Monday, June 4, 2012

447. Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966)

Running Time: 15 minutes
Directed By: George Kuchar
Written By: George Kuchar
Main Cast: Donna Kerness, George Kuchar, Stella Kuchar, Andrea Lunin, Hope Morris

IT CAME FROM YOUTUBE

Imagine a film where the credits read: "Starring: George Clooney and Brad Pitt; Mr. Clooney's Wardrobe by: Brad Pitt". It's the type of low budget film where Bronx born, underground filmmaker George Kuchar hired his friends to put together an obviously powerful, fifteen minute film. Unfortunately, it's power was lost on me, but I'm sound minded enough to admit that Kuchar obviously had something to say, or else, he probably wouldn't have said anything.


As previously noted, "Hold Me While I'm Naked" is a mere fifteen minutes in length and tells the story (albeit a short one) of a film director, a loser of a man who still lives with his mother, who, while in the midst of shooting a sexually explicit film, goes through a period of depression, loneliness and sexual frustration. During shooting, his star (played by Donna Kerness) quits the production, due to conflicts with the director and this leads us to believe that the director had a fixation with his star. A new star is hired and the director (played by Kuchar himself) ends the film on a positive note, citing that "there's a lot of things in life worth living for...isn't there?"


Remember those Magic Eye images that were all the rage about 10-15 years ago? In my neck of the woods, they'd publish them in the newspaper every Thursday and it wasn't rare to walk into the living room, on a Thursday evening and find my mom or dad holding the newspaper two inches from their nose and pulling it away slowly, in hopes of catching that weeks image, be it a sailboat or a crocodile. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I focused, I could never see the damn sailboat. That's what "Hold Me While I'm Naked" kind of reminded me of. The pictures on the screen and the general message were straightforward enough here, but it was the voice and vision behind the film that I just couldn't quite make out. I wasn't sure where Kuchar was going or what he was ultimately trying to say. I'll give him due for making an obviously powerful picture, one that obviously meant a great deal to him, but I just can't give it any praise (nor can I tear it apart). And what was the deal with the dead bird? or the meaning of the bird in general, even pre-death? Lets just leave it at that.

RATING: None.  Any rating that I affix to "Hold Me While I'm Naked" would just be me plucking a number out of the sky and why do that?

MOVIES WATCHED: 473
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 528

June 4, 2012  6:07pm

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