Frameline 29: Scary, Mary!
Okay, indie filmmakers. Today's lesson: ECONOMY. In these difficult, troubled times, you absolutely must not allow a single frame of your piece to go to waste. Economize, consolidate, and slash your movie until you're eliminated every single extraneous moment. And if that leaves you with a movie that's only two minutes long, fine -- they'll be two minutes the world will love, instead of thirty that we'll all hate. And in case you need a lesson in What Not To Do, look no further than most of the offerings in Frameline's Scary, Mary, a misleadingly-titled collection of gay sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.
We've only seen an audience turn ugly once, but it very nearly happened at Monday night's showing of Scary, Mary at the Roxie. Our previous ugly-audience experience was at an attempted comedy in the Indie Fest that had long, aggravating streches of Not Funny. Such was the case with several of the Scary, Mary pieces: clever ideas, streched so thin you could barely see them anymore. For example: Harigata, a splicing-together of clips from 50s sci-fi and modern dyke pr0n. The Good: an arched eyebrow that meant nothing in the 50s, but recontextualized with muff-divers made the audience roar with laughter. The Bad: Way-too-long shots of writhing women that left the audience impatiently silent, and probably revealed the real reason the piece was assembled in the first place. What a waste. Economize, people.
So were there any good shorts in the collection? Yes, in fact, thank God for Taco Chick and Salsa Girl, which was perfectly trimmed and economized, raucously adored by the crowed, and deserved to be feature-length. But first, let's examine some more of the sh**ty pieces.
In a similar vein to Harigata, Star Trek: Voyeur merged scenes from "Voyager" with gay pr0n. Watching the crew grow nauseous after the view-screen flashed "Warning: Hardcore Scat" was funny ... but not seven-minutes-long funny. Definitely not economical.
We'll give some leeway to Creep because we love its star, local drag queen Cookie Dough. But oh, those long, unfunny, bloated streches -- they hurt! A stabbing scene seems to take forever, as well as a corpse mangling and cat-sh**ting sequence. And half the dialogue was inaudible -- Judies, we don't care how poor your asses are; invest in a friggin' shotgun mic.
Tranny Force Episode One: Cirque du so Gay was the biggest disappointment, but only because we'd pinned really high hopes to it. A great dorky-gay concept: four manga-styled space heroines crash to Earth, and their spirits and superpowers transfer into three gay boys and their puppet dog, who must then save Earth by transforming into crime-fighting trannies, just like "Sailor Moon," um, kind of. It's an awesome concept, but the piece then goes on to spend most of its 40 minutes REMINDING US OVER AND OVER WHAT THE CONCEPT IS. Fer crying out loud! Skip the constant exposition and just cut to battles between sassy queens and evil shirtless circuit boys. The message of Tranny Force was pleasant enough: circuit boys are alien villains so fake that they can be defeated by being punctured and deflated. Yay for the idea; boo for the execution. This piece, due mostly to its long running time and missed potential, was the most bloated of the evening. Bloat is bad. Economy is good. Cut yourself down by about 15 minutes, Tranny Force, and then maybe after that we can start dealing with your distracting audio problems.
And if you ever needed an example of ecomonic storytelling, look no further than Taco Chick and Salsa Girl. Every single moment of the piece, with not one exception, was absolutely hysterical. No doubt there was a temptation to leave in longer shots, or to strech out the fighting scenes, or to maybe put in a dance number. But no! The (startlingly hot) director resisted, and economically saved their screentime for only the most deserving elements. And it was awesome: a frantic, unpredictable story about two Mexican drag queen superheroines and their fruity sidekick, it had the speedy-funny pacing of Family Guy and the silly-gag sensibility of Airplane. The story mainly concerns two villains -- Neato Nazi Barbie and White Supremacist Ken -- who kidnap Salsa Girl and hypnotize her by playing golden maracas. Ah, good times. Frameline was kind to put this piece at the beginning of Scary, Mary; that way, those who left during the shorts that followed it -- and deserters were numerous -- didn't miss much.
