Kill Your Idols

Directed by Scott Crary (2004)

Kill Your Idols is a documentary on the alternative music scenes in New York City.  It is divided into the late 70s/early 80s “No Wave” scene and the early 00s.  While providing great footage of No Wave performances and describing their aesthetic, many of the interviews with the artists make them sound like crabby grandparents who don’t like what the kids are up to these days.  That said, the next generation doesn’t have much better representation.

I was really surprised when Kill Your Idols split into its second half.  It introduces numerous bands that are supposed to represent the contemporary music scene in New York City, but there’s no justification for why these bands are important out of the hundreds and thousands that exist in the area.  And if part of the film’s point was that there used to be this coherent scene and now there isn’t, why do they skip forward twenty years to make that point?  Why even focus on New York, when many of the No Wave interviewees define themselves by how different they sound from any of their fellow contemporaries?

That said, it’s relative nitpicking on my part to latch onto the lack of cohesion within the documentary.  The more important theme stems from the desire to create art rather than searching for fame and notoriety, although that’s where a lot of the bellyaching from the earlier generation stems from.  I think the No Wave scene is either overlooked in music history or it’s grouped in with punk music, but it seems to have evolved from people who just wanted to be onstage doing something rather than perform as artists, until it developed a little bit and attracted art students.  It seems like defining what they performed as art only came in retrospect, after the accolades had filtered down.

The shift to the 2002-era does address the fact that a lot of the musicians are looking back on the No Wave bands, but also that they are more aware of their status as bands and as performers.  The interviews with Eugene Hutz, of Gogol Bordello, perhaps best illustrate the reflective qualities when they’re used well, but in contrast there are a lot of interviews that seem more focused on getting blow jobs from groupies.

Kill Your Idols is an especially interesting documentary to watch in an age with no major musical trajectory, but with many niches available for a diverse audience.  It succeeds best at selling the past back to the audience rather than give any clear criticisms towards contemporary musicians, but it remains entertaining to the last minute.

The Parking Lot Movie

Directed by Meghan Eckman (2010)

Man.

Not all documentaries are able to show humanity or American society so well, and be so funny.  And it is so funny, but in a really fascinating way.  The Parking Lot Movie is about the attendants at the Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville, Virginia, situated behind several bars.  The attendants are described as social outcasts and well educated at once, several of them attending the nearby University of Virginia.

Not all documentaries do I want to watch twice, let alone in the same night in order to show my friends.

Man.  This documentary.

If you put over-educated men into a service job where they do nothing, they have plenty of time to think about the job, as a former attendant points out early on.  Often these guys come from departments like the Anthropology or Philosophy, sometimes as grad students and often get the job because they’re friends with other attendants.  They make wall art within the booth, decorate and re-decorate the gate, all making observations about the job.  And they love it, and respect it, but also admit that this job can drive you insane.

I don’t want to generalize the attendants much, since they’re so different, but there are some patterns that appear in the position.  As much as they are educated and in a service job, they love it, but they hate the people who use the parking lot.  The criticism from all of them is intense: Hate the frat boys,  hate the sorority girls, hate SUVs, hate alumni– but it is justified.  These people are jerks, which the attendants make abundantly clear.  The attendants will run after cars that will not pay, often becoming violent with the customers.

Contrast that with the zen perspective offered at times, how doing nothing in at this job will lead to a better understanding of self.  That’s fantastic.

It’s also funny as hell, whether the interviewees realize it or not.  Their comments are often spot on, and while revealing the sometimes ugly parts of the job, they’re still laugh out loud funny.  As one former attendant remembers that a classmate wouldn’t pay a $0.40 ticket, he finishes it up by recalling that this classmate’s father was also a jerk.  “Fuck that guy!”  Between the philosophical and the angry, the way these stories are presented makes them hilarious.

It was a successful screening when I showed it to my friends and I’ve been recommending it all over the place.  The Parking Lot Movie: It must be Movie-Love.