A FEW (STRANGE) WORDS WITH ODERUS.

Way back when, during the mammoth nerd expo that is San Diego Comic-Con (circa 2009).   


At one lofty point during the course of my Comic-Con immersion I found my self locked in one particularly cramped and unsanitary men's restroom with none other than the morally ignorant, gloriously inhuman Oderus Urungus, front man to the world renowned 'Scumdogs of the Universe', GWAR. I put myself in this potentially suspect situation (think prison sex with less hygiene) in order to obtain some nuggets of wisdom from perhaps the greatest rock persona since...uh, that guy with the chainsaw from Jackyl.

We begin with a warm up, just to get the juices flowing.
I ask the esteemed Mr. Urungus to share his thoughts and musings on the  impending 25th anniversary of his band, the accompanying tour and (most  importantly) the arrival of the latest and potentially greatest GWAR record to  date, 'Lust in Space'.
'Basically what we got going this year is GWAR's 25th year on the planet since we've been dethawed via the copious overuse of hairspray. 25 years is not a heck of a lot to an eternal god, it's more like half of an eye blink, yet in human terms it's a long time. So we have decided to declare the onset of a two year celebration of all things GWAR. Our new album, 'Lust in Space' drops on August 18th. We will have a two year celebration because, quite simply, one year is too short. Two years is twice as long! We might even take it up to 3 or 4 years if it's going well.'

'GWAR will go down in history as the band that took 25 years to break. It's a lot like jacking off for 25 years and finally getting your nut, which is what I will be doing at every show.'

Every  one?

'At every single show I will share my filthy load upon your faces and together, all you freaks out there who have supported GWAR for all these  years will be paid back in full. GWAR is not an easy band to support, you've got to take the slings and arrows of ignorant assholes that don't understand our majesty. It's a whole new level of commitment. What other band asks you to sever your mother's head, core out her genitals with a daisy cutter and then have sex with the family dog? Not many, but GWAR fans are all over it.'

About this new record, where does it fit in reference to your earlier works?
'I would say that it is a new level of GWAR's super awesome-nasity (sic). If you took all the GWAR albums and melted them down into mush, it probably fits somewhere in the middle. It's got the thrash of 'Hell-o', the epic metal of 'America Must Be Destroyed', the Dungeons and Dragons on LSD of 'Violence Has Arrived' and it's got the  title of 'Lust in Space'. It is the greatest GWAR album since the last time  we did an album.'

'GWAR at its' worst destroys Slipknot at its' best. Even when Cory what's his face is crapping into a solid gold toilet right onto his fans' faces. We've got a relationship with our fans that is beyond insidious, it's not rape, yet it has something to do with dentistry. I'm not sure what that means but I know that Monty Python would understand.'

Let's talk about your re-signing with Metal Blade Records and also one particular track on 'Lust in Space' that appears to have heavy radio airplay written all over it, 'Make a Child Cry', what inspired you to write this little gem?

'On this planet, there is this whole idea that children are to be 'cared for'. They are to be fed, they are to be given presents and so forth. In outer space, children are used as power units for cybernetic war suits or sex aids and the like. The children of your planet are your  future and if we can destroy them all you will have none, and that is kind of the idea behind  that.'

As for Metal Blade........?

'We're back with Metal Blade, we were on some other label for awhile that didn't make any sense what so ever, they went broke or something. So we're finally back with the ultimate metal label in the world, it was just the perfect time, with the 25th anniversary thing and all. The cosmos, the planets, they're all in line to make this the most successful year in GWAR's history. Metal Blade, they are very much like us, they've been out forever and gone through highs and lows, yet they've hung in there. Brian Slagel (the label's founder) is fat and bald and I love the man. Bringing GWAR back together with Metal Blade is like Laural and Hardy, Charlie and Chaplin, it's like 'you got your anal sex into my carburetor!' It's a wonderful thing.'

Huh?

'They're putting out the new record, it's really the  story of GWAR's final escape from earth. We travel through space, we run out of crack, we have to go back to  earth, that's pretty much the story.'

How about this epic new tour? Any surprise guests?

'Well, we don't wanna give anything away. We got Sleazy P. Martini with us this year. Now that he's solidified his control of the crack industry and the world porno industry, he's back into erecting solid gold skyscrapers and managing the band. We got a lot of off-planet people, back from the old days before GWAR came to this world. Like our old General, General Zod.'

Will you make another stop at the Rave, in gorgeous downtown Milwaukee?

'We'll be back in Milwaukee or Chicago, it all depends on who gives us more money.' (The boys will be sharing the stage at the Rave with Lamb of God and Job For a Cowboy November 6th)

In conclusion, can you just throw a few words out there about what GWAR means to you at this  point?

'All I can say is this, GWAR is the greatest band in rock n' roll history. Nobody cares so much about their  fans that they would mouth Jello molds into a testicle.'

And with that last pearl of infinite wisdom, Sir Oderus wraps me in a sweaty, drunken embrace and we part ways. I stumble in my typical Menasha way out into a fitfully rank crowd to bare witness to the two-fold threat of GWAR and Canadian battle metal progenitors, 3 Inches of Blood, and I have lots of woefully under lit pictures to prove it.

Perfect.

Hell is Where the Heart Is.

Being the efforts of a local film dude inspired by Pig Destroyer.

Stowed deep away atop the mighty House of Heroes comic book hot spot in the thick of Oshkosh is a grand laboratory adorned with majestic posters (mostly of the original 'Evil Dead') and copious objects truly fitting a film savvy scholar that houses one mad soul hard at labor on a challenging collection of projects and ideas meant to work the value of the area filmmaking community to an ever higher level. The soul in question is that lovable man on a seemingly endless movie mission, John Pata. Pata, many of you should swiftly recall, is one of the chief creative engines behind one of the most positively received and widespread cinematic success stories to ever have been generated out of the Oshvegas/Fox Valley landscape, 'Dead Weight'. That film (which finally landed a fully legit, national distribution deal via Kino Lorber and became available online and on store shelves late last month) signaled the clear arrival of a potent cinematic commando with a natural knack for the form.

For those yet to witness 'Dead Weight' (a number of the populace that hopefully continues to dwindle), it is the tense, often troubling story of a young man named Charlie (Joe Belknap) and his increasingly self centered quest to be reunited with his eternal true love Samantha (Mary Lindberg) across a post outbreak tainted, mid western backdrop. The film plays out with minimal flaw despite the relative inexperience of many involved on either side of the camera and serves as a much more effective study of the strange ticks of the human mechanism than some entrail laden 'Walking Dead' wannabe or entry level slasher also ran (though the new packaging its been draped with may lead some to assume otherwise).

'Dead Weight' has done a serious number of festival dates and managed to win over a phat percentage of the folks who took it in, many of whom (myself included) would eventually gain the itch to see just what this Pata fellow and his constantly expanding army of contributors (especially his Head Trauma co-hort Adam Bartlett) would follow this baby up with.

Enter, of all damn things, Virginian grindcore band Pig Destroyer and their frontman, J.R. Hayes' engagingly demented arrangement of words. See, several years back, when Pata was in the midst of his U.W.-Oshkosh student tenure, a friend introduced him to the writings on the inlay booklet of Pig Destroyer's 2001 record 'Prowler in the Yard'. Now, Pata, not traditionally given to the fashion of sonic violence contained within the record, nonetheless found himself immediately taken by a brief (4 paragraphs+1 sentence) piece of writing included in the booklet. The words attempt to convey the very fractured psyche of a severely downtrodden soul sitting in his car outside the house that contains the 'better half' of a recently terminated relationship while holding depraved intentions of a dire sort of reconciliation close to his crippled heart.

During a meet up a short while back, Sir. Pata confessed to me that he found that scant passage to be one of the most 'beautifully disturbing' he'd ever run his eyes across. It stuck with him and he found himself returning to it a few years on when, in the wake of a rather disheartening creative setback (the disintegration of an ambitious horror opus named 'Among the Dead'), Pata immersed himself in the penning of a series of short film scripts, the Pig Destroyer idea (to be tagged 'Pity') fell easily in line.

It would ultimately be a tad longer as the whole 'Dead Weight' thing soon came together and soaked up a dominant chunk of Pata's precious time. But in 2013 the focus came right back around to 'Pity'. In the small interim between the close of production on 'Dead Weight' and this new short, Pata kept his filmmaking chops well oiled by lending assistance in varying capacity on several film projects guided by others. One such production, an Illinois based anthology called 'Chop-Shop', introduced John to several crew members whose work ethic and overall skill sets greatly impressed him ('They were all on the same page...it was almost like they 'shined', they didn't have to verbally speak!', he told me), most of all, cinematographer Robert Patrick Stern who would carry his considerable abilities and enthusiasm over to 'Pity'.

The time spent helping out and lugging around equipment on the sets of other people's productions only worked to magnify the itch in John Pata to get back to realizing his own cherished vision. Pata reapproached the 'Pity' script, sent word out to Pig Destroyer main men Scott Hull and J.R. Hayes of his adaptation intentions and pitched to them his plan on how to interpret the material as a short in hopes of acquiring the official rights to do so, which he did. The next obvious step was to pull together the bodies, locations and gadgets necessary to take this thing all the way. Along with the already mentioned Adam Bartlett (who served as assistant director) and camera ace Stern, Pata tapped Sarah Sharp to realize the production design and to embody the lone acting requirement of the story, there is a guy named Jake Martin. Martin, a onetime frontman for a local band named Lead Me Not, is a long standing friend of the director who has taken part, on camera, in each of his three film projects (as a zombie in 'Better Off Undead" and an intimidating redneck in 'Dead Weight') and was deemed a natural fit for the brooding, closed off and ever silent 'Anonymous' (the only words spoken in the piece come care of voiceover).

Following around two and a half months of pre-production the actual meat of the production process was largely meted out on an area soundstage with a heady array of toys (lights, cameras, rainmaking devices) to give the project a much greater polish than anything Pata has attempted to date. The shoot only needed two days to complete,yet the director explains that 'Pity' required a greater level of complexity and variety in the camera work and number of set ups for shots designed to help spice up a potentially limiting concept of one individual doling out his last moments of mortality while sitting in a car. Once the 'Pity' shoot wrapped up nicely, Pata set to the arduous undertaking of piecing the resulting footage together into a coolly effective 6 minutes of elegant, dark storytelling.

Nicholas Elert (the man behind the band Northless who scored 'Dead Weight') is back matching lovely sounds with the imagery and the completed 'Pity' is set to make its big public bow during the natural monthly chaos that is the Oshkosh Gallery Walk this coming April. This is going to transpire at the Time Community Theater (of which John Pata serves as President) right on Main Street with the film running every half hour and accompanied by an exhibition of on set photographs snapped by Mary Manchester and David Burke. From that point, Pata plans to push his 'Pity' heavily toward the sprawling film festival circuit (15% of the short's $4,500 budget was set aside for submission fees) with a possible DVD package featuring a much longer 'making of' documentary to arrive at some time down the road.

Once this 'Pity' thing and the 'Dead Weight' official roll out have both cemented their respective places in the film universe, John Pata will likely not waste time before jumping headlong into the next significant stage of his filmmaking career. He already has multiple concepts in rapid development (including one about a troublesome chain letter he's at work on with Mr. Bartlett described as something along the lines of 'if John Carpenter directed an episode of The X-Files'). In addition, John will be toiling as an editor on a documentary that is attempting to chronicle the rabid punk music scene that erupted in Green Bay back in the day between 1977 to 1987 (Kutskas Hall anyone?) and is slated to arrive sometime late in 2014 or early 2015.

Beyond all this, who knows, just rest assured people of Wisconsin, this native son has no plans in the direction of slowing down. Like the man himself summed it all up in relation to all of his experiences to date working on films, 'No time on a film set is time wasted.' Prime words from a perfect source.

Keep up on the progress of 'Pity' and other John Pata projects at these handy web spots;

https://www.facebook.com/PityFilm

https://www.facebook.com/headtraumaproductions

We Are What We Are.

Rising to a dismal rainfall, the matriarch of a remotely situated family in rural New York State sets out to embrace the clear inevitability of her impending demise. Left in the wake of this abrupt departure, an emotionally distant, ever mulling father and his brood of socially exempt offspring find themselves burdened with the obligations of a particularly daunting legacy. Such is the core plotline establishment of Jim Mickle's studied yet freshly unnerving re-take on the 2010 Mexican thriller of the same name (or 'Somos Lo Que Hay' to keep it culturally specific) by Jorge Michel Grau. Transplanted to a storm ravaged East Coast setting with a shift in gender alignment for many of the key characters, the story remains close in basic theme and situational development all filtered through a fully distinct and personal directorial touch.

As with the two prior Mickle pictures ('Mulberry St'-probably among the finest of those After Dark Horror Fest entries and 'Stakeland') the director provides equal, perhaps even superior, space to aspects of persona and genuine human behavior patterns as opposed to over saturating his story with too many cheap, exploitation friendly shocks and excessive carnage that would most likely reduce the proceedings to the lower ranks of the disposable representations of the horror genre. Sticking closely with this suddenly degraded family four pack (surname Parker) as they shuffle weakly forward with their deep rooted lifelong rituals, the film charts their struggle as they enter into a sort of 'fasting' process while pieces and portions of their closely held secrets have slowly come to the literal surface care the violent mischief of cruel mother nature.

The thing that has placed this family so curiously outside the communal mainstream is the very disturbing fact that they are, indeed, full on cannibals. Not quite the grindhouse type sleazy savages of all those (mostly Italian) flesh munching flicks that so peppered the drive-ins and low brow venues in the bygone days of the 70s and 80s, these cannibals are a somber, meditative lot who almost seem perpetually trapped in this hell embedded throughout their lineage. Seems the ancestry of this clan enacted this human consuming human option due to being unfortunate, Donner Party like settlers stuck with no other survival alternative. Because of this intrusion of hostile weather working past sins to the fore, many key members of the small surrounding populace (i.e. law enforcement) inch ever closer to the Parker's tightly hewn personal bubble. With the threat of discovery closing in, the Parkers hurry to find a way, any way to keep their unit from being torn apart eventually leading to a rather brutal collision of worlds at the film's startling climax.

The fair body of Mickle's variant on this flesh eater saga centers close to the effect of this plight on the two young sisters (played by able actresses Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers) who must wrangle some semblance of stability together in their homestead as their pa appears to degrade into a remorseful waking coma. Mickle makes the most of his rather limited resources (this is no high priced studio epic, mind you) as he has with his other works and sculpts some quality performances from a completely game and impressive cast that includes veterans Michael Parks (whose measured way of delivering dialogue elevates his performance even more) and Kelly McGillis (far removed from her 'Top Gun' prime but effortlessly effective here as a friendly neighbor) plus some lesser known folks like Bill Sage as the casually deteriorating father figure, the director's long time partner in crime Nick Damici as the local Sheriff and even Kurt Russell's son Wyatt as a deputy with an eye on one the Parker daughters.

'We Are What We Are' comes to DVD and Blu Ray courtesy of the good folks at eOne Entertainment who have included an entertaining enough running audio commentary by director Mickle, his camera man Ryan Samul and several cast members who give the impression of a fun and very creatively healthy production process.  There is also a near hour long collection of behind the scenes footage that seeks to impart some of the day to day hands on craftwork it took to make this film the fine little piece of disturbed art that it came to be. Recommended to any and all who favor a little bit more thought and class in their cannibal cinema. parkerfamilytradition.com

Thank you for reading, may you never hunger for long.