That's Beautiful Frank

2012
1h 23min

MA NOTE

George Demas, Jill Helene, and Edgar Oliver in That's Beautiful Frank (2012)

New York French Futurist performance artist Francis Carroll (Edgar Oliver) faces pressure from his theater manager Donald C. Marinetti (George Demas) to increase ticket sales at his Lower East Side venue. Francis soon decides to take matters in his own hands and purchases a black-market handgun from a disgruntled firearm safety instructor (Jason Bauer).

With box office sales sliding, Francis takes his show on the road and commits a series of armed robberies targeting rent-controlled eccentrics across the Village. His first victim, beauty Diane Lakes (Jill Helene), quickly fixates on him after the robbery cures her of agoraphobia, but before long her intentions threaten to unwind his greatest performance.

FrankÂ’s biggest obstacle may be New York Detective Daniel Atkins (Michael Laurence), who finds himself on a case of enormous implications but struggles to determine the motives behind the ongoing Â‘purification of the odd.Â’

With the cast set for his swansong performance, Francis needs only to lose everything to stage his Futurist masterpiece.

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Ajouter une intrigue dans votre langueA New York French Futurist performance artist faces pressure from his East-Village theater manager to increase ticket sales. Inspired, he purchases a black market handgun and begins looking ... Tout lireA New York French Futurist performance artist faces pressure from his East-Village theater manager to increase ticket sales. Inspired, he purchases a black market handgun and begins looking for his audience; committing a series of armed robberies to steal empty boxes from eccentr... Tout lireA New York French Futurist performance artist faces pressure from his East-Village theater manager to increase ticket sales. Inspired, he purchases a black market handgun and begins looking for his audience; committing a series of armed robberies to steal empty boxes from eccentrics living in the Village. The NYPD investigating detective struggles to find reason or mo... Tout lire

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That's Beautiful Frank

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Damn ridiculous, by design!

I love this film! Damn ridiculous, by design.

I saw it in New York City's East Village (where most of the film was shot) at the Anthology Film Archives, and many times since on YouTube.

It's very fun in its own right - with its silliness and absurdism and terrific performances by Edgar Oliver, the late Jason Bauer and the lovely Jill Helene.

But it's also precious as a time capsule of a certain era of the East Village -- much in the same way as The Blues Brothers preserves an era of 1980 Chicago (when there was still a Maxwell Street music scene, and SRO hotels with a view of the loop elevated train). The humor of That's Beautiful Frank (and the mad performances that are its crescendo) is an echo of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and of the many East Village venues where graduates of that theater later performed. Some of it was filmed at 104 East 10th Street when that building was still structured as an unrehabilitated boarding house, and a nocturnal refuge of a Bohemian scene as distinct and fertile as the Beats, but never got a name.

The East Village theater scene the film depicts is long gone now (even if the theater started by Jason, Under St. Marks, is happily still going). Indeed, it was really an anachronism even when it was made -- harkening as it does back to the pre-AIDs era of the Pyramid Club and other East Village venues where so much silly and inventive theater took place. Okay, maybe that scene should not be ranked with Elizabethan England (and this film is not Twelfth Night), but it was distinct and fun, and this is its testament.