By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Stephen Earnhart
Country: united_states
Year: 2002
Running time: 93
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0290010
Diane says: “MULE SKINNER BLUES is a docu along the lines of AMERICAN MOVIE. Music video director Stephen Earnhart met up with Beanie Andrew, a retired shrimper who considers himself an entertainer. Andrew’s dream has been to make a horror movie, and the filmmakers make this possible for him and his friends/neighbors in a Florida trailer park. Like AMERICAN MOVIE, (and Solondz’ STORYTELLING) this docu walks an unpleasant line between tribute and condescension. (It
reminded me of the jokey trailers at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, which featured a couple in a trailer [pun intended] park. After seeing them for a few days in a row, one audience member shouted out, ‘Why do we laugh at the poor?’ I had to agree with his point.)
“Earnhart uses cheesy effects in the docu, e.g., swirling vortexes like you’d see in a low-budget ’50s horror film. They sure were annoying. I wasn’t drawn into the movie until after the halfway point, when we start to learn about the Achilles’ heels of Beanie and his friends: a Vietnam vet who hasn’t been sober in thirty years, a sober alcoholic who falls back to drinking after his father’s death, an aspiring rock guitarist who can’t share the limelight…. It’s when we see their drive to perform and be recognized
contrasted with the struggles they have to face that their stories take on interest. But that wasn’t Earnhart’s focus, really. And the material he was working with was not as rich as the filmmaker in AMERICAN MOVIE” 2 cats
Laura says: “Imagine if John Waters’ troupe from PINK FLAMINGOS had been obsessed with country music and all lived in a Florida trailer park, then cross that with AMERICAN MOVIE. Senior citizen Beanie Andrews becomes starstruck after being
tagged as an extra in a country music video and decides to make a horror opus about – well, something about a man seeking his lost arm after coming back from the mud as a gorilla. The neighbors he recruits to help all have their own strange story.
“Overall I really enjoyed this one, although I found it lost its focus for a while (had me wondering if they’d forgotten about that movie!). It’s an interesting rumination on the human creative urge peopled with bizarre (but always sympathetic) characters.”