THE BATTLE OF PUSSY WILLOW CREEK (2010)

July 2nd, 1863: At a small farm outside Bent Fork, Virginia, the grossly-outmatched (at a rate of fifty-three to one) 13th Rhode Island regiment faced and defeated a massive Confederate force bent on staging a sneak attack on Washington, an herculean military routing that tested the leadership, thinking-out-of-the-box ingenuity, dogged tenacity and the general fearlessness of its four principal Union officers. Yet while many of the Civil War's military engagements remain prominent in the public's consciousness, this set-to, known as "The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek," has faded into the mists of obscurity. Fortunately, documentarian Grace A. Burns has crafted a fascinating act of cinematic archaeology with this feature-length examination of those Union-saving heroes.

The four principal figures in a forgotten chapter of American history: (L-R) Li Shau-zu, Colonel Jonathan Franklin Hale, Elijah Swan, Rowena Harris/Nick Brody. 

The film's narrative goes into considerable detail on its subjects' back-stories, aided by commentary from a number of distinguished historians, rendering them into more than mere historical footnotes to the viewer. The four now-obscure soldiers whose efforts staved off the potentially devastating attack were:

• Colonel Jonathan Franklin Hale, a twenty-four-year-old cross-dressing homosexual, infamous and persecuted within the military for his rakish deportment and insistence upon freshly-laundered uniforms for his men. Sent to West Point at sixteen, Hale was forged into a leader while enjoying every moment of the riding, drilling, stylish dress, and camaraderie of other like-minded young men, and though of Georgian origin, Hale held to his vows as a soldier of the one nation when the South opted to secede, a move that put him at direct odds with his lover, one Sinclair Whittier, a proud officer of the Confederacy. (The film traces the trajectory of that relationship.)
• Li Shao-zu, an aged warrior who joined the Chinese military at a very young age and fought the British in the opium wars. Skipping out on his "lousy, drug-pushing whore" of a a wife who was doing a brisk drug-trading business in opposition to her husband's anti-British efforts, Li made his way to the States with the intention of getting rich during the Gold Rush, but instead found success as a pioneer in the laundry industry, eventually serving as a launderer for the U.S. Army and forging a friendship with Colonel Hale. His bravery and military experience — to say nothing of his innovations in dry cleaning chemical engineering — placed Li in a position that would make him vital to the 13th Rhode Island's martial success.
• Elijah Swan, the result of a liaison between a wood-chopping slave and the jungle-fever-ridden wife of the slave's owner, whose early life was marked by the effects of his mother's many questionable decisions. Cast into the hardship of slavery upon the deaths of his mother and her husband (a fanatical and abstinent Calvinist whose poor vision allowed him to somehow believe that the obviously black child was his own spawn), Elijah eventually escaped and built upon his pre-enslavement education, revealing himself to be a mathematical, scientific and engineering genius.
• Rowena Harris (aka Rowena Oaks, aka Candie Apple, aka "Poison" Apple, aka Nick Brody), the battle's most tenacious hero. A poor and once-innocent young woman who found herself thrust first into sexual slavery and then child-prostitution at the hands of the unscrupulous pimp Beauregard Ridge, Rowena, after proving herself a voracious trollop when it came to making cash from the lust of men, sought sociopathically-motivated vengeance upon Ridge with the focus of a Fury straight out of Greek mythology when her former pimp made off with all of the money she'd saved while in his employ (along with that of all of the other whores in his stable) and joined the Confederate forces in Arkansas. Adopting the identity and uniform of drowned drummer boy Nick Brody, Rowena's quest for retribution was derailed upon her left arm being amputated following catching a bullet. Adrift after that tragedy, Rowena/Nick switched sides and ended up under the command of Col. Hale, who saw nothing odd about having a one-armed drummer boy in his regiment (a decision that may have been influenced by Hale's growing opium addiction). It was during this time that Rowena/Nick experienced a full-on speaking-in-tongues mystical vision, the first of several that aided in guiding the 13th Rhode Island to its celebrated (and swiftly swept under the rug) destiny at Pussy Willow Creek.

But what exactly occurred at the battle of Pussy Willow Creek and just why was it so instrumental in the Union's eventual winning of the Civil War? There's a lot to that answer, and it's best left for the curious to discover for themselves.

The byzantine paths of the disparate figures weave together in a most compelling and improbable tapestry that illustrates just what glorious results can come from a confluence of "misfits" and those derided by general society, and rescues their story from the rubbish heap of history deemed unworthy of celebration by virtue of its protagonists' lack of an heroic image in keeping with the usual "all-American" image as perceived by its era. Packed with vintage daguerreotype images, excerpts from letters written by several of the principals and those who knew them, and seasoned with music and songs from the period, THE BATTLE OF PUSSY WILLOW CREEK comes from out of nowhere to join the ranks of such celebrated documentaries as ZELIG (1983), C.S.A.-THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA (2004) and Marti DiBergi's epochal THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984), and if its merits can be judged by the company it finds itself amongst, THE BATTLE OF PUSSY WILLOW CREEK stands as an achievement to be reckoned with...

Aaah, who am I kidding? THE BATTLE OF PUSSY WILLOW CREEK is actually a straight-faced "mockumentary" written, directed and produced by Wendy Jo Cohen, and is a work of such verisimilitude that one could be forgiven for being snowed by its earnest recounting of a battle that never happened, led as it was by "a drug-addicted faggot, a geriatric heathen, a nerdy nigger, and a crazy, one-armed teenaged whore." Starting out utterly deadpan, the film slowly builds in sheer ridiculousness that ends up as a finely-layered narrative depicting just how badly the groups represented by its protagonists got fucked up the ass without benefit of Astro Glide by the nation they fought for, and its content is just as hilarious as it is riveting. Highly recommended and definitely not to be missed, the film will be screened at Manhattan's Quad Cinema from March 1st through the 7th, so here's the theater's info:

The Quad Cinema
34 West 13th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
New York, NY
(212) 255-2243

Click here for the theater's website and more information. (And speaking of websites, click here for THE BATTLE OF PUSSY WILLOW CREEK's own site.)

Get your tickets today and support this triumph of indie filmmaking and comedy that wasn't shat steaming and redolent from the asshole of the Judd Apatow assembly line. This is a film for humor-lovers with a brain, and seriously, it's funny as hell. TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

HEAVY TRAFFIC (1973)

We's all niggers, boy! Ha ha! You an' me, just goddamn crazy niggers! We's all niggers boy. Most of us don't know it yet. 

-Crazy Moe

Back in April of 1972 a new animated film opened and I, as a kid just two months shy of turning seven, begged my mom to take me to see it. She kindly obliged, but when we arrived at the movie theater we were both shocked at being refused admittance because the cartoon flick in question was rated X. The film was of course Ralph Bakshi's FRITZ THE CAT and I was quite confused by not being admitted to a cartoon since in my experience cartoons had always been a thing designed for kids, but I came away from that experience with an understanding that films bearing that strange X rating must contain something it was necessary to protect my innocent young mind from, thereby igniting an interest in X-rated movies that burned fiercely within me until I finally saw one during my adolescence in the late 1970's. The funny thing is the first X-rated movie I ever saw was director Ralph Bakshi's followup to FRITZ THE CAT, 1973's HEAVY TRAFFIC, and while not in any way what I expected from an X flick (namely unmitigated pornography featuring hairy hippie types with dirty feet), I was not in the least bit disappointed and have found that the film sticks with me far more than any other that Bakshi has made.

HEAVY TRAFFIC's cartoonist protagonist, Michael Corleone.

HEAVY TRAFFIC is a surreal and over-the-top blend of live action and animation, but the world it depicts in both instances is a caricatured study of a decaying environment and its equally squalid denizens. It follows the day-to-day existence of several lowlives who act as grotesquely-delineated New York City mainstays from the pre-Giuliani era, those bad old days of a Times Square that oozed a fetid and potentially deadly allure, an urban existential limbo populated by whores, junkies, bums, Mafiosi, and living ethnic stereotypes run rampant. The film is chock-a-block with volatile niggers, spics, guinzos, kikes, gimps and damned near every other unflattering human you can name (although the Chinks are conspicuously missing in action), and at the center of the dysfunctional maelstrom is twenty-two-year-old Michael Corleone (no, not that Michael Corleone), a more or less jobless, virginal slacker who lives in a run-down tenement apartment with his mob-connected Italian father, Angie, and his long-suffering Jewish mother, Ida.

Ida: "I died the day I married a Goy."

While stuck in the middle of his parents' failed and physically violent marriage, Michael spends most of his time at his drawing board, creating what were then known as "underground" comics, and when not being a disappointment in the eyes of his hyper-macho dad and serving as his mom's focus of maturity-stifling Jewish mothering, he wanders the streets of New York, encountering the myriad types previously described. There's not really a plot to speak of, but rather a series of events propelling Michael from Point A to Point B and so on.

During Michael's wanderings we meet such notables as Crazy Moe, a homeless black guy whose bent philosophy may be the closest thing the film has to an existential "voice," pathetic drag hustler Snowflake, the legless and very creepy barfly Shorty (who looks like an even tougher and more mutated version of Popeye transplanted to a depressing post-hippie metropolitan dystopia), and most importantly Carole, a tough, no-nonsense black bartender.

Carole tells it like it is.

Carole is the object of Michael's initially unrequited affections and when she loses her job she moves in with Michael, after which the pair team up for a pathetic series of attempts at earning money that soon escalate to savage brutality.

Angie (Michael's dad and the anti-Homer Simpson) and his drunken mistress, Molly.

But while Michael and Carole try to figure out what to do with their lives, Michael's dad commits a few errors in judgment and conduct that put him out of favor with the local Godfather, a situation that does nothing to soothe his already explosive nature, and his temper is pushed past the limit when he comes home with a fat Italian whore he intends to give to Michael to finally take care of his son's virginity problem, only to find his son shacked up with a mulignane.

A very drunk Angie takes a walk on the wild side with Snowflake (and friends).

Michael's dad then goes on quite a bender, finding solace in the understanding (and frankly predatory) arms of Snowflake — and also possibly several other homosexual hustlers who've set up base in an abandoned cargo truck — and hiring Shorty to kill his son after the Godfather refuses to sanction the hit because Angie's hatred of his nigger-loving progeny is personal and not business-related.

Shorty embarks on a jealousy-fueled hunt.

Y'see, Shorty has carried a seriously unrequited torch for Carole's fine black ass and her hooking up with Michael does not make the legless badass very happy at all, so it's only a matter of time until something very ugly transpires...

Clocking in at a brisk seventy-nine minutes, HEAVY TRAFFIC blew my fourteen-year-old mind when I saw it during a visit to my dad's, late night on WHT (remember that?), since up to that point about the most vivid depiction of New York City that I'd seen was SERPICO (also from 1973). That bygone era was rife with New York City-based films examining the human condition but at such a relatively innocent age I didn't know about that, and my existence in Westport, Connecticut was about as far removed from the horrors of the big city as a one hour ride on a Metro North train would allow, so I certainly was not prepared for the exaggerated truths contained in Bakshi's movie. Several things about it shook me to the core, for better and worse, and to this day I can't get some of HEAVY TRAFFIC's images out of my head. For example (SPOILER WARNING!!!):

• The sequence when Michael is kindly invited to lose his virginity on a rooftop mattress with the very willing assistance of a neighborhood cutie, while a trio of sleazy greasers egg him on.

This bit was especially squirm-inducing to my fourteen-year-old mind because it was certainly a situation to be desired (minus the greasers), but the setting rendered the potentiality quite sordid (who knows what kind of action both that mattress and the girl had previously seen?). But what's more disturbing than the concept of losing one's cherry while being observed by switchblade-wielding local louts is that Michael's over-eager rush toward the girl in question results in her being accidentally shoved off the roof, and after a brief stunned silence Michael turns to the greasers with a sleazy smirk on his face and observes, "She had it comin'," after which he and the greasers laugh at his perceived wit. I was stunned to see such nonchalance in the face of an innocent girl's apparent multiple-story plunge to a splattery end on the pavement, but almost immediately after the boys laugh themselves silly we see the nude and apparently unconscious and unharmed girl dangling by one foot from a clothesline, also to be seen again later in the film from another angle. Was I supposed to read it as the deserved fate of a "loose" girl who'd give herself to any random slob on a rooftop? I didn't know then and and I'm not all that sure about it now, but it still disturbed me when I saw it again recently.

• The exuberant dance, punch-up/slash-up engaged in by the greasers following the girl's plunge off the roof, musically accented by the Isley Brothers' original recording of "Twist & Shout."

The happiness and bloody violence expressed is indeed cartoonish, but it made me think of some weird ancient ritual performed by a bunch of modern savages whose only joy can be found in pain and degradation. This was also the first time I'd heard the original "Twist & Shout" rather than the Beatles cover, and it holds a lot more power for me when coupled with the idea of a group of friends merrily beating and slashing each other. The Coyote coming back unscathed after his latest crash to earth or run-in with dynamite this definitely was not.

• Snowflake was perhaps my earliest exposure to the late-1960's/early-1970's cinematic stereotype of the pathetic and grotesque gay drag hustler, and I really didn't know what to make of her at the time.

An offensive stereotype even then, Snowflake is depicted as trawling seedy bars for very rough trade and actually enjoying getting beaten when her date discovers she's actually a guy. I grew up with some kids who knew they were gay and were out, loud and proud about it from the time they were eight, so Snowflake's sad creepiness did not compute with what I knew of homosexuals. In the years since 1979 I have witnessed the real life version of Snowflake more times than I care to consider, and just as the question crossed my mind when I was a kid, I still ask myself whenever I see one of those lost boys, "What put you where you are, and what will become of you when you end up on the wrong end of the wrong bruiser?" I'd love for some of my current crop of gay friends to see this movie and give me their analysis of Snowflake, once they got over their justifiable offense and nausea.

• Shorty scares the living shit out of me for a number of reasons, especially after encountering several types just like him in the real world during my time at the barbecue joint.

Shorty's a creepy regular at Carole's bar whose lack of legs is never explained, but his half-a-man stature belies the palpable violence brewing a millimeter from his misshapen surface. This dude is the embodiment of every tough guy loser I've ever seen in seedy dives and his animalistic, uncomprehending need for the clearly not interested Carole is painful to watch because once he gets it through his head that he's been rejected, you just know somebody is going to pay for it in blood. Everything that self-admitted diamond in the rough Popeye stood for finds its polar opposite in Shorty, and that's something I'm loath to contemplate.

• The idea of the isolated loser finding solace in the movies of yesteryear is an old trope but it works really well here as Michael sits alone in a vast decaying moviehouse, watching 1940's comedies and musicals that cast the world in far more pleasing shades than the one he exists in (note that I don't say "lives").

The images Michael watches bear no relation to his reality and the heart sinks as the camera pulls away from him, seated in the balcony, to reveal a theater so empty and quiet save for the unspooling movie's soundtrack. I've experienced a similar feeling several times over the past three decades as I sometimes sat alone in assorted theaters, and every time I'm drawn back to the image of Michael's desolation.

• The New York City captured by Bakshi is a surreal and freakish jungle whose every inhabitant and vista appears to have been hewn from some bottomless source of both psychedelia and deep psychosis.

The panicky, bloody red as Carole fearfully avoids being stalked by Shorty.

A distorted view of Snowflake's dockside cargo seraglio.

The pre-Lynchian models at Michael's uncle's girly magazine photo studio.

Looking back at it now, it's something of a miracle that I moved to New York City to find my so-called fame and fortune in the wake of seeing HEAVY TRAFFIC at such an impressionable age, but maybe some of its untamed interpretation of the pre-Giuliani NYC served as a lure to this Connecticut darkie...

• At the film's end we get to see a live action Michael and Carole, and their real life selves are refreshingly even less glamorous than their animated incarnations.

Y'see, the movie opens with live action Michael (Joseph Kaufmann) playing pinball, and as the game intensifies the animation kicks in, blended with well-used stock footage and live street locations. I may be wrong about this, but I think the main animated narrative is a feature-length fantasy experienced by Michael as he works the pinball machine to a futile conclusion (although a conclusion considerably less bleak and disturbing than that met by his animated avatar). Upon making his way out of the arcade and onto the street, Michael's wanderings bring him past the bar where Carole (Beverly Hope Atkinson) worked and he sees his dream girl angrily cursing out an unseen patron. The two eventually meet in a park, briefly argue, and then end the film dancing together to the by-now-haunting strains of "Scarborough Fair" as rendered by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. It's a weird and disorienting finale, but somehow wholly appropriate.

Reminiscent of LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN in its hopelessness, HEAVY TRAFFIC will come as a sobering and rather depressing story for those whose animated tastes are informed by the works of Das Uber Disney and is not recommended if you need a feel-good break from the real world's endless cycle of misery and ennui. Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66's version of "Scarborough Fair" is heard several times throughout the film and serves as an ominous signature that underscores the film's menace and anguish. When I found the soundtrack album in a cutout bin for a buck about eighteen years ago, I took the LP back to my Manhattan apartment, smoked a fat joint and put the record on the turntable, listening to "Scarborough Fair" about six times as the other-than-nicotinal bliss took hold, and in those moments I felt very much connected to Bakshi's squalid vision.

These days the New York City seen on film in movies like MIDNIGHT COWBOY, SHAFT, MEAN STREETS and TAXI DRIVER is long gone, tits-up dead and relegated to history. But as long as films like HEAVY TRAFFIC and its dark fairy tale of Manhattan remain, its time will never truly fade from memory. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Original theatrical release poster.