Kaboom Not Good Enough For “Bunch of Geeks” Says Gregg Araki

If actions speak louder than words it doesn’t really matter how accurate the quote at the centre of this story is; nonetheless, I believe it’s most likely to be 100% accurate.

There’s been a last minute substitution in the program of this year’s FrightFest. Out goes Gregg Arakis’ Kaboom, and in comes Brett Anstey’s Damned By Dawn. But why did Kaboom go kaboom? One of the festival’s founders, Alan Jones, has blogged about the switchover:

Can you imagine our surprise then when we were told that Araki wanted Kaboom pulled from our line-up because he didn’t want it being seen by a ‘bunch of geeks’ – his alleged words.

The first thought that crossed our minds was: How come he’s taken this long to tell us when we’ve been publicizing the program for a month now and every major website has carried the news?

The second thought was: What sort of film does he think he’s actually made?

The third was: So much for the pleas of tolerance and acceptance he advocates in his movies.

The fourth was: Wow –  has he got the FrightFest audience wrong.

The fifth was: F**k him, we don’t need his movie if that’s his blinkered attitude.

“Bunch of geeks” slur or not, Araki has pulled his film from the festival, and in a rather tardy fashion.

It would seem that he has considered FrightFest to be beneath his film. Here’s a quote from him on the film’s Cannes premiere:

And for me as a… I went to film school as an undergraduate and studied film history and everything, it was just the most amazing thing to be in this place where all the legends of, you know, cinema – Godard, Truffaut, Kurosawa, the giants have all preceded you. It was such a humbling kind of thing to be there.

Apparently not humbling enough.

At the end of the show  we got like the craziest standing ovation and people were like cheering and going crazy and it just went on and on and on… it was so awesome you know? But then me and the cast were like “What are we supposed to do? Just keep standing here?”… So you just stand there and get all of this incredible adulation.

And the applause of the FrightFest audience wouldn’t be gratifying enough? Why? Because they like horror films? That’s all he can realistically know about them – that they’ve chosen to buy tickets to a festival full of horror films. It would seem he sees this as an indication of the audience’s inferiority.

I’d like to pause now to name some of the films that have premiered at FrightFest over the years, the majority of which are far greater, and far more respected, than Kaboom could realistically hope to be.

Let the Right One In. Martyrs. The Orphanage. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Audition. The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. Oldboy. There are plenty more that I think are tremendous too, some of them even better than that bunch, but I want to stick with widely loved and acclaimed films for the moment.

And besides the films? Man-of-the-moment, Christopher Nolan has attended the festival for a Q&A. So have Nicholas Winding Refn, Chan Wook Park, George Romero, and Guillermo Del Toro – who had Alfonso Cuaron in tow. Danny Boyle brought along the first reel of 28 Days Later before the film was even finished. A special preview of Shaun of the Dead was cut just for the Frightfest audience. Hideo Nakata joined the festival by (faltering)  satellite link-up. Last year, John Landis stayed for most of the  weekend and presented both a remastered version of An American Werewolf in London and a special Thriller event. John Ajvide Lindqvist came to discuss his novel, the basis for Let the Right One In. Sam Raimi brought along the stars of Drag Me To Hell… and I’ve just scratched the surface here, really.

In a nutshell: who the hell does Gregg Araki think he is? He’s just flipped the bird at every filmmaker and every film in that list – and every one of us that loves those films and filmmakers too. This is from the man responsible for The Doom Generation, Splendor, Nowhere and Smiley Face – films that certainly have their strengths, but only mixed in with considerable weaknesses.

There would seem to be a stunning arrogance to Araki’s actions, perhaps fuelled by those years in film school studying “the legends of, you know, cinema”. It really seems like he should have gone to a better film school.

The festival’s replacement film, Damned By Dawn isn’t some sort of second-tier make-do option, but a film that was already programmed for the FrightFest Halloween all-nighter and has now been bought forward to the August session. It’s clearly going to be a very, very different film to Kaboom, but both seem to fit the (broad, inclusive, eclectic, challenging) FrightFest mandate very nicely and both would have been appreciated by the audience at the festival – if in two very different ways.

Now, the FrightFest audience won’t get to see Kaboom and, in fact, Araki’s rude snub has very possibly persuaded a fair share of them to turn their back on it for good. I can’t say that I blame them, really. Me – I’m still very keen to see it. I thought Mysterious Skin was a rather good picture (that, ironically, I show to my film students), remember finding The Living End very exciting and rich with promise, and thought that Totally F***ed Up was genuinely affirming . I wish Araki wasn’t being so silly.

Here’s another, completely different perspective, just to play Devil’s advocate. Let’s assume that the audience at FrightFest aren’t as cinematically educated as they might be, but that they like horror films and that the tropes of that one genre are their way in to cinema, in to getting enthused about movies. Then surely this was a golden opportunity to show them something – if indeed it is something – that uses the conventions of horror filmmaking in a challenging and interesting way?

That argument is just academic, in truth, as some of the most cineliterate individuals I have ever met have taken seats in the FrightFest audience. It might be a test for Araki to show up and discuss his film there, but one I thought he’d cherish, not run away from.