Dead Men Driving

I first saw Japanese-Californian film-maker Gregg Araki's "The Living End" when it was on the Sundance/gay film festival circuit in 1992. It was very obviously made with a tiny budget, but the rage of its HIV-positive gay characters connected with its niche audience, and many of us loved Luke (Mike Dytri)blowing away the fagbashers. And the homicidal lesbians Mary Woronov and Johanna Went) in the first scene.

I didn't see any other Araki films until "Mysterious Skin," which I was surprised was a cinematic masterpiece based on Scott Heim's novel (about which, see the review by Ricardo Ramos; the movie was #3 on my list of best movies of 2005). I then caught the 1997 well-named "Nowhere" (1997), which I loathed. I could see some connections both to "The Living End" (aimlessness) and to "Mysterious Skin" (the alien abduction subplot) but it most definitely did not inspire me to seek out the preceding two Araki " teenage apocalypse films" (Araki's own label).

Earlier this year Araki had another Sundance audience loving his latest film, "Smiley Face" this year. If it's in general release, I haven't seen it, but it seems that it is about the second item in the trinity of "Sex, Drugs, and Rock'n'Roll," with less homosexuality than other Araki films.

The Sundance Channel broadcast "The Living End" (which is more focused on Love than on Sex and alcohol and nicotine as the drugs) following a broadcast of "Mysterious Skin," so I had the chance to see how--or whether--it holds up from the other side of the "protease inhibitor revolution" that gave many HIV+ persons an extended lease on life.

The production values look and sounds as abysmal. A lot of it is underlit, some of it overlit. Some of the dialogue sounds muffled, though the music from KMFDM, Coil, Babyland, Psychic TV, and Braindead Sound Machine comes through loud and loud. Insofar as there is a plot (it is primarily a road movie), it is pretty incoherent. I still find the homicidal lesbians who pickup hitch-hiking very funny in a kind of Paul Bartel way. (Paul Bartel has a cameo in "The Living End," BTW.)

I'm not completely sure, but think that Luke is a hustler. He regularly swigs Jack Daniels either from the bottle or from a Ninja Turtles bottle. After blowing away the fagbashers with the pistol he kept from the lesbians whose car he stole, he is hitch-hiking again and is picked up by Jon (Craig Gilmore). Jon tested positive for HIV earlier in the day and his instincts for self-preservation are obviously undermined. After learning that Luke is "between" places to live, he takes him home for the night and installs him on the couch of his apartment (decorated by a Godzilla replica, and a poster for a Warhol film retrospective). Jon writes (for $.25 a word?) about avant garde cinema. There is a picture of Jean-Luc Godard, and the movie has more than a little resemblance to Godard's unnarrative 1980s and 90s films (with lots of jum-cuts, a hallmark of Godard's style from the start of his career).

Soon the desperadoes are headed north from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and then over Altamont Pass to I don't know where. Jon keeps trying to regain his balance, but the sex with Luke is good and neither sees much future for HIV+ gay men. A "gay Thelma and Louise"? Well, among other differences, there is no one pursuing Luke (and his accomplice after the fact, Jon) as Harvey Keitel pursues T&L, and T&L drive across more scenic parts of the American West than J&L do. IMO, "The Living End" has a better--though less dramatic--ending than "Thelma and Louise." Rather Beckett, actually (I can't go on. I will go on.)

Mike Dytri's Luke has a body that it's easy to imagine finding renters of. Craig Gilmore's Jon has a bad haircut that I find oddly touching and an astoundingly dense pelt. Some find him whiny, but I find him sympathetic. (Luke is the kind of doomed psychopath who plausibly interests the cineaste Jon, who longs for love and adventure before what he sees as the imminent end of his life.)

For me the most sympathetic character in the movie is Peter, the boyfriend (Scot Goetz) of Jon's gal pal Darcy (Darcy Marta). He has great thighs and considerable patience. That her best friend has tested positive and gone off with a homicidal psychopath has her upset, so like Jon she is sympathetic but knocked off balance.

I'm pretty sure that most viewers--particularly those unaccustomed to independent film style--would rate "The Living End" two-star. The unhappy few (and/or those who remember the hopelessness and rage of HIV+ gay men ca. 1992) have made it something of a cult movie.

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This is a(nother) contribution to JPS246's 2007 Gay Pride Writeoff.


© 2007, Stephen O. Murray