Films
DIGITAL UNDERGROUND
Pipe
Dreams
Sunday,
August 27, Playing all weekend
outside the loo at Cell
Brett Simon, 2000
Bathrooms
and video are the black sheep of the movies. Both are considered too ugly,
too real, or too raw to merit time on the silver screen. When video does
appear in movies, it is cast as the medium of choice for perverts and
peeping toms. Video is the place where bad things happen, where the gritty
details of the real world seep into our celluloid dream. The bathroom
is also typecast as the site of dirty deeds, everything from gruesome
murders to titillating peeps, to fart jokes. With Pipe Dreams I have attempted
to challenge the usual roles played by video and bathrooms in the movies.
I wanted to show video as not only as a tool of peeps and perverts, but
as a storyteller in its own right. I wanted to use bathrooms not just
as a site for scat gags and strip teases, but for romance and fantasy.
Pipe Dreams does contain some peeping and a little toilet humor--I couldn't
help myself--but also something different, something unexpected.