Hated

I've been wanning to write down about the GG Allin doco, Hated, since I (finally) saw it on Friday. I'd been meaning to see it since someone (I don't remember who. I apologize if it was you) gave me the poster* - featuing artwork by John Wayne Gacy - several years ago, and my ex-grindhouse tech Mike Yetter was one of the cinemetographers on the film. The poster is a JWG painting of Allin with a swastika on his forehead. The director, Todd Phillips, apparently had Gacy agree to do the artwork before he even started shooting, and financed the film with advance sales of the poster, a move I find to be fairly genius for an indie artmaker. I had it up for several years, more for strange synchron with my life (I was a teenage Allin fan and have an ex whose brother was killed by Gacy) than anything else. Eventually, it got too creepy for even me and it's been in my closet ever since.

The film itself is complete insanity. He was complete insanity. GG Allin was the most extreme example of human regression to a point of total infantilism, pure reaction. He is like a feral child, and you can't take your eyes off him even as he is turning your stomach and terrifying you at the same time. There is nothing noble about his art, but that it exists at all is astounding and important. He was completely ego-less, but only because he hadn't even gotten to ego yet, not that he had transcended it. The value of the performance that was his life is, to me, not in the content of the work itself, but in our own reactions to it: watching his punk yesmen following him around in the bonus footage of his last show at the gas station is a study in deviant obsequity - it should be its own film. Allin and/or director Todd Philips state several times during the 50 minute film (it was his thesis film for NYU, I think) that his art is a "commentary" on a sick society, or something to that effect. Such horseshit. You would think that, by this point, we'd see through the trick of slapping the word "commentary" on something that self-consciously thinks it needs to justify itself. It doesn't. What's wrong with someone rolling naked in their own shit? It's distinctly not-punk to have to explain it to anyone. ohhh....coommmentarrryy..... gotcha. wink wink. Implying that there's some uber-allin that is creating this character, the meta-artist. Uhh.. nope. This is it. He's a dude who likes to roll around in shit and beat people up. He's an artist who barely knows he is one.... the old Wesley Willis scenario.

For those of you who still have no idea, after reading that, what I think about him or the film - join the club... all I can do is blab about it and hope it helps the lingering visuals fade away.

Anyone following my ongoing liver-drama: I'm getting re-tested tomorrow and an ultrasound on Tuesday. I'm getting tired of all this medical shit.












*can't for the life of me find a pic of the poster online. back up.






.