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| Tom Noonan and Karen Sillas in WHAT HAPPENED WAS... |
Last night, I checked out the new arrivals on the Criterion Channel and, on a gamble, watched Tom Noonan’s 1993 indie film WHAT HAPPENED WAS..., a two-person, one-set theatrical piece staging a first date between two longtime office acquaintances. Initial mutual awkwardness leads to social niceties, discovering the quirks of another person’s sense of humor, setting the scene for a romance that nothing in their personal chemistry seems to call for, and things go from weird to worse. There is a very memorable reading of a short story that fits the film right into a hilarious, unspeakably revealing AFTER HOURS or Lynchian place. I was pleased to see in the closing scroll a “that makes sense” credit to my Facebook friend. filmmaker Scooter McCrae.
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| 18 year old Curtis Harrington starring the outlier protagonist of FRAGMENT OF SEEING, a character worthy of Franju. |
Afterwards, I watched two Curtis Harrington shorts, “The House of Usher” and “Fragment of Seeing.” It’s been 30 years or so since I saw the latter, on VHS, around the time we were preparing the Harrington issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG (#14) and I’m not sure I’d ever really seen the Usher piece before. These must be the finest experimental films ever made by a 14 and 18 year old, respectively. They are fully achieved works of art; he was a distinct talent, a fully formed director even then. His technique fills a gap between Cocteau and Franju - and I was startled by what an arresting screen presence Curtis had in his youth, both as a somewhat mysterious, ambiguous man and as a startlingly beautiful woman. I’ll be watching more of these later tonight. Now I'm belatedly craving that deluxe edition of Indicator's NIGHT TIDE with the bonus Harrington disc and 80-page booklet.
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