Gregory Pennington | Boys Beware / 2014

jimmy crow, age 13, grows up quick

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gregory Pennington (screenplay and director) Boys Beware / 2014 [6 minutes]

 

Gregory Pennington, the presumed writer of this 6-minute Boys Beware appropriation, has created one of the most fascinating of the numerous responses to the original, in part because of its buried messages, which keep appearing a small headlines over the characters’ heads as the movie progresses.

    Like the original, it begins with Lt. Williams, but this time he is a Hispanic man who gets in his car and drives quite recklessly, careening over curbs and changing lanes at irregular intervals. When he sees trouble up ahead—in the original boys hitchhiking—he now dismisses an automobile accident involving a gun attack as normal activities.

      The narrative again depicts a young man hitchhiking, the small headline over his head describing him as “Jimmy Crow, 13.”  In the same manner, we’re told, humorously, that his driver is Ralph Sullivan, 100. And almost immediately, the small over-title reveals one of his comments, the “N” word appearing when he might least expect it, but perhaps revelatory of the original’s statement that he told me “adult off-colored jokes.”

       And when they pull up at Jimmy’s house, it already looks like a motel, where he and his family live, the small headlines identifying an unidentified neighbor, Vincent Johnson, as being 113, the various wide disparities of age making this version far more comic than the original.

        Jimmy already lives in the Jefferson Hotel, which mocks the original by the reminding us that in the last scenes of the 1955 version Ralph takes him to a motel to demand the “payments expected in return.” As Ralph drives away, another figure, Huilo Diiablo is identified as being 145 years of age, suggesting Jimmy may already live in either a graveyard or a world inhabited by vampires.

       The next day, after playing ball, 13-year-old Jimmy is met again by the now 114-year-old Ralph, who, for the first time we see looks suspiciously like a priest, as they stop in the now proverbial drive-in where the stranger treats him to a Coke. Now, at 100 years-of-age, Ralph tells him several “off-colored jokes,” not unlike the first one we encountered earlier on. “Genders are like the twin towers. There used to be two but now everyone gets offended if you talk about them.”

       I should mention that these small titles over the head of the vehicles and individuals are so quick that in order to properly read them you must truly stop the camera motion. I cannot imagine that in a regular viewing of the images that the eye might not even be able catch the subtle messages being transmitted. But that is the subtle art of this work, which forces the eye to pick up the realities that the narrative itself refuses to reveal. In a sense, this film represents a challenge to determine if the viewer can differentiate between what the narrator/narrative is telling us, and what is truly happening in the real world.

     Soon, the boy and man are “going fishing,” as in the original, sitting in a strange way that perhaps suggests their legs daggling from a series of logs into some invisible body of water. Indeed, Jimmy seems to even to have “lost his legs,” the small overhead title now announcing his age as 71, as he and Ralph, now clearly identified as a priest, seem to be engaged in a series of prayers or at least genuflections that go on and on as the narrator repeats the original’s comment that “Jimmy hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in a long time,” reiterated by a “headline” that repeats his feelings, “Gee mister, this sure is fun.” Throughout, the priest holds his briefcase closely, as if it were more important than anything else in his life, including Jimmy.    

     Ralph once more shows Jimmy some pornographic pictures, obviously held in his beloved attaché. As the narrator goes into to the description of Ralph’s homosexuality, the images portray Ralph’s involvement with “Horizon Gaming,” along with figures like Wu Ming, a resident of the fantasy community of the “Black Hand Triads” of Los Santos, an internet video gaming series, in response to which Ralph is now seen busily masturbating. Suddenly Ralph shas-shays down the street, Jimmy behind him, like a true gay queen as they stroll together down Hollywood Boulevard past the Egyptian Theater, the narrator repeating how Ralph takes Jimmy to many interesting places. Jimmy is headlined as now being 112 years of age.

     As they climb the steps of the original’s motel, the narrator talking about the presents he’s bought Jimmy, the boy, now again 13, is visually sodomized by the priest Ralph as, Jimmy calls out “Please mister, no!” The scene is far more specific than the original film, and, in that fact, far more honest, making it clear than they didn’t just “meet up” in the hotel room, but actually participated in sex.

    Repeating the 1955 version, Jimmy reports the incident it to his parents and Ralph is arrested, Jimmy again described by the small headline as now being 112-years of age, as in he put again under the control of his parents seem to be described, in the film’s quick headlines, as being in their early 20s.

      In the final credits, the apparent director, described as “House Owner” in which Lt. Williams is about to enter, as Gregory Pennington, presumably the director of this work. The room rents, if you’re interested, for $1,000, where we can only imagine that the director and Lt. Williams might meet up for whatever shared interests they have in this appropriated work.

      This film makes no attempt to deny or even question the misinformation and outright bigotry of the original, but subtly mocks it by creating a kind of gaming world where ages change every few seconds and characters are not what they might seem to be, the world not one in which the realities of the original film comfortably fits. And I am sure if I knew the gaming world to which the film refers, I might discover an entirely different perspective from the original white boy horror film which the original Boys Beware represented.

 

Los Angeles, December 31, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2023).