by John Bear
Daily Lobo
If you find the steamy puppet love scene in "Team America: World Police" a little conservative for your taste, you are, first of all, a sick, sick individual.
Secondly, you are in luck. Filmmaker John Roecker is bringing his depraved stop-motion circus, "Live Freaky! Die Freaky!" to the Guild Cinema.
He said he had to resort to using puppets, and they weren't his first choice.
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"I couldn't have my friends fornicating on film," he said. "So I did it through puppets. Plus, they're kind of creepy."
When asked if he would ever make a puppet movie again, he replied with a groan and a "God, no."
He said he lacks the patience to do stop-motion filming.
"Those puppets are retiring," he said. "As soon as they clean my house."
"Live Freaky! Die Freaky!" begins with a picture of the bleak near future. Some sort of cataclysmic disaster has wiped out civilization. A nomad, looking suspiciously prophet-like, stumbles upon an old copy of Helter Skelter, the book chronicling the Charles Manson family.
"They find this book and it has lasted so long it must be sacred," he said. "And they make this mad man into a savior."
Books being misinterpreted is the main point of the film. He gives the Bible as an example. He doesn't compare Jesus to Manson, but feels the Bible has been twisted around by bad people.
"I think Jesus was a great person, but the people promoting his legacy are not," he said. "People are being killed, being outcast, and that's not the point. The point is to get along - accept other people."
Roecker is not against religion, but he said people who devote their entire lives to something, whether it be the Bible or the Constitution, should do the research.
The film casts a somewhat sympathetic shadow on the Manson character, Charlie Hanson, making him look more like a misunderstood prophet subjected to persecution at the hands of "the pigs."
He said the early Los Angeles punk scene, of which he was part of, embraced Charles Manson somewhat because "he destroyed the '60s." Sharon Tate, or Sharon Hate in this strange universe, serves as the antagonist to Charlie. She pollutes the air with her giant car and snorts copious amounts of cocaine while pregnant. Roecker said he made the characters this extreme, this good and this bad for the sake of good satire.
Roecker said the film, through its graphic violence, satirizes America and how conservative it has gotten lately. He finds things in common with his film and "The Passion of the Christ," the violence especially. He said they are both propaganda films. He said "Passion" is the best one since "Triumph of the Will."
The main difference between the two films, according to Roecker, is the fact that Wal-Mart sells one and not the other. Roecker attempted to get Wal-Mart to carry his film, but was turned down. He said it upsets him that two exceedingly violent films would be treated so differently. He blames companies like Wal-Mart for driving small business that might carry a film such as "Live Freaky!" out of business and, through censorship, denying consumers the right to think for themselves.
"Do I think Wal-Mart is evil? Absolutely," he said.
The film stars Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day as the voice of Charlie. His band mates Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool also appear, as do members of Rancid and other punk bands. Roecker said he has been friends with Green Day band members for many years and made "Heart like a Hand Grenade," a documentary chronicling the making of the American Idiot album. His new project is a documentary about how Hollywood misperceives Satanism.
He said "Live Freaky! Die Freaky!" is not for everyone, but he doesn't mind if anyone hates it.
"If someone hated the movie, it would leave an impression on them," he said. "That's better than an Oscar."
