Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
So this should teach me to make a joke. I'm sitting here right now looking around the Moriarty Labs at what can only be described as an aftermath. Glass broken, desks flipped over, henchmen folded into wet little piles of pain. It's not a pretty picture. And it's all my fault. I got an e-mail this weekend from a new spy, and I misread the name that was signed. I just glanced at it, and I could have sworn I read "Miss Molly." So I write this intro, and I make some cheap joke about Miss Molly being a film whore, and I post the piece. Haven't thought about it since. Then this evening, there's a knock on the door of the Labs, which is strange since I have guards on duty and they alert me before anyone gets close enough to knock. I sent Mongo to answer the door, hanging back and watching. It was a hell of a show. This goon tosses my guards into the room, both of them out cold, then proceeds to bust the joint up. By the time I realized he wasn't going to stop, it was too late to run. He put a hurt down on me the likes of which no one's ever had the nerve to try before. He made me wear my own ass as a hat. He used my fist to punch me in the face until both eyes were blacked, swollen closed. He broke all the fingers on my left hand, leaving me to hunt and peck this out for you tonight through a fog of agony. The whole time, he only said one thing to me, and that was as he jammed another report into my mouth, my broken teeth holding the wadded paper in place. "That's MISTER Molly, evil boy." With that, he left. I'd like to apologize to the lovely Mr. Molly and ask him not to kick my ass again. I've scraped most of my own blood off the report he left behind, and would like to present it for you to enjoy now.
My Flick-Nerve Is Flat
An (Ultimately) Disappointing Evening with Jan Kounen
Wednesday, September 20th was VIBROBOY: AN EVENING WITH JAN KOUNEN IN-PERSON at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The American Cinematheque, which screens flicks at this boss vintage theater, had shown his short LE DERNIER CHAPERON ROUGE (THE LAST RED RIDING HOOD) a few months ago. The response, according to their mailer, was overwhelming. Thus, the entire evening.
Let me start by saying Jan Kounen is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a live-action Tex Avery. That is, if Avery had Russ Meyer’s libido and David Lynch’s revulsion/love of the human body and all of its functions. Jesus Christ! Blood arcs through the air. Pores sweat rivers. Eyeballs bulge and jaws flex like they contain steam pistons. Every angle is spastic, every pull-in a crash-zoom. Even a CONVERSATION between two people, standing outside at a clothesline, is cut like a Sergio Leone gunfight. And all in French! Sacre bleu!
Kounen doesn’t like you taking yer eyes off of the screen. EVER.
At 7pm they screened 3 shorts. GISELE KEROSENE (1993) which I realized I’d actually seen years ago in San Francisco. 5 minutes long, fucking brilliant. Post-punk drag queen witches zoom around a deserted office park (Kounen likes deserted office parks, it turns out) on sputtering, gas-powered brooms. “We dare you to count the edits and camera set-ups” boasted the program. Well, there’s a bunch of ‘em, plus a genius “cameo” by a certain DC superhero, in his “mild-mannered” disguise.
VIBROBOY (1994) followed, and was the weakest of the bunch. It also portended things to come. An abusive white trash couple and the drag queen they love to hate run afoul of an ancient Incan (?) idol which contains “Vibroboy”, which seems to the malevolent spirit of angry, throbbing cocks. Yeah, I was confused too. 28 minutes of some pretty intense spousal abuse, homophobia, and an extended off-screen ass-rape set to a lovely rendition of “Parle moi d’amour”. Has to be seen to be dis-believed.
Then came THE LAST RED RIDING HOOD. Wow! Co-produced with Caro (of CITY OF LOST CHILDREN Juenet and Caro) who plays the part of “The Monster”, this is a graphic/lovely children’s horror-musical about a banished monster, an atomic rocket containing “100 Little Red Riding Hoods”, and a heroic/villainous Big Bad Wolf. There are these unbroken, herky/swooping extended shots (especially during the musical numbers – YES, MUSICAL NUMBERS!) which had me slavering in anticipation for DOBERMANN, the full-length feature they were screening at 9.
Kounen spoke in between films. About his commercial and video work (I can’t help thinking he did that Lamb video I see pop up on 120 MINUTES to disturb my sleep every now and then), about how VIBROBOY was his desire to see “…stupid assholes given super-powers”, about the DVD of his complete short films, videos and commercials -- encoded ONLY for European DVD players! Rat-shit!
Then came DOBERMANN, which I think was based on a French comic book. I was sitting with David Goyer, who said at one point they were considering Kounen for BLADE 2, after watching a 10-minute screener of DOBERMANN. “Considering” being the key word.
DOBERMANN is SO over the top it comes BACK around to blast its way up your ass. The opening sequence alone – a baptism that ends with a gurgling baby fingering its first gift, a .357 Magnum – is like MANON OF THE SPRING compared to the rest of the film. I remember Pauline Kael describing STAR WARS as being like a “…box of Cracker Jack that is all prizes”. DOBERMANN is a crime/action film that’s all exit wounds.
Keep in mind, there are some sequences that literally lift you from your seat. A shoot-out in a drag-queen/rave club where EVERYONE involved, cops and criminals alike, are on PCP. Shot through their P.O.V.s, including the P.O.V. of Dobermann’s deaf lover, it’s like watching John Woo trying to prove his manhood by sheer body count and muzzle volume.
Come to think of it, Kounen also enjoys his drag queens.
And that’s the lead-up to the CLIMAX. The CLIMAX! Until that point we’ve seen grenades stuffed into motorcyclist’s helmets, families tortured, flaming bodies blown through the air to be snuffed in the Seine, and a criminal wipe his ass with CAHIERS DU CINEMA. There are twice as many bullets coming at you than lines of dialogue. Characters are defined by how and why they bleed and die. Dicks are blown off. Faces are literally scraped off on the pavement. To give you an idea of who you’re forced to root for (at moral gunpoint) Dobermann’s nemesis is a cop so brutal he enjoys watching a woman nearly kicked to death by her boyfriend in the street, and thinks nothing of tossing a man’s baby through the air (and later dropping a grenade into its crib) to get information. He does, however, suffer one of the funniest (and cleverest) “double-deaths” I’ve seen in a long time. If MAXIM magazine ever does a flick, Kounen’s hired.
It was just TOO GODDAMN MUCH, in the end. Even THE ROAD WARRIOR, THE MATRIX and DIE HARD had lulls. Catch your breath, wait for the next “topper”. I love Milky Way bars, but I don’t want eight of them for dinner.
"MR. MOLLY”
