It is
the best of times; it is the worst of times. We make love to our iPhones and our egos,
while begrudging food for the poor and health care for the indigent. I don’t know whether to disclose or disguise
my disgust and disdain for the America of 2012: an America whose obstructionist
Congress of hicks and rednecks, flat-earthers and holy-rollers, have wasted two
years of our lives treating our kindest and wisest President worse than the shoeshine
boy that they obviously wish he were; an America so engorged on violence and
inured to it that the cause isn’t even discussed anymore, merely whether we
prefer homicide or suicide; an America so dumbed down that it prefers its arts
and entertainment in the form of reality TV, and its presidential elections,
too. No, I can’t decide whether to disclose
or disguise my disgust and disdain. Both
paths have their perils. If I disclose
my disgust, then I’m unpatriotic. If I
disguise it, then I’m dishonest. So I
look for others to do it for me.
So
where was Bobcat Goldthwait’s “God Bless America” in the 2012 Oscar lineup? It’s nowhere to be found, nor would you be
likely to have found it in a theater near you.
Ah, but that must be because its director is a washed-up stand-up whose
best work was long ago, so he must be a hack director by definition. Wrong again.
This is Goldthwait’s third major (independent) feature, including the
critically acclaimed “World’s Greatest Dad” with Robin Williams and the movie “Sleeping
Dogs Lie,” which preceded it. However
independent he might be, though, and however proud of it, still every filmmaker’s
goal is not only to create good work, but to have others see it and appreciate
it, and “get it” in the way it’s supposed to be gotten. Yeah, you gotta’ have that, too, and you’d
think GBA would’ve gotten some notice for the sheer amount of violence in
it. After all, even Bob Dole and other
politicos chimed in on “Natural Born Killers” way back when, didn’t they? Ah, but that was a different era, wasn’t it?
“God
Bless America” is about the trials and tribulations of Frank, a loser who’s
just lost his job, just found out he’s got brain cancer, been soundly
rejected by his own daughter, and, worst of all it seems, is being subjected to
a barrage of idiots, a**holes, and reality TV stars that overwhelm what little
sense of sanity he has left. Those are
just the symptoms of the underlying problem, though, which is that people are just
rude nowadays, and for no apparent reason, as if our civilization and religion
and social niceties have all come to nought. "Why have civilization if we no longer are interested in being civilized?" he
asks; me, too. So what does he do? He does what we’ve all thought of doing at least in our worst nightmares. He starts killing people,
choosing them on the basis of the degree to which they annoy him. In this he is joined by an adoring admirer, a
teenage female misfit named Roxanne, who more or less agrees with the annoying
nature of modern civilization and is looking for other outlets than the
collected works of Alice Cooper and transcendant power ballads such as “Only
Women Bleed.” Hey, you gotta have
heroes.
So they
don appropriate couture for the task ahead and proceed to start wasting people,
right and left, mostly by gun, sometimes by knife or cord, as if each person
were merely a ridiculous word balloon waiting to be popped, another over-puffed
ego deflated, another bad joke tossed in the can. Frank isn’t immoral, though, quite the
opposite, and any love interest with his teenage partner is strictly kept in
check. He won’t even attempt to get his
finger wet in his desire for Roxanne, who he obviously loves more by now than
anything in this world, and who is at the same time a surrogate wife and
daughter. No, he sticks to the business
at hand, which is to rid the world of pompous asses and poseurs, a jihad of the
soul, a jihad of sorts. This all changes
when he finds out that he doesn’t really have brain cancer, and that Roxanne is
not really an abused child, as she had told him. Not only that, but the most famous reality TV
star of all, adored simply because he is the most hideous, didn’t attempt
suicide because they were laughing at him; he attempted suicide because they
tried to cancel him. You can guess the
rest. It’s a shootout at the
not-so-OK-corral. Fortunately, Roxanne
is back at his side by then, so they get to waste quite a few before they
themselves are wasted. Joe Bob Briggs
must have had a field day. I don’t know
why the cops never showed up before this.
But the
movie is not so much violent, as it is about violence, the violence within us
and without us, that and an unhealthy handful of other ungodly traits that
define the age in which we live. Maybe
that’s the difference in the “Natural Born Killers” that author Tarantino
wanted to make and the one that Oliver Stone actually did make, and which they
famously fought over; but I doubt it. Goldthwait
has done something here which I prize most in my favorite artists and authors. He has put something very heavy in a light
easily digestible format. This is not
disgusting blood-and-guts violence. This
is meta-violence, conceptual violence, violence of the palette. I for one can certainly appreciate it, not
only for the reason that I am not alone in my disgust of most things 2012 American,
but for a day, at least a day, I can let someone else do the heavy lifting,
while I sit back and pontificate, nodding slightly and thinking, ‘see, I told
you so.’
I have
only one complaint about “God Bless America,” and that’s that there are not
enough low camera angles in the world to make The Music Box (Fonda Theatre,
whatever) on Hollywood Boulevard look big enough to host an American Idol-like
major TV show. But I only know that
because I pass by there often to get my little cup of black meat as part of
Trader Joe’s™ free caffeine-maintenance program. I even passed by there yesterday because my
wife forgot to take her little Tupperware™ bowl of rice to work. Hey, you gotta’ have rice. But I have nothing but admiration for the
high concept of the film. We’re killing
ourselves, mass suicide of the species by the species, the first apocalypse
ever televised. We’re driving off a
cliff, guns all ablaze, grinning like Cheshires, with no bottom in sight. After all, would there be any unemployment,
hunger, epidemic or war if we all grew our own food and made our own clothes
and shared the fruits of our arts and labors willingly and openly with each
other and with respect for the Creation of which we are all a part? No, I don’t think so. That’s “God Bless America,” starring Joe Murray and Tara
Lynne Barr, available now at a Netflix website near you. Check it out.
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