June 22
The Assholes are gearing up for their first commentary track and they want you to help out.
Place your votes for the first movie we talk about:
Jason Goes to Hell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6IWFlNs3zs
They Live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L86AAGZ9BBg
Sukyaki Western Django
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYUecko6Vd0
Zombie aka Zombi 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3thbT3wq7JE
Bad Lietenant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZngYILmPv4
Vote and vote loud!
One things fans of this website will find is that I am a huge fan of music. Especially of the heavy and industrial varieties. While a lot of my peers left the bands of our youth behind in high school like a discarded pair of gym shorts in their locker, I still love and follow many of those bands and one of my all time favorites is Nine Inch Nails.
Man were they some screwed up guys back in the day. Like rather disturbed in a scary sort of sense.
How do I gleam this pearl of useless knowledge?
I just spent a day going over two fabled Nine Inch Nails bootlegs.
Time for a brief history lesson kiddies.
A long time ago when the assholes were in high school, there was this thing called video tape. It was kind of like a dvd except heavier, easier to destroy, and not quite as sharp of a picture. Occasionally bands like the aforementioned Nine Inch Nails, put out compilation videos or concert videos. Fans bought them and everyone was happy…until dvd.
I am a firm fan of the dvd format, I have a ton more dvds then I ever had videos. One of the videos I never had was a NIN set called Closure. It had a bunch of concert footage and behind the scenes stuff. The second tape in the set had all of their music videos and supposedly had The Broken movie which was a whole mini music video movie for every track on the Broken album. Rumor had it The Broken movie was really fucked up.
I say supposedly because no one I knew at the time owned it or even saw it. Hell The Broken movie was only slightly confirmed myth that it even existed (local radio host Alan Cross said it existed and he was usually right) but no one owned Closure in order to confirm it’s contents. And then shortly after it came out it disappeared and then dvd arrived and the Closure set disappeared completely. But fans clamored for it and we got announcements that an updated Closure was coming on dvd. And then nothing. And more nothing.
And then posted on Trent “Mr NIN” blog:
“12/21/06 Happy Holidays! This one is a guilt free download (shhhh – I didn’t say that out loud). If you know what I’m talking about, cool”
And suddenly on bit torrent, there was Closure, two discs, slightly updated, not completely dvd quality but shitloads better then vhs created by some guy named seed0. More on him a little later. It had dvd menus and some extras.
And most importantly, Brent could finally see it.
Disc one is random concert footage and backstage footage. It looks like a really, really good home video with much better sound (but still only in stereo n, no 5.1 surround). While at the time, this footage would have been cool, now it’s a really interesting time capsule. We see the mayhem of destroying backstage area, my favorite part being the guys aiming everything you can think of at a slightly dangling exit sign. We also get to see a young and less pretentious assholish Marylin Manson telling the camera guy that he was hung over from doing too many drugs and drinking too much the night before. I also had a smile when appearance of the lead singer of one of my favorite bands Clint Mansell from the mighty, Pop Will Eat Itself. Too bad we don’t see any of the band. The add on footage was also pretty cool with NIN first show, Woodstock footage and David Bowie footage.
Disc two, not quite as exciting. A bunch of music videos ending with The Perfect Drug. There is some cool behind the scenes stuff of the making of the Closer video (which is a really decent video btw).
Which brings us to The Broken movie.
The story goes thusly. Trent and the band and his friends made a small movie for the entire Broken album that resembles the unholy union of snuff film and music video. Once again, this was rumor and unlike Closure, there was never any commercial release, just tapes made for friends of the band. One of those friends, cough Gibby Haynes cough, leaked the tape. Now there was some graining multi generation tapes floating around. I saw a bit of one grainy copy years ago at a comic convention….so I figured it existed. Two of the videos, Wish and Happiness in Slavery were readily available as well…okay so Happiness wasn’t so readily available unless you watched Too Much for Much on Much Music. Apparently MTV and Much Music didn’t like a video featuring a naked guy being dismembered by a machine. Like nipples being chopped off dismembered.
Go figure.
But for the most part, this video was legend until that seed0 guy seeded a dvd version of the film with what appeared to be a really good quality video and also containing a missing video from most of the tapes.
I wonder who seed0 could be?
Professor Plum perhaps….screw the metaphors! It’s Reznor! Trent is the guy leaking the cool stuff! Or someone doing his bidding. I like to think Reznor has these human/chimp hybrids that wear village people costumes and do all of his computer work for him….but that’s just me.
Now for content. For the kiddies, this probably isn’t that bad. Plot line wise, dude picks up kid, tortures kid and makes him watch Nine Inch Nails videos until he finally kills the kid and the cops bust in. In between we see lots of torture, the band, a guy in a gimp suit being drowned by a toilet amongst other things. Not a lot different then Hostel but what makes it work is the texture of the video footage itself. We obviously know it’s not a real snuff film…unless the psycho has rather decent taste in music and editing equipment.
But at the heart of it, it is an interesting experiment and should be looked at by the Nine Inch Nails fan and possibly high school media English classes. Be better then watching the Handmaid’s Tale wouldn’t it?
Hi there. If you’re reading this, you probably know Doug or I. We’ve had this concept of the Assholes at the Movies for a while and are looking forward showing this to you guys and your friends…and your friends friends. And hopefully their friends who work at a big Internet company so Doug and I can completely sell out and live out our dreams of being playboy millionaires.
The main difference you’re going to find with this movie site opposed to others is attitude and content.
We are going to release commentary tracks to your favorite films and movies you’ve never heard of.
We will review and coment on any movie we want and tell you without hesitation if it sucks.
We will review bootleg dvds.
And we will do it all with a smile….which is probably hiding a bag of poo behind our backs that we will light on fire when you’re not looking and place on your porch.
Hope you stick around and enjoy this little experiment.
Brent aka asshole 1
Coming soon, the guys you hate to watch movies with…but find funny later.
