FILM REVIEWS - Miscellaneous - http://maxpages.com/aeazine2/ISSUE_11_FILM

FILM REVIEWS

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)
Directed by Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill
Lafayette Films

If you kept up with the controversy that surrounded Aileen Wuornos from her 1991 arrest to her execution by lethal injection on October 9, 2002, you might have an idea that the press transformed her into a symbol somewhat akin to the Amy Fishers and Tonya Hardings of the media. When word circulated through TV and the papers that Wuornos brutally murdered seven male victims on a senseless killing spree, the public was confronted with yet another demon who they righteously reviled, yet would have safely listened to if her story had been recreated on film. The fact that Patty Jenkins penned a movie (2003's "Monster") that won eight awards, including an Oscar for Charlize Theron, substantiates this.
When the media christened Wuornos "America's first female serial killer," it meant she is the first female serial killer in America to receive publicity traditionally given Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez and John Wayne Gacy. Categorized by the press as everything from a "man-hating lesbian" to a "killer who preyed on truck drivers" and nicknamed "damsel of death," Wuornos became the object of fear and abhorrence who the public could safely condemn now that prison bars separated her from the rest of the world. Indeed, the only people with a right to condemn Wuornos were the families of the victims. But as is the case when a serial killer's exploits are brought to light, someone always has words to share.
"Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer" is Nick Broomfield's second documentary about Wuornos, made in 2003. His first, "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer" (1992), was filmed during Wuornos' murder trial. "Aileen," intended as an argument against the death penalty, raises questions about what is more shocking, Wuornos flying into a rage in court, hurling obscenities at the judge, or how others involved in the case seemed to be concealing deals made behind the scenes with less regard for the victim's families. Aileen is just one of the mentally disturbed who have received the death penalty, according to aileenfilm.com, and "Aileen" raises a question as to whether it should be considered justice to execute the mentally disturbed, especially under the sort of circumstances that Aileen experienced.
This is the third time I've seen Broomfield investigate the least explored areas of major media events, the first being a painstaking search for uncovered facts behind the death of Nirvana's frontman Kurt Cobain in "Kurt and Courtney." The second was an exhausting, and painful for some interviewees, search for answers in the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Big E. Smalls in "Biggie and Tupac." As he does in those documentaries, he shows his calm resolve to dig deeply under the surface, targeting specifics and allowing the facts to reveal themselves. The self-explanatory light Broomfield sheds has a way of raising doubt as to whether things are exactly as they seem.
The circumstances of Wuornos' life, oddly romanticized by Jenkins, certainly read like a successful film in the making to fans of "Thelma and Louise" and "Kalifornia" alike. Not the first woman in American history to prey on a line of victims despite being held up as such, Wuornos was abandoned by her mother and left with her grandparents at an early age. In her teenage years she dropped out of high school to work as a prostitute, drifting from state to state under different aliases until she settled in Florida. Frequently landing herself in jail for assault and drunk driving to auto theft and armed robbery. Florida was where she committed the serial murders for which she received multiple death sentences.
"Life and Death of a Serial Killer" begins with Bloomfield's narrative describing how Richard Mallory, Walter Antonio, Dick Humphries, David Spears, Charles Costadon, Peter Sims and Troy Borroughs were all murdered with a .22 caliber handgun, their bodies discovered by local police in a secluded area by route I-75 between 1990 and 1991. In the news clip immediately after this, the reporter points out the murders were apparently committed by a "feminine touch" "for the first time in criminal history," possibly setting off the "first female serial killer" media hype. At her taped confession at a Daytona Beach police station following her January 1, 1991 arrest, taken from "The Selling of a Serial Killer," Wuornos expresses remorse and maintains her victims attempted to beat and rape her, forcing her to kill in self-defense.
Broomfield reports the exposure the killings received on the news, which paid strict attention to Wuornos' lesbianism and the fact that she was a hooker at the time when the killings occurred, earned her a "special kind of hatred" not only from the wives and families of the victims but from society at large. The Christian right joined local politicians in lobbying for the death penalty in Wuornos' case; Wuornos responded that the politicians were motivated by political prestige, not justice. If money and status played a role, a woman with an extensive history of abuse, mental problems, addiction and prostitution who happened to commit multiple slayings was unlikely to be heard, even if she had acted in self-defense.
Still, from his personal contact with Wuornos, Broomfield believed she was "the most honest woman in the case" as she appeared to have a knowledge of the feeding frenzy happening all around her as everyone in her immediate circle was looking to walk away with the largest paycheck from selling her story to Hollywood. Although her mental state is shown deteriorating through the documentary, Wuornos also claimed people sought to finalize film contracts about her story. Broomfield had previously uncovered some evidence to support this, suggesting the police received money from selling the rights to Wuornos' story (in which case the death sentences she received would have been overturned). In the decade that followed he was unable to uncover any more evidence of any movie rights being sold by the police.
Between investigations into Wuornos' abusive past, Broomfield conducted more interviews with Wuornos, watching her mental state deteriorate into deeper delusion and paranoia. At first her stories were that the police were watching her as she was committing the murders, letting her become a high profile case in order to sell successful stories. Her suspicions became allegations that guards were torturing her with sonic waves to keep her from writing. Subpoenaed to Wuornos' execution, Broomfield finds it disturbing that someone was being put to death who was obviously insane.
An odd development in "Aileen" is an interview with Wuornos that comes soon after this. In it, she recants what she said in her previous interviews and sworn testimony, saying the murders she committed were not in self-defense, but premeditated first degree murder committed in the course of robbery. When asked about her testimony on the death of Richard Mallory, she confides to Broomfield this was a story she invented to beat the system, stressing that the death penalty must go through. Broomfield disbelieves this, persuaded she is trying to sabotage her own defense. In another interview, unaware she was being taped, Wuornos says she admitted to first degree murder on camera because she has been on death row for too long and wants to succumb to the state's sentence because she can't go on living.
Broomfield says making "Aileen" has had a profound effect on him long after it was completed. Citing it as his "most personal and disturbing film," Broomfield lays it bare on his official website he was plagued with nightmares. As reality seemed to overwhelm him when he was required to attend Wuornos' execution after coming into things as a witness, he arrived to the conclusion that "the violence of taking a life remains the same whether it is legally sanctioned or not. - Dave Wolff

Die Mommie Die (2003)
Directed by Mark Rucker
Bill Kenwright Films Ltd.

You may remember when the transgender lifestyle "officially" went mainstream with 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar!" The reason it was a challenge to Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo goes without saying, because these are all actors who appeared on screen in drag after establishing themselves as more inclined to "macho" male roles. They had the courage to depart from traditional male roles, even if we knew they were male actors. It would be a while before other actors would take it one step further, moving the development of androgyny closer to its logical conclusion. This has yet to be reached, as no actor has mastered total androgyny.
Getting back to Roger Ebert for a moment, in his review of "Die Mommie Die" he succinctly described the difference between drag queens and female impersonators: that while the female impersonator actually passes himself off as a woman, to such an extent where he trains his mind to conform to his appearance, the drag queen makes his disguise obvious, making it clear he's a man passing himself off as a woman. Members of the transgender scene see it from a different perspective. Interviewing actual drag queens, writer Angela Brown discovered drag queens always appear as females, while impersonators occasionally appear as men. The point is, there is a difference between the two.
As entertaining as films like "Die Mommie Die" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" were for their characters capturing the mystique, that indie picture where the lead character can pull off the most convincing aspects of the impersonator and the drag queen is still waiting to be made, as far as I suspect. What I mean by total androgyny has not quite been achieved as things stand now, but somewhere between those differences lies what some future actor may discover while making his own indie picture. One New York City stage actor who just recently broke into the mainstream hasn't discovered it, but he succeeds in exploding traditional male roles that have existed in moviemaking since the 1950s.
One of the first stage productions that Charles Busch ("Psycho Beach Party") appeared in was "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom," that opened in Manhattan's East Village in 1984 and is described as one of the longest running plays in off-Broadway history. Since then he's appeared in other stage productions including "Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium," "Times Square Angel" and "Gidget Goes Psychotic," penned novels, musicals and anthologies and appeared in stage productions of "Psycho Beach Party" and "Die! Mommy! Die!," which were made into movies in 2000 and 2003. These established Busch as a writer who is not afraid to parody his favorite movies and be as campy as possible about it.
"Die Mommie Die" expands the challenges "To Wong Foo" established because Busch is a drag queen by profession rather than an actor who dressed in drag for one film. Acting as a spokesman for the transgender scene while playing the central role, Busch brings his profession to the screen whereas Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo's impressions of the lifestyle from outside. Ebert said this movie wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been since we're aware Busch is a drag queen beforehand. This got me to thinking whether its success would have depended on a drag queen whose androgyny was so well concealed we wouldn't have known. This is where the question of total androgyny came in.
"Die Mommie Die" took eighteen days to film in June 2003, with Michael Bottari and Ronald Case who Busch says are his "long time collaborators" and designed the costuming. Busch parodies everything from 40's noir to 60's psychedelia. Although the setting and characters are removed from the free love lifestyle of 1967, as much depraved behavior goes on behind closed doors here as outside. Only in here, said depravity leads to a few turns for the worse. Murder, spite, greed, secrets, conspiracy and revenge with some plot twists; how's that for peace, love and harmony? In this sense Busch intends to pierce the facade of immaculate, star struck living personified by Hollywood during those years.
A black comedy where the jokes are meant to pierce its own lighter facade, "Die Mommie Die" leaves the impression that it worked well on the stage, in the more intimate settings of off-Broadway. Busch's character is Angela Arden, an over the hill performer whose career lost its glamour years ago. Philip Baker Hall ("Bruce Almighty") plays husband Sol Sussman, whose career producing in Hollywood is likewise on its way out. As ashamed as Angela and Sol are of one another, kids Edith (Natasha Lyonne, "American Pie," "Party Monster") and Lance (Stark Sands, "Chasing Liberty") are ashamed of both their parents, hatching a revenge plot once it becomes apparent to them that she murdered Sol.
Most of Busch's inspiration for "Die Mommie Die" came from '40s noir films such as "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" and "Double Indemnity," mostly from the perspective of the Angela character. Busch says since this is a period piece in the 60s it had to be shot in color; the one exception is the series of flashback sequences depicting the time Arden had her singing career, and how she coped with her career falling to pieces around her, giving her family their dark secret. The different methods of photography representing each time period, from the flashbacks to the present day, converge into the same universe, with the set lighting darkening as the secrets of Angela's past are dragged into the light.
One of the movie's major twists is that while Angela believes herself resourceful for keeping her secrets for so long, her wits are eventually undermined when Edith proves herself far more so. Edith's domineering relationship with Lance as she directs her brother through the scheme mirrors Angela's smug confidence that reached its peak when Sol's life seemed to come to an abrupt end. While exhibiting more wits than Angela, Edith was her polar opposite, plotting quietly under the shadow of Angela's flamboyant, extravagant personality, and waiting for the right moment to spring her trap. The other major twist is that, in a way, Edith is the story's moral center because she wants to discover the truth.
Translating the stage production to a movie made it possible to expand the visual effects used to represent the time periods more convincingly. Everything that was confined to the same set in the stage production were given their own world when the sets were expanded to an entire mansion. This gave the transitions from the present to the past, from reality to memories, a strong feeling of being transported back through time alongside Angela as she is forced to relive her past and face her personal demons through Edith's resourcefulness, and a cup of coffee with LSD-coated sugar. Whether she can leave her past behind depends on what happens next; a few more twists that shouldn't be revealed.
More than understanding the motives of each character, you will generally find "Die Mommie Die" enjoyable if you're inclined to find a humorous side to the femme fatale who haunted the world of '40s noir, and don't take movies made in later decades too seriously, especially those that Busch decided to remake with camp for the purposes of his story. - Dave Wolff

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