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Hey JackassJacking Reality by Al Larsen (originally appeared in Careless Talk Costs Lives #6) I'm downtown crossing the street and I hear someone calling to me loudly: "Hey! Jackass! Way to go!" It might sound like a random, unsolicited, obnoxious comment (I am no stranger to such), but in reality it's an acquaintance congratulating me on having a song placed in a new hit movie called Jackass. Apparently the movie is based on an MTV show where the hosts do weird and dangerous stunts, like snort wasabi, roll down steep hills in shopping carts, etc. I say apparently because it's all second-hand for me - I've never seen the show or the movie. MTV, extreme sports, Survivor - mostly I hate stuff like this and do my best to ignore it. So it's not surprising, well, to me at least, that my joy at cashing the check is tempered by overwhelming ambivalence. I mean, Jackass? It's neat to be in a movie and all, but it's a long fucking way from Bowling for Columbine! So, despite providing the soundtrack for a man to crawl around on a floor of mouse traps ("Mousetrap" by my old band Some Velvet Sidewalk) it turns out I'm just the sort of humorless fuck that's going to get all huffy and offended by the project. In any case, the whole hubbub has made me think about it a lot more than I would've ordinarily and here's what I've come up with: "People shouldn't waste their time on Jackass - if they want fucked up stunts that they shouldn't try at home, then they should watch Caveh Zahedi's films!" Caveh Zahedi is the "evil Iranian troll" of American independent film whose intensely revealing films mix documentary, drama, confessional, humor and a penchant for on-camera experiments that are both one step away and a universe removed from Jackass. The Jackass cast performs experiments like "What happens if you eat a snowball soaked in urine?", "What happens if you attach electrodes to your testicles?" and then they film the fallout. Caveh also keeps the camera rolling but he performs experiments like, "What happens if you take your father to Las Vegas for Christmas and try to get him to take Ecstasy with you?"(Why I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore), what happens if you shoot video of your personal (your really personal) life every day for an entire year? (In the Bathtub of the World). "What happens if you reassemble all the players in a gone-nowhere love triangle (Caveh, girl, girl's boyfriend) to re-enact their real life experiences together on film?" (A Little Stiff). Where the Jackass dudes challenge themselves with revolting things and get a good laugh out of it, Caveh challenges himself and his viewers with reality, with being honest and living in the present (hey - don't go to sleep yet, being honest and living in the present include a good helping of revolting things) and gets, at best, a glimmer of real emotional truth. There may be an element of grandstanding for the camera, but, you know, he really wants to be closer to his father and he really wants to live honestly even when it means exposing his most pathetic impulses. He also really wants to talk to Michael Stipe (that's why, according to In the Bathtub of the World he follows Stipe into the men's room at the Sundance film festival). In Richard Linklater's surreal animated feature Waking Life, Caveh has a brief scene in which he sits with a friend (the movie uses real actors and then animates over the footage) and suggests that the two of them try to have a Holy Moment together. So they sit there, doing nothing for 20 or 30 seconds but, amazingly, you can feel it: two people trying to really be present with each other. In the midst of a fucking animated feature Caveh injects a stunning, mundane moment of beauty. So to the readers of Careless Talk I say, "Ladies and gentlemen, here is a real rock-n-roll artist without guitar or p.a. system." Rock-n-roll on the terrifying and true base-line emotional level (see also Patti Smith, Jonathan Richman, Mecca Normal, Billy Childish). Watching Caveh Zahedi's films, you get uncomfortable, scared, amazed by the ordinary. Art should be like that. "Hey! Jackass! Way to go!" http://www.cavehzahedi.com http://www.jackassthemovie.com |