My Favorite Movie In the World (Today)

Two days until this "Festive Imposition", its sights sounds and smells are all put back in the box again. Not that I'm anti-Christmas - Christmas is awesome! - it's a mixed bag though, there are certain expectations - I don't do well with expectations.
This happens to me every year - I buy a gift for someone, a good gift, and think, "That's _____ done", and then a few days later run across a better gift - the PERFECT gift for this person, of course! So then you have a series of options, all more or less unsatisfactory, and you do what you have to do...

xxxxxxxxxxx ho ho ho xxxxxxxxxxx

Never mind that, though; last night I rented a movie on pure speculation, and as of this moment it is MY FAVORITE MOVIE IN THE WORLD!

That's right, "The American Astronaut", a very independent film from 2002, written and directed by this guy Cory McAbee, whose band The Billy Nayer Show also provided the music.

I saw the Billy Nayer Show three or four years ago, they opened for Deerhoof at a really nice outdoor amphitheater at the University of Richmond, on a warm (summer?) night - and, they knocked me out, McAbee playing autoharp to a garage-'n'-western backing, spinning humorous, bewildering tales of hard-boiled hallucinating psychosexual drama - like the Residents in cowboy hats, it was very entertaining. But then Deerhoof came out and thrashed my mind's ear to a twitching sparkling jelly, and I came away from the experience with TBNS relegated to the back burner pretty much.

Until last night, when fitfully browsing through the 'cult' movies I saw this, described as a "Space Western". I'd never seen one of those, unless "El Topo" counts.

So what it is, (and knowing the plot will avail you in no way whatever with this one) is the story of an interplanetary trader "Samuel Curtis" (McAbee), who while transporting a cat to one of Jupiter's moons, is embroiled in a convoluted plan suggested by his old friend The Blueberry Pirate, wherein he is to transport to the all-male and sexually-impoverished work planet Jupiter, a suitcase containing a kit for cloning a Real Live Woman; in exchange, picking up a teenage passenger and Jupiter VIP, The Boy Who Actually Saw a Woman's Breast and transporting him to Venus.

Venus is a planet of all women, recalling Petticoat Junction, heh - where the only male, who hitherto had sexually serviced all its inhabitants, has died; they need a replacement. Curtis is then to pick up the corpse of the spent male and transport it to Earth, where he will finally obtain a large cash reward.

Along the way his plan is foiled by run-ins with his murderous nemesis, Professor Heiss, who has a strange obsession with our hero whereby he can't actually kill Curtis until he has somehow resolved the mysterious conflict between them - something which Curtis has no intention of allowing to happen.

In the Ceres Crossroads bar

All this otherworldly nonsense is just an imaginative, allegorical way for McAbee to write about various personalities and situations from real life, I guess, transposed to the fantastical. (He was working as a bouncer in a bar, and musician/painter/writer as he was working on the screenplay - you get the sense of someone who hasn't seen much daylight!)

The emotional relations between the characters, the juvenile relationship of the sexes (all the men on one planet, the women on the other), the evocatively dingy garage, barn and barroom scenarios, chintzy sets and special effects, all captured in crisp gorgeous black and white; many great musical vignettes, surreal offbeat humor and character acting (the guy playing Professor Heiss is really Dennis Hopperishly good) - that's what this movie is 'about', and it makes perfect sense to my gaylord, escapist aesthetic...

I don't want to compare it to other films and filmmakers, but - think of McAbee using the rigor-mortised corpse of Jim Jarmusch to bludgeon David Lynch and bring him, bruised and trembling, to kneel before the throne of Guy Maddin, as Alex Cox looks on, laughing, and you have some helpful frame of reference I hope.

Here's the trailer:

There are other bits and bobs on that Popular Internet Video Hosting Site, including the amazing 'bathroom scene' - but, if you have any real interest in seeing the movie, I implore you, save it as a surprise, it's worth waiting for.

(They have it at the Video Fan here in town, on Strawberry Street...after I return it that is.)

And you might want to check out The Billy Nayer Show too!