QT QUATTRO - Night 4 - SEX NITE - SUCCUBUS, SEX ON THE RUN and Father Geek's Brilliant Short Film
Published at: Aug. 30, 2000, 4:11 p.m. CST by staff
SEX NIGHT at the 4th Annual Quentin Tarantino
Film Festival.... night four.... depravity begins to set
in... The various attendees begin getting a bit...
familiar. We begin to notice a certain... pheramonal
shift... To sate these desires... Quentin has decided to
bring forth... SEX NIGHT.
The first thing you would notice is that everyone was
wearing rubber pants and nipple clamps... Except
Quint, who had leather chaps and a jock strap.
Moriarty came with all his regular Cronenberg quack
medical devices. And me? I arrived in a diaper with
an enlarged cherry flavored pacifier.
I was rather disappointed when Quentin took the
stage and had on just regular khaki shorts and a
t-shirt... nothing quite as ribald as Dorothy Parker’s
bullet bra and corset... damn those silk seamed
stockings of hers rule.
Everyone brought throw pillows and the Alamo’s
contribution was free de-lousing... that powder burns
a little... I felt all tingly.
Anyway... Quentin took the stage under the auspices
of being the rod raising legend... and the shrieks of
girls at night screaming... ‘take it off’. Then Quentin
thanked the corporate sponsors for “allowing us to
have sex here tonight.”
You could see Mouth eyeing Quint who was eyeing
some popcorn... and Annette looked at the popcorn,
hoping it had... extra butter... and Johnny Wad was
reading his bible.... (select MAD magazine/Little
Annie Fanny moments ensue)
Quentin relates a lobby tale about how a person came
up and asked... “What are we supposed to gain from
these films tonight?” To which Quentin said, “Well...
They’re sexy.” And the person responded to Quentin
with, “Well, there has to be more to them than that?”
and Quentin retorted with... “Let’s not start getting
greedy here. On Sex Night Sex is enough... If you
get scintillating conversation... Great... but on Sex
Night Sex is enough. And you willll be getting SEX
tonight!”
He then went on to talk about Jesus Franco (who I
believe has more film credit pseudonyms than anyone
in history). To Quentin... he feels that the way
everyone likes to think of Ken Russell... Jesus Franco
really is. Now I believe I’ve only seen one Franco
film before and that is the fantastic VAMPYROS
LESBOS.
Now... I believe there was a slight miscalculation in
Quentin’s introduction to SUCCUBUS... He got the
audience in a... ready for kinky... sex sex sex sort of
mood. I believe the audience was expecting
something a bit harder than they got... much like the
pre-hype did to EYES WIDE SHUT... if the media
had been properly handled on EYES WIDE SHUT...
the audiences would not have gone in expecting hot
and heavy Tom and Nicole sex... and what needed to
be stressed was that SUCCUBUS was an erotic
experimental art film.
The film really isn’t about characters or storylines...
it’s about impressionistic dreaming and eroticism. I
really dug the film. Now I know... some of you will
bring up THE CELL... others will bring up
SUSPIRIA... Well, THE CELL by trying to marry a
traditional reality based detective crime thriller with
the surreal nightmaristic world... well for me it was
OIL and WATER... they didn’t mix well for Me. In
SUSPIRIA... It is an excellent vision of a nightmare
world... just not my nightmare world.... it didn’t
capture me.
This movie did. WHy?
First off... I love the impressionistic word association
verbal foreplay moments. There were these scenes
where two characters are talking... but instead of
sentences... instead of paragraphs... It’s quid pro
quo... statement of a word... your one word reaction
to that word. Example: HITCHCOCK.... eye....
BUNUEL... death... etc...
I felt this was an ingenious way of boiling down the
verbal flirtations of men and women. Many of those
first meeting conversations are intellectual probings...
sharing and seeing the reactions to common
knowledge. In 2 minutes of this, you have seen the
entire base structure for a 2 hour movie like BEFORE
SUNRISE... none of the pretty flowery pretenses...
just the subjects and their instant reactions.
Wonderful.
The sexual moments of the film are brief and not
particularly.. get your rocks off hot... what they are
though is provoking.
The lesbian scene with the woman and her mannequin
was surreal and exquisite. The LSD orgy shows
exactly how weird and off this universe can be... the
puppet bulldog barking... an image I will not soon
shake.
The film is bizarre... definitely not for all tastes...
There were those that I talked to that absolutely hated
the film... others that were bored... As a matter of
fact, the only person that I talked to that fully
appreciated the film like I did was Dorothy Parker...
who must now marry me. hehehe
It should also be noted that when SUCCUBUS
showed at CANNES in 1969... Fritz Lang saw the
film and really really liked it.
Alright... now before SUCCUBUS there were some
trailers that were very cool...like THEY CALLED
HER ONE EYE... a Dutch sex revenge style film that
I really really want to see... the trailer has an eye
patch wearing shotgun wielding black leather wearing
badass.... Very cool trailer.
HOWEVER... Between SUCCUBUS and SEX ON
THE RUN... The trailers were... a bit harder.
The first trailer was for BEYOND THE GREEN
DOOR... First off, I was stunned to actually be seeing
this trailer... I mean... if you know anything about the
history of Porn, this film... alongside DEEP
THROAT.... was hugely acclaimed at the time...
Playing at museums, universities... everywhere. The
film stunned people. And it wasn’t just fucking and
sucking... I mean... it had some weird ass
Fellini-esque moments going on in it... Very strange.
There were other trailers... I really can’t say I
remember. However, the grand highpoint of the
entire night was the inclusion of FATHER GEEK’s
Filmic Masterpiece.
I’m hoping on presenting the audio of the audience’s
reaction to this 16 mm 2 minute film that Father Geek
created 6 months before I was born as a young
independent filmmaker in Austin, Texas. The
audience set in silent stoic anticipation.... The film
began.... people watched in silence... and like
Scorsese’s THE BIG SHAVE... there comes a
moment that can never be forgotten. Something... in
all likelihood.. You’ve never seen before.
When the moment came... The audience erupted in a
cavalcade of applause... screams of “MAESTRO!!!”
and “BRILLIANT!!!” and “SPEECH SPEECH
SPEECH” For an almost equal length to his
masterpiece the audience applauded and buzzed...
People amazed by the imagery now burned for all
time into their consciousness.
So... all you people out there, bow down and pay
respect to Father Geek... After the night was done...
Quentin even said that he does not believe he’ll ever
be able to shake that imagery. It can not be
described... it, like all great provoking works of art,
must be seen to be fully appreciated.
Now... the next thing that came back was SEX ON
THE RUN... Now Quentin hadn’t seen the film until
this very year... but he remembers first hearing about
it at the time in 1976 because... the very first issue of
PLAYBOY that ever came to him at his house.. the
first subscription issue... had a big spread on all the
girls that were in the film. And a boy does not forget
his first Playboy.
The film stars Tony Curtis... and because of that... I
was expecting the tamest most demure of sex comedy
romps...
That being said... Let it be known throughout the land
that there exists a film called SEX ON THE RUN
which contains some of the all time greatest T&A&B
(for those unfamiliar with TAB... it means Tits and
Ass and Bush)
Before the film, Quentin went on and on about how
this had to be a film that Tony Curtis adored deeply.
I thought... ah, yeah, lots of scantily clad
Euro-Babes... NO... NO NO NO NO...
Dudes... Tony Curtis is the MAN! This film cements
him as being waaaay cooler than Frank Sinatra and
Dean Martin and that whole group. Tony Curtis
made this softcore pretty damn funny flick at a low
ebb of his career... but folks... if this be the low ebb...
then damn damn damn, let’s all have low ebb career
moments.
The girls in this film are the absolute finest Euro
Babes of the seventies. Tony Curtis plays two roles...
Casanova and this convicted gambler cheat... Hijinks
ensue... There are issues of impotency, 3 nuns
exploring one another, Strip Craps... all sorts of fun.
And literally, Tony Curtis has never ever looked
happier or more pleased on screen. Tony... you is da
man!
Oh.. It should also be noted that there is an alternative
title for the film called, “SOME LIKE IT COOL.”
Sex night ended and we all fell into the lobby where
some of us hung around for about an hour talking
about all manners of goofiness. Father Geek’s opus
spawned all sorts of questions as young filmmaker
types wanted to know how they too could accomplish
this startling effect on screen... Quentin was
commenting upon the brilliant name of the club in
Father Geek’s film... and how he’d love to use that
same last 10 seconds in one of his films some day...
Yup folks.. Ol Father Geek... He be a-mazing.
Then we moved on to my Fortune Cookie Paranoia
Conversation. Which I will not repeat here... it’s
something I have to verbalize... And then... at about
4a.m. we all ran from the theater to escape into our
own dreamlands....