The Diary of BadBones

I grew up in the outskirts of richmond in the suburbs.  Strong memories of manicured lawns and freshly painted vinyl siding comes to mind, along with the strained smiles of passerby walking their poodles, (which doubled as plush, indoor furniture when the rainy season hit.)  My favorite voice is the voice of my mother reading Swiss Family Robinson, my least favorite voice is the voice of Samuel L. Jackson.  Although, I would probably have dinner with Mr. Jackson given the opportunity.  I have been recording, mixing, mastering, and producing music for a number of years.  This has brought me great joy and several meditative and out-of-body experiences.  My favorite sound is the sound of rain.  Ableton.  My dream project is to capture and document fully the coming apocalypse, or at least the various interpretations of the apocalypse myth as interpreted by many different cultures.  This could include art, people, and events centered around various apocalypse beliefs.  The soundtrack would be The Firebird Suite, and the narrator would be a full-time Kurt Vonnegut Impersonator. 

Gets in-depth into some of the myths surrounding North Korean culture and government.  Favorite moment is when they show the capitol, with no cars or pedestrians, this is their capital 24-7.

Watching Japanese officials explain how much they care about wild-life and at the same time allowing dolphin meat with high mercury content be served to their citizens is really sad.

For a love story, the character development was pretty weak.  This doc is in similar style to many of his others, and what I took from it can only be described as “an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my gallbladder.” Pretty funny ending.

Daniel Johnston is a genius schizophrenic, and the documentary shows both sides of him.  I took a lot from this film about what it means to be a successful artist without the convenience of retaining sanity.  How he got from his parents house to where he is now is also a very inspiring story.

number nine.. number nine… number nine…… and also running water.

Turned out to be less about his mother and more about his life story and how his mother’s illness affected him.  One part ego trip and one part genuine introspection.  C plus.

When I was really young my family went on a Christmas vacation.  We took a cruise to some Central American countries, and the one I remember most was when we stopped off in Belize.  I was a kid, but an observant one, and I noticed that when we got off the cruise ship and walked around the area the front three rows of streets contained diamond shops and high class clothing stores.  Past those three rows however, was a huge expanse of shanty-towns.  There were a bunch of tours of the country that were offered through the cruise-line, but these pretty much went through the country side and offered a view of pretty vistas.  My mother started talking to a man, clearly a native of Belize, who was standing by a van.  We ended up taking a tour of the city with him and he showed us the widespread poverty and hypocrisy of the area.

I was constantly being reminded of this memory when I saw Cannibal Tours, and much of the same dynamics were going on.  Something that caught my eye was how the tourists, more and more throughout the movie, started to seem less like people going on vacation, and more like voyeurs.  Money was also huge theme of the documentary, and it was plain to see how it affected everyone interacting in that area.

I watched this documentary with a female friend of mine and boy was it a barrel of laughs.  By a barrel of laughs I mean a terribly disturbing and curious experience over-all.  I especially liked when the daughter is prancing around on her doorstep imitating a marching parade of some kind.  Yes.  She’s pretty crazy, and often-times her mother comes off as the sane one.  But wait, is she really that crazy or are her actions just a product of her situation.  Well, they’re both definitely agoraphobic and have delusions about what is going on around them.  It’s sad, interesting, and also mysterious.  For more on the subject we go to a feminine reaction:

-allowing the house to fall back into disrepair

-will they be given a second eviction notice?

-little interaction with family, although they have many relatives. Two arrive for big Edie’s birthday, apparent awkwardness

-did Jackie O’Neal only interfere because of bad press? They speak well of her anyway

-Little Edie is self conscious of her hair loss, but extremely confidant on camera

-always trying to win over the camera man, confesses her love for him

Femininity concluded.

There are so many details that make this movie what it is.  It’s almost like a case study, well, not almost.  The film-maker becomes a sort of interpretive psychologist who’s hell bent on changing nothing.  Picture a good friend who you tell all of your problems to, and they react by standing there and pointing a camera around the room.  This would drive me crazy, but the women in this movie seem to take the opportunity to turn it into their own reality show that they are working as hard as they can to ignore.

I think every family or group of people living in a house should have a documentary made about them, although this particular project would probably still stand out as the most interesting and enlightening.

The only other Errol Morris documentary that I have seen is Thin Blue Line.  First thing I want to mention: these two films have entirely different subject matter, but the style that Morris employs is omni-present in both.  Face-to-camera interviews abound, but not the type where it is clear that the interviewee is responding to a series of questions.  It is more like the person is rambling, unsure where to go so he or she goes wherever the mind takes them.  In most cases, this leads to monologues that seem to fit in perfectly with what Morris had in mind.  How he does this?  I’m not sure, but it seems like Morris goes on a sort of journey with his documentary process, and his subjects can’t help but feel and tap into this direction. 

I loved how the documentary started off.  Long-winded, almost redundant retellings of one man’s struggle with trying to start his own pet cemetery.  When he was talking about how our pets are our little friends, and we need to know they have a good resting place, I began to be won over.  It seems from reviews on the internet that as the movie goes on and moves to a family with a successful pet cemetery, most people start to lose interest.  Its true that this appears wildly off-topic, but for me it really struck home.  All of the photographing of people talking about their deceased pets was moving and also humorous in a way, (because of their enigmatic nature, not because I wanted to make light of their losses.)  However, it was more important seeing the men that dealt with these people and tried to console them on a daily basis.  What would it be like to sympathize and provide for people going through a loss that most of society tends to ignore or marginalize?  Would that bring something out of this family’s personality that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

This brings me to my favorite shot, when the son is on top of the hill overlooking the cemetery and playing electric guitar on a loud amplifier, having the sound carry through the surrounding landscape.  This is not him only blowing off steam and pursuing a hobby as he suggests, its something that represents what he feels and wants for the world around him.

What a rollercoaster ride.  I went from the mother’s side, to the father’s, to the son’s, to the community’s, to the police force’s.  Where did I end up?:  Having absolutely no idea what actually happened.  What did I take away?: that human beings operate on an infinite level of motivations, and who the hell knows what’s going to happen when an incident sparks this kind of reaction from a community at large.

I particularly was enthralled by the section with the investigative journalist when she was describing the idea of American hysteria.  It’s almost like the families of the alleged victim’s wanted to imagine the most horrible and disgusting acts possible.  Why? In the documentary there was a process described where these families were almost competing to see who’s child was the most abused.  This was supposedly done  because the community was bonding together by identifying themselves as victims of a monster.

Where the film really hit home was with the father however.  His sordid and unfortunate past was exposed, and from that point I had no idea whether to think of him as a tragic character, or a venomous criminal.  The truth is he was probably a mix of both.  This is clear from his family splitting in two, choosing sides, and to this day holding true to their earlier convictions.  This is why the footage that was taken by the sons during this period is so critical to this documentary, and without would be a series of empty interviews.  I felt invigorated and also extremely depressed being drawn in to the personal and conflict-ridden place.  I also feel like I have gained some sort of understanding about how the drama of broken families are played out.  In the end, I was left frustrated, upset, and angry that events like this can happen in a country so focused on projecting an image of nuclear families and a high quality of life for its citizens.