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).
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
