SXSW2002– Charlotte Sometimes/Tribute/Kinky Friedman: Proud To Be An Asshole From El Paso/Tromeo And Juliet (1996)

CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES Behind this Cure song title lies a film about the desperation behind unrequited love and the search for something else.

Micheal is a young Asian man who rents out half of his childhood home to Lori. Lori’s boyfriend, Justin, understands that Lori and Michael are “just friends.” But isn’t it strange that she always tends to go over to Michael’s place after she’s had sex with Justin?

Enter Darcy. She’s a free-spirited young woman who Michael meets at a bar. He starts spending more and more time with her to the annoyance of Lori. Could she be falling for Michael? Or is she still in love with Justin? And we all know that Michael really loves Lori, so what’s up with Darcy?

You may think know exactly where this movie is going, but trust me. You don’t.

I guess the biggest selling point of this movie for the festival was the fact that the cast is all Asian, but there’s barely a hint of it in the subject matter. It’s a universal story that everyone can relate to in some way, but it just happens to have Asians in the lead roles. That’s a great thing, in my book. There are, however, two scenes that do call attention to their Asian-ness. One is when a white guy sends a rose over to Darcy’s table. She and Micheal both give the guy a very evil stare before dropping the rose on the table and leaving the bar. The second (and best) one is when the four leads go to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Justin is only half Asian (like writer/director Eric Byler), so he is a little bit left out of some of the conversations.

That’s actually one of the best scenes in the whole movie. The conversation is real. It feels as if it was improvised on the spot by four very good improve actors.

And for these two scenes the only two Asians in the audience (that I noticed) wanted to suck the director’s dick during the Q&A.

This is a great movie with very good performances. You can tell early on how everyone feels about each other even if they can’t. The only problem I had with the acting was that Michael sometimes seemed to need some help getting his words out (maybe a crowbar would help), but it seemed to work pretty well for the character. Give it a shot if it gets full distribution. It’s obviously shot on video, but get over it. That’s the way things are going.

TRIBUTE

This is the greatest documentary I have ever seen. Uh-huh-huh. Huh-huh-huh.

Ok, maybe not, but it’s a lot of fun.

After seeing the cinematic abortion that was Rock Star (complete with tag team lead singer) I decided that being in a tribute band had to be just about the saddest existence possible. Not if you’re just out to have fun with it (as local bands like The Eggmen (Beatles’ tribute) or The Diamond Smugglers (Neil Diamond taken to perverted “heights”) do), but if you’re really serious about it then you may as well put your head in front of a shot-gun and wait for a squirrel to come along and pull the trigger for you.

Think about it. These guys have no chance of ever becoming big. Oh, sure, there’s the occasional “Ripper” Owens (ok, there’s only one story like that, never to be repeated again), but most likely you’re doomed to play someone else’s songs in cheesy costumes in a dive bar for the rest of your musical career. You can’t get famous on someone else’s songs. (Unless you’re Rod Stewart, but that’s another documentary. And, really, that’s not a dig at him. He’s great at covering Dylan. I like his version of “Forever Young” a lot better.)

So what’s left for these guys? Not much. They go to their crappy day jobs, get off work, get with their buddies and then take their night job a little too seriously. Or at least they take their fandom a little too seriously.

Tribute is the story of Larger Than Life (KISS), Bloodstone (Judas Priest), The Missing Links (The Monkees), Escape (Journey) and Sheer Heart Attack (Queen). All tribute bands. All going nowhere fast.

These are the guys who take it all too seriously. The guys who think that, one false move and reality comes crashing in on their party and they are no longer their heroes.

And I guess that’s true, but they aren’t their heroes. And no one brings that point home better than who they call Superfan. He’s a fan of Queen. Ok. Let’s rephrase that. He’s insane for Queen. He’s gone from collecting albums and posters and gone on to painting the album covers and hanging them on his wall. He has a shrine to Queen complete with incense.

When he goes to a Sheer Heart Attack show he gets nervous. He sees it as his only chance to see Queen live since he decided not to go to their last US tour in 1982 (the Hot Spot tour, for those of you keeping track). When SHA’s lead singer got a job in Germany in an opera, Superfan was devastated. He thought that it would be a good idea to get the singer a girlfriend over here so that he wouldn’t want to leave. (Somehow I doubt that the guy would have wanted a girlfriend, but anyway…)

The most frightening thing about Superfan is that we can all see a little of ourselves in him. Yeah, he takes it too far, but there’s that little part of all of us that probably would take it that far if it wasn’t so damn geeky.

Let’s just say that this was just about the best documentary I’ve seen this year. It’s fun, scary and informative all at the same time. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

Or maybe it’s about being your hero until you actually think that you ARE your hero.

Either way, this is better than Rock Star ever even thought of being.

I don’t know how you’ll see this, but the short before Tribute was just as good. It was called Ace’s High and was about a group called, strangely enough, Ace’s High. They are an Ace Frehley tribute band. That’s right. All Aces.

And the real kicker is that they dress as Ace through the 70s with distinctions that only a true fan would even notice. One is “Destroyer Ace,” one is…um…Ace…from 1974.

Yeah, well, I’m not really a fan, so I couldn’t tell. But they spent a lot of the time of the short talking about how he was the only talented one in the group and it was time for a tribute. So they play only Ace’s material with the band or his solo stuff.

Great concept and a great little flick. Hopefully it’ll show up on IFC or something.

KINKY FRIEDMAN: PROUD TO BE AN ASSHOLE FROM EL PASO

No one can sum up Kinky Friedman in an hour long documentary, but Simone de Vries tries. And the strangest thing about this woman who is here to teach us about one of the strangest characters in modern Texas history is that she’s from The Netherlands! That’s right! It took a foreigner to do this.

As a lot of people know (but a lot don’t), Kinky Friedman started his life of semi-fame as a country singer. Of course he didn’t sing about your typical country fare. He and his band, The Texas Jewboys, sang satire. Songs like “They Just Aren’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore” and “Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed”. You know. The kind of stuff that pisses off every non-thinking person in the universe.

After that brush with fame, Kinky became a writer. He’s been writing mystery novels (starring himself) for about 15 years now and has a very loyal following, including President Clinton, who is actually in this film! Yes, ol’ Bill shows up quite a bit talking about The Kinkster. How did Simone do that? She asked. A lot. What happened, though, was that no one bothered to ask the President until about her 10th time. They thought that it wasn’t even worth it. But, as soon as they asked him, he agreed. It’s just that easy, folks.

If you get a chance to see this doc, do it. It may not give a complete picture of Mr. Friedman, but that’s about all your going to get unless you’re him. TROMEO AND JULIET

Lloyd Kaufman always says that if Shakespeare had been about to get away with squashed heads, pierced nipples and penis demons in his plays, he would have. And Tromeo And Juliet proves it.

We all know the story, right? Young Tromeo Que and Juliet Capulet are on opposite sides of a feud between their fathers. But when they fall in love, all hell breaks lose.

This was the first Troma film that I saw all the way through, so I have a special place for it in my heart. It’s not as good as some of their later ones, but it is the beginning of the new Golden Age of Troma which as culminated in Terror Firmer (also starring Will Keenan) and Citizen Toxie.

This one isn’t nearly as offensive to the more offendable out there, but it has its moments. Some of the scenes between Juliet and her dad are disturbing even by Troma standards. And it may be a little too punk for my taste. There are an awful lot of piercings and tattoos running around here. Not too in to that.

I do wonder what the news article was that inspired this one, though. (Lloyd says that all of his movies are inspired by the news.) Maybe domestic violence? Or incest? Not quite as satire inducing as a toxic waste dump near a school or movies causing violence, but it’ll do.

Watch for the Sgt. Kabukiman car crash and listen to some of the best music to ever be used in a Troma film. This time it actually doesn’t suck…too bad.