“Funny Pages,” a new, chaotic rite-of-passage movie now in theatres and on VOD, seems to have taken the advice of one its characters to heart. Early on, an art teacher in urges his student Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) to “always subvert.” Director Owen Kline, in his quirky directorial debut, challenges the notion of a traditional coming-of-age tale in this gritty celebration of life’s outsiders.
When we first meet Robert, he is being mentored by Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis), an encouraging teacher who heaps praise on the teenager’s drawings. “Michael Jordon!” he shouts when he sees a drawing he really likes. When Katano suddenly dies, Robert is left adrift, caught between his suburban parents (Josh Pais and Maria Dizzia), who want him to go to college, and his ambition to create “Mad Magazine” level artistry.
One quick brush-with-the-law later Robert quits school, and subverts his life by renting a space in a rundown rooming house, already occupied by creepy roommates Barry (Michael Townsend Wright) and Steven (Cleveland Thomas Jr.). He’s hoping some of the unusual living situation will provide him with the edge he needs to create great art.
While working as an assistant for Legal Aid attorney, Cheryl (Marcia DeBonis, Robert meets Wallace (Matthew Maher), a techy criminal who once worked as a “color separator” at Image Comics. Despite Wallace’s crusty exterior and occasionally violent outbursts, Robert is drawn to his talent and tries to recruit him as his new mentor.
Most coming-of-age stories rely on a certain amount of uplift to provide an inspirational punch to the storytelling. Not “Funny Pages.” This is the kind of movie that offers unlikable characters with no happily-ever-afters. It lives in the fringes of society, and the abrasiveness of the story’s denizens may turn off some viewers, but the richness of the performances is rewarding, no matter how edgy.
The movie’s gritty, grainy look matches its subject matter. There is nothing slick about “Funny Pages.” Like the comic books it reveres, the movie is outsider art unconcerned with the niceties of coming-of-age conventions. It feels destined to become a cult film, much like the movies that movies—“Crumb,” “Ghost World”—and people—Joe Franklin, Peter Bagge—that serve as its inspiration.
“If it bleeds it leads,” is an accepted mantra around newsrooms these days but back in 1974 it was a new, controversial idea. Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall), an investigative reporter at a local ABC affiliate in Sarasota, Florida, was particularly disdainful of the idea until she became the poster child for news sensationalism.
In “Christine,” a based-on-true-events film, Chubbuck is working at local station WZRB. She’s a steely presence, a serious person doing light news. “People are listening to me,” she says, “so I have to be sure I’m really saying something.” Reports on strawberry festivals and local events are the station’s stock in trade but the station manager (Tracey Letts) is desperate to get higher ratings. How? “Juicier stories,” he says. “If it bleeds it leads.” When the station owner (John Cullum) decides to poach one or two of the Sarasota on-air talents for his much larger Baltimore new division, Christine sees that as a way out. “So if I get some footage of fat people burning in cars and I’m on my way to Baltimore?”
Her progression to the larger market is stymied by illness and depression—“My life is a cesspool,” she says.”—and culminates with the news reporter becoming the news. On July 15, 1974 Chubbuck was on air, reading the news when announced, “In keeping with WZRB’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see complete coverage of an attempted suicide,” before putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.
The events in “Christine” are well documented, so the shocking finale doesn’t come so much as a shock but the inevitable consequence of history. With the element of surprise removed what’s left is a look at the woman at the heart of the story. Hall plays Chubbuck as an almost otherworldly presence, someone who doesn’t quite feel comfortable in her own skin, always judging herself and those around her. “You’re not always the most approachable person,” co-worker George Ryan (Michael C. Hall) tells her, and that is the beauty of Hall’s work. In a terrific performance that elevates the movie, she plays Chubbuck as aloof but human, edgy and without a trace of sentimentality.
“If it bleeds it leads,” is an accepted mantra around newsrooms these days but back in 1974 it was a new, controversial idea. In the based-on-true-events film Christine Rebecca Hall plays Christine Chubbuck, an investigative reporter at a local ABC affiliate in Sarasota, Florida. She was particularly disdainful of the idea until she became the poster child for news sensationalism by announcing to her viewers, “In keeping with WZRB’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see complete coverage of an attempted suicide,” before putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.
“There are a lot of films that portray misfits and odd the people as cool,” says Hall during a stop at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I don’t want to say it fetishizes it but sometimes it makes it seem aspirational or trendy. The access [to Christine] for me personally was feeling like you are different and not excepted. That can be excruciating. Especially if you are a woman, especially at that time when you were operating it in un-meritocratic system. She had integrity. She wanted to serve your community. That was her driving force but she was not rewarded for that. [People around her] thought, ‘Well, you’re a lady in a bit weird.’ They didn’t know how to deal with that.”
Chubbuck’s progression to larger markets was stymied by illness and depression—“My life is a cesspool,” she says in the film.—and culminated with the news reporter becoming the news.
“To me Christine is someone who went through her life every day thinking, ‘OK what does it look like to be normal?’ What she perceives to be normal. She looks to everyone for affirmation. Am I doing OK? Did I get away with it today? Am I like you? Am I accepted? Sometimes she’s really good at it and sometime she’s really bad at it but regardless her community accepts her. The tragedy of the film is that she doesn’t see that. It is a compassionate film. It is a cautiously optimistic film about people.”
REBECCA HALL SIDEBAR:
“I don’t think I have given [a role] like it before and I probably won’t again because it is one of those jobs that if you are incredibly lucky you get maybe three of them in a career. And that’s only if you are incredibly successful and lucky and often only if you were a man.”
