Burnt Money (Argentina, 2001)

Like a misbegotten remake of Bonnie & Clyde or Gun Crazy, Burnt Money is a romantic crime film from Argentina brilliantly directed by Marcelo Pineyro starring Eduardo Noriega. It's based on a true story about a gang of criminals hiding out in Uruguay after a high-profile heist committed in Argentina circa 1965.

Because the armored car holdup is so high-profile their faces are plastered in every newspaper in South America, so they have to lay low in some beat apartment until they get their fake ID cards. The lovers on the run are a pair of criminals Angel (Noriega) and Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia),nicknamed “The Twins” because of their close resemblance to each other. Angel has a serious heroin problem and Nene has occasional urges for women. Rounding out the gang is Cuervo (Pablo Echarri), the wheelman, insanely high-strung and homophobic.

The hideout in Uruguay turns into a season in Hell as the gangsters are sitting on millions of dollars with nowhere to go and nowhere to spend any of it. Angel is tormented by his crime and homosexuality, aggravated by Cuervo’s constant taunts, which Nene just laughs off as sheer insane drivel. Although the three hoods have been ordered to stay inside, they rebel by going outside; once to the beach for a liquor-fueled dance to “Surfin’ Bird” with bikini beauties which quickly goes wrong when they start shooting off pistols, and the second time to a local carnival where Nene picks up guys in the rest room and eventually hooks up with the local tramp, Giselle (Leticia Bredice).

In one of their private times together Nene confesses everything to Giselle (while Angel repents in church). When Giselle realizes she can’t replace Nene’s love for Angel after getting kicked out of her own apartment by the gang, she drops a dime on the boys. The police and the militia arrive, culminating in an intense 20-minute shootout with the boys burning all the money (Plata Quemada) and going for broke in a final gun battle.

Pineyro’s direction is simply brilliant, the action never slowing down or appearing hackneyed. There’s enough sex of both stripes flying around (Cuervo’s girlfriend Vivi is particularly memorable), the crime scenes are exciting – edited by Juan Carlos Macias, and there’s enough humor and downright insanity to keep you riveted to the screen. The film utilizes equal helpings of smoldering Fifties-style jazz and early Sixties garage rock (Wild Thing/Land Of A 1000 Dances), and the cinematography by Alfredo Mayo is colorfully dynamic. With three main leads that look like they belong more in a fashion magazine than in a police station line-up, Burnt Money has enough style and crime to keep any film lover happy.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Most religious films will kill you with their stodgy righteousness, but there’s never been a film like Luis Bunuel’s “Simon Of The Desert”.

Originally intended to be a part of a religion-based trilogy (with Pasolini and Fellini) that never saw the light of day, “Simon” is a 45-minute film about Simon, a deeply religious man in the 4th Century who stands on a high platform delivering platitudes about the glories of God. Townfolk flock to his high podium in the middle of the desert to offer him goats and sheep, some are crippled and sick begging for religious healing. Simon is played by Claudio Brook, who I instantly recognized from Santo and Neutron Mexican wrestling pictures as the evil, debonair villain. What a killer resume!

Simon is most attractive to Satan, who drives up to his platform in a coffin, which opens up to reveal a cheap, slutty Silvia Pinal. She keeps trying to seduce him to come down from his platform, but he repels her every time. Her role not only seems to be parodying traditional images of Satan but of Biblical femme fatales like Samson and Delilah.

She finally wins as Satan as always does and whisks him away to NYC 1965, both now hipstered out in The Peppermint Lounge listening to a loud, noisy garage rock band belch out a tune called “Radioactive Flesh”. And that, folks, is how you make a movie.

Love It To Death

It’s ironic that a group of wholesome Catholic school boys from Arizona would form a band called Alice Cooper and manage to push every religious button possible. With song titles like “Second Coming”, “Hallowed Be My Name”, and “Dead Babies”, to this day they still render efforts from lesser talents like Marilyn Manson as ineffectual.

I caught Alice Cooper at The Hollywood Bowl on the “School’s Out” tour (1972) with the opening act being Flo & Eddie, the “200 Motels”-era Mothers without Frank Zappa. It was a great show and didn’t lack a milligram of drama, not always by the hand of Alice and his amazing friends. As my friend and I ran up the hill to get to the show there were scores of Jesus Freaks hanging around the not-so-pearly-gates of The Hollywood Bowl. Guys brandishing Bibles, grabbing you, “Please, I beg of you, DO NOT GO IN, Alice Cooper is Satan, an agent of evil, pray with me”.
“Gotta go! I wanna hear Under My Wheels!”

Next guy, this one with tears in his eyes, “Beware of false idols like Alice Cooper, you need Jesus Christ, The World’s Greatest Rock Star, as it is written in Corinthians 5:16, BLAHBLAHBLAH!”
“Let go, I wanna see Alice in a guillotine!”
“Jesus died for your sins, Alice Cooper will make you sin and sin again!”
“God bless Alice Cooper!”
“NO! NO! GOD DOESN’T LIKE ALICE COOPER!”

The show was so not evil, in fact it was silly, the band did a goofy “West Side Story” routine on stage pantomiming a knife fight, almost as gay as Russ Tamblyn with his pants pulled down. But it was still priceless rock trash!

One of the highlights of the show was a helicopter flying over The Bowl dropping more of those crazy panties you got with the album (made of the same material as Handi-Wipes). Jesus Christ on a helicopter!

***********************************

In the late Eighties/early Nineties all the rock drama took place at Hully Gully Rehearsal Studios in Silver Lake. No night club or rock star hangout could compete with the overall dementia that went down there. My band Trash Can School rehearsed every Sunday night in Room 1 with The Nymphs in Room 2 and The Cramps in Studio B. I remember one night when The Cramps rehearsed “Shortenin’ Bread” over and over again. You’d hear them playing just the intro for half an hour, then the full song for another 30 and then they’d take a much deserved break and back to that cycle again. I think they threw in “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?” and a fast version of “Heartbreak Hotel” and boom! they were out of there. Lux in sunglasses paced the office snapping his fingers while Ivy, also in sunglasses paid for the room and set up the next rehearsal booking. This was around midnight, of course.

Sam Kinison was a regular there, too, coming in with his entourage, some of them genuine metal guys, some struggling comics, and others just drug flunkies. Since rehearsal time is paid for in blocks of three hours it was safe to say that perhaps thirty minutes of those three hours was spent with music coming out of the room and the other two-and-a-half with partying. Since Hully Gully was an anonymous, unmarked building straight off Interstate 5 it was probably easier to party at than at his home. The struggling comics that would hang out with him were by and large the angriest, most humorless fucks I’ve ever met. And fucking ugly, too.

But it got darker, too. A very famous metal band I can’t mention, here’s a clue, it rhymes with M*gaD*th booked Studio A. The leader of the band was prone to getting into knock-down, drag-out fights with the other band members. You could hear them screaming in the other room and these rooms were pretty sound-proofed. This band leader, we’ll call him MegaPoodle Hair, had a tendency to freebase and hang out in the room after rehearsals. One night a new attendant went in to clean up the room and lock up when MegaPoodle Hair nervously approached him with a gun aimed at his head. “Fuck you man, get out, you ain’t rippin’ us off I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off”. The poor kid freaked out and ran out letting MegaPoodle Hair twitch it out for the rest of the night.

Of course this drama was eclipsed by the even bigger drama that was Jabber Jaw, the little coffee house that became a night club. The second home to Courtney Love, The Dwarves and Kurt (“I’m famous leave me alone”) Cobain, Hully Gully’s drama couldn’t stand a chance.

**********************************

Silent movies mean couples, and lots of them. When I attended the Silent Movie Theatre in 1981 I was always greeted by The Hamptons, an elderly couple that ran the theatre. Mrs. Hampton took tickets and sold candy, while Mr. Hampton ran the films in the projection booth and occasionally checked the facility while the movie was playing. Another couple I always ran into was John Doe and Exene of X, fresh from the popularity of their album “Wild Gift”. We attended the movies every Monday night and sometimes they would drag Billy Zoom or D.J. Bonebrake with them. It was cool.

The Silent Theatre was one of the most primitive theater-going experiences ever: A crudely painted sign on paint-peeling wood –black on white, natch with a panel missing – spelled THE SILENT THE- and that was it. The front didn’t have lobby cards but a simple ink drawing of Charlie Chaplin with a few quaint stills of The Keystone Cops, Laurel and Hardy and Tom Mix. The front door had a little booth, you walked through and a tiny wet bar served as a snack bar. The staircase leading upstairs had a locked door because the Hamptons lived upstairs. On a clear day you could see their apartment window from Fairfax High across the street. The theatre itself was fairly Spartan: hard wooden seats, minimal lighting, and canned hot Twenties jazz playing during the movies unless it was a class picture, then they’d pipe in some Tchaikovsky. The bathroom in the “lobby” was a tiny water closet, only big enough to fit one ass at a time.

The Silent Theatre played the same program all week long except Sundays (closed) and admission was only $2, a steal even back then. It didn’t help much to bolster business, though, because the theatre was pretty dead on Mondays. The Hamptons’ film library was healthy so there wasn’t much in the way of repetition: a few silent cartoons (Felix The Cat – he didn’t talk and had no magic bag), some comedy shorts and then the main feature, Chaplin, Keaton, Gish, Barrymore, not a lot of oaters (cowboy movies) and not a lot of foreign shit. They might have played “The Golem” a week before Rosh Hashanah, but that’s it. Right before Christmas they played “King of Kings” and come Halloween you could count on Lon Chaney ruling the roost.

A few years later a new guy, Laurence Austin, showed up at the theatre helping out and running things because Mr. Hampton was in the hospital, and I remember him as a pretty friendly guy. He was also instrumental in getting investors for the theatre for some way overdue upgrades and had the admission price raised ($5 – sacrilege!). Nobody minded paying more because the theatre was much loved. I stopped going there after awhile because better prints were being shown at LACMA, The New Beverly Theatre, etc. VHS and DVD made the scene, too. In 1996 Mr. Austin was shot to death inside the theatre by a hitman hired by Austin’s projectionist/lover who was allegedly promised a $1 million inheritance.

Nowadays if I want to see an awesome silent film I’ll catch it on Turner Classic Movies. The last one I saw was a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Magician”, brilliant stuff and not available on DVD.