Mike and George Kuchar

Building off our class discussion, I think that the Kuchar brothers’ films critique Hollywood by exposing the artifice of Hollywood movies. I believe they do this by recreating films that mimic Hollywood films, but that replace Hollywood’s glossy and alienating perfection with a series of flaws and chinks that let in an innocent, charming, human sweetness.

In “Hold Me While I’m Naked,” the homely director or film maker character is juxtaposed against the attractive couples who he films making out, a contrast that is especially evident when we see the couple in the shower and then the director in his own shower. The director’s mother yells at him to come eat, and sitting in the kitchen, he asks us, “There’s a lot of things worth living for, isn’t there?” His ambiguous question prompts us to reflect on the juxtaposition of the numerous make out scenes with his sitting at a kitchen table with his hair wrapped in a towel. With sex scenes featured prominently in many Hollywood films, and with romance narratives emphasized as the most important aspect of characters’ lives in many movies, the director’s question makes us wonder if romance really is the most important aspect of life for impoverished, homely, more “real” people. His question challenges us to see that his life has worth even if he’s showering alone with his mother banging on the door.

“Sins of the Fleshopoids” also casts individuals who do not meet Hollywood’s standards of beauty to play the roles of supposedly ideal characters, showing us how Hollywood films mediates our visions not only of human progress, but also of distant, impossible, imaginary worlds, visions challenged by the pudgy, homely male fleshopoid. The tacky, bargain basement sets and the cobbled together costumes draw our attention to the artifice of Hollywood’s realism, showing us how people of average or limited income actually conceptualize and inhabit their surroundings, even in the context of a sci-fi, make believe world. Watching “Sins of the Fleshopoids,” we notice that even in sci-fi movies, which are set in an alternate reality, Hollywood imports the same ideals of affluence, romance, and human physicality, standards that the sets and actors of this movie undermine.

“I, An Actress” similarly challenges us to notice aspects of movies that we might take for granted. Until the intervention of the director, we are willing to overlook the artifice of the dummy the actress is speaking to, and interpret the monologue of the attractive young actress as an expression of genuine emotional suffering. When the director starts stepping into the shot and instructing the actress, however, it is brought to our attention that the actress is not the character she is playing, and that her performance is not the product of her individual affective interpretation of the material but a collaboration with the other people involved in making the film. The ridiculousness of the dummy also is revealed, as the director embraces is and knocks its wig off. The presence of the director demonstrates that the perfect, pensive world of Hollywood is actually created by less perfect individuals, and that these people play a major role in constructing the seemingly real world and emotions of Hollywood movies.

“I, An Actress” humanizes the melodramatic films it recalls, and like “Hold Me While I’m Naked” and “Sins of the Fleshpoids,” this film shows us what it’s like when people who don’t conform to Hollywood’s ideals of beauty and affluence are put into a Hollywood film setting. The results are charming, and inspire not disgust at the imperfections of the individuals, but instead inspire a sort of sweet empathetic or affective response to the Kuchars and their movies. In this way the Kuchars’ films critique Hollywood not by attacking it, but by showing us that the world outside Hollywood that the vast majority of us inhabit is more charming, interesting, relatable, and touching. The humour and adorable elements of the Kuchar brothers’ films inspire a compassion and a level of engagement that Hollywood’s artifice can’t produce. These movies make us wonder why then we would try to impose Hollywood’s ideals on our lives, when instead we can do as the Kuchars do and make Hollywood conform to us.