Richard Kern's You Killed Me First concerns Lung Leg's Elizabeth, a hormonal, indecisive teenage girl who doesn't know what she wants other than to feed her notion to rebel and critique. Her family is made up of a bunch of squares and conformists, leaving her disillusioned with her boring life and at odds with her parents constantly. Elizabeth begins to rebel quite heavily, going by "Cassandra," and refusing to comply with her parents' limiting orders.
You Killed Me First has Kern absolutely slaughtering typical, suburban niceness and the convention that lies behind a spotless white-picket fence and a beautiful three bedroom home. In a way, one could infer this was Kern's upbringing in a sense, defying convention in a bold and powerful way, simply by refusing to play by the rules and create the kind of personal paradise he was comfortable in and he wanted to embrace. This short takes a completely normal and familiar concept and spins it on its head, featuring bizarre instances and ridiculous depravity only Kern could make so appealing and fun. This is the kind of deviance that sucks you in to the point where you could almost see yourself committing, or at least finding the attraction in bending the rules to fit your own personal wishes.
At one point in the short, Elizabeth's girlfriend remarks how if she keeps up this kind of socially taboo and unacceptable behavior, no sorority will accept her. Elizabeth doesn't care, nor can we assume Kern's desire to be accepted is particularly high either. Both have a unique and incorruptible view on themselves and the capabilities they can provide to make them better, more enriched people. You Killed Me First is an underground testament to individualism in an extreme and occasionally perverse sense, but the audience who have this kind of mentality will certainly find it and be enriched far beyond any square ever could.
Starring: Lung Leg, David Wojnarowicz, Karen Finley, and Jessica Craig-Martin. Directed by: Richard Kern.
