Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure

I tried as hard as I could not to laugh at the recordings of two drunks hurling abuse at each other. It was impossible, my moral code failed beneath the sheer brilliant beauty of the dialogue that takes place. Some of the lines from Peter and Ray are pure comedy gold, I wish I could remember as many of them as possible.

The film itself is very well made, weaving together exciting visual eleemnts to accompany the auditory subject matter. There is a distinct nod to Erroll Morris in the Interrotron, to-camera style of interviews as well as the re-ennactment of the scenes taking place inside the Pepto-Bismol Palace.

This film is a riot, great for fans of the tapes and those who know nothing. Highly recommend.

Imagine, if you will, a couple of cartoonist Harvey Pikars living in the next apartment in 1987 San Fran; only these two aren't savage cartoonists and don't have Harvey's wit or wide-ranging interest in humanity. They're just a couple of aging men, roommates, one gay one straight.

Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure is the strangest documentary you'll see this year or almost any because nothing really happens except that filmmakers Mitchell D and Eddie Lee Sausage tape their two old neighbors, who, when drunk, verbally abuse each with the same repetitive expletives, the most memorable being Ray's, which is the first part of the film's title.

Two elements of the experience are worth noting: a viral fame came by way of a world-wide network of lending tape organizations (remember, no You-Tube or Internet), and talk of litigation about privacy rights appears and then vanishes.

These two topics could have been the heft needed to counterbalance the repetition of Ray and Pete's rants, which are strangely uninteresting except for our voyeuristic interest in loser humanity and the sheer banality of their lives, perhaps reminding viewers of their basest moments of stupidity and anger against a loved-one.

The doc is peopled by geeks who spend a large part of their lives pursuing these tapes as if they were the private conversations of Charlie Sheen. Wait! That's the answer: We love the salacious, degraded moments of someone else's life because we feel superior or we need to know that others have the same weird moments we do. I must admit to a fascination with the rhythmic patterns of their language, poetry from the tenement but not T.S. Eliot.

Its lowness mystifies me, an art house fan, and yet attracts me, as a winsome prostitute might. I know she's not part of my life, but for some reason I'm compelled to invite her in.

I saw this documentary at the Traverse City (MI) Film Festival. Two Midwestern college grads move to California in 1987, only to find that their new apartment has a pair of profane, arguing drunks living next door. After being awakened repeatedly by their new neighbors' rants, the guys start audio taping the fights. Eventually they collect dozens of hours of material, share bits with their friends, and an underground sensation begins. Tapes, comic strips, a play, and even a puppet show depicting Peter and Ray, the fighting neighbors, emerged throughout the 90's. At one point 3 competing movie productions were planning films about the couple.

The first 30 minutes or so of the doc sets up the scenario and lays the background to the story. It is this part, when we are first introduced to the vulgar fighting couple, where the movie is at its best. Unfortunately the film can't sustain the humor and energy from the first third of the film, as we follow the legal battle to determine who has the rights to the recordings. The film ends with the college guys returning to the scene of their recordings, 20+ years later, and investigating what has happened to their old neighbors. Still, I found the story engrossing and interesting enough to sustain my attention through the second half of the film. The movie is entertaining, but if you're easily offended by profanity look elsewhere!

The story of Raymond and Peter, mean drunks and awful roommates whose constant shouting matches - committed to tape by frustrated neighbors - made them an unwitting, unsuspecting pair of underground celebrities. Like the thematically-similar Winnebago Man, the quest to learn more about these clueless cult legends is much more rewarding than what's actually at the end of the trail. While the focus hovers on revisiting the tapes, hearing the men who recorded them reminisce about the glory days, and watching dozens of talking heads throw on a headset and burst into genuine fits of laughter, it's a light, cheery smile a minute. Later, when the inherent humor of the material begins to run out, the whole picture begins to look downright pathetic. Hearing about the legal struggles that surrounded the story's film rights, witnessing the self-important ruminations of the guys who held the mic, seeing how confused and flabbergasted Peter was about the phenomenon, captured on film years later... these actually take away from what made the tapes so enjoyable in the first place. As a momentary distraction, an escape from the mundane to voyeuristically laugh at the worst state of the human condition, the tapes are in their element and at their best. This level of over-inspection only rubs away the veneer and many of the laughs.

In the end, this movie felt like an excuse to milk the tapes for a little more fame and/or money.

The first 2/3rds nicely chronicle how the whole phenomenon took place. And it truly is fascinating. You get a sense of how strange, serendipitous and organic it must have been to have a personal project turn into a meme.

But the key word is "organic". Other people drove the Pete and Ray story. The partners, correctly, said "go ahead" since, in effect, it wasn't really theirs to control.

It's when they take control that movie inadvertently reveals that, rather than a sweet, hapless pair that fell into something, they've staked their identities on this one thing and they've become kind of self-important assholes.

When Eddie Lee made proclamations about "art" my first thought was - "Really? What other art have you created? Because an artist normally creates more than one piece of art and all you did was tape some guys screaming at each other. Other people picked it up and turned it into something. Duping tapes and giving them to people...well...that's not really art." After that, the pair goes on a quest to do the one thing that art should never do - explain itself. Tracking down Ray, the roommate, felt like a stunt. It was a fishing trip to solve the riddle of whether Pete and Ray were lovers. That's dull and pointless.

Art, imho, allows people to project themselves into and onto what they see. These two, Eddie in particular, seem to want to prove something that doesn't need to be proved. Wrapping up the film with the Pete and Ray dancing sucks everything that's interesting about the relationship out of it.