Bruce LaBruce's <i>Otto; or, Up With Dead People</i> Debuts, Horrifies Straight People
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Written by patrik
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 12:12 |
The Sundance Film Festival is a notoriously surreal cinema outpost. Somehow playing host to quaint snow lodges filled with young and unfinanced film talent, reporters, starlets and a veritable blizzard of Hollywood vultures all in one Park City stretch, the fest has become notorious for being more Hollywood than Un-Hollywood as years pass. And when you're a gay underground artist like writer/director Bruce LaBruce, all bets are certainly off. "It's another world premiere, but this time we haven't pre-sold the U.S. territory," LaBruce blogged on his MySpace profile, of his new zombie flick, Otto; or, Up With Dead People. Attending the festivities with his co-producers and sales agent, LaBruce and friends "[had] the pleasure of trying to sell a melancholy gay zombie movie with political overtones to a mob of distributors looking for the next Juno," an uphill feat for a genre-bending auteur who brought us such transgressive and semi-pornographic classics as Super 8 1/2 and The Raspberry Reich.
Admittedly not Hollywood's ideal indie-film-with-a-heart-of-gold, Otto
premiered on Saturday, January 19th to polarized reviews. Many
spectators walked out during a particularly gruesome gay zombie sex
scene, while others left the theater ecstatic to see new work by one
of their favorite directors. One reviewer griped, "Maybe if you like gay zombies, maybe if you like zombie porn, maybe if you like gay porn, you could end up liking Otto, but that's it. I was not entertained," while horror website Bloody-Disgusting.com chose to review the film in haiku, writing "OTTO: Pretentious Garbage / Penises, Lots of Colors / Didn't Get the Joke."
Needless to say, we can't wait to see it. What could be better than gay
zombies in Rick Owens outfits getting it on in Technicolor? LaBruce
mentioned in his blog that his best review came from a gaggle of
ecstatic teens waiting for him outside of the theater. "As I [passed]
they all yelled 'Great movie!' and 'That was awesome' and 'Thanks for
making that movie!' You can't ask for a better review than that."
www.ottothezombie.de (Official Site)
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