SPECIAL EDITION MOVIE REVIEW:
HOW'S YOUR NEWS?

Finally had a chance to see Arthur Bradford's documentary How's Your News?, and I am so glad for it. I remember reading about this film a year ago or more, in some pop culture magazine (the kind that puts chloe sevigny on the cover, instead of tara reid. that's all i can remember, though) and thinking that it was just a really smart and interesting subject for a film. And it was.

Describing it is easy and hard. Here's the easy description, from the HBO "Frame By Frame" web site: A chronicle of the magical voyage of 5 adults with developmental disabilities as they travel across America, reporting their vision of the news from a hand-painted RV.

It was really joyful and weird and uplifting in ways I didn't expect. What's especially interesting in the film is the way the interviewers, developmentally disabled adults with varying functional abilties, were in some ways deliberately set up to confront passers-by, to make people aware of their existence.

One particularly great scene occurs in New York where larry, a nonverbal member of the 'How's Your News?' crew confined to a wheelchair in which he experiences constant and uncontrollable muscular fits while he groans and shrieks his way through conversations, is planted outside a subway entrance with his 'How's Your News?' microphone and no other real explanation. People stream past him and employ their best avoidance tactics while Larry shouts and struggles and extends his microphone to the best of his abilities, hoping to pick up some sort of interview. Finally, someone stops and chats with him a bit and it is an enormous relief, albeit one laced with discomfort. When Larry's aide comes back to retrieve him from his post, he says, "are you ready? That was good. That's really hard to do." And it is.

There are so many reasons to recommend this movie. The cast is wonderfully diverse, and clearly having just about the best time of their collective life. One of the interviewers, for instance, approaches her job with an unflaggable tenacity of a professional, even when she is interviewing an angry homeless man and an auto technician in Arizona, from whom she demands to know the status of the RV they brought in for repairs. (this interview is particularly great to watch because the interviewer badgers the staff of the repair shop with the polite tenacity of mike wallace.)

The film is touring now and will premiere on Cinemax in January, but I experienced an almost immediate need to see it again as soon as the closing credits and theme song rolled away. When movies like this happen it seems especially crazy to me that they share a medium with Joe Dirt and Summer Catch. I feel like, if you make the choice to see Joe Dirt you should be forced to view it projected on a semen-stained bedsheet or something, just so you know where it - and you - stands.

The web site for How's Your News? is worth your time. It does a fine job of explaining how the film came to be, and has information about upcoming screenings and the people involved. the most immediately satisfying content on the site is the 'songs' area, including mp3 versions of many of the songs written for the film. The lyrics were written and performed by the cast with great attention. The celebratory theme song will probably stay with you for a long time, but my personal favorite is Ronnie's tribute to las vegas. Ronnie has an amazing ability to remember every television show and star from the 1970s and quotes them continuously throughout the film. But his great obsession is the actor Chad Everett, whom he continually refers to as "Brother Chad". (for reasons, explained at a late point the film, that only serve to make chad everett seem professionally weird and ronnie just a sort of innocent bystander.)