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A buddy comedy like only Trent Harris could (or would) do it. What make this movie so endlessly entertaining are its characters. Crispin Glover, one of my favorite actors, gives his greatest performance. As Rubin Farr, a person who might actually exist though I don’t think anybody but Crispin and Rubin really knows for sure, he reaches a pinnacle of weirdness. Mr. Farr seems to be a person with a history, no matter how bizarre, but he seems real. Howard Hesseman as Ed acts like he’s doing fine but is actually constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He’s someone who is trying to keep his life in order. When the two personalities come together, the result is awesome. Comical flashbacks, hilariously weird dialogue, and an endless interaction between two highly interesting peoples.
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Mormons, bees, motorcycles, alien sex cults. What the hell to make of this? Typical Trent Harris, of course. Lacks the weird emotional resonance of “Rubin and Ed” but makes up for it with just how wonderfully hilarious so much of it is. The movie certainly isn’t predictable. Just when you think you have the strange non-plot about sex crazed Mormons from outer space and the horrible, horrible Secret of the Bees figured out, the film goes in a completely different direction. Hell, there’s even a musical number!
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Actually filmed over a period of many years, “The Beaver Trilogy” is three different films edited together without any set-up or transition. The first is a documentary about the kind of character that can only exist in small towns. Gary Haft is a young man who likes to perform impressions. Trent meets him by chance in a parking lot. Gary longs for the camera’s attention and it’s impossible to take your eye off him. As he shows off his car, rambling on, obviously trying to make this moment last, immediately you feel some kind of connection to him. His favorite celebrity to impersonate is Oliver Newton John. In full, all singing all dancing, drag. Gary’s dream is to get on television and he seems to have that dream fulfilled as Trent Harris, then a cameraman for a local news program, agrees to record a local talent show Gary has pulled together. We watch this young man get done up in costume by the local mortician, the only person in town who can do make-up, we laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. But later, when he goes on stage and sings his song, not well mind you, but with more heart then you get out of any rock star, you are strangely impressed. It’s sort of beautiful. Maybe it’s just because you feel that his dream is finally being fulfilled or maybe it’s because he got up there and did it and didn’t worry about feeling silly. The film more or less ends there.
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