Garage Days (2002/2003)
"Garage Days" is a glorious mess.
At one moment a pop bubblegum card come to life and
rocking like the best music video you've ever seen
then dumping into the doldrums of a complete Australian
rip-off of "Trainspotting." Filmmaker Alex Proyas,
best known for his oilslick black latex films like
"The Crow" and "Dark City," opts here for a pop-video
palette of greens, pinks and yellows and generally
confuses the hell out of his audience. It doesn't
help us Yanks either that the film is decidedly Australian.
This film is as foreign as a film in French.
Meant as a ode to the process of
getting your amateur band noticed, "Garage Days" turns
into a pretty typical and hackneyed story of a lousy
garage band struggling to make itself heard. Trouble
is, the plot Proyas concocts here rests on the fact
that we never hear the band play until the end of
the film. Therefore, really, it's rather difficult
to build up any excitement about the band making it
at all. Albeit since the band is decidedly silent,
Proyas fills the soundtrack with pretty punk pop songs
from bands like Supergrass, The Hives and Moldy Peaches.
This does work to rev us up somewhat.
Yes, you can't argue with Proyas's
soundtrack. This is a film that not only features
a bunch of bands sounding like AC/DC (without ever
covering the band except in one hilarious tribute
moment) but also uses Bowie's "Kooks" (to express
the love of father for son) Roxy Music's "Love is
the Drug" (to express the joy of sexual attraction)
and The Jam's "That's Entertainment" (to express melancholia).
When it comes to the soundtrack, as Supergrass would
say, "It's alright!"
But the story here goes all over
the map and is often as infuriating as it is typical.
Proyas seems gleeful in his pop culture mishmash and
uses every new filmmaker trick in the book to tell
his story. Two rather silly moments in the film involving
altered states are preceded by title text that warns
us the moment will feature "Fun with Drugs." Also
Proyas slows down to "Matrix" style slow-mo to introduce
characters or show their hotness. It's all been done
a gazillion times before and seems dated and sophomoric.
Proyas does have a hot cast in his
film and it is rare that we are not enamoured with
the sexy bodies on the screen. Lead male Kick Gurry
is cute without being modelesque, very guy- next-door
and very likeable. Brett Stiller is more modelesque
(i.e. hot!) and has a wonderfully funny storyline
when he adopts a melon as a surrogate baby (and there
are a few clever surprises with his character as well).
Females Pia Miranda and Maya Stange are also adorable
with Stange's brown eyed soul (she looks like Alamo
Drafthouse owner Karrie League's little sister) captivating
all the males in the audience while Miranda turning
lithe scrawniness into rocking gurl-power eroticism.
When it comes to the ends of the
spectrum there is Andy Anderson (where have I seen
this guy before - did he play one of the members of
Scum of the Earth on "WKRP in Cincinnati" or what)
and Chris Sadrinna. Anderson looks like a scruffy
member of Def Leppard all grown up and becoming stinky.
He's very unpleasant to look at. But Sadrinna is just
the opposite. Looking like a refugee from a stage
play about 80's cult star John Sex gone on hiatus,
Sadrinna blinds us with his beauty. Each frame of
film he is in is like a sunburst on celluloid. And
he's funny and a good actor as well.
"Garage Days" is another one of
those films, like "Times Square" or "Valley Girl,"
that just doesn't work. Too punk to be mainstream,
to poppy to be punk. Only goofy new wave fans like
myself might enjoy it. Those who take their music
and their film seriously will not. For them, "Garage
Days" is nothing more than a poseur on celluloid.
Notes:
The end credits feature a cool,
one-take dance number featuring most of the important
cast members.
Released in Australia in 2002 and
in the U.S. in 2003.
Viewed at a press sneak at the Dobie
Theater in July 2003. Also in attendance were Corey
and Cargill (probably misspelled that) from cable
access TV's "The Reel Deal" and Marjorie Baumgarten
from "The Austin Chronicle." When I told Corey this
film had sat on the shelf for a while, Cargill disagreed
and said Proyas had been slowly circulating it in
festivals and stuff, which I don't think is exactly
true. This was filmed in 2000 or 2001 and has been
pushed back for release in the U.S. for several months,
if not over a year.
We also discussed other films and
Marjorie told us she had seen "American Splendor"
(at Sundance) and "Northfork" and they were both good.
We discussed the Polish brothers a bit and also a
recent news release that Quentin Tarantino's "Kill
Bill" is apparently three and a half to four and a
half hours long and will be released in two separate
parts.
