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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 2002)
40 JuMt mm ' february 1. 2QQ2 FILM .............▼ ............. Hit and miss Punks offers nothing more than eye candy, but Storytelling is a triumph by «n Sunday. February 24, 2002 @ 2 p.m The Old Church (SW 11 th Ave. and SW Clay) To P u rch a s e T ic k e ts C o n ta c t P G M C @503-226-2588 or O nline @ w w w .p d xg m c.o rg T ic k e t P rices: $15 G e n e ra l A d m ission Listen for 14 hours of dynamic radio - open mic, panel discus sions, national experts and the homeless themselves - live from the street outside the KBOO studios to stations all over the country • who qets kicked off welfare when limits kick in • Diqnity Villaqe: are Hoovervilles an answer? • rural homelessness • what should the homeless movement be? • squattinq: a riqht to seize shelter? • the increase in NYC homelessness after 9/11 • qoinq hungry in America • and more COMMUNITY RADIO 90.7fm Portland * w ww .kboo.orq 5 0 3 /2 3 1 -8 0 3 2 • 20 SE 8 th A ve.,Portland 9 72 14 P L ease join us soon to s i are I our passion for flood pood andpriendship in a romantic Settinfl ^ 4 YJ»u, O rioni P litro 503-249 5001 Tuesday-S aturday 5 :3 0 -9 :3 0 1303 NE Fremont St www.creolapdx.com C hristopher M c Q uain unk” is African American slang for I “homosexual.” In the case o f Punks, B C writer/director Patrik-Ian Polk uses the term to refer specifically to a group of four disparate men of color (three African Americans and one Latino) living in the gay ghetto of West Hollywood. Marcus (Seth G illiam ) is a 20-something photographer who, despite good looks and a friendly personality, has trouble finding a date. Crystal (Jazzmun), a drag queen who performs a Sister Sledge-based act, is strug gling to keep her extremely contentious coterie of lip-syncers from breaking up. Hill (Dwight Ewell) catches his longtime partner making out with another guy and embarks upon a series of hot but empty one- Innocent Marcus (left) has the hots for straight boy night stands. Dante (Renoly Santiago), a Darby in Punks spoiled rich hitch from Beverly Hills, hangs around the periphery of the group, apparently his hatred of school, his desperate daydreams of for the sole purpose of interjecting the occasion becoming a television talk show host— are al finger-snapping bon mot. brought into focus by Toby Oxman, a faltering New York City filmmaker who ventures into Marcus’ drama-laden chance for true love arrives in the form of Darby, a music producer upper-middle-class suburban New Jersey to make who moves in next door. Darby is gorgeous and Scooby the star of a documentary. Toby’s docu sweet, but shy Marcus contents himself, as usual, mentary is too noble, however, to allow for dirty, with taking photographs of his crush. Darby’s girl bothersome details like Scooby’s sexuality and his friend (alas!) follows him from the East Coast, but family’s casually disrespectful treatment of their Marcus immediately senses something amiss be maid, Consuela (the fabulous Lupe Ontiveros). tween them and wonders if he knows something The film’s who-cares take on Scooby’s situa about Darby that Darby doesn’t know himself. tion is technically gay-positive, but it’s not that Punks is possessed of an extremely commer simple. “Gay people are human beings, too,” cial nature, partially explained by the fact that Scooby’s baby brother, Mikey, smugly admonishes it’s another production from Kenneth “Babyface” at the dinner table. Later, Mikey— clearly a future Edmonds. Like Soul Food, this is an attempt to “compassionate conservative”— dismisses Con- suela’s grief over her dead son, a criminal execut depict unquestionably underrepresented African American lives with dignity and honesty. ed by the state, telling her “bad people should be But Punks falls short on the honesty front; the killed” before ordering her to clean up the grape smallest African American gay role in any Spike juice he has spilled on the kitchen floor. Lee film is better drawn than all of these charac In the world according to Todd Solondz, the ters combined. Any possible cultural impact suf road to hell is paved with glib answers to life’s fers from Polk’s easy salving away of their social problems, lip-serviced good intentions, patroniz and emotional wounds. Instead of exemplifying a ing classism, detached intellectualism and sancti vibrant local color, his insertion of WeHo gay monious political correctness. This is evidenced vernacular comes off as a trite panacea. both in Scooby’s story, which takes place in a The film’s questionable idealization of hetero section of the film titled “Nonfiction,” and the sexual masculinity as something both at tainable shorter, more brutal “Fiction” piece preceding it. and highly desirable and its insistence on slapping Storytelling is painfully honest in a way that a smiley face over any subject even approaching likely will be beyond the comfort zone o f many the confrontational make Punks impossible to take an audience member. But regardless o f its seriously. But for the obvious and deadening good provocative, sometimes excruciating content, intentions of its creators, it could have worked as it’s also quite humane— a progressive, smart, the hybrid sitcom/soap it so structurally resembles. truly moral film with a refreshing lack of preaching or pretension and, even more impor he films of Todd Solondz often are criticized tantly, a wicked sense o f humor. J H as gratuitously unpleasant, sometimes to the point of perversity. But if the depictions of C inema 21, 616 N.W . 21st A ve., screens Punks inexorable schoolyard hierarchy in 1995’s Wel through Feb. 7 and Storytelling from Feb. 8 to come to the Dollhouse and the more tortuous 14. For more information call 503-223-4515. aspects of human sexuality in 1998’s Happiness were uncomfortable, it wasn’t necessarily C hristopher M c Q uain is a Portland writer and because of sadism on his part but a principled filmmaker. lack o f sentimentalized “poignancy.” With Storytelling, Solondz turns his unsparing eye on a gay character. The fact that suburban high school burnout Scoo- by Livingston’s sexual experiences tend to involve his male best friend are less a problem for Scooby than for his popular younger brother, Brady, a crudely “toler ant” football star who nevertheless has a reputation he can’t afford to sully with a sibling’s homosexuality. Scooby’s own issues— his harried, clueless bourgeois parents (John Good Gay teen Scooby is the focus of documentary filmmakers man and Julie Hagerty, both delightful), in the darkly comic Storytelling T
