The Open Mouth:

A Bi-Weekly Crash

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This Week: du-BEAT-e-o

(D:Alan Sacks, 1984)

LV's exclusive column from Blake Carlisle of End of An Ear Records,

Austin's main source for eccentric, ecstatic, experimental & reckless outsider music & video.

du-BEAT-e-o

(D:Alan Sacks, 1984)

    I don't know many people who have seen this strange, pretty much forgotten film. This is the only time Alan Sacks ever worked as a director (besides making a TV movie in 1994) and it's co-written by El Duce of The Mentors. In 1979, there was a film made about Joan Jett and The Runaways called "We're All Crazy Now" which was never released, and these dudes ended up with the footage. Through acquiring this footage, the concept of a film about a film was hatched. Ray Sharkey stars as du-BEAT-e-o, a guy who has borrowed money from a mobster named Hendricks (played by Len Lesser, you know, Jerry's uncle from Seinfeld) to finance his film about Joan Jett. Hendricks and his goons show up at du-BEAT-e-o's apartment and demand either the film or the money back, neither of which he has. Hendricks can't pronounce the the young artist's name, hence the phonetic spelling of du-BEAT-e-o used for the film's title. He also doesn't like guys wearing earrings, so he rips out du-BEAT-e-o's and gives him 32 hours to complete the film. Now in a panic, du-BEAT-e-o goes out and finds his old friend Benny (played by Derf Scratch from FEAR), who he needs to help edit his film. Benny is living in an abandoned building with lots of other squatters and is strung out on cough syrup. He convinces him to come back and help him and they meet a weird girl named Sharon along the way and bring her along for the ride. There's lots of still photography and collage mixed in with footage of the the film that they're actually working on, and everything starts to bleed together. There's disorienting narrative going on over the natural dialog as well as hand-scratched subtitles and notes happening at all times. It's kind of like commentary from a DVD playing over an art film with footage of Joan Jett, the film they're working on, and experimental photography all thrown in at the same time. It sounds kind of annoying and pretentious I know, but it's really not. It actually brings to mind early films by the great Robert Downey Sr., but who knows if these guys had even heard of him. At first, the mixed media employed to create this film seems like a means to get it finished, but then you kind of feel like the creators of this thing realized in real time that it was kind of working, and went with it. The results are brilliant. And seeing as how this is a movie about pulling scraps together to make a finished product, it's kind of an accidental concept film. But then there's the extreme roguish side to it. When Derf Scratch seems like the responsible one in the bunch, you know shit's dogged-out. du-BEAT-e-o hangs out with El Duce at a Runaways show where El Duce ad-libs lyrics to what Joan is singing like- "We're useless fuckin' sluts". It's bizarre. When du-BEAT-e-o gets home he freaks out on Benny and Sharon because they want to leave. He holds them at gunpoint and forces them to help him finish the film. At one point he falls asleep and has a nightmare involving performance artist Johanna Went. She does a little goth-type song and dance above him in bed while he wears a speedo. He then hallucinates that El Duce is in his bed telling him to lick the cheese out of his foreskin! There's footage of the Mentors playing (unfortunately El Duce hadn't started using dildos as drumsticks at this point, but it's still great), and pushing girl's faces into dog food bowls. There's also a scene where du-BEAT-e-o is having sex with Sharon and a piece of paper flies accros the screen that says-"Actually Fucking", and you hear some laughing voices. Considering the levels of insanity in this movie, I do not find that hard to believe. I won't ruin the rest of the story for you, but I highly recommend seeking this one out. I have a feeling that it will stay buried in the VHS dungeon for all eternity. Most of the people involved are now dead. Ray Sharkey was a terrible drug addict during most of his career and was most definitely one when this was made. His neurosis shines through in tons of improvised dialog and freak-outs that greatly inhance the delirious vibe of this film. 4 years after this was made Sharkey was diagnosed HIV positive. Supposedly, he convinced himself that he had a strain of it that wasn't contagious and continued to sleep with tons of women, infecting them with the virus. One of the women was his ex-girlfriend, who sued him for millions of dollars. She never got a penny though, as he died broke in Brooklyn in 1993 at the age of 40. El Duce went on to piss lots of people off for another decade and once made an episode of Geraldo really memorable when he enraged the studio audience. He was in the movie "Kurt & Courtney" being interviewed about rumors that he had killed Kurt Cobain. He later died after falling asleep on some train tracks drunk in California in 1997. I think this movie is really great. I've never really seen anything like it. On VHS in the music section at the Airport location.