At age 35, with just three features under his belt, Azazel Jacobs seems like an unlikely candidate for a retrospective, but if such an endeavor pumps up the profile of his first two, lesser-seen films whilst effectively promoting his soon-to-be-released Momma’s Man, I’m not going to argue against it. BAM will devote five nights of programming to Jacobs this week, with all three of his features shown alongside two films selected by the director: the 1980 Clash vehicle Rude Boy, and Aki Kaurismaki’s La Vie de Boheme.
The series opens tonight with a screening of Jacobs’ second film, The GoodTimesKid. A punk rock fantasia shot on 35mm stock infamously stolen from a Hollywood feature, the film stars Jacobs as Rodolfo, a scrappy brooder who kicks his way out of domestic complacency with girlfriend Diaz (played with an irresistible mix of strength and eccentricity by Jacobs’ drop-dead real-life GF, Sara Diaz). In order to join the army, Rodolfo steals the identity of another man named Rodolfo (Gerardo Naranjo), a loner who lives on a liquor-littered little boat. When the first Rodolfo walks out of Diaz’ life on the night she’s throwing a party for his birthday, the second Rodolfo walks right in. Diaz, hungry for the attention and affection that she can’t squeeze out of her Rudolfo, is open to a replacement Rodolfos, at least for a night.
Naranjo, who also co-wrote the script, came out of the same AFI class as Jacobs and filmmakers Georgina Riedel and Goran Ducik. Shot on the streets (and buses!) of the residential enclaves around Downtown Los Angeles, GoodTimesKid has a vibe that’s reminiscent (if decidedly lower-concept) to the dystopian romanticism of Ducik’s Wristcutters: A Love Story. It’s my favorite of Jacobs’ films thus far. If you can’t make it to Brooklyn tonight, keep an eye out for GoodTimes’ upcoming DVD release, courtesy of the ubiquitous Benten Films.
Also very much of note is Jacobs’ first feature, the rough but bizarrely fascinating Nobody Needs to Know. Shot in black and white in New York City, the film begins with a director (played by Momma’s Man star Matt Boren) auditioning a series of eager young actresses for a role requiring them to improvise a death scene whilst wearing lingerie. When it comes time for the Jean Seberg-like Iris (Tricia Vessey) to audition, she finds herself unable to go through the motions. The narrative splits to follow both the director who, beguiled by Iris’ refusal to play ball, is desperately trying to get in touch with her; and Iris herself, who studiously ignores her agents persistant calls and drifts into an existential crisis that manifests itself in semi-aggressive inaction. Both stories are filtered through the narration of a young black male who “cuts” between characters and locations as if he’s watching it all via surveillance cameras–taking the power back, he says, from a world that watches him suspiciously regardless of his actual behavior or intent. It’s this aspect of the film’s construction that both elevates Nobody into something really risky and different, but also precludes any real engagement with Iris and her issues.
Though the film features performances from a number of name actors (Tricia Vessey, Norman Reedus and, in a funny self-mocking cameo, Emily Mortimer), it never really found an audience or an interested distributor. In notes prepared for the BAM series, Jacobs admits that he got a little bit in over his head with it, as “writing, shooting, cutting and raising funds for years,” led to a loss of focus. “Guess I had dreams of changing cinema, somthing I won’t attempt again, but proud that I tired.” Jacobs eventually put it online for free streaming. You can watch it at the Internet Archive.
Showing Jacobs’ three films together (Sundance hit Momma’s Man will screen on Friday, a week before its theatrical release via Kino) reveals much about how Jacobs has grown as a filmmaker while sticking to relatively consistent themes. At the risk of being reductive, these are three films about going into isolation, of people at ill-defined psychic crisis points attempting to force change by going into withdrawl. In Nobody and GoodTimes, our glimpse into the lives of the characters––or as the narrator of Nobody would put it, our power over them––concludes before that change starts to fully take hold. Less concerned than either with formal style Momma’s Man is the more universally satisfying film in part because it’s more conventional––it’s got a true sense of catharsis and emotional closure that the other films lack, it lets the audience exhale before the go home. It’s about somebody who isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but ultimately finds it, and then appears to be able to move on. The same could be said of it’s filmmaker––Momma’s Man feels like the the period on the end of the first paragraph of a career. Maybe it’s the perfect time for an Azazel Jacobs retrospective after all.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth