While the good people of the world (or moderately religious and/or guilt stricken) were filing into the pews of their local place of worship last Sunday morning, I was committing an act of heresy.  The venue: AMC Southdale.  The location: Row 14, Seat 2.    Total attendance: rivaling a Mormon convention in Amsterdam.  The film: Bruno.  In the event of the existence of a non-benevolent higher power: one ticket to hell signed, sealed, and delivered.

For those of you unaware of Western Civilization, mass media, or the 24 hour news cycle, Bruno is the 110% gay character/caricature created by the English actor/performance artist Sacha Baron Cohen.  Initially achieving cult status with his HBO hit Da Ali G Show and continuing on to box office mega-success with 2006’s Borat, Mr. Cohen inhabits the mantle once occupied by the immortal Andy Kaufman.  Both of these provocateurs mastered the art of creating characters which exist in the “real” world and interact with both the famous and faceless.

As a film, Bruno is an enjoyable romp.  Sadly, it could have so much more.  During its best moments (seducing Ron Paul in a hotel room, making a mockery of a fundamentalist “gay curer”, and braving saturation heckling from an enraged ultimate fighting audience while performing simulated acts of homosexual love) Bruno reaches heights rarely achieved by conventional entertainment.  It is not so much about the laugh quotient as it is the sheer audacity of the performance.  Face it, it takes major bravado to risk beatings by the secret servicemen of former minor presidential candidates, or in a scene from the original HBO series, frenzied bigoted Southeast Conference football fans.  (See NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross for Mr. Cohen’s description of this near calamity.)

Too often, Bruno goes for the easy or cheap laugh.  For example, if you purposely find the most homophobic individuals in society, it should be no surprise if they go ballistic when offered a shared sleeping bag experience.  Bruno is a much better experience when the targets are vacuous celebrities, the arrogant and self righteous, and general media whores.

Besides exploiting the easy mark, Bruno suffers from one other flaw.  All attempts at providing clarity for the fictional back story for a generally uninteresting character is neither an effective plot device nor a use of time.  Just like Borat, the less we know of Bruno, the better.  Borat’s origins were better left to the imagination of the individual viewer than the unnecessary and prolonged sequence of the film bearing his name.  It is not the character which drives Bruno (and Borat), instead, it is his interaction with the real world.

When Mr. Cohen is not shooting fish in the proverbial barrel, Bruno is a captivating and often uncomfortable experience.  This is an extremely wonderful thing.  Very few products in popular culture attempt on any meaningful level to make the audience tense and uneasy.  Most attempts at shock are often trivial and superficial.  Bruno is different.  Mr. Cohen, through his creations, exposes ugliness in society that is mostly disturbing, often funny, but never dull.

In the final analysis, was risking my soul to eternal damnation worth it?  During the best moments of Bruno I would answer unequivocally “yes”.  At it’s weaker points?  I really, really hope there is air conditioning in hell and the Cubs are not perennial World Series contenders in Dante’s Inferno.

On a side note:

I know Ron Paul, like any elected official, must have an incredibly high self-opinion.  That said, did he really think a play was being made for his affections.  Ponder this for a moment, important decisions in Congress are made by people with this level of judgment. Scary, but true.  Tocqueville would have wept.

Let’s face it; Netflix has become as American as Chevy, apple pie, overextending military engagements, and budget deficits as far as the eye can see.  According to official company propaganda, there are now over ten million subscribers to the service.  Curiously, the impact on the society at large caused by Netflix has not been properly addressed.  Hopefully, this blog will create the springboard for action.

In one interpretation, Netflix can be seen as a benevolent entity created with the public good in mind.  Before Netflix how could anyone find the entire Criterion Collection for rental, or for a lower brow audience, the complete 30-odd discs comprising many a successful 80s sitcom.  Netflix has revolutionized the viewing patterns of the American audience by providing access to everything under the sun, not just under the low ceilings of a ma and pa video store.

But, dear reader, there is another side of the proverbial coin (or mailer, if you are so inclined).  One could also view Netflix as an insidious tool concocted by the dreaded “powers-that-be” as a device for social manipulation and population control.  In high doses, meaning unlimited rental with 4 DVDs at-home, Netflix could potentially create the conditions for isolation, paranoia, and the propensity to watch Crash repeatedly.  For a single person, this could mean fewer hours pursuing mates.  Likewise, for married and/or attached people, this could mean fewer hours pursuing replacement mates.  Needless to say,  the potential destabilizing effects this could have on society should shake us all down to our very foundations.

I call on the social sciences to perform their due diligence on this largely untapped subject.  The data exists for a robust study on the affects of Nexflix membership.  Some key questions must be examined:

• Is there any statistically relevant data linking Netflix to the malady described by serious observers in non-serious tones as “datelessness”?
• In married couples, does Netflix membership have positive or negative impact on birthrates?  What are the affects on non-married, but cohabiting heterosexual couples?
• Is there potential for terrorists or other malevolent forces for using Netflix mailers as delivery devices for harmful biological agents? (Note: although utterly terrible and hazardous to your health, the remake of Mr. and Mrs. Smith does not count.)
• Does unlimited access to the great films of Hollywood’s past create more nerds?
• Does unlimited (subject to a very long wait) access to the recent Transformers shrink the cranial lobe?
• Are Netflix members more or less likely to believe in the values of community engagement and philanthropic commitments?

Harmful pathogan in DVD form?

In his famous work Bowling Alone, the sociologist Robert Putnam used the activity of bowling as a gauge for social capitol, which is vitally important for a proper functioning liberal democratic society.  Some ingenious scholar(s) needs to pick up the mantle and update the work of Putnam and add him/herself to the pantheon on great social thinkers.  When you do, please credit me as the inspiration.  Outside of bumping me up to the unseen heights of 5 rentals at a time, that’s the least you could do.

In 1994 Kevin Smith was on top of the world.  On the heels of the critically acclaimed and much heralded Clerks, Mr. Smith (along with Quentin Tarantino) was considered a crucial member of a vanguard of independent filmmakers breathing life into a moribund film scene.   The creator of Clerks was lauded as a visionary, who incidentally from a suit’s perspective, could work on a microscopic budget.  What to do for follow-up?  Why of course, make a film about the denizens of a New Jersey shopping mall!

Well, as they say, the rest is history.  Mallrats went on to gross about $13 domestically and drew the ire of the film intelligentsia which had fawned praise on his debut picture.  Mallrats has had a Nixon-like rehabilitation over the years.  Just like Nixon held court counseling future presidents, Mallrats found its niche in the ever profitable secondary VHS/DVD market.

Due to its important place in the history of malls, both strip and enclosed, Minnesota must have seemed the ideal location for production.  Even though our fair state helped revolutionize the retail experience,   Minnesota is a long way from Hollywood.  When news arose that a leader of the new alternative cinema would be filming locally, word spread through the channels of underground culture with a hysteria rarely seen.  Unfortunately, my ear was not affixed to the train tracks of hipster buzz.

You may ask, what does all of this really have to do with your life?  Well, dear reader, my life would have been different if fate had intervened and guided me to my proper spot in life: that of a Mallrats extra.

Here are the crucial ways my life could have changed:

• Meeting Kevin Smith would have enabled me to say after Clerks 2, “I knew that guy when he was good.”
• Meeting Kevin Smith would have enabled me to say after Zack and Miri Make a Porno, “I knew that guy before he tried to copy the people who copied him the best.”
• Michael Rooker would have given me the dish on exactly how many drugs Oliver Stone ingested during the making of JFK.
• Jason Lee would have shown me the proper execution of the kick flip at risk of great injury and possible litigation.
• Listening to Smodcasts would have extra meaning for me while waiting for Smith and Mosier to mention “the strange guy in the Bad Religion shirt from the Mallrats shoot.”
• Selling an autographed call sheet at a record show in 1997 at a fraction of the price it would currently fetch on EBay would have been a huge economic blunder
• Dinner party conversation with strangers would have been so much easier.
• Meeting Ben Affleck would have fooled me into backing the wrong horse in the Ben Affleck/Matt Damon career box office pool.
• Approaching pretty girls would have been so much easier (for a while).
• The early post-grunge years would have been way more interesting.

The moral of this story is simple: when an opportunity for a brush with greatness presents itself, take it!  You never know what an indelible mark one day of (not very) hard labor can leave.

If you actually participated as an extra on Mallrats, please leave a comment with your recollections.  We can’t let this little piece of Minnesota cinema history disappear like Ben Affleck’s career after Jersey Girl.