William A Kirkley's Excavating Taylor Mead [7/10]

   My philosophy is from Nietzsche: minimum of effort and maximum of error. It's gotten me practically nowhere.
 - Taylor Mead

    Biographical documentaries in which the subject takes part tend to stand or fall on whether or not said subject is sufficiently good company to maintain our interest and sympathy over the course of a feature film. And this means William A Kirkley is in luck and how. Because whatever else he may be or may have been over the last half-century - Bohemian poet; pioneer performance-artist; underground movie star; Andy Warhol muse/collaborator (and very first 'Warhol Superstar'); award-laden stage-actor; colleague of Hopper and Pacino; beloved Manhattan eccentric/barfly/raconteur - Taylor Mead is nothing if not good company.
    Bitchy, endearing, acerbic, anecdotal and jaw-droppingly indiscreet (Montgomery Clift fans beware!), Mead is very much one of a kind - especially so since the demise of fellow Manhattan resident Quentin Crisp, whose famously lax house-keeping habits look like the acme of hermetic purity alongside Mead's chaotic domestic "arrangements."
    Seemingly granted access to all areas of Mead's life - including his nightly perambulations around the bars and cafes of Greenwich Village, and his regular feeding of the area's stray-cat population - Kirkley at several points bravely shoehorns his camera into the minuscule one-room apartment on downtown Ludlow Street that's been his subject's residence/lair/storeroom for the past twenty-odd years (with the emphasis on the odd). 
    Mead 'lives alone' only in the sense that he doesn't cohabit with another person - but he certainly doesn't want for company: he has several pampered felines to take care of - not to mention hundreds, perhaps thousands of cockroaches and other assorted creepy-crawlies who seem to be able to look after themselves (and stir memories of the BBC's Life of Grime programmes).
    Excavating Taylor Mead - the title in part a gag on the way Mead has become 'buried alive' by his own paraphernalia - covers a period in 2002/3 when the Ludlow Street pad falls foul of health inspectors. For a while it looks like Mead might have to seek alternative lodgings - but his plight rapidly becomes a cause celebre among the Manhattan demi-monde, emblematic of the way the character and charm of old Noo Yawk is being swept away by gentrification and rocketing property values. 
    Serendipitously, one of Mead's periodic spells in the limelight turns out to be just around the corner: long-time admirer Jim Jarmusch casts him in Champagne, the final, wonderful, segment of his shorts-compendium Coffee and Cigarettes. And needless to say Mead proceeds to steal the show not only in the film itself but also at the glitzy Manhattan premiere.
    Such exposure is really no more than he deserves - Kirkley and his assembled talking-head commentators explain just how central Mead was to the nascent underground American movie-making scene of the late fifties and early sixties: several critics have compared his antics in seminal titles such as The Flower Thief and Lemon Hearts to the finest physical comedy of Chaplin and Keaton. A genuine polymath, Mead's literary exploits make him a living link between the Beat Generation (with whom he was so closely acquainted in San Francisco that he calls himself 'the last of the Beats') and radical visual experimentalists like Ron Rice, Jack Smith and Warhol.
     Even into his ninth decade, Mead (born 1925) has on this evidence lost none of his sparkle, opinionated recall or irrepressible joie de vivre. 'Champagne' stuff indeed, even if some aspects of Kirkley's amiably ramshackle package are less charming than others: the incessant, too-loud score cries out, like Mead's uninvited house-guests, for a quick dousing of Raid.

Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha [6/10]
    Written, directed and edited by Bujalski - who also casts himself in one of the main roles - Funny Ha Ha is a small-scale, well-observed, slightly inconsequential (and inconsequentially slight) story of aimless twentysomethings and their struggles with work, love and self-esteem. It's effectively a showcase for actress Kate Dollenmeyer, who's seldom off-screen as the mildly neurotic Marnie: on the cusp of 23 and 24; not long out of college; determined to sort her life out, and pronto; still very much "interested" in her ex-boyfriend Alex (Christian Rudder).
    While temping at a high-tech company, Marnie meets the geeky, earnest, bespectacled Mitchell (Bujalski), whose tongue-tied verbosity indicates he's seen rather too many Woody Allen pictures. The pair drift towards a relationship, but Marnie resists Mitchell's advances - she's optimistically holding out for Alex. Marnie nevertheless one night allows herself an intimate moment with Dave (Myles Paige), despite the fact that Dave and Dave's partner Rachel (Jennifer L Schaper) are her best friends. And then Marnie receives some unexpected news about Alex...
    Amiably rough-edged and with feel of loose improvisation (chopped into shape with brisk editing), Funny Ha Ha accurately captures the rhythms of real, modern-day conversations - at least, among over-educated but somehow emotionally-inarticulate American college-graduates who haven't yet made the full transition to adult life. And it's that increasingly rare thing - a "proper indie," made for peanuts and far from the slick Sundance-friendly product churned out by "specialty" divisions of major Hollywood studios.
    But verisimilitude only gets a film-maker so far - Bujalski's scenarios are rather like eavesdropping on a conversation in a bar (or rather a coffee-shop): mildly intriguing, but not quite enough to sustain the listener/viewer's interest for an extended period of time. You can probably get this kind of stuff any day of the week in your own life - why pay money and devote several hours to observing it in a cinema? That said, both Bujalski and Dollmeyer show more than enough promise to make them names to watch as they develop over the next few years (see Bujalski's latest, Mutual Appreciation). And, who knows, Funny Ha Ha may yet end up being the Walking and Talking of this current 'zero decade.' 

Neil Young
10/11th January, 2006


EXCAVATING TAYLOR MEAD : [7/10] : aka Excavating Taylor Mead - Buried Alive : USA 2005 : William A. KIRKLEY : 106 mins (timed) : recent film festivals include Philadelphia, Tribeca, Raindance.

FUNNY HA HA : [6/10] : USA 2002 (commercial release 2005) : Andrew BUJALSKI : 85 mins (approx)

Excavating Taylor Mead seen on VHS(NTSC) in Sunderland (UK), 9th January (with thanks to Mary Dine and David Miller)
Funny Ha Ha seen on DVD in Annesley, Nottinghamshire (UK), 10th January (with thanks to Andrew Bujalski and Houston King)