The Beaver Trilogy (Trent Harris, 2000)

I love Olivia Newton-John. Now, in some less progressive circles, a statement like that might come off as a tad queer. But it's the truth, I love Olivia Newton-John, and I don't care who knows it. Oh, you're probably thinking to yourself: There's nothing queer, or even faggoty for that matter, about loving a woman, especially one who is a British-born Australian singer-songwriter and actress. That's true, you would think the sight of a man loving a woman would endear oneself to the heterosexual overlords who oversee all that goes on within the ovary-antagonizing gefilte fish factory that is the straight universe. But they're not. In fact, there's nothing more subversive than a man loving a woman. In an ironic twist, this is particularly true in a Utah town called Beaver. (Ironic? Twist?) I don't know how many people know this, but Beaver is another word for cunt. And the last time I checked, most women are fitted with the complex box-like doohickeys that are some times referred to as beavers and cunts. (That makes sense.) You see, the heterosexual overlords don't want you to love women, they want you to procreate with women. (There's a difference?) You bet your ass there is. Love is for sissys who regularly clip their toe nails. Real men, on the other hand, fuck pussy whenever possible. And the latter activity, which any doctor will tell you, is the leading cause of pregnancy the world over.

What if you loved Olivia Newton-John so much, that you wanted to be her? And by "be her," I mean the way she appears on the cover of her 1979 album "Totally Hot." You would most likely think that this person had totally lost his marbles. Well, in Trent Harris' The Beaver Trilogy, this question is explored not once, not twice, but three times!

Whenever I hear someone use the word "meta" in a sentence, I always wonder to myself: What the fuck does that mean? Using something called a "dictionary," or at least the modern equivalent of one, I looked the word up. After reading the definition of "meta" multiple times, I began to understand the word's meaning.

The reason I'm talking about the word "meta," is because I think it applies to this film. Truth be told, if I was in charge of writing the definitions in dictionaries, I would say The Beaver Trilogy is the definition of meta. I'd even go as far as say that I don't think a film has ever been this meta.

Anyway, moving on to less meta ground. Who would have thought that Trent Harris' chance meeting with Groovin' Gary in the parking lot of a Salt Lake City television station in 1979 would lead to a film that deftly explores the topics of fame, celebrity, intolerance and mortuary makeup application, and do so in a manner that would elicit so much humour and pathos? I know I sure didn't. I mean, when I first saw Trent Harris (Rubin and Ed) point his video camera at the world's biggest Olivia Newton-John fan, I had no idea what kind of poignancy lay ahead of me.

You know when Grandmaster Flash says, "Uh huh ha ha ha" at the end of raping the lyric, "It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under" on the classic track "The Message"? Well, Groovin' Gary punctuates his sentences the same way.

Wearing bell bottom jeans and a rugby shirt covered in stripes (the stripes kind of reminded me of those old jerseys of the Vancouver Canucks used to sport), Groovin' Gary starts doing impressions of John Wayne, Sly Stallone and Barry Manilow for the cameraman. It's obvious right away the self-proclaimed "Rich Little of Beaver" loves being in front of the camera. After showing Trent his white 1964 Chevy Impala, Groovin' Gary drives off. But not before promising to contact the cameraman if any "good stories" occur in Beaver.

I don't know how much time passes, but Trent gets a letter from Gary informing him that there's a talent show happening in Beaver and that yours truly is headlining. Insisting that he attend, Trent drives down... or was it up? Trent drives to Beaver with his camera in toe. While it's clear, judging by his car, that Gary loves Olivia Newton-John (he has Olivia's name and likeness stenciled on the passenger side window). But just in case anyone in the audience had any doubts regarding his devotion to her, Gary plans on unleashing Olivia Newton-Don at the talent show.

Meeting Gary at the local funeral home, Trent films him as he gets makeup done. It's here where that film starts to really show its off-beat charm, as Gary repeatedly reminds everyone watching that he is in fact a man. But at the same time, he can't help but extol the many virtues of Miss Newton-John: "I love Olivia Newton-John... This is just for fun... I'm a man, not a girl. I enjoy being a guy... Where's my purse?"

After enduring some of the other local talent, it's finally Groovin' Gar... or I should say, it's finally Olivia Newton-Don's time to shine, as we get a wonky rendition of ONJ's "Please Don't Keep Me Waiting." Oh, and like I said before, Gary is dressed like Olivia as she appears on the cover of her 1979 album "Totally Hot."

If you want to know what life was like for Gary before being filmed in the parking lot of that Salt Lake City television station, you're going to have to wait until chapter three. But the black and white "Beaver Kid #2, starring Sean Penn as "Groovin' Larry," does explore the aftermath of his Beaver talent show appearance. And let's just say, it takes a dark turn. For starters, in this chapter, the cameraman, now played an actor, seems to have duplicitous intentions. It also implies that Larry's fellow Beaverites might not be all that thrilled to have a male Olivia Newton John impersonator living in their town.

While watching "The Beaver Kid," it never occurred to me that some people would frown upon having a male Olivia Newton John impersonator in their midst. However, "Beaver Kid #2" smashes any naive notions I had about small town tolerance.

The most relatable scene in the entire trilogy has to be the sight of Sean Penn in a blonde wig singing Olivia Newton-John's "Please Don't Keep Me Waiting" into a hair brush in front of a Xanadu poster. I mean, who hasn't done that? I'm a man, by the way. Don't get me wrong, I love Olivia, but just  not as much as I love being a guy.

Getting back to smashing naive notions. Part 3: "The Orkly Kid," smashes them even further by fleshing out the back-story of Groovin' Gary/Larry even further. What does Larry do when he's not hanging out in the parking lots of Boise (the action has now moved to Idaho) television stations or singing in Olivia drag at talent shows? He survives, that's what he does. He has a dream, and that dream involves being accepted for who he really is. Well, I have bad news for you, fella. It ain't going to happen in Orkly.

You would think that Carrissa, the diner waitress played E.G. Daily (Valley Girl), would more accepting of your unique lifestyle, but she's just as bad as the rest of them.

It's true, the first two chapters in The Beaver Trilogy lay a lot of the groundwork. However, The Orkly Kid is the jewel in The Beaver Trilogy crown. Anchored by a terrific performance by Crispin Glover, and great supporting work by Stefan Arngrim (Class of 1984), as Larry's "friend," The Orkly Kid takes the premise of an Olvia Newton-John obsessed eccentric from in a small town in Utah, and runs with it. Now, the fact that I watched the entire film in one sitting, means that I had to listen to "Please Don't Keep Me Waiting" at least six times. Meaning, you'll probably never want to hear the song ever again. That being said, the film is kind of rewarding... in a "This is awkward... make it stop" sort of way.

Rubin and Ed (Trent Harris, 1991)

It is written somewhere that living in an inside world is different than living in an outside world. In the former, the events that take place mainly occur within the spacious confines of your own head. In other words, not much happens beyond the odd hallucination and the occasional parental disruption. Well, the complete opposite happens when faced with an outdoor existence, as your weather-beaten psyche is literally inundated with all kinds of newfangled stimuli. Sure, the hallucinations remain, but you will probably notice that they have expanded not only in scope, but also in terms of intensity (if you wear platform shoes, for example, they will seem larger than they really are). One particular individual meets this inside-outside culture shock criteria perfectly, and that is, Rubin in the delightfully off-kilter Rubin and Ed, a little film with big ideas about a man with a watermelon-eating cat named Simon and another man with substitute hair. Encompassing a wide birth of deep and meaningful topics, the film, written and directed by Trent Harris (Plan 10 from Outer Space), somehow manages to successfully bridge the gap between the absurd and the deranged. Announcing its charm almost immediately with the introduction of its playful music score (Fred Myrow), we learn that even a set of thick blue curtains, a stack of old newspapers and a boombox (one that sports the coveted "auto reverse" feature) can't shield you from the real world forever.

We all know what it's like to mourn the loss of a furry loved one. My black cat died at the ripe old age of seventeen and recall being quite shaken by the experience. It's true, I kept their remains unburied for longer than I should have, but my situation never got to the point where I found myself drinking the sweat that had accumulated in my platform shoe's insole after walking for hours in the arid, extra dry wilderness of Utah, a state located in the United States of America with the kind of skies that would even impress a fluffy cloud expert like Rickie Lee Jones.

The advantage the person mourning his dead kitty in this film has is refrigeration. In that, he can hold on to the idea that his four-legged pal is still around without having to worry about decomposition. Unfortunately, Rubin (Crispin Glover), the dead kitty person, is confronted by outside forces who unwittingly compel him to bury the deceased animal. It begins with his mother, who tells Rubin that he can't listen to Gustav Mahler (his late cat's favourite) and squeak the yellow rubber mouse (his late cat's favourite) until he leaves the house (or in this case, his hotel room) and makes a friend ("No friend, no music!"). However, it's ultimately a fella named Ed (Howard Hesseman) who puts the unorthodox burial adventure in motion after he knocks Simon out of the freezer ("Why don't you keep you hands off other people's refrigerators").

The odd pairing both have ulterior motives: Rubin wants Ed to come over and meet his mother (proving to her that he has in fact made a friend). Ed wants Rubin to attend a seminar run by the mysterious "The Organization," a self-help group (run by Michael Greene from To Live and Die in L.A.) for successful salespeople, in order to show Rula (Karen Black), his smoking hot wife, that he is not a total failure. With his mother awol, Ed agrees to help Rubin bury his cat in the desert. Sounds simple enough (lay cat to rest, swing on by the seminar), but things get a tad weird when Rubin decides that the spot they chosen isn't quite right. The high-strung Ed, lounging in the dirt by a smallish hole that, thanks to Rubin's indecisiveness, bares not a single dead cat, even direly points out the impending weirdness that is about to transpire. While some may not appreciate this sort of self-aware candor, I found it to be refreshing, as most films of this nature seem to shy away from acknowledging their own strangeness.

The scene where a sexier-than-usual Karen Black (Mirror Mirror), sheathed in an alluring red dress (the camera even slowly pans up her supple frame as if she were a curvy pin-up model circa 1949), can be seen screaming while entangled in the fender Ed's company car is just the first of many outlandish dream sequences peppered throughout Rubin and Ed, a film that isn't afraid to show a cat water-skiing. And even though Crispin Glover can be seen at one point wearing a hubcap on his head, the film isn't completely enamoured with its own kookiness. On the contrary, the way the film deftly mixed unexplained nuttiness ("Andy Warhol sucks a big one") with moments of pure pathos was elegant and smooth; like droplets of liquid slowly oozing out of a recently discarded can of beer. I mean, call me a nonsensical sack of deformed hammers, but I thought the scene in the cave where Ed bonds with Rubin to be quite touching. You really got the sense that Ed genuinely cared about Rubin's loss.

In a flash, your mind immediately stops thinking about the exquisite paleness of the legs sprouting out from the torso of that woman Rubin harasses by the hotel's pool–Rubin inadvertently utters one of the worst pick-up lines ever ("You wanna meet my mom?")–and the film starts making you ponder the meaning of life. Okay, maybe I wouldn't go that far (her legs were crossed after all). But it does capture what it must feel like to inhabit the specific skin of two men on the cusp of scoring an existential breakthrough.

Employing the word "asswipe" like it were a badge of honour, Howard Hesseman, an actor best known as the iconic Dr. Johnny Fever (his slacker diskjockey character from WKRP in Cincinnati), gives a complex performance as the beaten down Ed, a man reduced to repeating corporate nonsense in the presence of others. Affixed with a questionable wig (hair substitute), Howard, whether displaying his cringe-worthy habit of adding an unnecessary Spanish flair to everyday Anglo phrases (I know for a fact I heard him say, "el weirdo" at least twice) or extolling the virtues of Cat Ballou, imbues the defeated Ed with an unhinged tenderness.

While it doesn't seem to get thrown around that much nowadays, I've always preferred "asswipe" over "asshole," its more popular cousin in the high stakes realm of anal-based insults. I don't know, "asshole" just seems to sit there like a lump of coarse nothingness. On the other hand, "asswipe" seems to glide off the tongue with a gentle grace.

The phantom-like Brittney Lewis appears every now and then as Rubin's nameless dream girl. Usually dressed in swimwear–the kind that was fashionable during the late 1980s, Brittney helps Rubin when he is lost–this comes in handy when he finds himself aimlessly drifting amongst the desert's penis-shaped rock formations (similar to ones found in the music video for 2 Unlimited's "Magic Friend"), and builds up his self-esteem when he is down. You could say: The magic friend is what she is.

A demented humanitarian who almost kicked David Letterman in the head, Crispin "I'm making my lunch!" Glover is an awkward revelation as the platform shoe-wearing Rubin. Unafraid to rock a pair of gaudy bellbottom trousers in a desert setting, Crispin captures the despair of a desolate pet owner in a way that only an actor of his unique reputation could summon. And while the ridiculousness of appearance may at times dampen the weightiness of his predicament, the eccentric actor always manages to advance his character's spiritual cause.

The year may be 1991, but the black and blue ensemble Karen Black wears while talking on the phone in her kitchen was definitely purchased in 1986.*

Why my viewing expanse (the eyeball-centric area I use to watch things with) and this wacky adventure have never got around to molesting each other until now will probably remain a mystery. I love movies where mismatched oddballs wander the desert in search of themselves. Wait a minute, no I don't. But I did love this one. We all need someone to help us let go of the coolers that contain the partially frozen remains of our dead pets.

video uploaded by dtnehring

* Just because the film was released in 1991, doesn't mean it was shot in 1991; Miss Black's outfit could have been only a couple of years old.

Anyway, thanks to Tenebrous Kate over at Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire for making me more aware of this film than I already was.

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