As promised, Lance Weiler brought his Head Trauma alternate reality game to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens this past weekend, and as promised, a number of interventions were made to bridge the gap between the world inhabited by the film and its audience. Notes and images follow; you can see more pictures here.
Information about the event in the run-up to it seemed to be deliberately vague. I knew Weiler was referring to the cut of the film to be shown as a "remix"; I knew there was to be live music, live actors, and most intriguingly, some kind of interactive game involving a cell phone.
I was a bit suspicious about that last idea. I wondered if Head Trauma wasn't too...um...cerebral a film for this kind of thing. Not to give anything way, but the horror perpetrated within the narrative is relatively ... um ... self-contained. There's little potential for the killer to strike again, little potential for a sequel, little fear of him following you home. It's already a film that engages the viewer far more than the usual genre exercise; the suspense is located mainly in what you *don't* see, and there's quite a bit of misdirection that needs sorting through.
As we waited in line in the Museum lobby, we were handed fliers advertising a search for a missing girl. I called the phone number on the flier, and got an exceedingly creepy recorded message. You can call it and listen for yourself: the number is (866) 420-3096.
We were greeted in the theater by a slide inviting us to send a text message to 77089 in order to interact with the film during the screening. I dutifully obeyed, only to receive a message back: "Access denied." Several people sitting around me had the same experience; the common thread seemed to be that we all use T-Mobile as our service provider. But while I wasn't able to participate in the gaming aspect of the event, I was one of the few. Phones buzzed throughout the film and each time, you could see a mixture of bewilderment and amusement on the face of the phone owner, illuminated in the blue-green of the cell screen.
As far as the presentation of the film itself, the highlight for me was the live audio performance, wherein Weiler mixed the film's soundtrack live while a violinist and guitarist played a new score. It felt like a organic enhancement of the film, and it truly transformed the space. Other interventions were less successful, particularly those involving actors. A smoke-filled tent placed on stage was spooky and evocative; a literal staging of the film's sole death scene was...not. This was only the second of ostensibly many live Head Trauma events, and I imagine some kinks are still being worked out.
Like Four Eyed Monsters, which is "remixed" for every screening (in part to incorporate new submissions from fans), the Head Trauma remix functions less as a revision of the narrative, and more as a simple extension of the brand. The truth is, the average audience member would be unlikely to tell the difference between the various cuts of either film, but in the post-director's cut world, there does seem to be something attractive about the idea of a movie that, like a live performance, continues to evolve.
During the post-show Q & A, Weiler acknowledged an affinity for the great promoter William Castle, whose gimmicks hardly needed to offer any use value as long as they lured suckers into theater seats. The Head Trauma ARG seems to be similarly potent as a marketing tool but weak on intrinsic value, but there's a crucial difference between what Weiler's doing and Castle's insurance policies and inflatable skeletons: Weiler's gimmicks are put to the service of selling what is on its own a film worth seeing. If a bit of not-quite-there theatricality serves to draw a new, curious audience to what is already a strong, under-seen indie, then that's a mission I can get behind.
Lance Weiler will be taking the Head Trauma ARG on tour throughout the summer; for more information, check out the HTMOB blog.
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