"TV Party"- 2005, Danny Vinik

First of all, before I say anything else, let me just say that if you want to read a horribly uncreative vomiting up of this documentary, visit
here.

Thank you, Village Voice. I mean, I guess, from a sort of informational standpoint, this is an adequate piece. But honestly, it doesn't even have any descriptive verbs that weren't actually used in the movie, as far as I can remember.

Just in case you didn't read the above, let me briefly say that "TV Party" is a documentary about "Glen O'Brien's TV Party," a NYC cable-access show that ran from 1978 to 1982. The show was notable mostly because of the wide variety of artists that came through its studios, virtually every figure in the fabled "Downtown Art Scene" of the early 80s. Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, and Fab 5 Freddie were just the luminaries who graced virtually every episode. Guests included David Bowie, George Clinton, Iggy Pop (the tape of his single appearance is lost, a fact much cried over in the film), Klaus Nomi, the Talking Heads, the B-52s, and the Clash, just to name a few. And I'm not using a rhetorical cop-out; there are actually lots more, but I don't want this to read like a hipster Iliad.

Despite a heavy attempt made by the grayed and mortgage-ridden ex-hipsters in the present-day interviews to claim the show's real significance was the amazingly relaxed attitude they all shared, or the intense exchange among different kinds of artists, or that,like, wow, they were actually smoking pot on TV (!) the guests are the true attraction to this show. This is perhaps unsurprising, as O'Brien wrote and produced the similarly difficult "Downtown 81." That film, another chronicle of the downtown scene, was ironically enough the distraction that killed "TV Party." It occupied the show's staff so completely that they simply never got around to making another episode.

While I could write about the film's subject all day, the sad truth is that Vinick's documentary is by and large a sad jumble. The wipes are repetitive and the editing is often clumsy, with non-artistic jump-cuts not unheard of. There are 20 minute stretches with absolutely no new footage or commentary, simply one musical guest after another ad infinitum. Even the title, "TV Party" is simply a re-presentation of the original show's name. This fact alone should let the audience know they're in for more of a nostalgia/wank fest than any kind of serious film.

This is also ursuprising. Vinick, who has virtually no prior feature experience aside from "Pornstar Pets" (a fairly self-explanitory project), was actually hired by O'Brien to help archive his old tapes. The film came about as an extreme afterthought. It's worth noting, as well, that Vinick's main claim to fame is as the co-founder of the internet film collective TriggerStreet.com, a project funded by Kevin Spacey and a major sponsor of the Tribecca Film Festival, where it premiered this week.

Hey, let's not kid around. I was at that premier, dammit! So, let's figure out some boldface HTML, MR SEGUE MAN. O'Brien was there, of course, along with the director and most everyone from his original show, including Blondie's Chris Stein, The B-52's Fred Schneider, and Fab 5 Freddie. Also, it turned out that the frumpy old man sitting behind me in the History Channel baseball cap was Jerry Stiller. He went unnoticed by most everyone until he shouted "Are you going to put this in the Smithsonian?" during the Q&A after the film. This got a mild chuckle from everyone milling nervously around the theatre's single microphone. "I'm not kidding!" he implored, before embarking on a five-minute harangue about what an important document of an truly special time in American Life this film is. Kind of like season 8 of "Everybody Loves Raymond," huh Mr. Dodgeball's Dad?

Boy Howdy.

So, there's been lots of action lately that I've been too stressed and tired and just outrageously drunk to write about. Due to the top-down temporal nature of blog posting, though, this post is going to be below the posts I'm about to write, which is strange, but let's see what I can get through.

"Prisioner of Paradise"

So, I just saw the most amazing documentary on PBS about Kurt Gerron. He was a famous actor and director working around the early 1920s in Germany. He worked with Marlena Deitrich and Peter Lorre, among others. He was also a Jew. He was such a cigar-chomping caricature of a Jew to the Nazis, as a matter of fact, that it is his image that immediately follows the famous shot of stampeding rats in "The Eternal Jew," one of the most famous Nazi propaganda films. "The Jew is the rat!" the narrator screams, before moving on to vicisiously and personally villify Gerron as an excessive and morally corrupt example of Jewish inferiority.

Gerron left Germany early on in the Nazi era, but ended up at a concentration camp following a series of moves, first to Paris, and then to Holland. Highlights (lowlights) of that part of his life include refusing an offer from Deitrich and Lorre to come to Hollywood and direct a film because they wouldn't send him to America first class. Also, failing to plan an escape as he worked at a seaside resort in Holland, where he could have easily hired a boat.

He lived, or was a prisioner, in the "best" concentration camp, Theresienstadt. While there, he put on Cabaret shows with the encouragement of the SS; they were so good they helped convince a representative of the International Red Cross that Theresienstadt was a thriving and healthy community. Gerron also directed a propaganda movie for the Nazis about the camp, shot extremely late in the war, after the Allied invasion of Normandy. After the movie wrapped, the Nazis began shipping off Theresienstadt's prisioners in earnest. Get this shit: Gerron is on the VERY LAST train out of Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, and is killed on the VERY LAST day before the concentrations camps are closed. DAMN! That is some shit, to say the least.

Aquaduct: NorthSix, April 1

A fresh-faced Midwesterner's exhortation ("Hip hop beats!" he screamed.
"Hip-hip beats!") set off one of several bouts of intensely homo-erotic
jamming.  The bass player and drummer stared deeply into each other's eyes,
jammed as if their orgasms depended on it, then giggled and clapped for each
other when it was all over, wiping the cum off of their chests.  Well,
almost.

At their best, Aquaduct invoke a Jason Gardner-fronted Postal Service- a
description that will admittedly send plenty of people scurrying for the
indie hills.  Almost unbelievably, this isn't intended as an
insult: they've got the cloyingly sincere lyrics, cascading digibeats, and
simple, joyous keyboard riffs that invoke nothing but dancing happiness.
The crowd, unsurprisingly, did lots of gentle swaying and hugging.

Yes, there is something shallow and "fun-loving" about Auqaduct.  When did
"fun" become a dirty word in indie circles, though?  Some of indie's best
bands were conceived and run on the principal of having as much fun as
possible: musical and otherwise.  Bands whose names I can't think of, granted, but I'm sure that I'm right anyway.  

The defining moments of this fun as enjoyable/deplorable dichotomy bookended
the show.  On one end was Aquaduct's opening song, a cover of the Geto Boys'
"Damn it Feels Good to be Gansta," perhaps better known as "That Song From
Office Space Where They Beat Up the Computer."  Severely digi and RATATAT-ed
out, yes, but still feeling more like Dynamite Hack's version of N.W.A.'s
"Boyz N Tha Hood" than anything else.  More successful were the songs from
their obligatory encore.  After abashedly assuring the audience they "just
want them to have fun," the band performed a largely doo-wop verson of R Kelly's
sexcapade smash "Remix:Ignition" followed by an just-barely-different take on
"Don't Stop Beliving."  Everyone sang along, if only during the chorus, and
it was definitely the high/low point of the evening.