47 Responses to “Bellflower”

1. 

   pegsman

   November 21st, 2011 at 4:50 am

   Without having seen the the movie, Vern, I think I can say that these guys aren’t hipsters. At least not in the way most people view hipsters. A hipster, and let me make it perfectly clear that I’m mostly guessing now since I don’t know any real hipsters (or actually believe that they excist outside of their own mind), would have chosen a more obscure movie, maybe something French and in black and white like Alphaville, and written an essay about it instead of dirtied their hands on building a car. I think. But the movie sounds kind of cool.

2. 

   Tawdry Hepburn

   November 21st, 2011 at 5:05 am

   No. These guys are definitely hipsters, possibly of the trustifarian subspecies, as per their lack of jobs. I say this with authority because I have an ironic mustache and almost everything I own came from a thrift store. I don’t qualify as a hipster anymore, but I edged toward it at one point.

   The choice of The Road Warrior franchise for adulation is very hipster because it’s so mainstream and well known that it becomes fringe again. Kinda like how a hipster could get away with wearing a t-shirt from Target, so long as you knew that he was *self-aware* about the fact that it came from Target. Like going into Target, buying the T-shirt and then putting it on was some form of elaborate performance art.

   Btw, Bellflower is in South Central, iirc. It’s a not very nice part of town. I think the filmmakers actually live there. Perhaps they think it’s gonna be the next Los Feliz or Echo Park and get all gentrified and shit.

   I went to the premiere of this movie. They had Tacate and buffalo wings afterward and showed off the Medusa. It really does shoot fire.

   The first half is good, but then the beard shit starts happening. There is a long fantasy sequence in the film…in the original cut, that wasn’t a fantasy sequence. That was the ending. I don’t think we’ll be hearing more from these guys if those are their story instincts. Ambitious guys though, made half a good movie. More than I can say for myself.

3. 

   pegsman

   November 21st, 2011 at 5:13 am

   As an atheist I don’t believe in Hipsterism.

4. 

   AU

   November 21st, 2011 at 5:34 am

   Too subtle… movie made me feel like making a whiskey tap for my car wouldn’t be that hard.

5. 

   Griff

   November 21st, 2011 at 5:45 am

   this doesn’t sound like my cup of tea at all, as a matter of fact I kinda hate movies like this, I prefer my indie flicks more Reservoir Dogs than drama

6. 

   pegsman

   November 21st, 2011 at 5:59 am

   Tawdry, I’ve tried to explain this to Norwegian hipsters. For a moustache to be ironic it has to be a) bigger than Sam Elliotts or b) thinner than John Waters’. A regular sized moustache is just a moustache. In what way are yours ironic?

7. 

   RBatty024

   November 21st, 2011 at 6:18 am

   Hipster might be the most ill defined subculture of the past sixty years. When most people try to define hipster, they usually describe someone who is really into obscure art. But then I read an interview with some writer who lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as it became hipsterfied, and he claimed that hipsters came about when the subculture stopped being interested in French philosophers and obscure art and started to become interested in popular culture. So these are two definitions that don’t really mesh.

   These days, I think hipster backlash is quickly becoming as obnoxious as hipsters themselves. I recently read an interview with the guy who started lookatthisfuckinghipster.com, a website I used to enjoy from time to time. I thought the website was about gently poking fun at people who did silly things in order to look cool to all their friends. But then I read this interview, and the guy who runs the website really hates hipsters. I mean, really hates them. It was as if a bunch of hipsters had raped his grandma.

   Anyway, over the summer, I saw the relationship drama Beginners, which was a little hipsterish. It had a couple who were a little too cute, if you know how I mean. But the film never crossed the line into straight up whimsy. It stayed grounded in part thanks to Christopher Plummer who plays the main character’s father who has recently come out of the closet. It was a surprisingly good film. Arguably, it was more gen X than hipster, whatever that means.

8. 

   Jake

   November 21st, 2011 at 7:15 am

   The ill-defined nature of the word hipster is what makes it so useful. It allows you to define the word in such a way that it does not include you. Unsurprisingly, this is how everyone defines it.

   I wasn’t a huge fan of BELLFLOWER. In my opinion it is never a good idea to remind an audience of a much better movie they could be watching instead of yours. When OUT FOR A KILL used the CHINATOWN quote I thought to myself, “Yes, you are correct, guy who wrote OUT FOR A KILL, I really should be watching that right now.” Still, like Vern, I wouldn’t mind seeing Evan Glodell’s name attached to a DRIVE ANGRIER or something.

9. 

   Mouth

   November 21st, 2011 at 9:09 am

   Medusa was the star of the parking lot stunt show at ActionFest a few months ago. I feel bad about the amount of gasoline she burned in order to entertain us with her flames.

   Aaron Norris looked genuinely unsure if having the fire-shooting demonstration was a good idea, like no one had told him this was going to happen at his film festival. His fear fed my fear, I won’t lie, and as Chuck Norris’s brother backed away from the car, so too did I increase my distance.

   I skipped the BELLFLOWER showtimes, and I guess I’m glad I did, as Vern’s review (first one I’ve allowed myself to read, since I didn’t want to spoil anything, and I had thought BELLFLOWER would involve some apocalypse action, not faux-hipster hipster relationshipping) makes it sound appropriate for the small screen.

   Other missed titleistical opportunities for BELLFLOWER:

   BOOM GOES THE TRUNK
   THE WHISKEY ENGINE THAT COULD
   MAD MAX 4: THE BATTLE FOR SOUTH CENTRAL

   THE FAST AND THE FLAMMABLE

10. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    November 21st, 2011 at 9:13 am

    I live a block from the center of the hipster universe, the Brooklyn Flea, where 90% of the retro shades, vintage tees, and ironic fedoras worn by the NYC hipster (still the gold standard by which all other hipsters much be judged) are sold at a hefty mark-up. They travel in packs, their hair matted and askew, their eyes hooded and indistinct, their jeans so tight they might well be poured on their legs like blue candle wax. But I don’t hate them. They’re harmless. They’re just the latest edition of “the kids these days, I don’t get ’em.” I don’t see how skinny jeans are any worse than the baggy, dragging-on-the-ground kind the kids were wearing ten years ago. Let’s face it: Young people will always wear different jeans than you and me. It’s how they show that their generation won’t commit the same sins ours did.

    Now, the 40-year-old cool dads and hot moms who have descended on my neighborhood like a pack of perpetually smiling, wheatgrass-guzzling locusts, those I can’t abide. With their $300 strollers and Jack Russell terriers, they bring with them Asian fusion restaurants and yoga studios, and they cause the rent and the price of food and sundries to go up until hard-working poor folks such as myself can barely afford to live here anymore.

    In my opinion, once you have a kid, you have an obligation to live somewhere with a yard. You must give up your coffee bars and your farmers markets so your kid can have a childhood. Then he can move to the city when he’s in his early twenties, and he’ll stay there, wearing his own generation’s style of jeans, until he knocks up some broad in a scarf and moves away. Meanwhile, lifelong city rats such as myself can watch the cycle begin anew, confident that no one will be trying to clean up our precious filth anytime soon.

11. 

    Dan Prestwich

    November 21st, 2011 at 11:21 am

    But how does anyone get to become a lifelong city rat like you if their parents have to move to the suburbs when they are born?

12. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    November 21st, 2011 at 11:33 am

    Perhaps “devoted” would be a better term. I have no intention of having kids so I’ll be living here in my city for the duration.

13. 

    Mouth

    November 21st, 2011 at 12:19 pm

    As an occasional tourist of The City, I find the “precious filth” much more attractive than the yoga studios and smiling rich people. And I agree with the “The rent is too damned high!” sentiment, etc.

    Stoned hipster chicks are a great source of stimulation & entertainment, especially when you can bond with them over surviving a monstrous hurricane.

    But I also like to hang with the rich people, the overachievers, even some of the dastardly 1%er wannabe types. But I hate small children and families with small children. I’m more a Manhattan elitist than a Brooklynite.

    City rat New Yorkers might appreciate the Asian fusion restaurants more if they weren’t necessarily poor, or, better, if the restaurants weren’t so expensive. And again, Mr. Majestyk, no, I’m not gonna order Budweiser when there is a fancy beer I’ve never heard of on the menu. I want the fancy beer. I’m on vacation, not a budget.

14. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    November 21st, 2011 at 12:26 pm

    I never ordered a single Budweiser in your presence. It’s PBR 4 life. That’s one thing the hipsters definitely got right.

    Those two $20 beers you ordered at the sushi place were pretty good, though.

15. 

    Stu

    November 21st, 2011 at 12:48 pm

    I don’t like pizza. Or more precisely, I don’t like melted cheese, which seems to be considered vital in a pizza, even though it’s something americans added, not italians.

16. 

    Mouth

    November 21st, 2011 at 1:23 pm

    L.A. BROS: RISE OF MEDUSA
    FIRE IN THE SKY: A BELLFLOWER LOVE STORY
    TO LIVE & BURN IN L.A.
    FLAMETHROWER ON WHEELS

17. 

    Armond Black

    November 21st, 2011 at 2:12 pm

    This movie is well made. And it’s about something; with a sense of intensity and devotion, for sure in a way that American indies rarely even try for.

    But it’s a flaming piece of misogynistic hipster emo horseshit. It’s the world’s longest Dashboard Confessional music video, with a side dish of rape justification.

    It IS the ultimate white hipster movie (I can’t imagine it resonating with many people who aren’t white, unless it starts a new sort of modern Blaxpolitation, Hipstersploitation ironically appreciated by black people – of which Tiny Furniture could be lumped in, too) – it venerates long dead traditions of white working class traditions – shopping in thrift stores, working on cars, drinking too much… The main characters have no source of income but this is no problem. Compare that worldview with Schroeder’s amazing and long forgotten ‘Barfly’ in which alcoholism and poverty are intertwined and explicated while being celebrated without sentimentality. Bukowski being one of the God Kings of hipsters and then digested and subsumed into the horseshit that is the careers of Terry Richardson or James Frey, we’ve now progressed to dudes who feel no economic pressure in their lives at all. Bukwoski was making a sacrifice, a choice and there was consequence for it.

    This on the other hand is the very definition of hipsterdom – trying way too hard pretending to be something when there’s no consequence. Whether it’s looking like an artisanal lumberjack or rebelling. The hipster is to modern consumerism what the person who found Jesus at the megachurch is.

    Hilariously, the greatest single defining hipster moment in the entire movie – minor spoiler here – the moment of nightmarishness that tips the thing toward apocalypse, is a really bad tattoo. I was laughing my ass off at that. While the character suffered and raged, I was in hysterics. At least the next scene he wasn’t screaming while riding a bicycle with gears.

    And finally, just as white hipsterdom seeks to fetishize long lost traditions of working class white people, Bellflower has a secret, reactionary vengeance it needs to mete out against modern progressive politics. Namely, it wants vengeance against women. It wants to enable and justify brutality toward them, and define them and their actions one dimensional and completely without motivation. Some even harm themselves in one of the most ridiculously stupid shots of the year. And then, worst of all, it PUSSES OUT because – hey, maybe it was all a dream? Are you fucking kidding me? Gaspar Noe would never go “you know what, that rape scene was just a dream”.

    Of the women I know who saw this, not a one liked it. As one said “I had some issues with the message of the movie being it’s ok to hate fuck your ex until she’s bloody.”

    But – and here’s the giant plot twist – Bellflower changes from the hipster movie at a certain point to the EMO movie, which is much worse. You start to worry Glodell is going to start cutting and writiing a livejournal about a bad breakup. And then you realize he has, and it’s turned into a movie.

    Now here’s the thing – the trailers hint at a really fucking awesome movie that this could have been, and the movie hints at – which would be an exploration of how a character becomes Lord Hummungus, when he starts out as something else entirely. That would’ve been an amazing fucking movie. How does one go from Glodell to being another bandit in the post apocalyptic wasteland.

    But instead, it’s just a bunch of hipster emo horseshit with some misogyny thrown in. Enjoy. Here’s the original trailer, which shows off that this movie is not about flamethrowers and cool cars at all.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w2c60qkqJC4

    (And I read interviews with Glodell in which he said this is the stuff men think about but don’t talk about much… Nah, I think it’s what pussy ass hipster emo dudes think about. Men are watching Breaking Bad)

18. 

    anthony4545

    November 21st, 2011 at 11:12 pm

    Oh god there’s WHITE hipsterism now?
    I give up, i don’t get these terms/labels. Maybe it’s because…

    “I’m too old for this shit”
    -Danny Glover

19. 

    anthony4545

    November 21st, 2011 at 11:16 pm

    I think the word should be changed to JEANSTERS now, after Majestyk’s observation.

    Cuz i can understand pants, goddamnit. That shit makes sense. My parents wore bell bottoms, and so it goes.

20. 

    Outlaw Vern

    November 22nd, 2011 at 1:44 am

    Thanks, Armond Black. Great post (and screen name).

21. 

    Jareth Cutestory

    November 22nd, 2011 at 8:21 am

    Based only on the clothing, I think the Original Hipster was Melvin Frohike.

    “Sure, baby, my kung-fu is the best.”

22. 

    Ronald

    November 22nd, 2011 at 5:16 pm

    Bored by all the hipster talk. Seems catty.

    I agree that the characters are unlikable and misdirected, but I feel like this movie had flawed characters and that their flaws were mirrored by the narrative. I like movies like that, ones that don’t sanitize or correct the offenses of the protagonists. Yes, their perspectives are flawed and injurious, but when, twenty years from now, we want to remember what was wrong with now, the evidence won’t be in 500 Days of Summer, it will be in this movie. Has anyone considered the movie intentionally self-critical and purgative? Bellflower expresses something about sourceless grief and shapeless anger, and it attempts to transmute these states into a filmic narrative. What the fuck is wrong with that, and why does it matter if other people have realer problems or realer suffering? The judgment itself is an article of subjectivity. I think some of the conversations here are more offensively myopic than this movie.

23. 

    Fred Topel

    November 22nd, 2011 at 10:04 pm

    Funny, their lack of jobs came up in the festival Q&A where I saw it. They just said it wasn’t important to the story and lots of movies don’t say what their jobs are. But yes, they do have jobs.

24. 

    Outlaw Vern

    November 23rd, 2011 at 1:17 am

    Yeah, I found an interview where Glodell said they had originally had scenes about all of their jobs but they ended up cutting it all out (I think at the script stage). But I don’t think it works to watch the movie assuming they are going to work in between scenes. I mean, the two main characters just up and leave town for days and nobody is even sure where they are. I guess maybe they all work from home. Maybe they run a porn websight or something. Or maybe they send those spambot messages I keep getting.

25. 

    pegsman

    November 23rd, 2011 at 2:55 am

    Charles Bukowski was mentioned earlier. And he’s perhaps the best example of how you can entertain people with stories about your daily life – precisely by not leaving out any details. If I’m reading a book or watching a movie that pretends to be about somebody’s life, I have to know everything to make it work. Or else it won’t do us any good to watch it in twenty years from now to see what was wrong with 2011 – other than the fact that some film makers didn’t bother to show us everything.

26. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 23rd, 2011 at 4:09 am

    I literally *just* wrote about this strength in Bukowski’s work two days ago.

    “Listening to Sedaris’ collection of short stories, diary entries, offhanded anecdotes and play-by-play breakdowns of overweight Midwesterners ordering coffee at mediocre hotels, I couldn’t help but think of another great American author, Charles Bukowski.

    As with Sedaris, Bukowski was the rarest of all things; a niche author celebrated during his own lifetime. And, as with Sedaris, Bukowski’s oeuvre focused primarily on the details of his own life. His early novels and collections of poetry mulled over his torrid affairs with women, excessive drinking, compulsive gambling and the bad luck that began with a horribly scarred face and eventually lead him to spend 10 hours a day filing mail in the back room of a post office. As time progressed, Bukowski found fame and fortune. Instead of going back to the well of his impoverished booze-hound womanizer persona, he began to write about his life as a wealthy, booze-hound womanizer who was slowly, very slowly, trying to turn his life around, always Slouching Toward Nirvana.

    But whereas Bukowski’s incredibly prolific body of work remained gripping and vital because of its’ ongoing arc of a man seeking redemption that he would never achieve, possibly because he didn’t deserve it, Sedaris’ more middle of the road material is less appealing. And while Bukowski was a fairly horrible person by any rational standard, his various grotesqueries are more relatable than the self-satisfied snark evident in Sedaris’ casual discussions of bourgeois life in France: the needless details of the obesity of a woman he disliked, his holier-than-thou rage at modern slang. Much of the material seems not autobiographical, but simply self-serving. As the stewardess heroine of one of his tales intoned, “You’re trash. You’re trash. Your family’s trash.” Indeed.”

    http://chatsworth.patch.com/articles/humorist-david-sedaris-takes-the-stage-at-csun

27. 

    Ronald

    November 23rd, 2011 at 11:56 am

    I would like to see a film that shows or tries to show everything. It would be a different film. It would not be Bellflower. Bellflower is not a film about daily lives, it’s a film about relationship emotions. It seems to bother some people here that it’s a film about emotions – they want it to be about something else, something from their lives – and I would say that the emotions do get taken too far, and that this is mirrored by the narrative, which goes too far, and therefore the film is authentic to itself.

28. 

    Chris

    November 23rd, 2011 at 3:33 pm

    i love how the last five minutes of the movie goes all Michael Mann.

29. 

    Mouth

    November 23rd, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    spoiler spoiler spoilers
    spoilers
    I wish I’d seen the version Tawdry saw at the premiere. What a shame the tension, the horror, even if it becomes a comical level of horror, of extreme emotions over the most petty betrayals among privileged L.A. idiots, is wasted by a bitchass change of perspective in the final act. It’s a narrative that betrays the audience for no good reason but to sanitize itself, to say, “Oh, it’s okay, you don’t have to feel bad about the blood and destruction. Just a dream sequence. We’re all woke up now. Hope you enjoyed the movie, that was almost kinda crazy, huh? Well, anyway, Mom’s got your pop tarts in the toaster downstairs. Have a good day, sweetie.”

    I was hoping to see the birth of Apocalypse. Lord motherfucking Humongous. Instead it’s a guy dealing with his feelings, his broken heart. {pause to laugh & vomit} And somehow a movie about gradually more ridiculous extremes, a movie with high potential for symbolic greatness in the relationships among tools, weaponry, hardware upgrades & evolutions, party life, girlfriend-boyfriend upgrades & evolutions, juvenile dreams, and adult-level dreams becomes a safe, forgettable movie.

    I agree a lot with Ronald in his 2 posts and I agree a lot with Armond Black. I disagree with how soft Vern treats this movie, but I see he’s trying extra hard not to judge the younger people and their silly relationship squabble movie, trying to appreciate the story despite the hipster-/-outlaw badass divide or whatever. I get it, people from Washington are always jealous of California dudes, always trying to prove you might be cool enough to make it 2 states south.

    Chris, get the fuck outta here. That’s a nice compliment to BELLFLOWER’s cinematography and mood, but c’mon, let’s not get out of control.

    BELLFLOWER’s cast is my age, and we might enjoy partying together occasionally, but I hated these motherfuckers. At least, I hated their decision-making rationale; I merely disliked everything else about them. I know you don’t have to “like” the characters in order to like or appreciate a movie, but these people are trash. They seem to know nothing of the world outside their hood. They make enemies easily. They make enemies of their fellow Americans, their neighbors, because they lack any worldly perspective and because they’re always drunk. They generate artificial drama in their lives to make them seem more important than they really are. That’s what some women do when they gossip and complain about inanities; that’s not a male trait that should happen for more than a few minutes until your buddy sets you straight.

    You don’t drive your bike through a stop sign because you’re emotional. Bitchass move.

    This dude freaks out when he sees his girl getting railed by another dude; he should be celebrating, b/c he just discovered something that’ll save him from putting his dick back in that coffin. Collect your property, delete her #, and move on. Don’t sit there 24/7 & whine about how she wronged you. I can’t understand this.

    And they don’t recycle. Not cool.

    I am hopelessly and gratefully unaccustomed to the lifestyle & decision-making of these characters. I can’t relate to assholes who litter, struggle with rent, break bottles on a guy’s head, look like pansies with a baseball bat, constantly drink like degenerates, swoon & mope over semi-attractive girls, smoke in bed, play with dangerous hardware as though it’s toys, celebrate shitty restaurants & dive bars, etc.. These are some grimy, declasse bitches. They’d be rednecks, but they’re semantically classified as a different breed due to their clothing & hairdos.

30. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 24th, 2011 at 6:37 am

    The version I saw was the final version. When they made the movie there was no extended fantasy. That was done in post with the help of some reshoots.

31. 

    Mouth

    November 24th, 2011 at 7:28 am

    Correction: I wish I’d seen the “original cut” to which you referred.

    “Half a good movie” is accurate.

32. 

    Casey

    November 28th, 2011 at 1:45 pm

    I think Mouth and I are the same age (I’m 28) and I agree with him. If I caught my wife with another man it would suck and I would feel hurt but it would mostly just be really easy to just move the fuck on.

    Mouth and I might be rare but I don’t think too many dudes our age spend a lot of our time feeling sad or shit.

    I was looking forward to renting this (although my local store (Potomac Video) just closed, so that meant I would have to reup my Netflix account) but now I think I’ll just watch more rasslin’ instead.

33. 

    Mouth

    November 28th, 2011 at 2:06 pm

    Odd coincidence: That damn Daniel Tosh did a nice series of jokes this weekend about how he becomes infatuated too easily but is also unable to break up with girls. So as soon as he hooks up with a girl he likes, it becomes a 3 year commitment because he’s too weak to break it off. (I won’t try to emulate the humor here, since it doesn’t sound right on these boards.)

    I have the same exact problem, being too much of a pussy to tell a girl “It’s over” after a week or 2, except I’ve managed to get lucky every time so far by letting travels do the hard work of breaking up for me. Long distance relationship, yeah right lulz. So anyway Tosh said that the best thing, the thing he prays for every day on the drive home, is if he discovers his girlfriend blowing another guy.

    It would sting for like a minute, but then FREEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOM!

34. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 28th, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    That’s funny.

    I had that issue too. I would basically go from one relationship to the next with little to no break between from 15 till I was 21. Since shortly after my 21st birthday I have fastidiously avoided having a girlfriend. I have girls I will hang out with, go to social functions with, be friends with…and sometimes we sleep together too. I’m very honest about the fact that I still have a *lot* of things to figure out about myself and a heaping helping of personal issues which leave me in a place where I don’t think it would be productive for me to have a relationship. And more than that, it wouldn’t be fair to *her* either.

    However, I still don’t know how to end a relationship. I just know how to never have one. ahahha…oy.

35. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 28th, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    BTW, an ironic mustache is a mustache where, when you look at the guy, you’re like, “He doesn’t really *mean* that mustache.” It’s one of those things where you know it when you see it. You know, like obscenity.

36. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    November 28th, 2011 at 2:56 pm

    Click on my name and look at my profile pic for an example.

    Don’t get me wrong, I wish I could mean that mustache. I just don’t have it in me, though.

37. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 28th, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    Yeah… I hate to break it to you, Mr. Majestyk, but between the screen name alluding to an obscure character, the foreign language profile pic, the stunner shades, the ironic mustache and the hit whoring for your *blog* where you show off the aforementioned glasses/’stache combo, you’re a hipster. Don’t worry though, there are recovery programs.

38. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    November 28th, 2011 at 4:30 pm

    I was worried about that. I knew I should have gotten myself tested after I dated that chick with the tattoo sleeve and glasses a few years back.

39. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 28th, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    DId she have a tattoo of Snoopy? It’s a common symptom that many people overlook.

40. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    November 28th, 2011 at 5:12 pm

    Nah, all vines and roses and crows or whatever. You know, standard tattoo shit that makes you look like you fell in a mud puddle when the lights go out.

41. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 28th, 2011 at 5:58 pm

    I wanna get, “Generic” tattooed in gothic letters on my collarbone.

42. 

    pegsman

    November 29th, 2011 at 2:53 am

    Most of the hipsters here in Norway are Swedish baristas that look just like you, Mr Majestyk. It’s a small and strange world.

43. 

    Casey

    November 29th, 2011 at 11:14 am

    I can’t bring myself to hate hipsters. I don’t know, maybe I’m mellowing with age but it seems to me that you can find an excuse to hate anyone.

    The only people I really hate these days are white people. Assholes deserve it, too.

    Maybe it’s because I’ve always been hopelessly attracted to “scene girls”. It doesn’t even matter what scene anymore.

    But, yeah, white people are the worst.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hepw_8fLhMI&feature=player_embedded

44. 

    Tawdry Hepburn

    November 29th, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    it was literally difficult for me to watch that whole trailer. However, the Regina Spektor at the end was at least some redemption.

45. 

    HALLSY

    January 24th, 2020 at 2:18 pm

    I saw something the other day, I don’t remember what, that reminded me of this movie and made me really want to see it again. But reading the comments here makes me a bit worried. I don’t recall, or I must have missed, the misogny. I mainly just remember the imagery of the car shooting flames and how rad that was. I kind of loved this movie but it was a long time ago so I’m very curious how it will hold up on re-watch.

    This review is a bit strange. Most of it seems like Vern is shitting on the movie but then says he liked it.

    Also, I think Jake has one of the all-time best comments here on outlawvern.com. I would like him to come back and comment more.

46. 

    HALLSY

    January 24th, 2020 at 2:20 pm

    Also – what the hell happened to Evan Glodell? He made this one movie and then fell of the face of the Earth??

47. 

    1-900-MIXALOT

    January 24th, 2020 at 11:48 pm

    BELLFLOWER is one of the most legitimately hateful and loathsome films ever made. if Evan Glodell has fallen off the face of the earth I hope he stays there, like a bicycle with a a rear basket pathetically thrown into a drainage ditch.

    that’s a reference to this one scene in BELLFLOWER were one of the characters sort of timidly makes a little “fuck everything” speech and then picks up his bicycle (with rear basket) and really pathetically throws it into a drainage ditch. that shit made me laugh pretty hard and would’ve really reinforced writer/director/star/mechanic/”I don’t have anger towards women”/fictional knife-rapist Evan Glodell’s contention that these assholes were immature, hateful, petulant monsters if that was a contention he had ever thought to make. i’m 100% sure that scene is not supposed to be in any way funny, by the way.

    SPOILERS FOR FUCKING BELLFLOWER OF ALL THINGS

    all the parts in the film that seem to be casting a critical eye on the male characters come across as total bullshit and all the bits about flame throwers and women being bitches come across as earnest and genuine. Glodell apparently started writing Bellflower when he was 22 after going through a particularly bad break-up. when asked about the violence and apparent misogyny in the film, Glodell said “It’s the first script I wrote. I was really young. I got older. It’s told from an angry point-of-view. Young men are crazy, strange, emotional beings.” okay, fair enough. but does this mean that he altered the script to better represent his subsequent maturity and it was that version that they shot? because if so the results are truly fucking troubling. or did he just film the version that he wrote when he was 22 in the hope that audiences would understand where he was coming from when, following the dissolution of a serious romantic relationship, he wrote a screenplay in which a character that he plays, and that is based on himself, rapes a character that is based on his ex-girlfriend with a knife.

    i would love for someone to give $17,00 and a custom-made camera to the girl Glodell was dating when he was 22 so, if she felt like it, she could go and make a spitefully ugly film about him.