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The counterculture vu par the auteur-tourist, the plastic jungle of Los Angeles '69 in a companion piece to The Model Shop. Viva, Jim Rado and Jerry Ragni on the Hollywood Hills, "the eternal traditional triangle" no more. The wacky trio arrives fashionably late to a staging of McClure's The Beard, then prattles moonily over the incantatory credits: "Can we be actors and be real? Can we be real and be in love? Can we be in love and be actors?" The Aquarius limbo, a stream of consciousness of narcissistic lyricism like sunglasses on a marble bust or milk spiked with Dr Pepper. The vantage point is the outsider's, the underground filmmaker who goes West (Shirley Clarke) as a surrogate for Agnès Varda, both highly amused by these shaggy, dippy creatures. "I hate every form of entertainment, including living." The gentle joke on cinéma-vérité is diffused through brilliant sunshine and droll tableaux, plus whoever happened to be on the set that day (Carlos Clarens, Eddie Constantine, Peter Bogdanovich). Nursery rhymes and ad-libbed monologues are prevalent, the ramshackle structure has Viva pondering motherhood until one of the tykes pees in the swimming pool. Tinseltown, the Shangri-La of old (Capra's Lost Horizon), mythical names on street posts. "We fight decadence with decadence." Producers talk final cut and previews and this thing called "new cinema," the suicidal melodrama of the displaced artist is more easily stated than enacted. (Self-reflexive about her self-reflexivity, Varda hops in front of the camera and handles the mouthful of sleeping pills herself.) Violence darkens the whimsy, the TV set wears mourning in the wake of assassinations. "Why do they always shoot Kennedys?" The snapshot of hippie wonderland is also its elegy, dissolving with a nod to Warhol.
--- Fernando F. Croce |