GRIND-FU INTERWEBS: ANDROGYNY

By Shyboy Tim

We had a lot of different double bills daydreamed up when there was funding for Grind-Fu Cinema.  Now that the money has dried up we're still left with the daydreams, and so you've been seeing these daydreams materialize on the Grind-Fu Interwebs as a proxy.  If you can't enjoy them in a theater, enjoy them on your laptop!

One double bill that I thought would be great was an androgyny double bill, featuring an influence and the son/daughter of that influence.  First up would be Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which was one of the first movies I ever picked up on DVD.  I only knew it by reputation, but I wasn't disappointed when I finally saw it.  It looks great, the music is tops (Wig In A Box was a big influence on the Shuffle Function Morning Show Theme), and it's an exciting movie from start to finish.  The fact that it was John Cameron Mitchell's first film (based on his off broadway production) is pretty awesome, and it's also cool that Hedwig was a big reason that Bob Mould finally came out of the closet.  Anything that motivates a person to do something that liberating is a good thing.

So I wanted to put the film on here, but I couldn't find it.  What I did find was video of the original off broadway production.  The sound is a little dicey, but it's an interesting artifact.

So that's the influenced.


The second half of the bill would be D.A. Pennebaker's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars:  The Motion Picture.  When it comes to the big daddy androgynous rock and roll icons, nobody is bigger than David Bowie, and his glam is all over Hedwig.  Since he just released his first album in ten years (It's called The Next Day and you should totally buy it), it seems like an appropriate time to feature Ziggy.