Jan. 10, 2010 – Neil Hamburger presents A Tribute To Frank Sinatra, Jr.
This past Sunday brought one of my favorite events of the past year to the Cinefamily: “America’s Funnyman” Neil Hamburger
Neil shared some rare Frank, Jr. TV appearance clips with the audience, as well as railed on Comedy Death-Ray host Scott Aukerman for bringing up the distasteful anecdote about Frank, Jr.’s kidnapping in the early 1960s.
Neil Hamburger (1 of 2)
Neil Hamburger (2 of 2)
- bret
Last night, Hadrian and I were invited to the AFI Fest’s screening of the brand-new Harmony Korine
A gang of elderly degenerates wanders aimlessly through suburban neighborhoods, wreaks havoc, and films their exploits on a decrepit VHS camcorder. All we see for the film’s 80 minutes are the images captured on this device: The trash humpers squatting to crap on driveways and doorsteps; the trash humpers smashing televisions, cinder blocks, and boom boxes in a desolate parking lot; the trash humpers hosing down their wheelchair in a carwash at night; the trash humpers jumping on a trampoline in the middle of the street; the trash humpers partying with some fat prostitutes; the trash humpers ogling a garbage can, while offscreen other trash humpers grunt lustily, cackle maniacally, and chant, sing, or simply yelp, “Git it!”
If all of this sounds completely idiotic, it is. But Korine’s perverse commitment to this idiocy holds the film together, allowing you to lose yourself (if you’re so inclined) in its grisly and analog-fuzzy view of the world.
I’ve had mixed feelings about Korine’s body of work over the years, but I was stoked to see some serious love for the distressed VHS aesthetic. Some interviews I’ve read have Korine stressing that maybe Trash Humpers shouldn’t even be called a “movie”, due to its extreme “narrative” circumstances, but there’s too much going on in the film to not call it a “film”. I’m still unsure, almost 24 hours after I saw it, what I thought of it. Here’s what the thing actually looks like:
And here’s what Korine had to say about it at the New York Film Festival:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Best moment of the Q&A last night at AFI:
Obnoxious Audience Member (giggling like a fool, and sounding like he’d been rehearsing the question in his car on the drive over to the theater): If you could pick any one historical figure to take a shit on your chest, who would it be and why?
Harmony Korine: Aw, c’mon, I’d never do that. You gotta draw the line somewhere.
- bret
