Camp kings

>> Legendary underground filmmakers
the Kuchar Brothers on their legacy of kitsch
and pop art absurdity

by RICK TREMBLES

Devastatingly unpretentious, the Kuchar Bros are perhaps a couple of the most influential filmmakers you’re likely to have never heard of, but that’s about to change. Responsible for hundreds of films since the mid-’50s, Bronx twins Mike and George have been credited for virtually establishing the camp aesthetic, screening alongside Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol and influencing the likes of Roger Vadim, David Lynch and especially John Waters.

Their films famously employ the chronically non-famous: low-rent neighbourhood friends without a smidgen of acting ability, slopped with exaggerated make-up and fed lines via obvious cue cards full of deliberately overwrought, yet intensely personal, poetic dialogue that transcends any amateurism. Cardboard sets, garish lighting, stolen B-movie soundtracks and a comic book colour palette all helped entrench their early efforts into the burgeoning ’60s NYC pop art explosion. George has been teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute since the early ’70s, while Mike is presently waiting for his next muse to come along.

Mirror: The filmmaking process usually involves compromising one’s vision somewhat in order to get the task completed. How grandiose were your initial ideas? Did you have to whittle them down to accommodate the budget or did you dream them up exactly as they resulted?

Mike Kuchar: I make it up as I go along. It’s more like a dialogue with myself, like I’m on the psychiatrist’s couch but I’m using outward subjects and they represent the conversation I’m having with myself and my feelings towards people, which I direct at people. You can do that when you’re self-motivated, you’re the boss. It falls together when the chemistry’s right. It’s a kind of a media-mystic thing, you’re creating something from nothing and it has to do with channelling. Proper channels start to open and the pictures start to make themselves, like somehow they’ve always been there and now the door’s open and it starts to pour out. Sometimes it’s like a battlefield.

M: Attributed as the forefathers of camp, do you have any thoughts on how this aesthetic has evolved/mutated over the years?

George Kuchar: I never knew what camp I was in and I don’t think the audience did either.

MK: You have to execute it without thinking how absurd it is. Don’t be too overt; its absurdity will come out just by presenting itself. My interpretation of camp is you set up your tent on an established recreation area. In my case, it’d be Hollywood.

Divine inspiration

M: John Waters said that after seeing your films, he created Divine. How does it feel to be indirectly responsible for John Travolta wearing 50 pounds of foam latex emulating Divine in the remake of Hairspray?

GK: Clarabelle Clown from The Howdy Doody Show inspired the Divine character and that honour should go to him.

M: You long ago gave up film in favour of less expensive video. How have you adapted to digital media?

GK: Just read the instruction manual and hit the record button.

MK: I’m interested in making moving pictures, so as long as it moves and talks it doesn’t matter whether it’s film or video, it’s the ultimate effect we’re after.

M: Given how stars now are getting plastic surgery as easily as slopping make-up on used to be, what’d be your dream body modification to work with?

GK: No need for a facelift, just hang the performer upside down and turn the camera upside down too. Gravity will do its thing when the results are viewed right side up.

M: Being cartoonists yourselves, you hooked up with the underground comix scene in the early ’70s. Was it comparable to your hobnobbing with the NYC underground film luminaries of the ’60s?

GK: It was similar to the intensity of personal vision and opinionated verve that fired the energy of the NYC underground movie scene; long periods of creative isolation interspersed with volatile socializing.

M: Unintentional histrionics and theatricality are viewed as the hallmarks of amateurism and kitsch but how is it that when deliberately employed it makes the perfect vessel for delivering otherwise inflammatory subject matter in an easy-to-swallow manner, whether the funny bone’s being aimed at or not?

GK: Some things go down easier when greased up for maximum enjoyment.

A retrospective of the Kuchar Bros’ work runs at the
Cinémathèque québécoise through Dec. 22; see
www.cinematheque.qc.ca for more info

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