So, you love John Waters, wear your Guy Maddin fandom like an ironic ‘stache and were heaping hosannas on Cory McAbee way back when he was animating himself crooning about kissing his pooch. But are you familiar with Mike and George Kuchar?
So, you love John Waters, wear your Guy Maddin fandom like an ironic ‘stache and were heaping hosannas on Cory McAbee way back when he was animating himself crooning about kissing his pooch. But are you familiar with Mike and George Kuchar?
If you’re drawing a blank, breathe easy – you haven’t forfeited your claim to film snob hipsterdom, even if the pair of Bronx-native filmmakers are exalted as keystone influences by the aforesaid alternative elite. Even Jennifer Kroot was unschooled in the brothers’ whacked-out ways before enrolling in a film class tutored by George at the San Francisco art institute in the mid-1990s. Nowawdays, she’s a veritable Kuchar savant, having made the documentary It Came From Kuchar. It’s a valiant, illuminating bid to reignite interest in the brothers and their work, as well a reminder of their prominence in the much-mythologised New York underground film scene of the 1960s and ’70s. Fans of transgressive cinema should notch up Kroot’s documentary as a ‘must-see’ when it arrives at ACMI in April along with a retrospective program of the brothers’ most (in)famous films.
Oh, and one more thing before we get down to brass tacks: did we mention that George and Mike are twins? "I knew nothing about them before that [class]," Kroot admits. "And I didn’t know anything about Mike for a long time after that. One day in that class, George was out of town [and when] I went in, someone who looked exactly like George with a beard-but who wasn’t nearly as friendly-was there. As if the class wasn’t bizarre enough already!"
‘Bizarre’ is a word you’re apt to encounter in any appraisal of the Kuchars’ work. With titles like Sins Of The Fleshapoids, Hold Me While I’m Naked, The Devil’s Cleavage and The Craven Sluck littering their respective CVs, that’s perhaps no surprise. But what strikes most about their films – most of which, based on the footage excerpted in Kroot’s movie and the selection of Mike’s shorts Beat was able to sample, would seem to be deliriously inventive, homespun exercises in psychosexual melodrama, cross-bred with warped fantasy, sci-fi and horror tropes – is their emotional earnestness. While humour certainly plays its part (The Craven Sluck, especially, is a mordant subversion of buttoned-down bourgeois ideals) it’s never so stridently self-reflexive as to present the films as so-bad-they’re-good. Despite the OTT affect of it all, in their own weird way, these films are very heartfelt.
"They never think in terms of parody," Kroot explains. "I grew up in the ’70s in Northern California. I remember lots of artists. [Mike and George] remind me of the people from that time period who were just making crazy art because they were compelled to. Despite the change in [American] society, at least, they’re struggling with some of the same themes and they’re honest about that in their work. Which is why I think a lot of times when people discover it, they’re like ‘Wow, this really hits home!’"
ACMI’s upcoming season is a rare opportunity to not only catch some of the Kuchars’ work on the big screen, but to see some of these films, period. "[Their films] are not widely available – especially George’s, [because] George still really fancies himself as an underground filmmaker," Kroot tells. "It’s so unusual nowadays with the internet that something is hard to find. George really enjoys that it’s mysterious and exciting. It makes it more special when you do come across them."
The Devil’s Cleavage , which boasts performances by underground comic icons Art Spiegelman (Maus) and Bill Griffith (Zippy The Pinhead), is one of Kroot’s picks of the program. "It’s unusual to get to see that screened and it’s just beautifully done. It’s feature length and it’s very surreal and haunting. And, as Guy Maddin says in [It Came From Kuchar], it almost created the genre that he works in."
Lassitudinous journalists often discuss the pair in plural (guilty, as charged), which suggests one agglomerated creative entity, but the truth is, both George and Mike have blazed largely divergent artistic careers. "People often say ‘the Kuchars’ or ‘the Kuchar brothers,’ but they are really quite different," Kroot asserts. "To see their subtly different interpretations of the world through their filmmaking is really interesting. So I would encourage people to go to both Mike and George’s work. You don’t find a lot of twin artists. Which is really intriguing to me – it makes it all the weirder!"
It Came From Kuchar screens as part of ACMI’s upcoming Freaky Fridays showcase, The Kuchar Brothers, which runs April 15 – May 20. A selection of Mike and George’s films round out the program. For more info and to book tickets, visit acmi.net.au.
