We need to talk about Gaspar…

 Aaron Guadamuz

It was getting late as I sat in the lobby of the hotel I was staying at in the Shibuya area of Tokyo, talking to my friend Tani about the madness we would be facing in the coming hours as someone approached our table. When the man arrived, I looked up and it became clear that we were not who he was looking for so he walked back towards the reception desk while messing with his phone.

“Wait…… I know that guy…….” I said. I told Tani to wait a second and I followed the man to the other end of the lobby. I wasn’t sure if I was correct at first but then I heard him speaking French into his phone and knew my suspicions were true. When he was finished with his call I approached him.

“Excuse me……are you Gaspar?” I asked.

He looked up at me a bit confused but then confirmed that he was indeed the one and only Gaspar Noe, director of some of the most innovative, unrepentant, disturbing and loathed films of the last two decades. I am, of course, a huge fan. It got awkward in a hurry and I was forced to reach into my bag for a few points of reference to explain myself.

About 18 years ago I was making my way into one of theaters at the old Lumiere cinema on California Street in San Francisco to see the movie Donnie Darko as an audience was letting out from seeing the movie Irreversible. I saw the posters around the theater but had not heard anything about this film but the looks on everyone’s faces said everything. It was what Che Guevara called Cara de Circo or is otherwise known as the thousand-yard stare. Those punched out faces were consumed by having witnessed something terrible.

Some months later we rented a VHS cassette of the film (remember those?) and, being in a more bohemian phase of life, I prepared the viewing by smoking what we used to refer to as a “fatty”. I knew a little about the film and had heard rumors that it caused people to storm out, or maybe even pass out, at the Cannes film festival and in those days, I rarely watched a movie without some chemical preparation. I knew it was going to be a ride, but after adjusting to the way that the film was unfolding I found myself in one of the most traumatic scenes I have ever witnessed inside a French felch club called The Rectum. It turns out that this wasn’t even the scene that caused the stir at Cannes.

When the film was over, I had to instantly go back to the beginning scene at The Rectum to see if the right guy got his come uppins. Upon finding out that revenge was carried out on the wrong guy, the trauma of the movie began to sink in. Part of the reason why the film has such an effect is in the third act of the film when we get to see the sweet and gentle interaction between the characters before their ultimate night of horrors. The final sequence of the film sheds some light on the rage that drives Vincent Cassel through the Paris underworld at night in search of revenge. As horrifying and racking of an emotional experience as this film was I knew Gaspar Noe was a person to watch.

One of the worst teachers I have ever had was an ex porn director who taught screenwriting at San Francisco City College. I stopped showing up to his class and as a result have a standing F but I do remember something that he said. He referenced the opening scene of the NC-17 Peter Greenaway film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover as an example of letting your audience know what it is getting into. If the first thing we see is someone dragged into an alley and pissed on, we can imagine what the rest of the film will be like. This could be said of Gaspar’s entire filmography. If, like most people, your experience with his films began with Irreversible, don’t complain about what you see when you cross through the theater doorway into another of his films.

Many years ago, I went to New York for a month to work for an art gallery in Chelsea. A few days into my assignment, the proprietor of this gallery told me that Gaspar Noe had been in the day before I arrived and that he was accompanied by a gorgeous woman. That seemed to be the only thing my boss remembered and his eyes kept rolling back in his head every time he mentioned her. Gaspar was apparently a big fan of a deceased American artist name Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, that the gallery represented and the reason he came in was to see his work.

Back in Tokyo, as my first point of reference, in three sentences or less, I tried to explain this to Gaspar but I could see in his eyes that he had no idea what I was talking about. Either this was poorly stated on my part or he had completely forgotten about Von Bruenchenhein altogether. This was strike one.

With a wandering eye towards everything that Noe has done or will do, the next film I got my hands on was his first feature, the 1998 film I Stand Alone. I realized that the main character, a stone-faced horse meat butcher played by the terrifying Philippe Nahon, was the character in the first scene of Irreversible. I also realized that the conventional rules of cinema and screenwriting are not something that Gaspar Noe has any regard for and he is not only fearless of failure, he seems to aim for it. I Stand Alone has one of his infamous title cards that gives the audience a full 30 second countdown to leave before they witness something that they wish they had not. I have often wondered if anyone took up this offer.

The instantly legendary title sequence for Gaspar’s next film, Enter the Void, hit the internet way before the film was released and instantly left me wondering if it was even real. It was a spectacle to behold, electrifying and left me dying to see the movie, especially since I knew it was shot in Tokyo which has become a second home to me. As soon as it was released, I went to another now defunct San Francisco movie house, The Bridge, on Geary street and saw that there were warning notices tacked up all over the place about the strobing and flashing in the film and how this may affect epileptics. The simulated DMT trip sequences and getting used to watching the movie through someone’s skull, with blinking and all, took some getting used to but it was in many ways a more palatable version of what we had come to expect from Noe. He has a way with underground sleaze unlike any other director and is a master of putting you in uncomfortable environments. There were times when there was nothing more than a white or red strobe going on the screening for what felt like forever and I sat there thinking, “Goddamn…. the balls on this guy”. It also was apparent that Gaspar has his eye towards music in a way that Tarantino could only dream of having by his use of Throbbing Gristle in the film.

Standing in the lobby of the hotel, I knew my time with Gaspar’s patience was wearing thin. I decided to swing for the fences and ended up with a base hit. I told Gaspar that I am friends with the great Billy Leroy of New York City, who for many years had his legendary tent full of antiques and oddities on Houston Street in Manhattan (it has been explained before but I still don’t get why in New York this is pronounced How-ston and not Hue-ston, especially since nobody on earth is talking about the How-ston Rockets). Gaspar’s face lit up and he said, “BILLY!!!!......I just saw him on tv, he is on that show…”. Being a huge fan of Billy’s I was well aware that he was a primary cast member of the reality show Baggage Battles, but this took me back a bit. I knew that Gaspar and Billy were friends but seeing Gaspar Noe get super excited about a show where unclaimed luggage is auctioned off to a motley crew of antique dealers was definitely not something that I expected.  

I told Gaspar that I am a huge fan of his and a bit in disbelief at this random meeting at a rather nondescript location in Shibuya. I told him that nobody will believe me and asked if we could take a picture. I fully expected to ask the clerk behind the desk but Gaspar said, “Yes…of course,” and instantly began walking all the way back to where Tani was sitting on the other side of the lobby. Tani took our picture and asked Gaspar if he was staying at that hotel which he confirmed that he was (again a bit surprising since this was a small business/traveler hotel and I imagined that he would probably have much more luxurious accommodations). It turns out he was in Tokyo for a screening of his new film and suggested that I could be his guest at a screening. When he told us when it was, I looked at Tani because I knew it was in conflict with our schedule but, truth being told, if Gaspar Noe personally invites me to a screening of his new film in Tokyo…. it’s going to fucking happen.

In the pantheon of ideas that ambitious directors have wanted to tackle, there is one true diamond encrusted unicorn and that is the “legit” pornographic movie. This means using A list above the line talent and getting them to do Z list below the belt work. It is something that Kubrick supposedly discussed at length with Terry Southern and that Vincent Gallo, of all people, made an extremely unsettling attempt at (along with having naked pictures of Noe for sale on his webstore). Tinto Brass had top tier talent like Peter O’Toole, Gore Vidal and Helen Mirren on his production of Caligula during the day, only to have producer and Penthouse top dog Bob Guccione turn the set lights back on at night and shoot some extended smut to cut in later. Brass was also able to score legendary production designer Ken Adam, best known for his work on the James Bond films and Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Barry Lyndon, to work on his rated X Nazi brothel epic Salon Kitty. It almost goes without saying who would have the balls, clout and resources to actually make a solid attempt at this.

I began seeing the posters for Gaspar’s next movie LOVE, shortly after it premiered at Cannes and was somewhat shocked at the blatant pornographic imagery but, then again, it is France. This was the first Noe film that I was not all that sure if I wanted to watch but I made it through anyway. It was an attempt at a dramatic story about a love triangle between two girls and a guy that had actual sex in it. By that I mean it graphically showed full blown penetration and all the sex appeared to be real. The film had its moments and the most memorable was when a couple of police officers take the main character to a bar for a drink after they watch him combust in a fit of jealous rage and have a calm talk about how if he is going to exist in France, this idea that another human belongs to him has to go. This idea has undoubtedly been stated with much less sophisticated dialogue in actual XXX fare, but Gaspar is perhaps trying to comment on the nature of human relationships and how sex both enhances and complicates the emotions behind them. I also have to give Gaspar musical props again for his use of Maggot Brain and a section of Lucifer Rising by Bobby Beausoleil.

This brings us to Climax (pun absolutely intended), Noe’s latest which is both a dance epic and a psychological drug meltdown. It seems like this film is a bit like the plot of the Mel Brooks film The Producers in that something was created with every intention of it being hated but it is going over surprisingly well with critics and audiences. Recent reports have suggested that Noe himself is surprised by this. It even won the director’s fortnight award at the Cannes film festival. I was not sure what to make of the film when I was watching it. The film is completely out of order as far as a traditional film goes but has some stunning imagery and camera work right out of the gate.

The film seems to revel in staying in the same place for way too long, whether it be the videotaped interviews at the beginning of the film, the conversations between the dancers during the beginning of the afterparty sequence, or following someone with a head full of LSD down hallways as they fluctuate between bliss and the urge to rip themselves out of their own skin. Ultimately this constant test of viewer endurance makes the film that much more unnerving. Just when a scene takes you to the brink of your tolerance, something jolting happens that then again lingers until your patience once again comes to its brink. At a certain point when the film was at a full boil of madness and exhaustingly chaotic camera work, I could not help but think if this time Noe really has gone too far. Has he reached a point of notoriety where he can source the funds to do whatever he wants and what he wants is to torture those of us who are in with him until the bitter end? Ultimately, I did like the film and it has a few undeniably incredible sequences but it is not a film that I can recommend to most people in good conscience.

I walked back to the elevator with Gaspar and gave him the business card I had at the time, explaining that they were printed terribly and it was hard to make out my contact information. He took out a small pair of reading glasses and looked it over and said that he could make out my email address and would let me know where to go for the screening of LOVE. I shook his hand and he disappeared into the elevator as I stood there once again bewildered and enchanted at this chance encounter. I most of all couldn’t believe that Gaspar wanted to invite me to a screening of his film. What are the chances?

 And just like clockwork……. I never heard from him again.