I just went to the Jackpot Records Film Festival event at the Hollywood Theater in the beautiful, mono-cultural town of Portland, Oregon to see the Beaver Trilogy by Trent Harris. It was truly awesome. I previously had only seen The Orkley Kid about 9 years ago at a Crispin Glover Slideshow at the Trocadero (RIP) in San Francisco. I was amazed by the absurdity, a kid who wants to be Olivia Newton-John.
(see http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=239375 if you aren’t familiar with the story and film).
Obviously, when I saw that it was coming to town, and Mr. Harris would be present for a Q&A afterwards, I had to go.
I showed up at 7PM with the trusty sidekick and marveled at the original Beaver Kid, the true story, the documentary, the chance meeting with high weirdness in a barren yet beautiful wasteland that swims, basks, and flounders in high weirdness (Salt Lake City). It is a celebration of true human diversity and absurdity. To think, some poor bastard in 1979, living OUTSIDE of Salt Lake City, liked to dress up as Olivia Newton-John and sing, nay, LIVE a song from Xanadu, you know that kid had to have had a hard life. Even today, let alone almost 30 years ago, I’m sure that cross-dressers don’t quite advertise themselves, let alone invite TV crews to their town to document their antics anywhere in Utah.
The kid was inspiring but just oozed tragedy... I really don’t want to get into the specifics. You can research it, and if you’re lucky you’ll get to see it some day.
Anyhoo, we watched all three versions. The Sean Penn version of 1980 or ‘81 was no good, but The Orkley Kid, the 3rd and so far final version of ‘84(?) starring Crispin Glover was awesome. I must admit I have a soft spot for Crispin and will watch anything with his name on it (hell, I sat through Chasers with Tom Berringer). As an added bonus, E.G. Daily appeared as a waitress. I have had a crush on her since I was a kid when she played Dottie in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and I always eagerly anticipated the school dance scene from Better Off Dead where she is the band singer in some hideous mini-flamenco dancer skirt, train-wreck of an outfit. Hell, I STILL look forward to that scene cuz she’s so damn cute and has that raspy voice thing going on.
Whew.
So after the final movie Mr. Trent came out and admitted amazement as to why people love these films. He said that he had made all three and then stuck them in his closet for years until one day he was broke and decided to stick them together as a ‘trilogy’ and showed them somewhere. After that, word-of-mouth picked up and soon there was a whole cult-type community that arose around them, embracing the films like little crippled children with cataclysmic hare-lips.
He also, I found, was the creator of another one of my favorite films, Rubin and Ed. He had copies of it for sale which blew me away and I immediately dropped $20 on a DVD copy as I was never able to locate a copy any where else. Turns out he has to bootlegs his own films. These small cult films, made years ago for nothing, are now unable to be re-released due to, as he put it, people who became famous, not to mention prohibitive licensing fees. He wouldn’t name names, but I’m pretty sure it is that fucking Howard Hessman, a.k.a. Dr. Johnny Fever who is holding up the release of the film. Mr. Trent said the only way he could get it released good and proper was to buy it from the company. Considering his career and the films he has made it is easy to see that he doesn’t have that kind of money to throw around. Sad that these films have such a passionate and dedicated following, but it is a small following none the less and not one that movie studios look towards when trying to figure out the right path to take with old films they’ve got locked up.
Mr. Trent updated us on the real Beaver Kid. Apparently he still lives in Beaver, Utah and is married with a couple of kids. There was a Beaver Trilogy showing at a Sundance festival around 2000-2001. Mr. Trent hadn’t seen the kid since the 70's and I guess he came walking up out of the crowd and said, "Hey, you might not remember me...". Apparently they both had near heart attacks at the reunion and they got caught back up. They are in contact again and the Beaver Kid keeps pitching all of these really, really terrible film ideas to Mr. Trent, including a sequel to the original Beaver Kid.
When asked by an audience member what the real Beaver Kid thought of the recreations, he was just flabbergasted that A) someone made movies about him and that B) famous people (though admittedly not famous at the time) starred in them.
It was a funny story and it was obvious that, like it or not, Mr. Trent is now and forever, thanks to a chance and peculiar encounter back in 1979, inextricably linked with this crazy and wonderful Beaver Kid for the rest of his life.
