I’ve been a bit…haunted the past few nights. I should change that, I guess, to say that I’ve been a bit haunted these past few LATE nights. My evenings have consisted of ferrying Tums to my about-to-be-baby-momma and partaking in hideous amounts of nesting. We’re talking, ahem, lamps, dude. At some point in the recent (and weird) past, soft lighting became a priority in the Hateball Household, and only now am I realizing that I am complicit in this endeavor. Very weird.

But. Late at night. Once I’ve watched a disc of the Office or 30 Rock, mussed around with photoshopping whatever it is I’m photoshopping for this week’s List, and sent all the emails I was supposed to send earlier that day, I’ve been sneaking out into the living room and flipping on the Netflix.

And, what have I been watching for the past 3 nights straight? Well, Exit Through the Gift Shop, of course. My Liege Caffeindorus alerted me to it’s presence on Netflix Instant Watch a few days ago, and, well, I rushed home to watch it. Which is weird, because I don’t really find myself watching movies all that often. I had been wanting to see what all the buzz was about with this flick for a while—well, since folks posted about it here earlier in the year—and I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

My disconnection from Banksy is well-documented here. So much so that I felt it appropriate to, ahem, *purposely* misspell his name repeatedly in a post I made about him a few months ago. Is it a typo if you do it wrong consistently? (that’s what she said.) Anyway…I don’t know much, but what I did know—before seeing this film—I was noncommittal about. It was just, whatever.

Banksy

And that’s not because I’m not an art person…it’s one of my (many) things. There are several contemporary art ‘scenes’ and artists that I feel like I can hold my own about; at least in a casual-discourse sort of way. I haven’t really chased anybody down and made a life’s work from collecting so-and-so, but I can certainly put myself in a place where I can understand street art in the context of the rest of the world. Which is why it was so baffling to me to not really ‘get’ or even ‘be aware’ of the bulk of Banksy’s import before starting to talk about him here.

But then I watched this movie. A few times. In a row. And I feel different now. The strangest thing of all is that I still don’t know HOW I feel about Banksy, but I do know I feel different than I did.

I’ll suspend the whole conversation of whether or not the characters and/or events in this movie are or are not staged. I have to assume it’s the genuine thing. And when I assume that, I am immediately struck by how human Banksy seems. Just a regular, funny, ironic, sarcastic dude. It’s weird—no?—to fucking WANT to listen to a shrouded Dr. Claw talk and recount moments from his life. The parts with him just sitting there and talking are, for me, the best, because you realize that this is just some dude who gets up on people. Not really a caricature like a Warhol or Dali; (at least, not in the same way…I DID just flip open my computerbook and call him Dr. Claw) just a dude ‘making art’. I am charmed…even if I don’t think rat stencils are the coolest thing in the world.

Banksy

And then I started paying attention to all the shit that’s swept up under the rug in this movie—and with ‘bigtime’ ‘conceptual’ artists in the larger sense: when do we talk about this huge studio space that he already had from way before it became, quote, ‘all about the money?’ Fucking crane trucks. Phonebooth operations. Elephant rental. Weapons-grade counterfeit currency.

Right? Am I the only one wanting to connect some of those dots? Forget about Thierry and MBW and all that (way bullshit); I want to know more about how Banksy rose to his now-prominent and godlike state. Not because I am indicting him in the court of public celebrity. But because I am charmed.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m stating the obvious, in classic me-steeze. Which is why, if that was all I had to say, I probably wouldn’t be saying it here. But! I wanted to make a recommendation, and I felt like this (the above) was the proper way in which to do that. Plus, let’s be honest, it gave me mad column-inches within which to share rad photos of rad art. Deallionaire. ( <- I think that was supposed to be in like a ‘deal with THAT, playa! sort of way. Still not sure.)

The first night I watched Exit Through the Gift Shop, it was at the beginning of a particularly trying night of insomniac olympics. Shit was mad awful. BUT! Once I got through that first flick and went for my second bowl of Corn Pops, and after an aborted attempt at Uwe Boll’s terrible Rampage, I stumbled onto another art-documentary called Beautiful Losers which, as it turns out, was beautiful.

Beautiful Losers is a few things. First, it’s a bit of a brief retrospective and/or primer on the history of Aaron Rose’s earth-shattering gallery space in New York (Alleged). According to the film (and actual life, sure) much of what we all consider as modern Street-slash-DIY Art-ish stuff can trace beginnings, crossed paths, and personal connections back to this gallery. In addition to telling the story of the gallery itself, the film spends time with some heavy hitters, all of whom have personal and professional connections with Alleged.

Shepard Fairey

Interestingly enough, the only person who appears in both of the films I’m talking about here—Exit Through the Gift Shop and Beautiful Losers—is Shepard Fairey. His role in Losers is much smaller than in Gift Shop but there was something about watching these movies back to back that made his omnipresence sort of poignant for me. Only sort of.

More interesting (to me, at least) is the actual/factual inclusion of some of my favorite artists of all time. Significant amounts of time are spent with Stephen Powers (ESPO), Geoff McFetridge, Ed Templeton, Thomas Campbell, Margaret Kilgallen, and of course, the original original, Barry McGee.

Barry McGee

If you know who any of those folks are—or if you’re a fan of Kids or Gummo [O yeah, time is also spent with Harmony Korine]—please check this movie out. If you can, watch these two movies back-to-back, like I did (by accident).

I don’t know. Something about these two movies really, for me, has been—like I said before—haunting. There’s sadness and loss and absurdity and rise-fall-Scorsese dynamism in both, and I think that, taken as a whole they really do a great job of summing up ‘our’ art and providing a context for someone who’d not already be familiar with some of these things.

Stephen Powers (ESPO)

These are the kinds of movies I look forward to watching with my boy someday. Really fun, really real documents that try and fail but still try to describe both what art is and isn’t.

I know I’m sort of babbling. And I know the whole premise for this post is thin, at best: plenty has been written by all of us about the Banksy thing. Bottom line, if you haven’t seen either of these movies, check ‘em out. They’re on Netflix. Probably steer clear of Rampage, too.

And that’s three to grow on.

PS: For Crook and Mars. The comment thread belonging to this article originally reviewing Gift Shop is a pretty interesting read. Crook, being his normal, detail-oriented self, attaches himself to a comment Banksy makes in Gift Shop about never having seen anything like Life Remote Control before. His (Crook’s) contention is that there are plenty of mainstream, frenetic examples of that sort of editing style, and it’s hard to believe that someone as savvy as Banksy would never have seen something like that before then.

The thread goes on to discuss the merits of that style, etc. When I first saw that part of the movie, I, too, recognized the style instantly, but had some trouble placing it. And then it hit me (this is the part for Mars): It’s some straight-up Welcome to the World of Dino Velvet shit. All things always and forever always come back to the Cage, son. The Cage.

- Hateball