2016
Directed By: Zach Clark
Starring: Addison Timlin, Ally Sheedy and Keith Poulson
GWAR was a pretty decent litmus test for potential friends when I was 16. Its not that I was a huge fan but I did think they were fun as hell. I completely understood why they had such a rabid fan base. You either got the crude joke or you didn't, I'm not sure if there was a more divisive band than GWAR. If you're not familiar, they were a metal band from Virginia who met in art school. Unlike any other metal band of their time they were intentionally offensive, over the top disgusting and most of all funny. When you hear the lyrics...
"Mommies, I've been stealing your babies I gag the brat and then maybe...
I'll suck out his brain
You know... Dead kids, they're making me feel almost hard
Go get one from the school yard
He bled like a stuck pig"
You either laugh at the absurdity or take it seriously and turn off the radio. This is a band that grew with the PRMC, almost as a reaction to it. They were also one of the only bands that the metal heads, punk rockers and hippies could all agree on.
I'm a dad and this song still makes me giggle, it takes me back to a really fun time in my life when I was first learning how to express myself. I never really felt significant before my teenage years. My older brother was a pain in the ass so he took up most of my parents attention and at school I didn't have many friends... or enemies. I felt insignificant, invisible. I remember actually wondering who would show up to my funeral if I died. I wasn't depressed just lonely and mute. Like most young adults I tried on different voices over the years until I found my own.
We all grew up, bought houses, had kids, had divorces, had tragedies and were able to navigate them with a strength unlike most of our peers. As a survival instinct, we learned to laugh at the most offensively terrible things in life. When you show me a goth kid, metal head, punk rocker, burn out or even a juggalo I don't see a weirdo, I see a kid trying to find their tribe.
I'm not sure how autobiographical LITTLE SISTER is but Clarks film felt remarkably honest. I knew the people that inhabited this movie. He treated them with compassion and respect in a way that was refreshing. When you see a nun with pink hair dancing to GWAR's Have You Seen Me it could come across as shocking for the sake of being shocking, but trust me its a tender moment that almost had me in tears.
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