Friday, June 15, 2012

The Movie Orgy (in the presence of Joe Dante)

US 1968. P: Jon Davison. ED: Joe Dante. A found footage compilation. 280 min. Source: Joe Dante. Format: DVCAM (from Betacam). Introduced by Joe Dante. Special thanks: Antti Suonio who proposed this to the festival. Viewed at Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 15 June 2012.

Joe Dante (résumé): This is the first thing I did, a collage of pop culture that was developed in 1968-1972, constangly changing and expanding into a duration of seven hours. It is a collage, get drunk, get stoned, grab a pizza and come back. It is not a conventional film, it's more a mash-up, perhaps to be compared with something you can now find in YouTube. It was made on 16 mm film and a splicer, there was no colour correction. It was just a bunch of stuff, suitably bizarre. American pop culture was juxtaposed with elements of anti-war, anti-establishment attitudes, and bad taste. Ten years ago in Hollywood we did a screening, surprisingly packed, Tarantino stayed for the whole. It has also played at the MoMA. It's an endurance test, but there are images there you will not be able to forget no matter how hard you try. There was only one 16 mm print that was ten years on the circuit. Finally it was scanned on Betacam, which means there will be three intermissions. But if you want to make a break elsewhere you won't miss anything.

AA rough notes: - Rated Z: unsuitable - fast edit - Great Gabbo - horse Midnight - Mighty Mouse - Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman - Colgate commercial - Groucho Marx in You Bet Your Life: bodybuilder from Muscle Shoals - sponsored by Dentynine - The Four Seasons: "Walk Like A Man" - Speed Crazy: "I'm a bundle of nerves, I never relax, I've been drifting since I was 16, never knew my folks. Rattlesnake is right: gotta be first." - W.C. Fields and a gun - The speed crazy shoots a garage attendant - Alfred Hitchcock presents - a nuclear bomb - Teenagers from Outer Space: a dog turns into a skeleton - atmosphere - gargons - "we'll continue our seach in another solar system" - The Naked City - nudie movies - there are eight million stories in the naked city - The Lone Ranger - The Wilhelm Tell overture by Rossini - "I was born in Texas, raised in Tennessee" - A Hart P. Danks biopic: "Silver Threads Among the Gold", 1876 - ex-wife a homeless, friendless scrubwoman - in 1903 the composer lives on a side street in Philadelphia, now a broken old man with a last bitter message - Warner Pathé News advertising Dial M for Murder, city paralyzed by atomic attack - Egypt's strongman protects the Suez Canal - Vietnam ousts Bao Dai, Diem elected the first President, a resounding victory for the free world - Ann-Margaret as a pro-Vietnam war figure: buy bonds - Nabisco cereals - The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, the theme fanfare, Rin Tin Tin and Rusty - missile, Nabisco cereals, Defenders of America cards 1959 - Alphabet Cereals, Alpha-Bits - a screening for children, nudist girls, a jukebox scene, Greensleeves - I'm sick of that fleabag - Star of India, the most famous diamond - Skibana peanut sandwich, skippy peanut butter - Andy's Gang with Andy Devine - Superman

AA remarks: I watched ca 75 min from the beginning until it was three o'clock in the morning and I was not yet exhausted but knew I'd soon be. The Movie Orgy is a journey into a nation's pop cultural consciousness, a weird collage, and a vision of the Cold War and the Atomic Age, at once infantile and apocalyptic. The view has affinities with Susan Sontag's essay "The Imagination of Disaster".

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