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Friday, April 11, 2003

Mullet-Proof Publicity

By Leanne Potts
Of the Journal
    Ridiculing the culture of bad haircuts and muscle cars isn't the simple act of elitism one might think.
    That's the moral of an indie film called "Mulletville" showing at Madstone Theaters now through Thursday. The mockumentary about a snotty film-school student and his white-trash high school buddies straddles the fine line between brilliance and stupidity perfectly.
    Here's the synopsis: A hipster film student returns to his rural Washington hometown to make a biting documentary about his trailer-park-dwelling, cheap-beer-drinking high school classmates. To keep from spoiling the film, I'll just say the film shoot doesn't go as our hero planned.
    The 90-minute film won the award for Best Feature at last year's New Jersey International Film Festival (insert your own joke here about mullets and New Jersey).
    Writer-director Tony Leahy shot "Mulletville" in 12 days for less than $100,000. Lacking a distribution deal with a big studio, Leahy, 28, is on a grass-roots tour of independent theaters around the country.
    He had been traveling to film openings in the "Mullet-Mobile," a cargo van with a 10-foot mullet (the fish, not the haircut) strapped to the roof. That promotional schtick has ended until further notice because the fish flew off the van last week on the interstate between Seattle and Portland, Ore.
    "(The Mullet-Mobile) doesn't do well at high speeds," Leahy said. He traveled to Albuquerque by plane — not as fun as driving a van topped with a giant fish, but a lot safer for his fellow motorists.
   

    Was anybody surprised Eddie Vedder bashed President Bush during a Pearl Jam concert in Denver? His political statement for the evening was probably written into the set list:
    1. "Evenflow"
    2. "Alive"
    3. Criticize president
    Some concert fans walked out of the April 1 show after Vedder impaled a George Bush mask with a microphone stand. News reports breathlessly told of gaggles of fans shocked by Vedder's display.
    Puh-lease. This is Eddie Vedder, people, the guy who at the zenith of his career played bars instead of arenas to spite Ticketmaster. The guy who stopped making videos and refused to be interviewed for a Rolling Stone magazine cover story that went on to depict him as a flannel-shirt-wearing poseur.
    Eddie Vedder's job is pulling the chain of as many people as possible; if he didn't do something contrary at a show, I'd want my money back.
    The band acknowledged as much in a statement released last week after the Denver incident. "Dissension is nothing we shy away from ...," the statement said.
    Nonetheless, the Bush mask did not make an appearance at a show two nights later in Oklahoma City.
   

    How's this for irony: Edwin Starr, the Motown singer who wrote and sang the classic protest song "War," died April 2, 14 days into the Iraq War. He was 61.
    "War, what is it good for/absolutely nothing," go the lyrics to the 1970 hit that was a standard at Vietnam War protest marches.
    Good God, y'all, why didn't we believe Edwin?
   

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    Leanne Potts can be reached at lpotts@abqjournal.com