Movie Buff: Electrick Children

By Charles Hachett

It was a 4:30 P.M. screening of the indie production of Electrick Children at Downtown Independent on S. Main. I had taken a train in from Sherman Oaks after a weird morning fishing my girlfriend’s cat out of the swimming pool. It is an old creature, on its last legs, wandering out around blind, getting through any screen door or open window that it can find. For some reason it survived. Some old things are supposed to. With a little resuscitation and thirty minutes under a blow dryer, the sick old kitty had new vim and vigor in its steps.

I felt the same way when I stepped off the subway and looked at downtown Los Angeles for the first time, on foot, in years. The old creature looked great. Just like the cat I had fished out of the pool, sure of death, the fur had certain sheen on it and the eyes were alive and full of life.

Climbing out of the subway at the Civic Center stop, I met a Fox News crew who were preening their faces, hair and high-tech equipment for a shoot right across from city hall. I noticed the old Los Angeles Times building through high security fences. I decided to move along I had an assignment to see a movie and tell my story, for good or for ill.

So I meandered my way through the old haunts when I used to work production on Hollywood TV shows and Big Budget movies. The scene had cleaned up and the fur was looking better than normal. I stopped at a couple bars along the way and grabbed a print copy of The G.R.A.W.N. and adjusted. I found the indie theater that I was looking for. THE DOWNTOWN INDEPENDENT. This neat chrome and aluminum modern art building was wedged between a parking lot and a building with the nefarious and criminal moniker of “NO AGE WEIRDO RIPPERS”.

There was only one guy standing out front and he was waiting for his date. I walked inside, took some pictures of the concession stand and the great waiting area. Cool huge atrium that gave a modern and comfortable tone to the art house faire. I liked it immediately. The snack bar had beer and wine and interesting goodies. The employees looked like they had just rolled out of bed nearby and were intent on having a good time on the job. A manager noticed me taking pictures without permission and asked polite questions. The vibe was very easy going. In the old days someone would have pulled a gun and rummaged through my pockets for I.D. and cash and drugs. This town had changed.

Up a flight of stairs. The guy standing outside and his date were finally inside—the only two guys who bought a ticket for the 4:30 show. I was shown into the 16-seat theater behind them and told that it was a really good show. No cameras. No music. No phones. No texting. Apparently they had experienced some very rude reporter types before. I sat behind the two other guys and the credits rolled. The theater, even though small, had great projection, sound and seats.

Electrick Children, written and directed by Rebecca Thomas, is just the kind of film that I like to cut to pieces. I had been hearing buzz from this film from all my wannabee film snob friends in Austin. Apparently it was very well received there during South By South West. It has become a huge festival over the years and everyone I spoke with considered themselves a critic/Tinsel town insider because they saved all year for a all-access hipster pass to the festival. These are the people who are in their fifties and sleep with runaway teenagers because they work at video stores and have movie and music blogs that never get read. They are bottom feeders that have never eaten craft service or have been in a fistfight with a teamster on a studio lot. These are the people that attack actors and name people with obscure questions about personal matters. These are the people we hold in contempt as low humans.

So when they contact me and tell me something is good, I usually know it is shit.

If you are a person who actually works in film or television, on set for 20-hour days, in a non-descript office with a tyrant sociopath producer boss, or happen to be criminal enough to get “Above The Line” in this strange and brutal industry, endless texts from old acquaintances from SXSW in Austin decrying the death of art and the few—last holdouts of “Everything That Is Kind And Cool” and a savior to what “It’s All Supposed To Be About”—really makes you want to drink yourself into an early grave.

These people do not have a clue how bad this industry has gotten and the issues of saving anything of what something “Used To Be About” is irrelevant. Just as irrelevant as trying to talk to a PTSD war veteran with glassy eyes as they step off a plane fresh from combat.

I had been told this show “Electrick Children” was such a great experience, a “Moving Life-Affirming Film” that makes you “Hope For Freshness And Much More”.

I don’t know what the hell quotes and statements like that are supposed to mean, but I have heard them my whole professional life and they make me want to buy more firearms and lock myself in a bunker.

As I sat and watched the beautiful landscapes and slowly unfolding immaculate natural imageries of this film unfold in the first few minutes—the meaningful voiceovers explaining back story and other stereotypical lead-ups to any number of art films—(lauded by the critics—breaking all the rules, escaping all the odds, making it with a non-Hollywood script and cast and brilliant female director)—I was ready to write a review about how I wished my girlfriend’s cat had drowned in the swimming pool and that it was because God hated film and art and especially me for being lassoed into writing about it.

The dark abused child in my soul was ready to walk—talk—and kill. (Name the movie quote you fiends.)

Then I watched the film. This shit was great.

Starring Julia Gardner and Rory Culkin, it is shot fantastically by Mattias Troelstrup.

The story follows a fifteen-year-old girl living way the hell out in Mormon country in an isolated berg of a country community full of fundamentalist. No TV. No Music. Totally alone. But somewhere this young girl, Rachel, has a curiosity that will inevitably define he destiny.

The story set up is like this: There is a handsome and creepy teacher/preacher who teaches class and records the blossoming young Rachel on a tape recorder as he asks her about her sin. Very detailed questions about how she thinks about things. Furtive camera shots of her legs and teen nervousness, in sparsely lighted religious rooms, give you the heebie-jeebies that this guy might be Roman Polanski.

Nothing happens.

Rachel’s brother has been given the task to look after the tape recorder and all the cassette tapes that the preacher/teacher owns—the only one in town—and it is kept in the basement of Rachel’s mother’s house. Oh, of course Rachel knows this and wanders down one night and starts playing the tapes, ostensibly looking for her confessions with the handsome creepy teacher/preacher. She finds a b-side of one random tape, out of a case of dozens, and hears Rock and Roll for the first time. The visions in her head run to Holy places. She has never heard these kinds of sounds before. She has a God experience.

Then the brother comes down into the basement finds his younger sister screwing with the Holy Relics that he has been in charge of—off limits to all others—sworn to respect and reverence. Then he jumps his younger sister and wrestles with her for the tapes. Then mom comes down and sees the older brother on top of innocent young Rachel, wrestling with her in hushed voices, between her legs, telling her to “Give It To Him”.

Her mom thinks the older brother is diddling Rachel.

After learning that mom had a youthful, too youthful indiscretion with a stranger in a red Mustang convertible that led to sex and the children, we realize that Rachel has a “Wild Woman” heritage to go where religion forbids her to go. Then she turns up pregnant. No joke, the test proves it true.

We don’t know who knocked this pretty young thing up, but Rachel thinks that she has had an immaculate conception from Rock and Roll.

I was sold from then on out.

What unfolds is that mom, fearing the worst—that either her brother got to her or even worse that someone of religious authority like the Teacher/Preacher had their way with this lamb of God—hands young Rachel the keys to the family vehicle and she is off to find the band that gave her the baby. She truly believes that the music is her baby daddy.

Now the movie is no longer an art film for me but a validation of why I came to Hollywood when I was young. This flick had meaning. I was glad the cat did not drown. I was suddenly anxious to get it on in downtown Los Angeles.

She chases her destiny and meets an amazing crew of freaks. Rory Culkin plays a great roll as do everyone who she meets.

No spoilers here. If it was a crap film I would fill you in on every boring detail, but you have to go see this one.

It is a true rock and roll road movie and for once the Philistines in Austin are right. It gave me hope that the industry is collapsing and good directors with a great cast and crew and no money can make something worthwhile.