Director Report Card: Trent Harris (2014)

5. Luna Mesa

Trent Harris is probably the most obscure director I’ve ever discussed. Harris is a Utah-based filmmaker who has never had a commercial hit, whose films are not widely available on home video, but whose visions, ideas, and humor are whacked-out enough that a tiny cult following has formed around him anyway. Despite the lack of exposure, Harris has still managed to release one of his bizarre flicks every few years. His latest, “Luna Mesa,” screened at a few small festivals before Harris made it available through his website a few months back. The director has primarily worked in comedy before. “Luna Mesa” shows Harris moving in a more serious, dramatic, but still experimental direction.

While traveling Cambodia, a young girl named Luna meets an older man, a filmmaker played by Harris himself. The two have a brief affair. After a few months, he is mysteriously shot dead in their hotel room, possibly from a suicide. Luna picks up his notebooks, full of strange poems and pointing arrows, and follows in his footsteps, heading to other countries and meeting new people. Luna’s physical journey soon becomes a spiritual one, as she attempts to move past her grief and fill a hole in her heart.

Many years ago, my enthusiasm for Harris was so great that he was one of the first directors I ever covered for this blog. Looking back on those old reviews, I gave every one of his previous movies an “A” rating. “Luna Mesa” has the director moving in a different direction. It’s funny but in a different way then the buddy comedy yucks of “Rubin & Ed,” the sci-fi goofery of “Plan 10 from Outer Space,” the documentary cringe humor of “The Beaver Trilogy,” and the meta-fictional absurdity of “Delightful Water Universe.” Like that last film, “Luna Mesa” was made for very little money, shot with non-professional actors in exotic, but not flashy, locations all over the world. The movie is no less experimental then his last, including a similar score, opening credits sequence, and do-it-yourself special effects. However, the intent of Harris’ images are different. “Luna Mesa” is more ponderous and existential.

It is also something of a travelogue. The film begins in Cambodia. Before the story is over, Luna travels to Thailand, Rwanda, Tanzania, Mexico, and Sierra Leon. She mingles with the local people and cultures. She takes photographs of tourist destinations, sitting among castles and pyramids. In Mexico, she gets caught up in a Day of the Dead celebration. There are elephants to meet and busy marketplaces to explore. The destinations are interesting and the film takes its time to show them off. If you’re looking for person-on-the-ground perspectives of some far-off locations, “Luna Mesa” certainly provides that. However, too often, the film simply allows itself to wander these places, without much plot or story to keep the audience’s interest.

“Luna Mesa” is light on plot. In her lover’s notebooks, Luna discovers a series of vague notes and arrows pointing in different directions. She follows the directions all over the world, the journey across the globe standing in for the journey in her heart for meaning. This is heavy stuff. While Harris’ previous films have dealt with seemingly light-weight topics like dead cats or Bigfoot, there’s always been an undercurrent of meloncholey and despair to his work. “Luna Mesa” embraces this fully, following a lead character in the grips of an existential crisis. Unfortunately, the movie explores this concept in an unusually vague manner. Harris’ narrates large portions of the run time, his oblique poetry playing over scenes of Luna walking places or the natives doing things. It quickly escalates from interesting to ponderous.

Luna is played by Liberty Valentine, a dancer who has done little acting before this movie. Valentine is attractive in a normal person way. Throughout the film, she wears a few different hair colors. As an actress, she is somewhat vacant. Frequently, she stares around at her surroundings, trying to gleam some deeper meaning from what’s happening to her. The movie doesn’t feature a lot of dialogue but its few conversations are somewhat stilted. However, Valentine occasionally shows a deeper ability as an actress. In her ordinary face, and wide eyes, there’s a sense of wonder and a willingness to discover something new. Befitting a dancer, Valentine also shows a certain physicality that makes her an attractive screen presence. It’s unlikely she’ll pursue a future as an actress but with a few more acting classes, she could develop into a viable talent.

Along the way, Luna meets some interesting people. When a director cast himself as the lover of an attractive woman much younger then him, it brings up certain… Questions. However, Harris’ involvement with the movie is mostly off-screen. He’s got a good radio voice so his voice-over is appreciated. Megan Zimmerman plays Luna’s sister, who calls her on the phone a few times, in a subplot that doesn’t go much of anywhere. Richard Dutcher, a fellow Utah filmmaker, puts in a memorable supporting part as a foul-mouthed expatriate Luna seeks out. Also memorable is Emily Pearson as an important character. To reveal her full role would be a spoiler but Pearson’s world-weary delivery is well utilized in the part.

Nestled in the middle of “Luna Mesa” is a moment that completely derails the entire movie. Luna cracks her lover’s notes and finds his laptop. Inside the computer is a short video. It’s an interview by Harris of the survivor of the Sierra Leon Civil War. We see people being executed by soldiers, shot in the streets, and the charred, burnt, stripped remains of the victims’ bodies. It is real, shocking and disgusting. I’m getting a little queasy just thinking about it. Why Harris inserted this footage into the movie is not too hard to decipher. On her quest for peace, Luna has to see the worst of what humanity can do, in order to forgive herself and everyone else. In practice, the movie in no way justifies inserting real life footage of war atrocities into the middle of its brief, hour-long run time. It’s a short moment, lasting about a minute, but it was enough to sour the whole movie for me.

In its final third, “Luna Mesa” finally collects itself into some sort of stable whole. In the desert of Arizona, Luna comes to peace with her lover’s death. The film enters a different, surreal state of mind. Infographics about the Tachyon Converter and the nature of matter appear on-screen. Luna, wearing a bright orange wig, thigh high boots, and a leather skirt, dances in slow motion through the desert. Letters and symbols dance in the sky. It’s strange, unexpected, and captivating, exactly the type of out-there imagery that Harris is best at. It’s the closest the movie comes to the existential heights it reaches for.

Interestingly, “Luna Mesa” doesn’t end there either. The film makes the interesting choice to keep going for an extended amount of time after the story’s logical end point. Luna wanders onto a goat farm and meets its eccentric owner, played by Harris regular Alex Caldiero. The man and the strange things he says and does is closer to the funny absurdity Harris delivered in his previous films. It adds a lot of humor to the final minutes of the film. Caldiero delivers increasingly odd monologues while Valentine considers their meanings. Among the caves and canals of the desert, she finally finds peace, ending “Luna Mesa” in a thoughtful, satisfyingly emotional place.

Trent Harris wanted to try something different. He wanted to explore the deeper ideas that frequently float under the surface of his films in a more straight-forward manner. You can’t hold that against the guy. However, “Luna Mesa” wanders and wanders, only finding any lyrical or emotional sense of meaning at the very end. To read that the film’s story was cobbled together from ideas, fragments, and non-narrative footage is not exactly surprising. [Grade: C]

Review: Delightful Water Universe (2009)

So, it’s 2009, and what has Trent Harris been up to all this time? Well, some documentary shorts have been made, some books written. The last thing I saw with his name on it were a few video/music collages done for the “Hearing Voices” website. (A few of which are on the YouTube.) And then, seemingly out of nowhere, “Delightful Water Universe” crops up.

What to say of it? Well, first off, Harris fans (How many of us are out there?) will probably go ga-ga over it. What will everyone else think? Who cares! Right out of gate, the movie inundates us with his unique brand of weirdness. The movie claims to be based on true events that will take place in the future. From here, we are reintroduced to the director’s trademarks. Plenty of funny, quotable dialogue, most of it in the form of obtuse insults, are on display here. (The writer/director can’t take credit for the highly amusing real Dan Quyale quotes that are trotted out a few times.) Perhaps more important is the odd story which involves a number of things, such as a dark future where corporations own everything and Bigfoot controls our thoughts with a hat made of windshield wipers. A vast conspiracy threatens to unleash the Delightful Water Universe on the world, enslaving us all to prime-time television.
Or is it? Perhaps the whole thing is just the incoherent ramblings of a nut locked up in an asylum, besieged on all sides by paranoid beliefs and delusions, and an apparent Burning Man festival going on just outside his walls.

Off-beat obviously but the movie is not as immediately accessible as some of Harris’ previous work. The whole thing is set up as a novel, leading to a heavy use of voiceover narration. Initially, it’s slightly off-putting and takes some getting use to. Also, one of the running jokes here, is that a lot of the big action takes place off-screen. Some times things are just described to us, more often we are presented with blindly artful montages. The best sequence in the film is such a scene standing in place of a wild sex scene. Instead of the hot action, we see the characters doing odd dances all set to infectious electronic music. (Also apparently composed by Harris. What doesn’t that guy do?) Though certainly a response to the paltry budget, this ends up working very well. These are moments of pure art tossed into the middle of the movie that somehow not manages to sidetrack or derail the momentum of the story. The other montages composed of old stock footage are less successful though no less hypnotic. And the long bits of underwear clad hotties seem slightly out of the place, even if it makes sense. (The movie has an overall sense of sad horniness, which it actually ends up justifying before the conclusion.)

Bill Allred isn’t buyable as a lady’s man, a joke the movie is in on, but is an amusing, easy to hang out with lead. Stefene Russell resurfaces for the first time since “Plan 10 from Outer Space” and shows the same sort of easy charm she did in that film, even if her Elmer Fudd lisp growls old by the end. However, it’s Dan Morley that gives the best performance, captivating in his derangement as the captured author that is writing the story we’re watching.
As much as I’d like to proclaim it as, “Delightful Water Universe” isn’t a full-fledged obscure weird classics like “Rubin and Ed.” The movie doesn’t really have an ending and instead just sort of circles out of logic before finishing up. Neither of the stories present have a proper conclusion and I can’t help but wonder if funding ran out or something. But still, there’s an emotional completeness here. Even if some things are left up in the air, the characters arrive at a better place then they began. The DVD case proclaims “Delightful Water Universe” as about heroic misfits, for heroic misfits. Truthful, as always. Not perfect but too infectiously quirky not to embrace, it sits proud among the rest of Trent Harris’ filmography. I mean, hell, it’s got a random musical number. You can’t resist the charms, it’ll make you as happy as a clam. [Grade: A-]

Director Report Card: Trent Harris (1991-2000)

1. Rubin and Ed
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.
But as the movie goes on, we get more then just weirdly wonderful comedy. As Rubin cries over his beloved dead cat, it’s actually a great moment. We completely, totally understand him. As Ed reaches his nervous breakdown, as he completely snaps back at his ex-wife, played by the one and only Karen Black, we get it. We believe all of it. At the end, when the two totally different people realize how similar they are and how close they have actually become, as they walk away into a dark alleyway appropriately as opposed to the sunset, you can’t help but smile. Man, how can you not love this movie? [Grade: A]


2. Plan 10 from Outer Space
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!
Stefane Loren is quite good in the lead. I’d compare her to Alyson Hanningan with her girl next door cuteness and easy accessibility. Karen Black is the only name in the cast as the rest of the characters appear to be played by this quirky director’s quirky friends. Harris is a native Utah-ian and seems to show a real affection for the history of his home state while at the same time he has the foresight to step back and analyze. Much like the director’s first film, this has an ending that is obviously meant to complete the film on an emotional level more so then on a story level. And I’d say that’s probably a better idea. A satire of religion, sexual politics, conformity, and sci-fi b-movies, “Plan 10 from Outer Space” is highly entertaining and totally unique. [Grade: A]


3. The Beaver Trilogy
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.
But, wait, no it doesn’t. The events we have just witnesses are restaged and re-performed in front of us, not once, but twice. The second time, Sean Penn plays Grooving Gary and the story has been slightly fictionalized. Penn’s performance is a dead-on imitation of the real thing. This version has an actual ending that is both sad and happy. The story gets even more fictionalized as the film folds into itself for a third time. The now renamed Grooving Larry transforms into Crispin Glover and is given a back story as the events are told from his perspective. The shooting is on a much higher film stock and shows off some interesting visual flair. The ending has been changed again and becomes more uplifting. But the story remains the same. I’m not sure what it all means but I do know that “The Beaver Trilogy” is poignant, funny, and totally unique. [Grade: A]