RUNNING A TRAIN

What about Koyaanisqatsi! Where’s Jodorowsky?! I want more animation! Such were the messages I received after posting “THERE WILL BE PUPPETS: Towards a Neo-Decadent Cinema.” As I considered these complaints over the following days, other oversights came into focus. So I present an addendum: ten more films (and five series) which may serve as an example for future enterprises in ND filmmaking. Let us begin.

Asceticism, the Devil, a dance called “Radioactive Flesh.”

Kick a lamb in the belly.

“Till the very word pleasure fills you with nausea.”

This short film focusses on toy trains, not—as the narrator is quick to point out—scale model trains. Understanding the implications of this distinction (artifice vs. slavish representation) might be at the very heart of our inquiry as to what will constitute an emerging Neo-Decadent cinema.

Tarot symbolism, Aztec lizards, shit-alchemy, the planets.

If Star Wars is a model train, then Starcrash is a TOY train.

Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager spacecrafts both hold a “Golden Record” containing music, greetings in multiple languages, whale and bird songs, 116 analog-coded images, and an hour-long compressed recording of the NASA creative director’s brainwaves: During the recording of said brainwaves, the director tried to focus her thoughts on topics such as “Earth’s history, civilizations and the problems they face, and what it was like to fall in love.” All of this is useless garbage when compared to Koyaanisqatsi, and future missions would be wise to include Godfrey Reggio’s documentary film as the sole cultural document—because nothing else is necessary.

As spectacle has overtaken all aspects of contemporary life and politics, it’s easy to forget that pure spectacle—devoid of computer effects and fakery—is sometimes welcome, and especially so in the cinema; dialog is for the theater, glittery mayhem is for the screen. Jackie Chan perhaps understood this best, as he blended the visual language and humor of silent film with real stunts and kung fu extravagance. Fully in auteur mode, Chan absolutely crashes through Police Story, first in a jaw-dropping scene of wreckage down the path of a hillside shantytown, and then again in a shimmering shopping mall, which erupts in countless explosions of shattered panes of sugar-glass. (The scenes between these two set pieces can be skipped entirely.)

To receive the full impact of Flight of the Navigator, it’s important to follow some basic instructions. First, before reaching the age of 12, accidentally watch part of the film while at a friend’s house. Second, spend the next two decades periodically thinking about the film’s themes as they relate to deeply held childhood anxieties—while also questioning the reliability of one’s own memory. Lastly, watch the complete film as an adult and feel an extreme sense of unease that borders on an ineffable and terrible gnosis.

(If viewers are unable to follow these instructions specifically with Flight of the Navigator, an acceptable substitute can be found with 1985’s The Peanut Butter Solution.)

Isabelle Huppert and sexual violence: two great tastes that taste great together.

I’d like to have seen slow close-ups on colorful sores, a miniature Steadicam winding through mysterious sites of illness. Sadly, Skin Deep is merely a conventional advocacy film, but as a document of people whose experiences fall between the cracks of what is known and unknown, these stories of real-life body horror serve as a sober reminder that the establishment will denigrate anyone—despite any earnest pleas for help—if they are deemed embarrassing or inconvenient. As such, the tribulations of these medical freaks can easily serve as a metaphor for outsider artists and their endless war against the academy.

“Lene Marie Fossen was an autodidact Norwegian photographer. She rejected the linear progression of time that forced her to go through puberty and stopped eating at the tender age of 10. She struggled with anorexia for the rest of her life. Fossen chose to be open about her disease and found her means of expression in photography.”

The thinner - the winner.

No. 2: “It doesn’t matter which side runs the Village. Both sides are becoming identical.”

There is no church in the Village, no God. Is this why series star and creator Patrick McGoohan—a devout Catholic—made ex-secret-agent No. 6 so hell-bent on escape? Despite his protestations of being a “free man,” is No. 6 really looking for the divine rather than the self? Is this psychedelic series covertly trad? Are the mod aesthetics in service of… anti-modernism???

Reddit user: “Pretty sure the kangaroo was my first on-screen crush.”

While I don’t necessarily endorse any of the specifics related to this early furry PSYOP, Zoobilee Zoo continues to serve as a potent example of how televisual media can warp and distort developing sexualities. Fiction absolutely has direct effects on reality—and if you don’t believe that, you should be a math tutor, not an artist.

Kink, a territory named Monica, sharp hip bones, a fly trapped in human eyelashes. Repeat.

Filmed in Cleveland with a young Kathryn Hahn and a cast of puppets, Hickory Hideout also featured a prop known as the “Joke Tree.” Viewers would send in jokes, which would be read on the air, and the slips of paper would then be fed to the artificial plant, which would shake and titter with excitement. Reader, I am in possession of the original Joke Tree, and the sack attached to its red cloth lips still contains a large selection of these documents. An example from Marty McGann, of Lakewood, Ohio:

Why can’t you tell a secret in a cornfield?

There are too many ears.

Sometimes, in moments of crisis or confusion, I will consult these jokes for guidance; their words, much like Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, often contain exactly what I need to hear.

The Joke Tree

While teaching a summer art class the other year, I felt compelled to tell my students about Passions—a situation which quickly proved difficult as these young people weren’t even familiar with the basic concept of soap operas. Scrambling for a quick explanation, I told them “women used to not have jobs, and they would watch TV shows during the afternoon called ‘soap operas,’ which were an hour long and ran every single day, not just once a week, and the commercials were aimed at women, with household products like detergent and soap—which is why they were called soap operas.” Met with their blank and confused death-stares, I suddenly felt a million years old. I then murmured, “well, Passions was a later-era soap opera and it was really weird because there was a witch-lady who had a doll named Timmy, and the doll would come to life and was played by a man with a rare form of dwarfism.”

Be seeing you.