motivated by outrage. Director Timothy Michael Gorski exposes the plight of Lolita, a killer whale who’s spent three decades performing at a substandard tank at the Miami Seaquarium. Even if you have mixed feelings about animal rights, Lolita lays out a convincing argument and has lively interview subjects, such as a former trainer of “Flipper” turned civilly-disobedient “Lolita Freedom Fighter.”
Unfortunately the film preaches to the choir with Valerie Silidker’s hug-the-planet narration (she describes a convergence of killer whales as a “ritual gathering of the orca nation”). That’s exactly the tone that will turn off the kind of audiences that Lolita should be trying to convert. Lolita also uses heavy-handed animated vignettes that depict the whale as both prison inmate and performing clown. Though Lolita strives for Michael Moore’s muckraking attitude, it lacks his sense of humor.
Lolita and The Gary Wilson Story both feel padded with repetitive clips. You feel that each could have been significantly shorter, but the filmmakers wanted to extend the documentary to feature length. “Petunia,” on the other hand, knows exactly how long it should be, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.