by MATTHEW HAYS

Have you seen Jackass: the Movie yet? Cripes, it’s one helluva weird and outrageous movie, one that’s proving as mindbendingly popular as the basis of its origins, the MTV show of the same name.

Simply put, this film is a celebration of all things terrifically juvenile. The Jackass crew are an unusual bunch of men who bond by grossing each other out (and, by extension the audience). They light fire crackers that are lodged in their assholes. They stage stunts in which, in but one example, they take a dump in a toilet on display in a hardware store. They attach electrical wires to their genitals and shock themselves. Just for the heck of it.

The film certainly could be interpreted as down and dirty het fratboy fun, but I couldn’t help but read something a wee bit gay into the whole thing. Many of these men, especially their leader, Johnny Knoxville, are quite hot, their tattooed muscular bods most definitely porn-worthy. And they seem intent upon ripping off their clothes in an instant. The film left me spellbound: was I in a frat party or some weird gay fantasy? Christ, someone has got to get John Waters on the record on this one.

My thoughts were only confirmed when I received several curious e-mails from filmgoers who’d seen the film and been struck by the very same subtext. Then I read Sky Gilbert’s “Pink Panther” column in Toronto’s weekly eye, in which he also discusses the film’s gayness. (Gee, great minds do think alike - or fools seldom differ, depending on your perspective.) Gilbert insists that all that butt and penis play must make the cast just a wee bit bi, if not gay. “I think these guys are getting off,” he opines. “Part of what makes them horny heterosexuals is not just women but their own hot dicks and butts too.”

Gay or not, this film is certainly noteworthy, one of those cinema events that will undoubtedly launch several thousand cultural studies papers. As for it setting some kind of new gross-out standard, I must offer a brief history lesson. In one of Jackass’s sequences, a grandstander makes a snow cone, urinates on it and then eats the yellowed snow (Ashley MacIsaac’s fave scene, no doubt). Ultimately, he collapses to the ground and vomits, to the glee of his chums. Gross, yes, but rewind three decades to Pink Flamingos, a film in which the central characters compete for the title of “the filthiest people alive.” In that film’s final sequence, 350-pound drag goddess Divine scoops up still-steaming dog feces and shoves it in his mouth, chomping on it with a grin. Though there was plenty to be grossed out about in Jackass, nothing in it has quite topped Divine’s antics. Consider that a dare, Jackass artistes, for your inevitable sequel.

In other wacky film news, Scott Heibin’s celebrated Lost Film Fest will present this Monday, Nov. 25 at Casa del Popolo on the Main. The anthology of experimental independent films unreels from 7–10 p.m. :

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