Am I bitter? Yes I am! For years I have read about filmmaker Richard Kern. Constantly mentioned in Film Threat magazine, stills from a few of his films adorn the covers of Sonic Youth's Evol and Sister albums. He even directed the video (or they provided the music) of "Scooter & Jinx" and it is pretty cool in a cute and quirky kind of way. So who is this guy and where can I see his cutting edge movies? Well, I could spend the big bucks and order them out of Film Threat or I could just rent some at the truly incredible Thomas Video — which I did.
And I wasn't impressed. Yeah, it was kind of cool to see Karen Finley playing a psychotic mother and to see Henry Rollins years before his big role in The Chase, thats about all the good things I could say about Kern's "Hardcore Vol. 1." Why the title Hardcore? Do you have to be a Hardcore Kern fan to find any redeeming qualities about his films? Judging by "Scooter & Jinx," maybe our boy picked up a little skill on basic camera and editing techniques for Hardcore Vol. 2 but it's going to take a lot of persuasion to get me to watch it. Lets hope that his story ideas have at least gotten better and don't rely on attitude.
Yes, that New York attititude. So prevalent in Kern's work, especially his films made with Lydia Lunch and Nick Zedd. Kern tries to shock his audience with stories of suicide, suburban chaos and cross-dressing. Kid, John Waters did it years ago and a lot better. At least he wasn't trying to be so serious. Because bad acting might work to make something funnier, it certainly won't give weight to serious psychodrama.
Of course, not all of Kern's work is filled with themes of any kind, there's also his films of naked girls rolling around to the sound of the Butthole Surfers.
And on Hardcore Vol. 1 there's also a video for the Sonic Youth/Lydia Lunch song, "Death Valley 69." Which brings us to the heart of the matter. A few years ago Sonic Youth had a big contest on Mtv — make a video for any song on their album and the winner gets flown to the big apple and the top three get shown on "120 Minutes." So, my friend Andrew Haupt and I spent a lot of time and energy making a video for the song "Swimsuit Issue." I liked it. It followed the song's theme of the oppression of women. And did it in a pretty strong but tasteful way. And, almost as an afterthought, we made a video for the song "Sugar Kane," which we filled with our favorite moments from our own personal video tapes.
Then we sent them out on overnight express since the deadline was a few days away, or so we thought. It had been changed to several weeks away. Why? Perhaps lack of response.
Months went by and finally the winner showed up right next to Dave Kendall and Sonic Youth one Sunday night. The winner looked like neither Andrew or I, but his video looked a hell of a lot like an old Dinosaur Jr. video for "Just Like Heaven." And when asked where he got his inspiration — you guessed it! Dinosaur Jr!
"Well, don't fret," Andrew told me, "they never showed the runners-up. We must have won with one or both of our videos since that kid's really sucked."
Weeks went by and almost as an afterthought and with no prior announcement the three runners up were shown. Not to be judgmental or anything but they sucked, at least the twenty seconds that they showed of each one sucked. Twenty seconds! They didn't even show the whole video. If it had been my video I would have been pissed. But I was even more pissed that none of them were!
Well, that's the extent of my gripes with Sonic Youth's taste in videographers and film makers. But my complaints with the band run further, actually I'd just like to complain about Thurston Moore and his role in 1991: The Year Punk Rock Broke.
"If this is the year Punk Rock broke, who's going to fix it?" quips Thurston. Oh, that clever Thurston. Oh, he quips a lot in that movie. So much so that the audience at the Michigan Theater were booing him whenever he came on screen. Keep that boy away from a microphone unless he's singing. I couldn't think of anything worse than listening to Moore languidly spout off about inane cool things unless Richard Kern were filming him.