Scumrock, 2002 film still [Enlarge in New Window]

Jon Moritsugu: Scumrock

Jon Moritsugu considers himself a "low-fi Luddite" filmmaker, so when he decided to work in video for his latest project, Scumrock, he didn't go for those new mini-DVs or digital editing systems that have so captivated everyone else. Instead, he chose an analog Hi8 camera and a primitive VHS editing system that allows him to make cuts only -- no special effects and no dissolves. As a result, the whole videomaking process ­-- from the overblown color palette to the long, raw scenes that eschew complicated editing -- matches the aesthetic of Scumrock, Moritsugu's nod to the punk do-it-yourself era.

"People once thought Hi8 would revolutionize the low-budget filmmaking world, but now people say it's junk," says the filmmaker, who was born in Honolulu but is a long-time resident of San Francisco. "If I was going to work in video to get a certain aesthetic, I wanted to be on that trailing edge of technology and explore techniques that other people had given up on."

The look he achieves breaks all the normal rules that filmmakers follow when trying to make their films look as good as possible. Instead, Moritsugu was aiming for low production values. "I wanted to really degenerate the imagery and exploit video as an electronic medium," he says. "One of the problems I see with DV filmmakers is that they use the electronic technology to try to make it look like film. It's interesting, but people expect too much from it. I've been trying to exploit the intrinsic properties of video for their own ends."

Like all of Moritsugu's work -- including the perennial raunchy, ironic underground favorites Fame Whore (1997) and Mod F*** Explosion (1994) -- this latest feature-length narrative is meant to poke fun at the conventions and hang-ups of prudish mainstream cinematic society. The underlying story is about two struggling underground artists: Miles, an African American filmmaker trying to get his first feature off the ground, and Roxxi, a lead singer trying to get her band to make a comeback. The two worlds intertwine, but just barely. The duo mostly exist in the same universe of ambition and mixed up priorities where they have to come to some sort of peace with themselves even if they can't be world-famous. "It shows how dreams are hard to follow and really fragile at the same time," says Moritsugu.

Although that plot synopsis sounds so sincere -- so not underground -- Scumrock is hardly an after-school special. That would be completely out of character for this 37-year-old Brown University graduate, whose work is often compared to that of George and Mike Kuchar, John Waters, and Gregg Araki, and whose thesis film, Der Elvis, was named one of the 50 best films of the '80s by the Village Voice. But Moritsugu prefers to see his whacked-out visions in a slightly different light. "I see all of those filmmakers as influences on my work," he says, "but I think my stuff is a little more like [Andy] Warhol, and it also has roots in the French New Wave of the late '50s and early '60s, which I studied when I was in film school [at Brown University]. But my biggest influence has been music. I was into music way before filmmaking."

To this end, Moritsugu has spent a lot of time working on the soundtrack of the film, especially to create the sound of Roxxi's band. For the main score, he relied on his father-in-law, the retired jazz musician Mel Davis. And for the sound to match the corroded imagery, he went to Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, a San Francisco band that creates music with old Casio keyboards picked up at flea markets.

"The way rock is represented in the mainstream is awful. Josie and the Pussycats is a terrible movie. People are offended when they see that movie," says Moritsugu. The ultimate goal of the music and imagery created for Scumrock, he says, was to "do a realistic slice-of-life thing," but in his hands it's a life ensconced in the subculture of the surreal.

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Film / Video > Film / Video | Asian Themes | History | California | 2001