I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #230 - Ed and His Dead Mother (1993, dir. Jonathan Wacks)

In the early ‘90s, after falling completely in love with his character Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, I became sort of fixated on consuming all the other films in which Steve Buscemi starred. That included a lot of late-1980s/early-1990s independent vehicles that were very hit and miss. Ed and His Dead Mother was one of the hits for me. It was one of the first Buscemi flicks that I watched period, let alone one of the first ones that I saw where Buscemi played a (relatively) normal schlub and not a psychotic, violent creep. Ed is also a comedy, which was (and really still is) my forte; my first love. And even though Buscemi was absolutely hilarious in most of his roles, he didn’t do a lot of comedic movies in his early days - at least not that I had seen. Buscemi’s turn as Ed, a sweetly naïve hardware salesman from small town Iowa is simultaneously charming and disturbing.

Ed is the third and final effort by American director Jonathan Wacks. Wacks is perhaps best known for his first film, the George Harrison (yes, THAT George Harrison) co-produced Powwow Highway, or for producing the cult favorite Repo Man. Buscemi plays the titular Ed Chilton, the ultimate mama’s boy. Ed receives a visit from a kind of shifty snake oil salesman (John Glover) from a company called Happy People, Ltd., who offer to reanimate his dead mother for a fee. After some consideration and a lot of resistance from his live-in Uncle Benny (Ned Beatty), Ed decides to go through with it. At first Ed is thrilled to have his mother back, as she picks up where she left off when she died, cooking and cleaning and generally helping Ed keep his life in order. But over time, as her behavior grows more and more irrational and bizarre, (hunting and killing living things for sustenance, for example), Ed must make a decision on what to do about mother.

The film itself is any indie film nut’s darling. In addition to Beatty, Glover and Buscemi himself, the film also stars a handful of other fairly well-known character actors, like Miriam Margolyes, Gary Farmer, Eric Christmas and especially Rance Howard, father of Ronnie and Clint, who plays the town preacher shopping at Ed’s store for tools to use to murder his unfaithful wife. The film also has one of the more curious set design choices I’ve ever seen. For the most part, the film looks like 1993, when it comes to wardrobe and hairstyles and things like that, but location-wise, the small Iowa town that’s supposed to be being portrayed here looks almost more 1953. Whether this was a conscious decision or a happy accident is beyond me, but somehow it works, adding yet another layer of strange to an already eccentric film.

Steve Buscemi is still one of my all-time favorites and I still tend to try to watch everything he appears in. Wacks, on the other hand, never directed another full length after Ed and His Dead Mother was released, most likely due to the poor box office activity of all three of his feature films. This would also explain why, up until 2018, the DVD was long out-of-print as well. This is a shame too, because I consider Ed to be kind of an indie classic. A deep cut that never tries to be anything it’s not. It’s just a quirky little comedy, in the tradition of Floundering or Living in Oblivion, with a little bit of a dark and macabre edge to it. Not a zombie film per se, but definitely a seasonally-appropriate film that offers a fresh take on portraying the undead.

- Jonathan Eagle

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #196 - Trees Lounge (1996, dir. Steve Buscemi)

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Steve Buscemi had one of the most ubiquitous mugs in show business. He showed up in the films of everyone from the Coen Brothers to Quentin Tarantino and seemingly every indie film in between. With his wiry frame and excitable bug-eyed demeanor, Buscemi played the perfect tough-guy henchman-type. His presence is always striking, and he’s been one of my favorite actors since the first time I saw him in Reservoir Dogs. In Trees Lounge, Buscemi takes on the role of screenwriter and director in addition to the lead role. The result is a bleak portrait of the life of a small-town alcoholic.

Buscemi plays Tommy Basilio, the protagonist, who has recently lost his job and his girlfriend of eight years to his former best friend. Tommy lives in a gritty section of Long Island in a small, run-down apartment above a bar called Trees Lounge where he spends just about every waking moment of his life drinking and chatting with the bar’s other regulars. One day, Tommy learns that his Uncle Al (Seymour Cassel), the local ice cream man, has died of a heart attack. Al’s funeral not only brings together a family who has so obviously drifted apart from one another, but also gives Tommy an employment opportunity to take over Al’s rounds. Business is slow at first, as Tommy does not prove to be as likeable to the neighborhood kids as Al was. But eventually, he enlists the help of Debbie (Chloe Sevigny), his former girlfriend’s teenage niece. This blossoms into a minor romance, further complicating things in Tommy’s life and confusing the naïve Debbie.

Throughout the course of Trees Lounge, Tommy’s presence has a King Midas-in-reverse effect on everything and everyone around him. The more he drinks and closes in on himself, the more he pushes away the only people around that genuinely want to help him. Tommy’s life, at his own doing, spirals more and more out of control, the crux of which lies at this small dive bar that acts as a metaphor for the lives of Tommy and the other patrons. The staff, the décor and the jukebox selections have never been changed. They stay constant, stagnant; much like the people, the ghosts, that inhabit it. The opening credits scene of the film perfectly portrays the kind of place Trees Lounge is when it focuses on one of its regular barflies, Bill, an elderly man who never leaves his bar stool, ordering a double shot of bourbon and staring blankly into space. Bill is a fixture at “The Trees” all throughout the film, sitting silently by himself at the same stool and occasionally barking at someone to leave him alone. This juxtaposes perfectly with the final scene, in which Bill is ominously absent, recently hospitalized because he “just stopped breathing.” Tommy, sitting in Bill’s stool, learns of this news and asks the other barflies why no one is with him. They all assure him they’re going “after this drink.” Tommy, realizing where he is headed, stares blankly in exactly the same way Bill does at the onset of the film.

This film has come to mean a lot to me over the years. I am intimately familiar with this life. I mean, I was in high school when I first saw it, so I hadn’t really experienced life yet. But over time, it’s become not just one of my favorite films, but the film that I perhaps relate to the most. Alcoholism runs rampant in my family. I myself have struggled with it for decades. More specifically, I have lived the life of the small town daily saloon drinker. I know these characters well. I know the feeling of hopelessness and pessimism that leads one to remain in such a comfort zone and say, “well, fuck it. I guess I’ll go drink again.” Buscemi captures this working-class alcoholism more realistically than anything I’ve ever seen. But more than that, he also perfectly captures the self-destructive nature that can often come with family and relationship rifts. Buscemi himself has stated that the film is a sort of hypothetical autobiography, saying that had he not left his small Long Island neighborhood of Valley Stream and begun his acting career, this is the life for which he was headed. In a lot of ways, my recent move to Colorado parallels that idea.

If it feels like I’m explaining a film that is very heavy, it’s because I am. But, please don’t let that keep you from checking Trees Lounge out. While it may not be a feel-good sensation, Buscemi’s directorial debut is extremely funny at times. It’s very dialogue-driven, almost more like a theatrical production than a feature film. Another thing that sets it apart from, say, Barfly or Leaving Las Vegas is that it’s not all dark and depressing. There are actually some very touching moments between Buscemi’s Tommy and the various other characters. Maybe not everyone can relate to the material the same way I do, but I really do feel that it’s possibly Buscemi’s finest film, acting, directing or otherwise.

-         Jonathan Eagle

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #184 - Ghost World (2001, dir. Terry Zwigoff, Written by Daniel Clowes & Terry Zwigoff)

Rebecca: This is so bad it’s almost good.

Enid: This is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again.

In the nineties Daniel Clowes had a run of his comic Eightball entitled “Ghost World” that, among others, featured the odd stories of recent high school grads Enid and Rebecca. Clowes’ series was a cult classic in the comic world and as the “Ghost World” narrative gained popularity, Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes turned the story into the crazily rad film that I have the pleasure to attempt to turn you onto for this post! I’ve always been a bit of a comic nerd with a penchant for the underground and alternative stories, so I fell in love with Clowes’ Eightball (at the same time as I found the Hernandez Brothers Love & Rockets series). With that in mind, I was extremely pleased when the film, in an abnormal turn of events, happened to live up to the insane awesomeness of the comic.

The story follows Enid (Thora Birch) as she and her best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), having just graduated high school, embark on the beginning of the rest of their lives. All seems well as they follow Satanists from their favorite haunt to the “like, Taj Mahal of fake 50’s diner’s,” mess with their ‘friend’ Josh at his convenience store job, and Enid dryly fumbles through her remedial art class, however life becomes much more complex as the both of them deal with the ennui of the real world in different ways.

While reading through the personal ads in the paper, they come across a “missed connection” (pre-Craig and his list) of a man who believed he had a connection with a woman who he had randomly helped. The two decide that it would be fun to mess with the guy, make a date with him and watch as he is “stood up.” Fast-forward; as Enid watches the man sit and sip his vanilla milk shake an interest is piqued within her. Having followed the man home they began stalking him, eventually discovering that the man, Seymour (Steve Buscemi), runs a makeshift record store out of his garage on Saturdays. Enid picks up a 33RPM compilation of old Blues 78’s and her interest begins to become an obsession (thanks to Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman”). While Enid further falls down the rabbit hole of Seymour’s anti-glamorous life and escapes further into defensive sarcasm, Rebecca begins to embrace the real world working at a coffee shop and looking for an apartment. And from there, well, the story evolves.

Seymour: I can't relate to 99% of humanity.

One of the things that hits me most about Ghost World is the fact that every time I watch this film (or read the comics or graphic novel compilation) I see it from a different perspective. The root of the film is transition. Enid and the rest of the characters are all going through major changes and transitions in their lives and the ways that they deal with them are extremely relatable and human. All of the characters offer a different perspective on change and evolution of self, which make the film/comic endlessly fascinating.  The story/comic is gorgeously imbued with this relatability, and the film under less capable direction and with less committed performers could have easily fallen flat. Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, and Steve Buscemi prove to be such perfect live action representations of their much-beloved characters that it almost seems as if Clowes had written/drawn the characters for those particular people.

While I have certainly focused more upon what makes this a remarkable and important film, I can’t express enough how enjoyable and hilarious the movie truly is! The trials and tribulations of Enid’s life in transition, while at time heartwarming/breaking, are often hysterical and the sardonic sense of humor of the main character permeates the entirety of the film. Being a new addition to the Criterion Collection I can’t say enough about Ghost World and knowing that words won’t fully be able to describe the appeal of this eccentric gem, I will end this edition of “I’d Love To Turn You On,” so you can go and experience it for yourself!

-         Edward Hill