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Bicentennial Curious is the third short in the Varava Trifecta, following The Fourth and The Shadow Effect. While at first I expected a short that might resemble a Hugo-award winning short story by the likes of Ray Bradbury, Bicentennial Curious is actually a mockumentary about the porn industry.
Mick Jones (Jon Gries, Napolean Dynamite) is the leader of an adult film company that makes “socially relevant” soft-core porn. Jones explains that they don’t deal with subjects such as wizards and magic; they choose real world issues such as his company’s flicks: Racy Space Race, with its’ Cold War paranoia; The Moaning Lisa, with its apparent basis on the Myth of the Black Madonna from which The Da Vinci Code was taken; along with XXX Chromosome, with its focus on the Human Genome Project, which Jones points out is, “light enough that it could be shown in schools, certain schools, not elementary schools, but some high schools, I think.”
As Jones gears up to make his 74th adult picture, Bicentennial Curious, he runs into flack from the people in town who don’t want him making smut in their city. To protest, they picket outside his studio with signs, making so much noise that the film’s shooting halts. To combat the picket line’s shout of “Protest the Breast” the porn actors and actresses wage their own “protest of the protest”, with the rally cry: “Protest the Protest of the Breast”! They face-off with the Town side waving competing signs like “No Nudes” and the Porn side waving back with “Leave Sex to the Professionals”. Initially it is an impenetrable standoff until local workers from Wal-Mart show up to tell the town protesters that a new Wal-Mart has opened, at which point the original protestors disband so they can attend the new opening. With the crisis averted, Jones and his crew get back to trying to make their feature.
Content
While the main plotline is fairly straightforward, the clever elements in the film revolve around all the people interviewed for the mock documentary. Their tales are those strangely oblivious ones of real people in documentaries and completely believable. As mentioned before, there is the charismatically befuddled Jones, who does a good job of “showcasing” the pornographer that wants to romanticize his work as “art” and creates an elaborate fantasy to make the rationalization seem believable to himself.
Besides Jones, on the side of pornography, we have a slew of actors who explain why working in porn is the best career choice for them. While this could be a way to glamorize porn, the fact that many of the people have bizarre social handicaps further drives the point home that porn helps no one; most notably, Renée Ohio (Laura Laurent) who feels extremely offended talking about culture and politics, but is completely happy to discuss sex.
On the side opposing pornography, the look at the townspeople who protest the porn studio is interesting and does a good job of showing how many people are willing to protest a situation without going out and doing anything to create an alternative to the problem. Even more interestingly, the brothers Varava examine the tendency of people who protest, yet fail to think through their own actions in other areas of their lives. This was illustrated with the protestors upholding Wal-Mart as the epitome of good family values while they slammed the porn industry. This is interesting, not because the porn industry doesn’t cause serious societal problems (because, sociologically, it does), but because some would say that Wal-Mart is just as corrupt these days. Many would argue that the days of Wal-Mart upholding community values and standing up for their employees died along with its founder.
Despite all the things Bicentennial Curious does right, the ending leaves a bit to be desired. As it currently concludes, it ends on a subdued note with Jones explaining that his grandiose visions and willingness to craft such amazing works of art really make him a patriot. While this does connect to his opening interview questions on how he sees himself, I would have liked to see a bit more of a hook to the ending to give the mockumentary a bit more of a conclusive note. As it is right now, the ending just kind of peters out. (And no, there is no pun intended here.)
Visual Look
Shot on Super16mm film, Bicentennial Curious looks a lot like many of the Super16mm documentaries we have all seen. The overall shot layout and angles chosen are quite nice, giving interest to the different interviews and scenes. Additionally, the mix of “talking head” shots with dynamic action interviews is varied enough to keep the piece moving at a nice pace.
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