More tales of mystery and intrigue from the second annual road trip to Chapel Hill, North Carolina…
The drive took us 16 hours this time. So much for a faster alternate route. We left on Thursday at about 9:15 and rolled in to Chapel Hill, North Carolina at 1 in the damn morning the following day. Yowzahs! Still, no complaints. We trekked through some pretty goddamn gorgeous country this time around, as our course took us slightly more westerly through Pennsylvania, and then West Virginia and Normal Virginia before hitting NC. This, ultimately, is what most boggles and infuriates me about the Americans: they live in one of the most unbelievably gorgeous places I have ever seen, and yet are doing more environmental damage to both their own country and the entire planet than any other nation on Earth. How in the world can you look out your back door at country this gorgeous, and not want to do every single thing in your power to protect and cherish it?
Due to the weakness of the American dollar, Matty Price and I were, of course, looking for spending opportunities. After a commerce-free slog through Pennsylvania we entered West Virignia and saw, like a beacon in the eveningtimes, a great, rocky promontory above us which housed a Best Buy, a Dick’s, and a Target. There was girlish screaming. Once we were in the parking lot, the lettering on a hot girl’s ass indicated that we were proximate to the University of West Virginia, which no doubt fostered the rank Bix Boxness of the mall. I bought Star Wars action figures at Target for only six damn dollars apiece. We browsed digital cameras, though it would take me until two days later to realize that I actually have no ability to make an intelligent decision on such a purchase, and I would be better off just buying something already. And most heartbreakingly, we discovered that at the Best Buy, Criterion DVDs were on sale for $30 a pop. And I didn’t buy any. I foolishly put a copy of Late Spring back on the shelf, assuming that every Best Buy in the South would have similar price schemes. And of course, though we visited another 6 Best Buys that weekend, we never found another single, solitary Criterion DVD, nor could we locate the original store on our way home. It disappeared back into the West Viriginian headlands like a mirage.
In our travels, we passed through Zelienople but did not stop at Bear Bottom Antiques, a regret I shall carry to my grave. We passed through a town called Harmony which was, originally, known as Murdering Town (!!!), but did not get murdered. We did, however, kill an hour and a half waiting for breakfast. They don’t move fast in Murdering Town.
We did stop in Bland, but found it boring.
On the way home we hit a rest stop in Virginia, nestled deep in the mountains. I went and got a drink and when I came back to the (rented) car I saw a woman approaching me. She was in her early 30s, was stunningly beautiful, and was wearing a white tank-top that quite demonstrably proved that she a) was wearing no bra, and b) had very large, puffy nipples, which were biteable in their perfection. And I got caught out looking. How? Easy: I got into her car. Yeah, real smooth, Matt. I was so flummoxed by this vision of loveliness that I missed our (rented) car outright, and went to get in the driver’s side door of her car, which she too was attempting to access. The kicker? Her 6-year-old daughter in the passenger seat. Woman now clearly thinking that I was trying to both steal her car and abduct her daughter, she jumped behind the wheel and took off so fucking fast that we literally couldn’t catch her even flatlining 140 km/h for the next twenty minutes. She was on the horizon. She was gone.
Chapel Hill itself, in the daytime this time around, could not be more of a lovely place to visit. A dedicated college town, the “strip” as it were isn’t really anything more than a couple of blocks… but the weather was sunny, the people were friendly, and this little slice of mid-South Americana couldn’t have been any more enjoyable for a mid-afternoon stroll.
Hi Mom! continued to impress; we saw two screenings this year, both of them on Friday night. Clearly, I misjudged rather wildly when sending them Nuns That Fuck as my submission this year. I probably could have submitted literally anything I’ve made in the past five years and had a better chance of getting in, but NTF isn’t their style. And their style? Awesomeness! I am monumentally impressed with the calibre of work that this little fest in the seeming middle of nowhere is able to attract. I would be nothing short of honoured to make it in next year… something I intend to attempt with vigour.
The first show was the outdoor screening, and was held on a parkade just after the sun had set, and could not have been more beautiful in a million years of trying. It was in this program that we saw David Chai’s masterful Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot, which was easily my favourite of all the films we saw this year. The program also had Arno Salters’ Playtime, a one-minute movie that put most of our one minute movies to shame. And for sheer artistic willfulness, I enjoyed Scott Ligon’s film, Escape Velocity, a rather lengthy exploration of A.D.D. It’s bloody brilliant for about ten minutes, and then (unfortunately) sort of just becomes a narrative about Ligon’s life, without ever really returning to the basic connection between deficit-abnormal personalities and artmaking. But still very, very cool.
This year’s midnight screening began with a surprise: Onur Turkel, who made last year’s The Tozer Show (my favourite flick of the year, and the only one where I actually wrote to the guy and begged him for a copy!), and had a second Tozer flick in the programme this year (The Urine Bomber), walked up and introduced himself to us, having no idea that me and Matty were probably the only two guys in the room who would actually scream with glee when he told us who he was. We screamed. With glee. Talking to him was like talking to Quentin Tarantino, in that his every mannerism was eerily Quentin-esque, from the “all rights” to the flailing limbs. He went on at length about how this year’s movie was nowhere near as good as last year’s movie. When it was over I turned to him and yelled “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU KNOW IT’S FUCKING AWESOME!!” And it really was. Hollywood, send this man a bazillion dollars, and send me a 15% finder’s fee.
And that being said, this would be a really good time to admit my hefty crush on the hotness of Amber Tozer, who is pretty hot when she’s an animated standup comedienne in the Tozer Show movies, and is way hotter in real live digital paintcolours on her way-too-well-written blog. Damn hell yes damn yes. I sort of want to marry her a little bit. Or take her out for huevos rancheros.
Other highlights on the midnight were Losing It by Bobby Miller, which was sort of addled in its production for no good reason which was a shame because the script and principal performances were actually really good. There was something worthwhile in there that still managed to translate out of the awkward staging and ultra-ultra-ultra-low quality filmmaking. And there was Cats and Pants avatar Jennifer Matotek‘s Every Boy I’ve Fucked; yes, I went all the way to North Carolina to see a flick by a Toronto filmmaker that I probably could have gotten a copy of with 2 or 3 e-mails. But that’s the fun. And the flick itself was, not surprisingly, boner-inducing. That woman is onto something. I’m gonna make a corollary flick called “Every Girl Who’s Stomped On My Heart And Walked Away Smilin’ Like They Was Christopher Walken Or Some Shit.” And it’ll be good, gorrammit.
At the end of the day, the three guys at Hi Mom! have been doing this shtick for nine years with no funding, no corporate sellouts, and no reason to do it other than the sheer love of the game. That’s powerful to me, man, especially now. They’ve succeeded better than anyone could possibly imagine, seem to have spent the weekend ably buttfucking Worldwide Short’s concept of “programming” with their endlessly inventive lineup of talent, and have made a true believer out of me. Honestly, when we set out for this trip, it was a gag, a dumb and pointless sequel. No longer. I will go back next year, and the year after, and the year after that. Hi Mom! is part of my life now.