Queer cinema

8/19/2019 Queer cinema

1/6

B RU Y

RI H

QU R


2/6

€ l

2013

Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of merica on

acid-free paper oo Designed by my Ruth Buchanan

Typeset in Minion

Pro

by

Copperline

Book Services, Inc.

Library

of

Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rich, B. Ruby.

New queer cinema : the director s cut B. Ruby Rich.

pages em

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN

978-o-8223·5411 6 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-o-8123·5428-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)


3/6

JON TH N

C OUETTE

What in

Tarnation

n

2 3 buzz was circulating on the streets of Park City, the

kind of buzz

to

which people pay attention because it

emanates

from audiences, not just a paid publicist (as if there isn t always

a hidden push from that maligned profession). Word

was

that

a newcomer, Jonathan Caouette, had made a powerful debut film about

his

painful life and

his

mother's near-destruction in the Texas

mental

health sys

tem,

produced for no money flat, to spectacular effect

Tarnation is

an

adrenaline-fueled mix of documentary and performance

relating a tragic autobiography through home movies, purloined television

footage, and a mix-master fuU ofsampled tunes.

Even

the

most

ignorant press

and industry folks safely pronounced the

film genius,

given that the names

:

,; .

' ,

. • :

• ' 't

:

.

•


4/6


5/6

So are the texts that interpolate

and structure

the narrative, an

i n t e t l i g e ~ t

device for conveying the unrepresentable. For example, continuing the

fable:

"In 1965-99, Renee was treated in over

one hundred

psychiatric hospitals.

Records now indicate there was nothing initially wrong with her." h e ~ ~

originally sent to a hospital for help by Adolph and Rosemary, after a ll

from a

roof

left her paralyzed. Today she'd get therapy

and

a n t i d e p r e s s ~ i s ;

back then, she was given electroshock therapy twice a week for two y e ~ ~

And

then more.

k

.,

If

much

of Tarnation s

exposition is delivned in an electroshock

b l ~ s t

straight from the screen with graphic intensity, the texture of the lives i t ~ ~ -

plores is nothing less. His mother

and grandmother

vamp for the

c a m ~ ~

he delivers confessions alone in the night,

and

peril lurks between the

r e ~ l s .

Caouette's brilliant grasp of the visual clearly goes way hack: at m o m e ~ t s .

Tarnation

plays like a catalogue of consumer video clfccts of the past w e ~ ~

years, some cheesy, some poignant, some both.

The

screen splits along

wfth

Jonathan's and Renee's mental anguish

and

institutionalizations, images

mu-

tate and multiply, the wholeness

of

the screen becomes fractured, and s u b j ~ c

tive states swamp all objective stability. L

His mother is central to

Tarnation and

to Caouette's life, to the point 2_at

we

witness his driving back to Texas to rescue her

and

bring

her

home

to ive

with him and boyfriend David in Brooklyn. Renee is what Divine was to John

Waters, what the Factory stars were to Warhol: a larger-than-life p r e ~ e

who eats up the camera and rewards all att ention with uniq ue performances.

In Renees case, she claims links to Elizabeth Taylor and tells her own tales

of

tragedy. And indeed life has been cruel to her· the difference

is

that

she's

J ~ n ~ t h a n : s

mom, and he never stops loving

her

or, paying attention to

hetit

's

his ~ n t ~ x i c a t i o n that the audience picks up, a passion

made

manifest b y ~ e

SUbJeCtiVe eye through Which

We

are thrust into this story

of mother

and

son

.

. , Some pundits have forged links for

Tarnation through

scandal,

claimlng

Its what Andrew ki'

c · b en

. . arec

s apturmg the Friedmans (2003)

would have .e

If directed by the sons themselves, not first-timer Jarecki

and

editor Richard

Hankin. For others

of

· 1 · · d:

us, an entire

y

different

documentary

comes to min

t h ~ .Maysles brothers' Grey

Gardens

(1975),

an

indelible portrait attacked by

cntics

of

its time

1 · ·

d

·d

by. .

as

exp

OltatiVe

but vociferously

and

publicly defen e

Its subJects Big Ed' d L' ·•

tty

' te an title Edie, who came across then as just as nu

as

Caouette's grand h . ·

h

. mot er, grandfather,

and mother

do today and Just

as

t nlled to be documented. . '

Except when th • . s

eyre

not.

To

his credit, Caouette includes several

s c e ~ e

8

BULLETINS FROM THE

RONT

f

1

·

in which his

mother

or grandparents tell him to turn off the camera; notably,

all

occur toward the latter

part of

he film, when h e clearly knew he was on to

something and

had

begun working on "my movie." (In one scene, Grandpa

Adolph even tries to call the police to stop his grandson's filming him.)

If

those moments d isturb the loving harmony that otherwise prevails, they're

a necessary reminder

of the

power relations that lurk behind the surface of

most documentaries and, however disguised, contribute to their shape and

direction.

The

difference is that, here, Jonathan

is

son, grandson, director,

c i n e ~ a t ~ g r a p h e r and

coeditor (helped by Stephen Winter, producer, and the

director of the MIX festival in New York, where a three-hour Tarnation first

premiered).

By

n ~ w Caouette has seen

Grey Gardens

and,

of

course, loved it. But he

doesn't consider his own film a documentary: "I prefer to call it a my: he

confesses. Asked to

name

film influences, he bypasses any reference to docu

mentaries in favor of an excited litany: "David Lynch,

Mulholland

Drive,

Derek Jarman, Alejandro Jodorowsky,

El

Topo,

Sidney Lumet." Months

later he expands the list: "There's so many, it's so hard to choose. I was

as

inspired by acid-trip animated madness like Dirty

Duck

as by My Beautiful

Launderette, Love Streams, Do the Right

Thing

or

Rashomon.

I'm very equal

opportunity when it comes to movies and there's still so much I haven't seen

that I can't wait to get a chance to "

3

As

a.Texas kid, Caouette

had

joined a Big Brothers program that paired

fath,erless boys with role models; he was matched with Jeff Millar, a film critic

for

a Houston paper,

who took him

to screenings and obviously changed his

life.

The clips from childhood and adolescence that cycle through

Tarnation

favor

horror and splatter genres; they alternatewith the hyperreal encounters

With

his family and his poignant narrative

of

his own travails, from child

hood trauma to hi s-and -her drug overdoses and mental health interventions.

T h ~ o u g h o u t he maintains his particular brand of creativity. One

of

the rare

scenes videotaped outside the home is a record

of

his high school

play,

cowrit

ten

With

an old boyfriend; it's a musical, based

on

David

Lynch's

Blue

Velvet

with songs by Marianne Faithfull.

Queering Documentary Style

In

cinematic terms,

Tarnation

is poised at a complex intersection

of

trends

and lineages. In spirit, it harkens back to the euphoric days of the New Queer

C

. h h t 1· r wunderkind Sadie Ben-

IDema, suggesting noth ing so muc as t a ear

1e

•

t

G ·

Jonathan Caouette es

;

i


6/6

ning,

and her

Pixel vision mast erpieces. Like her,

Caouctll

is a master of the

late-at-night-in-my-room-with-cheap-technnlog}' ode, a

hard

of queer

ado

lescence coming

into

being

on

videotape, but with Texan sensibility

and

a

touch of

Tennessee Williams decay shifting

the

balanCl'. I.ong after the

mar

ketplace

has

taken over the NQC label and filmmakers h<

-c

opted for

deals

over discoveries, Caouette brings

it

all full circle

with

his raw and ab s

olutely

new

style perfectly matched

to the

pains

and

passions

of

his life.

His

queerness marked

him

from

an

early age

and

informs

Tarnation

throughout,

even as

he

has gone in

other directions

within this one piece. His

club-kid

immersion

in a counterculture

mythos inlkcts the

w0rk as

well

, so

it

was

no

surprise

to

find that his years in

f

[ouston

and

New York were

indeed

club-centered.

He

was a natural at thirtee n,

smuggling him

s

elf

into Houston

clubs as a petite

Goth

girl. At

one

point,

he tried

to support himself as

an

actor and ended up doing

stints in

Hair and

a

European tour oi Rocky Horror

Picture Show.• Throughout

he always was a film bug ,

but

the cut-throat part,

the

finance, was all so daunting. Props to

the

gay

and

lesbian film circuit:

it

the introduction to

MIX

through a friend that led Caouette to the film

world, recognition, and

the important

assistance of

MIX

's Stephen Winter.

Tarnation

isn't being released into

the

world of

the

early 1990s when the

NQC

was

the

rage

of

the moment. ins tead its

documentary

credentials

en

s

ure

that it fl ies in

the

face of two

dominant trends of the mom

ent: on the one

hand, the move

in

the United States toward big theatrical -release documen·

taries in

the

wake

of

box-office successes like Capturing the Friedmans and

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit

9 11

(2004);

on the

other, the cultural obsession

with reality television shows, as even

the Osbornes lurk

in semiparallel in the

background. Caouette may well be

pointing

the

way to a

new

approa

ch to

both documentary and

autobiography precisely by refusing categories

and

insisting instead

on

a hybrid approach that accurately encapsulates the to

ne of

his life. Puri ty isn't his game. But he's generous

and

inclusive, posing a casual

model

of

what life looks like today in America for a

damn

talented queer

boy

who has just

turned

thirty-two, for whom the

contents

of his life and the stuff

of film have merged:

It's w ~ i r for

me

to

think

back

on

it because

although

I never, ever,

in

my Wildest dreams, thought the stuff I was shooting would ever get into

Cannes or even be shown outside my bedroom, I always did kind of

know that all the craziness

that

I was going

through and

all

the

footage I

was shooting would · h

Jd even

come m

andy

somehow, somewhere. I wou

8 BULLETINS FROM THE FRONT

sometimes invent weird scenarios, like: I'd die alone in my apartment and

my footage wou ld be discovered by someone, Blair-Witch style and

t ~ e n

they

would build something out of it, which

then

made me mad, wh•ch

is

funny.

I

was like,

I'm

not

waiting till

I'm de

ad

for

this film to get

madefS

Not a chance, Tonathan Caouette.

Tarnation is

out

, and there's a wonder·

fully

mad

idea

in the

wings: a new story stitched together from a

r i s

of cult

films from

the

1970s, all starring

the

same actress, redeployed mto a com

pletely differen t

and

original Caouette narrative.

6

I like always to be doing ten

things at

the

same time:· ad mitt ed Caouette. It's just how I'm hard-wired.

7

Notes

This chapter originally appeared as Tell

It

to the Camera; Sight

atrd

Sound

5·4

(2005). 32-34·

1. Thanks to Alexis Fish for insisting that I

see

Tarnation and arranging for

me

to

do

so.

.

k f

m an

2. This quotation and all others, unless indicated otherwise, are

ta en

ro

. S F c·

sco in

2004

, when

he

was

interview

conducted in person with Caouette

l l an ran

1

on

a press tour

for

Tarnation s impending theatrical release. .

. · b

h.

producer Stephen

WIDter

,

3.

Quotation emailed to me after the

mterv1ew Y

15

as dictated by Caouette.

4. He

returned

to

acting again in

Short Bus;see below.

5· Al

so

via

Winter's email. . n

Mitchell's Short Bus (

2

oo6),

6. Caouette had a cameo

as

an actor

m

John Camero . .,.

d h

t

film ll

Flowers rn

•

rme,

pl

a

ying

the Blondie-Grabber:'

He

has since ma e as or ' h. mother

. d

£

up

documentary

on IS '

starring the sublime Chloe Sevtgny, an a o ow·

Walk

Away Renee,

in

2011.

7 Also via Winter's email.

jonathan Caouette 87

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