In the decade-plus since the introduction of DVD, many cinematic classics have been released in the format. However, the work of avant-garde and experimental filmmakers has been woefully underrepresented thusfar. Admittedly, avant-garde cinema has something of a niche audience, and a collection of experimental works on DVD would never make the splash of a classic narrative film’s debut in the DVD format. Still, despite some notable exceptions like Criterion’s impressive By Brakhage: An Anthology, most of the classics of the various avant-garde cinema movements remain “underground” to this day, available only in battered copies (many of these works exist in a single print) to be seen at museums, festivals, and educational institutions. Because of this, the new DVD set Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 is a cause for celebration.

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This week, as the election nears, I decided to treat myself to two movies that I ordinarily wouldn't see under any circumstance.  Not just because they looked terrible -- although they did -- but also because they were movies that, in a very literal sense, were not made for me.  These movies are less artistic endeavors than they are salvos in the culture war, and if they were aimed at me, it was not as a consumer, but as a target.  

But hey, so what?  I go see a lot of movies that aren't really meant for me.  I've reviewed Tyler Perry movies, which aren't meant for me.  I've reviewed Disney animated movies, which aren't meant for me.  I'm a big fan of Stan Brakhage, and his movies weren't really made for anyone.  I'm a professional, damn it, and as a professional, I can take whatever to the other side in the culture wars dish out.  The first tasty bowl of arsenic:  David Zucker's An American Carol.

The film, as you may know from Phil Nugent's earlier piece on it, is a high-dudgeoned but low-minded spoof in which a stand-in for Michael Moore (portrayed by a stand-in for Chris Farley) is interrupted in his quest to ban the Fourth of July by a visitation by three ghosts, who attempt to dissuade him from his wicked anti-American ways.  Why wasn't his movie released at Christmastime?  Why would anyone want to ban a calendar day?  Why would you send John F. Kennedy to attack a prominent liberal?  I figured if I started asking myself questions like that, I would just go insane.  Instead, I focused on whether or not the movie was actually funny.  I hope I will be believe when I say that, all ideological considerations aside, it wasn't.  It's not that you can't be funny from a specific political point of view; in fact, satire (which, really, An American Carol is too dumb to qualify as, but still) depends on a moral standing ground from which to attack.  It's that these jokes lack any kind of universality, humanity or relatability:  the only way you can think it's funny is if you agree with where it's coming from.  Or, to put it another way:  the new, right-wing David Zucker believes it's funny to have Michael Moore slapped around by Bill O'Reilly.  If you happen to agree, you might be modestly amused; if you don't, the joke will fall even flatter than it actually does.  The old, non-political David Zucker knew better:  he just thought it was funny when people get slapped.  

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When you're named after a mythological figure (in some traditions, a co-ruler of Hell), and your mentor is the deeply strange Stan Brakhage, and your most well-known production to date is a nearly silent comedy whose big claim to fame is having been shot on stolen film, you'd have to go pretty far not to be considered the weird one in your family. 

Unless, of course, you're Azazel Jacobs.

Jacobs escapes being the strangest fruit hanging from his family tree by virtue of who his father is:  the legendary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, director of the brilliant Tom Tom the Piper's Son and the infamous found-footage epic Star Spangled to Death.  Given his parentage, it's not surprising that Azazel Jacobs started making movies that are more than a big off-kilter; what's surprising is how resolutely normal they seem in comparison to his dad's work.  Nonetheless, his movies have garnered Jacobs the Younger a reputation as a rising star in independent film; his last movie, The GoodTimesKid, was a quirky, unpredictable physical comedy, and his latest, Momma's Man, takes advantage of his father's skills -- not as a director, but as an actor.  As the Jacobs explain to the LA Weekly, the film is a gauze-thin metaphor where a young man (not played by Azazel Jacobs) goes to visit his aging parents (played by Azazel Jacobs' parents) and suddenly, inexplicably, finds himself unable to leave.  The apartment (played by Azazel Jacobs' parents' apartment) is both comforting and terrifying, a huge, strangely angled place that is filled with eerie emptiness and amusingly odd piles of junk ("What junk?" protests Ken Jacobs; "It's my life.")

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