If the The Football Moms were around in the late 70s and early 80s they may have made their way into the documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization". This Punk Mockumentary is reminiscent to the former that I watched in a filthy theater in early high school. Steilstra's "Excretion: The Shocking True Story of the Football Moms" is a grimly tale of a band destined to crash and burn. Stielstra is literally all over this film. He wrote, directed, produced, edited and wrote the score for the movie. If this wasn't enough he also stars in the movie playing several distinct characters including Cozy Deathbed, the frontman of the band. You can tell that Stielstra relished the role as he sacrificed his body, time, emotions and probably a few friendships along the way. We see interviews, behind the scenes, band practice, music videos and live performances throughout the film. This band has some serious fanboys ranging from winos and street kids to actual zombies. The band was certainly behind their time. Shot over a time period I can't even imagine and in locations that ask for a tetanus shot, the film never shies away from experimentation and grime. There is a lot of humor in the film along with a few sincere moments. There are genuine photos of Stielstra and his family scattered throughout the film. They act as a biographical backdrop for the filmmaker and the title role of Cozy. There are a number of other memorable characters in the film. Icky Terry played tirelessly by Michael Fredianelli dances through the film and gives us some wonderful moments from behind his mask. It wouldn't be right to talk about the movie without mentioning some of the hilarious titles to some of the Mom's songs including "Old People Sex", "Rock (Rock!) The Night" and "Valley of Isosceles". These titles alone give us a glimpse into Stielstra's humor. Give this flick a go. It's GG Allin tested and Mom approved.
3 Reviews
Original Rock n' Roll Mush
HughBennie-77714 May 2018
Overlong yet passionate biopic of one grotesque Los Angeles punk band, The Football Moms, unfolds with equal amounts of sincerity and indulgence. If you enjoy the sloppy, downtrodden lives found in Paul Morrisey/John Waters movies, writer-director Aaron Stielstra supplies these and demented, colorful montages which add imagination to what could be another rise-and-fall story. The movie's soundtrack belches lots of surprises, including the 1989 hit "Old People Sex" as well as incidental music which runs the gauntlet of slasher movie synthesizers and dissonant compositions of dysphoria to match all the dysfunction onscreen. The movie also says more about the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, chronic alcoholism and depression than most documentaries. Not as graphic as your average GG Allin story, but makes up for it with a lot of goopy, wet despair. Even if the movie's protagonist possesses nary an iota of rock n' roll charisma, the performances are stunning all around. Director Stielstra presents a broad canvas of deviant energy not to be missed.
This Is downward Spiral Tap
znowhite0124 February 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Aaron Stielstra's multiyear ode to punk rock (and obligatory atrocities) blurs the lines between Spinal Tap mockumentary and thinly-veiled autobiography. Gone are the crime sprees, squibs, Karo syrup blood and shootouts of past Depth Charge entries, but the speech impediments, anti-social behavior, fecal humor and middle-aged shirtless men remain in abundance. The film is a scenic, homeless man's odyssey through the back alleys of LA, infused with a solid and often times truly epic, original punk soundtrack with questionable lyrics see-sawing between old people bodily functions and wizard sorcery. The film opens with a heartbreaking flashback which leads into a head-banging, fist-pumping credit montage (in one word "powerful af") followed by a blitzkrieg of Super8 movies, childhood trauma and psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, the movie can't keep up with its superb opening twenty minutes which delivers a full bounty of laughs and nostalgia while setting up its wet brain universe of deviants and custom fan art. This is a cautionary tale with a tragic hero that celebrates its deviancies from a distance, but its ultimately hard to sympathize with an angry musician that urinates in a recording booth because he showed up to work drunk.
The cast is grab bag of funny faces and aging groupies. Skip Parole's candid confessions (filmed in what looks like a log cabin from 1850s Oregon) bring a gravity and sincerity to a lineup of interviewees that are very excited about taking down Cozy Deathbed with a plethora of insults and embarrassing stories. Especially notable is Brian Scott Miller's smug demeanor who enthusiastically demonstrates his Casio synthesizer skills last used in 1984's Devil Doll From Hell. Some minor characters are not as strong but still possess a sleazy music scene vibe the movie faithfully recreates. Graffiti parks, drug deal alleyways and gritty train tracks are mandatory rock album staples and the locations deliver in spades save for a weak bar set (and frosted tip beach rat wig) that dilutes the power of an inevitable reunion of Dill Pickle and Cozy. Chad Kaplan even contributes some grimy, adult-oriented animation that looks like Friedkin's outtake reel from Cruising. Stielstra himself manages to deliver a handful of convincing performances (save for some awful wigs on loan from Wild Dogs Productions circa 2004); my favorite being a bulbous music critic that is so fat, he loses his own breath just crossing his legs. It's here that the film gets its credibility in storytelling with superb and open-ended reminiscing of how Cozy soils his pants at a party but doesn't stop celebrating. Cozy's stage performances are also a high note, but his off-stage antics start to get repetitive and just gross though it does gift us with a great shot of him stumbling through Echo Park in broad daylight in a bathrobe. Icky Terry mostly just acts like a spastic buffoon and is easily the symbolic dumbo of the group. A truly heinous personality that deserved all of life's sweet cruelties thrust upon him and a fitting punishment for any man seen wearing bulbous rock-climbing shoes with a thrift store blazer. Dill Pickle's Vegas bender and photo montage with two budget Craigslist models offer some nice production value.
Technically, the film is paced well and almost too fast if that's even possible. There's plenty of mismatched camera phone footage and one-chip visuals that, on one hand, detract from the overall picture but also add to the anarchy. Audio alternates between pure hiss and uneven room tone between cuts but the editing is good in hiding a lot of this, offering jokes and hand-drawn gags that distractingly keep the eyes looking all over the place and demand a rewatch of the movie. In fact, some of the boomerang editing and sloppily-pasted still frames add to the hilarity and give the film its edge, especially when its married to its punk songs, all of which are perfectly timed with black screen cuts and computer-generated explosions. And film scratches. Where's the music video collection and vinyl soundtrack? And while the audio may not be equalized or mixed to perfection, the sound editing is superb with pig squeals and controlled distortion that add to the Lynchian ambiance of horror.
All in all, this is an entertaining way to spend a couple hours with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and decent performances. The band behavior is sometimes so spot on, it feels like a real documentary, and the montages offer so much visual overkill (the Nick Nolte's, the obesity drive-thru and Rocky Dennis flyers are my favorites), it can only be ingested with multiple viewings.
The cast is grab bag of funny faces and aging groupies. Skip Parole's candid confessions (filmed in what looks like a log cabin from 1850s Oregon) bring a gravity and sincerity to a lineup of interviewees that are very excited about taking down Cozy Deathbed with a plethora of insults and embarrassing stories. Especially notable is Brian Scott Miller's smug demeanor who enthusiastically demonstrates his Casio synthesizer skills last used in 1984's Devil Doll From Hell. Some minor characters are not as strong but still possess a sleazy music scene vibe the movie faithfully recreates. Graffiti parks, drug deal alleyways and gritty train tracks are mandatory rock album staples and the locations deliver in spades save for a weak bar set (and frosted tip beach rat wig) that dilutes the power of an inevitable reunion of Dill Pickle and Cozy. Chad Kaplan even contributes some grimy, adult-oriented animation that looks like Friedkin's outtake reel from Cruising. Stielstra himself manages to deliver a handful of convincing performances (save for some awful wigs on loan from Wild Dogs Productions circa 2004); my favorite being a bulbous music critic that is so fat, he loses his own breath just crossing his legs. It's here that the film gets its credibility in storytelling with superb and open-ended reminiscing of how Cozy soils his pants at a party but doesn't stop celebrating. Cozy's stage performances are also a high note, but his off-stage antics start to get repetitive and just gross though it does gift us with a great shot of him stumbling through Echo Park in broad daylight in a bathrobe. Icky Terry mostly just acts like a spastic buffoon and is easily the symbolic dumbo of the group. A truly heinous personality that deserved all of life's sweet cruelties thrust upon him and a fitting punishment for any man seen wearing bulbous rock-climbing shoes with a thrift store blazer. Dill Pickle's Vegas bender and photo montage with two budget Craigslist models offer some nice production value.
Technically, the film is paced well and almost too fast if that's even possible. There's plenty of mismatched camera phone footage and one-chip visuals that, on one hand, detract from the overall picture but also add to the anarchy. Audio alternates between pure hiss and uneven room tone between cuts but the editing is good in hiding a lot of this, offering jokes and hand-drawn gags that distractingly keep the eyes looking all over the place and demand a rewatch of the movie. In fact, some of the boomerang editing and sloppily-pasted still frames add to the hilarity and give the film its edge, especially when its married to its punk songs, all of which are perfectly timed with black screen cuts and computer-generated explosions. And film scratches. Where's the music video collection and vinyl soundtrack? And while the audio may not be equalized or mixed to perfection, the sound editing is superb with pig squeals and controlled distortion that add to the Lynchian ambiance of horror.
All in all, this is an entertaining way to spend a couple hours with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and decent performances. The band behavior is sometimes so spot on, it feels like a real documentary, and the montages offer so much visual overkill (the Nick Nolte's, the obesity drive-thru and Rocky Dennis flyers are my favorites), it can only be ingested with multiple viewings.
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