☆ STARSAILOR ☆

EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT

. . . my good friend Katie hosts a movie night at a bar called Churchill’s in Miami. She has a full-blown website for the thing, which she asked me to design for her. It may look familiar to you. Listen: she digs the layout of my site . . .

Sometimes Katie will come to me for movie recommendations, and I’ll tell her I need a few hours to meditate upon it. And then I’ll give her something that I can only hope will absolutely blow the minds of all the little freaks in attendance . . . I love it!

HOWEVER . . .

Lately, both Katie and I have once again found ourselves beneath the dark, humid constellation of Aquarius. We felt its leaden weight press down upon us like a curse.

Far away in Miami, Katie stands upon the shoreline, her long blonde hair blowing in the languid Floridian breeze, and gazes into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, wondering, “Is this all . . . ?”

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away across that very same ocean, perched in my high Dracula Tower here in the doom metropolis of old Berlin, I fumble around in the dark dressed in tattered black rags, living off of rain water and dust. With vacant eyes I stare up at the moon as its radiant light flickers through my open window and down upon my ghostly flesh. And quietly I wonder: “Is there naught beyond . . . ?”

Katie told me recently that she has felt demoralized . . . felt that maybe Kinoplex didn’t matter anymore, that nobody cared about it, and somberly she considered closing it down. Upon telling me this, an ancient protective instinct in me was activated. My brain lit up like a slot machine. I smelled the imminent death of a small but vital cultural institution. I grabbed Katie by her proverbial shoulders and said: “For GOD’S SAKE, Katie . . . there’s just no way I can let you do that!!”

I told her we need purpose. It is a difficult thing to come by, and so you have got to make it for yourself, or else you’re really in trouble. I said: “Why don’t you use the Dudes Done Wrong branding and I’ll choose one Dudes Done Wrong film a month?”

Bless ye who may be wondering:

“WHAT IS . . .”

DUDES DONE WRONG is a sacred ritual that began in Oakland, California well over a decade now. Every week, we the weary souls of the End Times, gathered in silence and darkness to bear witness to the only real truth, which is mighty tragedy. Which is to say: Brother McCune and I used to host a weekly movie night at his place on Thursdays at 8 p.m. sharp. Anyone could come and plenty did . . . sometimes every week, sometimes just once. We took Dudes very seriously. There was a legendary spreadsheet for it and everything. I lived for it! I knew that no matter how bad things got, I just had to make it till Thursday night, and then I would once again join my Brothers and Sisters in the comforting darkness of McCune’s living room, our faces lit dimly by that week’s observance of the perseverance of the human soul in the shadow of great despair . . .

McCune and I would trade off picking a film based upon a theme that I’m sure is self-explanatory, such is the beauty of its immediate legibility, though here it is anyway: a Dude, be they man or woman, has been Done Wrong. Often these Dudes have been battered, maimed, betrayed, forgotten, left for dead, had everything they ever loved or cared about taken from them by some sick freaks . . . or all of the above. After watching them crawl out of a smoking crater of their own would-be annihilation, and with nothing else left to live for, you’d wonder: now what is this Dude gonna do about it? The only way to find out was to BE THERE.

It’s such a good theme because a lot of different movies fall into it . . . and yet the soul of such a movie keeps it separate from the rest. You know? This image I took of Michael Caine calmly exiting a torture chamber in THE IPCRESS FILE became emblematic of the Dudes Done Wrong pathos:

It went on like this for years, us hosting Dudes Done Wrong together. Time passed. I moved to half a dozen different cities in the intervening years and nearly died about a hundred times. We stopped hosting Dudes Done Wrong nights. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth, and on and on . . . and thus Dudes Done Wrong became a well-loved artifact from a happier time in my life. For years I have mourned its absence.

BUT NOW . . .

. . . now Katie and I are bringing it back. See, the idea was always that there would be different Dudes Done Wrong chapters all over. We wanted people to observe in solidarity no matter where they were in the world. We had this secret wish that someone would operate an East Coast chapter, a Midwestern chapter, and on and on. I mean: if McCune or I were out of town, we’d watch the Dudes movie for that week at the same time as the other back in Oakland. I’m serious! And so now, to some extent, that dream will finally be fulfilled.

Katie asked me to make a trailer for the bar to post on their social media bullshit, and I went ahead and did it:

WOW!

To be honest, I should be in this fucking trailer, the way my life is going . . .

Can you name the movies? If you’re curious, in order:

Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (1981)
Point Blank (1967)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Rolling Thunder (1977)
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
Heist (2001)
Escape From New York (1981)
Only God Forgives (2013)
Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Possession (1981)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The Devils (1971)
Ms. .45 (1981)
They Live (1988)

She also added my August pick to the Kinoplex calendar:

If you’re in Miami, show up! Who the fuck cares!!

Have y’all never seen STONE? It’s incredible. As with every DDW pick going forward, I am going to record a 1–2 minute introduction to play before Katie screens the film . . .

I reckon I will start archiving them here. What the hell else am I supposed to do with my life?

FINALLY . . .

If you’ll recall, I mentioned a spreadsheet. In the minds of McCune and me, that spreadsheet may as well have been the Ten Commandments . . . the RECORD OF FILMS was essentially writ upon stone. It was sacred!

At the top of the spreadsheet you’ll find this:

This spreadsheet is a reminder of films past, present, and films future. The record of “Films” can never be undone. This is a creative space in observance of mighty tragedy. It encompasses the only real truth.

And so saying, I went ahead and finally did something with dudesdonewrong.com, which I’ve been sitting on for probably 12 years now. I’m slowly transcribing the spreadsheet into a permanent online record for posterity . . . mostly, I suppose, for my nephew Tower McCune, who will one day carry the Dudes torch into a nightmarishly dark future, where such a thing will be as necessary as the fresh water we will be fighting wars over.

And beginning with STONE next month, I will start logging new Dudes Done Wrong viewings there. If you would like to join us in solidarity, as was once the beautiful dream of two young men toiling in the trash metropolis of Oakland, California . . . well baby, then aloha.

I will end this post thusly: on the Dudes Done Wrong spreadsheet, there was space for the Film Chooser to fill out: “How, specifically, is this particular dude done wrong?” These were were always really fun to write. Brother Kerwin in particular was good at it. And so here is his telling of how a Dude is Done Wrong in the excellent film ROLLING THUNDER (1977):

Major Charles Rane spent seven years being done wrong in a POW camp in Vietnam. He didn’t like it much. Now he’s home, finds out some friendly sheriff decided his wife and kid could use a new man around the house. Well, that’s gonna be what it’s gonna be. But the couple thousand silver dollars he picked up at his homecoming celebration got the local scumbags The Texan, Automatic Slim, T-Bird, and Melio all riled up and slobbering. They torture him and mess up his hand bad, try to make him give up the silver. Hell, go on and add a minute or two on top of seven years. It’s when the slobbering jerks put a bullet in his wife, his son, and his belly that Rane has been utterly done wrong. First step, live through the gunshot. Next step is either provide descriptions of the killers to the police and take a nap, or to sharpen his new prosthetic hook hand, saw off a double-barrel, and head toward Mexico for some scumbag hunting. Guess which.