I wasn’t prepared to hear John Waters speak in tongues. I’m not sure why. What is there left to do after over fifty years of spreading the sordid slime of good bad taste around the globe than falling to your knees where your role model’s testicles were crushed before he was mowed over repeatedly with … Continue reading
“You thieving treacherous little shit! To think that I actually liked you and let you touch my lady bits. I’m going to slice your face off with a cheese grater and then feed your testicles to my girlfriend!” No, this isn’t a quote from a lost John Waters film spoken with the perverse and pathological … Continue reading
Who among us can deny the alluring draw of golf carts circling and darting here and there in formation set to the rhythm of their instructor’s whistle and shouted directions, “Ted! Ted!!”? Certainly not me. Only a couple seconds into Lance Oppenheim’s intoxicating documentary Some Kind of Heaven, which opens with the faint sounds of … Continue reading
The day after I finished watching Eugene Kotlyarenko’s film Spree, Azealia Banks documented digging up her dead cat Lucifer and boiling his bones on Instagram stories (apparently she wants to gild his skull). It was a witchier version of Joe Keery’s maniacally eager, viewer count-obsessed protagonist and spree killer Kurt Kunkle’s homicidal ride-share rampage turned … Continue reading
“Oh, fuck you! Those are heirlooms. My family heirlooms!” Wild-eyed and bunny-eared with her Appalachian drawl, Amy Adams’ Bev Vance delivers those lines with the pathos and conviction of a woman who just lost her cherished, long held inherited treasures, passed down from generation to generation of country folk. What are these heirlooms of which … Continue reading
The inventor Nikola Tesla had a proclivity to give himself electrotherapeutic shocks. According to biographer Richard Munson, Tesla suffered debilitating depression, and it was not unusual at the time to deploy mild shocks to treat such an ailment. Each morning he would disrobe and stand naked upon his “vitality booster,” gradually administering higher doses. Michael … Continue reading
Michelle Handelman’s tantalizing and provocative 1995 documentary BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes And Sadomasochism is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year, which will be celebrated with a digital screening at OUTFEST Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival starting on August 26. When I first sat down to watch it on my tiny laptop screen, I was filled with … Continue reading
“Once there was a song. The song yearned to be sung” –Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds “The Spinning Song” What makes art relevant, particularly during a global pandemic as complex as COVID-19? What does it look like to speak to a moment when creating seems useless and inadequate? How can culture have an impact … Continue reading
A brick appears in his hand as if by magic. This corn-fed white cis straight-passing Ken doll in a torn Gap T-shirt fresh off the bus from Indiana looks down, realizing that history has its eyes on him–not the gender-nonconforming street kids of color he just met and whose brick he just swiped. No, this … Continue reading
Well, hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! What’s that? You’re bored after ten-ish weeks of quarantine? Is that how long it’s been?!!! What month is it? I thought it was still March! Or May! Or November! And I know. I know. It’s just so difficult to be in lockdown, sheltering in place, staying at home, … Continue reading