Sweet god I have never eaten that much popcorn in my life. Thank you, Film Night, for coating my stomach walls with whatever puts the ‘kettle’ in kettle corn.
Also, thank you superguest Jonathan Coauette for hooking us up with a camera when ours broke last minute (on film night, of course). How nice is that? Without that camera I wouldn’t have been able to record Coauette’s home address and personal phone number provided as his risk, and without that valuable information, how would I know where to send my annual ‘Horsin’ Around On the Holidays’ christmas-thank you card??
Coauette showed some of the 42 experimental films made by 42 exciting names (Coauette, Kenneth Anger and David Lynch among them), each 42 seconds of an impressively-rendered dream-nightmare state. These were excellent–I really loved ’em, sometimes funny, often waaay strange, occasionally both (I’m lookin’ at you, Mr. Korine). And then there was Sean Lennon’s, which resembled a perfume ad.
Maybe you’re like me and you saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch through your raccoon-eye makeup in high school and thought John Cameron Mitchell was one of the prettiest human beings you’d ever encountered on a screen. Well, then I’m here to keep the dream alive, because he does not disappoint in person. I think it has something to do with those Anderson Cooper-esque-subdued-caring mouthlines, the ones that say, “I know. I know, and I’m here. Here to make you sad-laugh.” In that same vein (the mouthline vein), JCM’s reading about his visit to Russia for a so-underground-it-put-moles-to-shame gay film festival was both funny and consistently heartbreaking. Sad-laugh aplenty. Also, it provided a good life lesson: when the Uncle Vanya vodka starts getting poured into shot glasses, its time to head home unless you’re ready to become a human tear towel real fast.
Thomas Bartlett aka Doveman sang a beautiful extended set, covering (of course of course) Only Love Can Break Your Heart and we all sang along, though not quite as emotively as we are wont to do face-deep into some Vanya shots/alone on long road trips. It’s okay, for a full venue it still felt like a pretty intimate evening, so I’ll understand if you just felt like whispering the words. Lip-synching, however, remains out of the question.
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