Thanks again to the talented, charming, and foxy Andrew Kemp for sharing his epic quest to ActionFest with us. If you missed parts one and two, read them here and here.
ASHVILLE AND ACTIONFEST
If guessing the city where ActionFest might take root, I’d probably name Detroit, New York, Austin, or a dozen other towns before I would even think about Asheville. Lazing about in the shade of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville is the place where hippies swim upstream to spawn, its culture more inclined to give peace a chance than to let God sort them out. ActionFest’s home, the Carolina Theatre, is down the road from a school called Warren Wilson, where students are required to contribute to the community before they graduate—preferably by working at the school’s on-site organic farm. I once heard that Asheville has more practicing Wiccans per square mile than any town in the US. My source spoke with authority but I have doubts; witchery isn’t known for its immutable facts.
But there’s more to Asheville than dreadlocks, skateboards, and peace. Asheville may trend granola, but the people welcome any counterculture they can find. What are they rebelling against? What do you got (that’s locally grown and free range)? ActionFest fits Asheville because it provides an alternative to the big festivals with their pomp and chafing dishes. Nothing could be more Asheville than sticking it to the man.
Speaking of hippies, have you seen Hobo with a Shotgun? It’s a story about Rutger Hauer reducing the planet’s carbon footprint, one thug at a time.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
Before the screening, Erik and I refueled at Zaxby’s, where we thought we were man enough for Birthday Cake milkshakes. We were fucking wrong. If you see Hobo with a Shotgun, let me be crystal clear: do not see it with a stomach full of Birthday Cake milkshake.
So, the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse experiment now has sequels, plural. Yes, the movie that tanked so dramatically Harvey Weinstein hacked it in half in a Solomon-like rage of financial desperation (that was Solomon right? Gotta get paid?) is now a legitimate franchise. It’s as if Ishtar had been followed by solo movies about Beatty, Hoffman, and the camel.
Grindhouse and its Robert Rodriguez plug-in, Machete, are in love with the sticky tackiness of the movies they’re riffing, but they aren’t really grindhouse movies. They’re big budget films slumming it with low ideas, movies of privilege sliding on ripped stockings and haunting the corners at night. Hobo with a Shotgun, however, is from a rookie director and made for pocket change—hilariously provided by the Canadian government—and it’s the first of these faux-exploitation movies to actually feel exploitative. You know, in a cool way.
As you’re no doubt aware, Hobo sprang from a fan-made trailer contest to promote the original Grindhouse, and was such a hit that it became an actual part of the film for the Canadian release. The story, now featuring a Rutger Hauer hobo upgrade, concerns a homeless man who uses his spare change to buy a shotgun and purges the crime-infested streets he sleeps on. That’s pretty much it. There’s some business with a prostitute down on her luck, but the film is primarily a string of escalating action scenes that take us from one calculated “holy shit!” moment to the next. I mostly just sat in the theatre and marveled that the movie exists.
Unlike Machete, Hobo is happy to stray from its trailer. Director Jason Eisener wisely expands on the short, keeping key moments for fan service and rewriting the rest. The hobo’s world is now a dystopian wild zone, one step from Thunderdome, dripping with comic-book lighting and shot with jarring, tilted camera angles. By the time armed robo-men from the ancient past arrive to slaughter innocents and battle an octopus, it’s clear that Eisener is a man of ideas.
Unfortunately, the film goes off-message with its single Hollywood concession. Rutger Hauer is a genre icon, but he’s curiously out of place here. He should be the film’s highlight, but he spends too much energy wringing tragedy and gravitas from the character, who I’d like to remind you is a shotgun-slinging hobo. Hauer feels like he’s running parallel to the film; he’s on the screen, but he’s in a different movie. The marble-mouthed grouch from the trailer is missed.
I know that saying the lead actor is too good reads as bizarre criticism, but that’s the kind of upside-down reaction that only makes sense when talking about a movie like this. Does Hobo hold together as a film? Ultimately, I think it does, and I’m inclined to say it’s a better and more complete film than any of its siblings save Death Proof. I need to see it again, though. It’s hard to know anything for sure underneath all that blood and muck.
SUPER
We returned to the Carolina the next morning, no longer feeling sick (or, to use Zaxby’s spelling, “zick”) just in time to meet Stephen and Rob, two friends of ours from Cary, NC, who had driven in for James Gunn’s Super, a film billed as an alternate take on the same premise from last year’s Kick-Ass: What would a superhero look like in the real world?
For me, Super is the movie of the festival. It’s a skewed and deeply demented film that rides its premise all the way down the road. I cooled on Kick-Ass over time because I just couldn’t accept its split personality. Instead of puncturing superhero films, Kick-Ass’s second half just is a superhero film, and one that belongs to a different superhero. If Kick-Ass had never put on a uniform, Big Daddy and Hit Girl would have still existed, and probably would have had a much easier time of things. The story is a bait-and-switch.
Super, on the other hand, takes the same idea and sticks to it, blurring the line between Rainn Wilson’s “good” and the criminals he assaults via wrench to the head. For every child molester Wilson kabongs, there’s a greater number of less guilty citizens who suffer.
Super explores the quasi-fascist implications of unchecked, masked vigilantes, a subject the studios can’t touch because they count on the big superhero dollars. They don’t want moral questions, but Gunn tackles these questions in straightaway mid-field. Wilson’s character, Frank, even gets his mission from a higher power, the big G himself, and a dorky holy superhero he finds on Christian TV (played pitch-perfect by Nathan Fillion). I was reminded of Bill Paxton’s Frailty, of all things—Frank believes it’s his divine duty to slay the city’s demons. (And, you know, steal back his wife from the drug dealer she’s living with. If possible, God.)
The rumors are true. Ellen Page steals the movie as Boltie, Wilson’s comic-book tutor slash sidekick. Page is a beast, bursting with so much enthusiasm, sexuality, and bloodlust that the frame can barely contain her. It’s a cliché, but you’ve really never seen her like this before.
Super, like Kick-Ass, escalates from a wish-fulfillment comedy into a shocking bloodbath, but Super’s denouement sets it apart. Gunn shoots the moon for an astonishingly ballsy ending, one likely to divide audiences down some pretty hard lines. For me, it worked. For you, who knows? Still, between Super and the equally demented Slither, James Gunn has proven his chops as a cult filmmaker. His films are goopy and grotesque, but they come from the heart.
BUNRAKU
By now, the party had moved outside. The parking lot was ground zero for motorcycle stunts, fire demonstrations, and other pyrotechnics, no doubt meant as a release for those movie fans whose adrenaline had bubbled over after a weekend of carnage. Without some kind of real life, daylight spectacle, we might have streamed into the streets, foaming at the mouth and forming spontaneous, compulsory fight clubs with the normies.
Some of us remained in the theatres, however. Some of us couldn’t say no to Bunraku.
Bunraku is the kind of big-budget indie that studios won’t make, and I can’t really blame them. Studios are in the business of minimizing shareholder risk, and there is almost nothing about Bunraku that isn’t a giant fucking risk. Starring Josh Hartnett? Risk. Musician Gackt as the second lead? Risk. An exaggerated world that looks like origami, where sets fold away to be replaced by new ones? Risk. A convoluted mythology, outrageous characters, a non-English title, risk, risk, risk. The only bankable element here is kung fu.
Before the film, Bunraku’s fight choreographer stood up to talk about the script’s 28 fight scenes, and facing the challenge of keeping each scene unique. His hard work is the film’s greatest strength. Every major character has a different fighting style, and part of the fun is watching them play off one another during the various matchups. The film moves from scene to scene largely via those fights, and they’re as much a part of the story as a musical’s songs.
Hartnett plays The Drifter, a “cowboy in a world with no guns” who blows into a town ruled by The Woodcutter (Ron Perlman), a legend who clings to power with shadows and violence. The Drifter seeks revenge for an old wrong, but as per usual in this type of movie, he’s not alone. A samurai warrior (Gackt) and a friendly bartender (Woody Harrelson) join the Drifter’s quest and what starts as a hunt for blood eventually turns into all-out war.
As you may guess, each character has an agenda, and the story is a stew of layers and subplots. There’s plenty for an audience to chew on--probably too much. The talk at the festival was that Bunraku had finally picked up American distribution, and my guess is that cuts will happen before the movie hits theatres, cuts aimed at speeding up the film’s sluggish pace. People should be using the word “kinetic” when they describe Bunraku, but the film plods along, strolling to admire the scenery. The film eventually wears out its welcome and becomes exhausting. Bunraku has enough great ideas and solid performances that it could stand to lose a few, and trimming the fat could make it the cult hit it deserves to be.
EXIT
The festival wasn’t quite over, but it was in its final act. The stunt show was long gone and the parking lot was quiet, fans milling about, telling stories, and reliving their favorite bloodbaths.
Erik and I said goodbye to our friends and walked to the car, but the gravity of something truly badass stole my attention. It was a modified black muscle car, the word MEDUSA written on its side. I recognized the car from the movie Bellflower, one of the many films I missed at the festival. The driver—a filmmaker, I assume—gave some lucky fans a chance to sit behind the wheel. I snapped a shot.
The car somehow appeared in front of us on the road. We watched it peel off, engines so juiced that it literally can’t drive casual. I wondered whether this was a sneak preview of my return trip down the mountains with Erik the Leadfoot, or if it was just another symbol of why ActionFest and Asheville belong together. Anywhere else, a car like that is an eyesore or a road hazard. In Asheville, even near the famous Biltmore Forest, it’s just another way of kicking ass.
(That’s it for my ActionFest road report! Thanks for taking the journey with me, thanks to ActionFest for being what it is, and HUGE thanks to everyone at The Movie Advocate for asking me to cover the festival, and then for allowing me to ramble on for so many pages. )
Andrew Kemp
www.TheHollywoodProjects.com