"Beck was a dirt poor punk living in a shack recording surreal songs on cassette tapes and just being a tripper." - Steve Hanft on the pop star's early days (from the official "Southlander" website)

I've seen a lot of silly messes in my time, but it has been a long time since I saw anything as silly or as messy as Steve Hanft's "Southlander." Hanft is a L.A. musician who has played with Beck and even made some music videos for the pop star, so he easily cajoled the new millennium's Think White Duke into appearing in his film. This is easily it's biggest selling point: The name Beck Hansen in the credits.

For what its worth, Beck is a natural on camera, extremely at ease and comfortable. He is a star of the highest magnitude. One only has to listen to his beautiful and eclectic pop albums to understand that Beck is probably at home anywhere, from a hippie commune to a rifle range to in front of a camera. His videos show this as well. And his performance of "Debra" on MTV was surely one of the highlights of pop culture last year. In "Southlander," where he pops up for about 10 minutes, he does fine.

Hanft, however, is a rip-off artist of the highest magnitude. Where Beck takes various things from pop culture music and makes an amalgamation all his own, Hanft simply riffs off of other films and looks an ass. "Southlander's" blatantly racist mid-section, where "Welcome Back Kotter's" Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs provides one of the most stereotypical black characters to grace the screen since, well, Freddie Boom-Boom Washington, should be condemned by the NAACP. It's embarrassing. In a rip-off of both "Pulp Fiction" and, especially, "Jackie Brown," as well as P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights," Hanft sets poor sweet and stoned-out-of-his- gourd actor Rory Cochrane down in the middle of a 70's funk star's apartment. Jacobs, as funkster Mother Child, is the only black person in the entire film, unless you count the black people who are supposed to be Egyptians in a later scene. Previously, second-banana Ross something-or-the-other nee Ross Angeles has been to the apartment which is decked out in deep pure white shag. Pure white rabbits shit all over the carpet while Mother Child's white, strawberry blonde, Briget Fonda-esque, coke whore girlfriend (cause only a white coke whore would shack up with a black guy, right) gets stoned and disappears to fuck Richard Edson.

Then theres the scene straight out of "The Limey" where a Peter Fonda lookalike in a caftan invites Cochrane and Ross Angeles to get high, hang out, and feel his glowing white spheres. Later Hanft will artfully strip Ross down to only a pair of white cotton briefs, making me wonder if we're batting for the same team. Ross is scrawny and dorky, so I really liked that part of the film where he is all but naked. I have a white cotton brief fetish, by the way.

The plot of "Southlander" is laughable. It is supposed to be. Cochrane plays (not very well) a keyboardist who has discovered and bought a cool mellotron synthesizer that allows him to hook up with a band and get a gig. The film is set in 2008 and some mumbo-jumbo "Star Wars" style title cards at the film's beginning try and set up some futuristic time-setting where music is illegal or something or a drug or something. It is impossible to follow. Anyway, musicians use a little newspaper called the "Southlander," kind of a futuristic "Greensheet," to hook up and sell equipment. When Rory's magic keyboard is stolen, he and Ross spend the next 80 minutes trying to find it oft times using the newspaper for leads. In the process they come across Mother Child, the Peter Fonda guy, Hank Williams III as a junk yard gangster and Beck as "early" Beck. Also along for the ride is Beth Orton, who does a cool underwater music video thing, Ione Skye, Donna Prepon of "That 70's Show" (whose character's name is 7=5, an apparent spoof of 7 of 9 on "ST: Voyager"), Elliot Smith, and several other people you might now if you are an L.A. session musician or something.

I'm knocking the hell out of "Southlander" when, if fact, it made me laugh almost the entire time I was watching it. The film is just silly, goofy, messy midnight movie fun. At least it is fun crap. And since it uses so much modern music, from Beck and a plethora of Beck wannabees, from Beth Orton, and Iggy and Television, I can't really hate it. It shows two people making out while a Iggy bootleg album plays, that can't be bad! (even if they are hetero). And the end credits run over Television's "Marquee Moon." Even when the end credits are over, Hanft lets the song run continue for several minutes over a black screen. The song is that good. It stands on it's own quite well even in a theater of 200 people over a black screen; hardly anyone talked while it played out. I really need to buy "Marquee Moon" on CD.

Note:

Also with jazz musician Billy Higgins, Da Da Munchamonkey, Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux, and skateboarder Mark Gonzalez.

Robosaurus, a giant robotic dinosaur that is used in monster truck shows, appears in the film.

Hanft also directed the short starring Elliot Smith, "Strange Parallel," which was one of the biggest pieces of shit I saw at the 1999 Austin Film Festival.

Website is http://www.southlander.net

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