FERAL CINEMA: The Quickening

The third Thursday of each month I Luv Video, The Austin Chronicle, The Onion & The Austin Underground Film Society will present FERAL CINEMA Double Features — rare, freakish & often damn near impossible-to-find cult classics from the wild fringes of pop culture. Hosted & curated by Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle, Charles Lieurance of I Luv Video, Pop Matters & Blastitude Magazine & Andy Gately from The Austin Underground Film Society & Psych Fest, these double features will bring to light a wide range of chronically unseen treasures. As an added bonus, screenings will have surprises like giveaways, trivia contests, drink specials, and erudite, boozy introductions from your hosts.

WHO IS KK DOWNEY?
Darren Curtis/Pat Kiely, 2008

We’re kicking off Feral Cinema with this brutal send up of hipster culture via the real-life controversy surrounding 16-year-old transgender cult author JT LeRoy, who made headlines with her “astonishingly confident” (New York Times Book Review) semi-autobiographical debut novel Sarah. Despite questionable literary merit and dubious authenticity, the story of a boy truck stop prostitute struck a masochistic chord with younger readers through its exotic subject matter and pitch black humor, and catapulted the mysterious teenage author into celebrity status, as she soon found herself being courted (in every sense) by the likes of Asia Argento, Gus Van Sant, Carrie Fisher, and Debbie Harry. It soon came to light that, in what the San Francisco Chronicle calls “the greatest literary hoax in a generation,” the sunglass-clad guy appearing on LeRoy’s speaking dates was not, in fact, the true scribe behind the work, or even a guy…

Enter Montreal comedy troupe Kidnapper, who lampoons the scandal’s perpetrators and marks for all it’s worth, and then some. Just leave it to the Canadians to rip American scenesters a new one. View the trailer HERE.

WHO IS KK DOWNEY? Will be preceded by the amazing punk rock short TORTURED BY JOY (Dir. Henry Griffin, 11 min.)

Doors @ 8 p.m. so you can get your drink on & the actual films will be shown at 8:30 p.m., with an intermission for giveaways, more drinking and bathroom breaks. Feral Cinema screenings cost $5. Feral Drink Special #1: $2 Lone Star pints

Austin, laid back and somewhat indulgent as it is, might be a terrible place for a New Yorker or anyone who wants to move and shake culture or corporations but it’s an undeniably great place to start a band, as I recently learned. No paranoia, no career hang-ups, no star trips (well, not usually), no heroin, no your drummer informing you at Thursday’s rehearsal that he’s just gotta play with this “Smoke On The Water” copy band Friday night instead of with you at CBGB’s because he says he desperately needs the money even though he lives with his parents in Westchester.

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In 2002, a curious little book titled Through Our Enemies’ Eyes came out which presented a wealth of information on Al Qaeda and became a New York Times bestseller, perhaps unsurprisingly given its uncanny insider knowledge and topical interest. Its author was credited as “Anonymous,” which you would expect to register some intrigue among literary circles as to the identity of this new and remarkably successful writer, but for some reason, little mainstream mention has been made of it, or its follow-up tome, Imperial Hubris, which seems odd when a book like, say, 1996’s Primary Colors sent journalists scrambling to expose the man behind the pseudonym.

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In the final story of Austin writer Irwin Tang’s new collection, the narrator wonders, “I write stories that are so solipsistic, the only true audience is myself, and I am disgusted and fascinated at what? At myself.” While all eight of the stories contained in the volume essentially are about Tang, and his transforming journey toward understanding what it means to be both Asian and American, simply summarizing it so dryly fails to capture the sheer wit and humor with which he relates the trails and epiphanies of his characters. What might otherwise be a self-indulgent read is more than redeemed by Tang’s considerable proficiency at storytelling and weaving of motifs that draw from such unlikely and diverse sources as Marvel comics to Run DMC, 16 Candles to Roots.

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The 2006 Austin Underground Film Fest took place from 6:30pm-11:30pm on May 23rd, 2006 to a sold out theater at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on 1120 South Lamar Plaza, voted “Best Theater in the Country” in 2005 by Entertainment Weekly and home to such events as the World Air Guitar Championships, Tenacious D Sing-a-longs, Videoke, and Quentin Tarantino’s Film Fest.
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Author Kalle Lasn helped literally coin the book’s titular term during an epiphany he had when he realized that he hated the “sterile chain store that rarely carried any locally grown produce” he was shopping in, so he expressed his feelings of purchasing powerlessness by jamming a bent coin into the grocery cart slot of one of those bins which requires a quarter deposit in order to check out a basket, and then refunds you once you’re good enough to return it. From then on he opted to shop at the “little fruit and vegetable store down the road.”

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