KIDNEYS ON FILM: PART SIX - CRIMES OF THE FUTURE *UPDATED*

Not to make this about myself (typical only child move), but Crimes Of The Future hits a bit closer to home when you’ve had an organ transplant or suffer from any kind of chronic pain. For those of you that are new here - I had a kidney transplant 15 years ago and it comes up in my writing from time to time. On top of that - my father died from kidney disease (he had a heart attack brought on from complications/side effects of dialysis). So I know a thing or two about organ disease & transplantation. David Cronenberg’s fascination with organs is on full display here. There are a ton of visual self-references in his latest film (which you can see below), but he also reaches back to the early years of his career for thematic similarities…

Within the first 15 minutes of Cronenberg’s latest masterpiece (probably the best thing he’s done since Spider) we hear talk of organ transplants, organ registry and the possibility of new organ growth. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again - I don’t normally like when film critics & movie writers personalize their reviews but when you’re a movie-loving kidney transplant recipient, it’s kind of impossible to not personalize things a bit.
This isn’t even really a “review”. These are just my immediate thoughts. I might come back to this later and write more. But in the meantime I wanted to jot down a few words.

For anyone reading this that wants to know what Crimes Of The Future is about, it’s a mix of everything ranging from pushing the limits of what performance art can be to sustaining the human race with a possible new form of digestion. There’s more to the film but those are the two major plot points that really stood out to me. Just about every Cronenberg movie is layered and about multiple radical topics (David Cronenberg is incredibly intelligent & well-read and much more than the exploding head/body horror guy). Crimes Of The Future is no different. 

Right now I’m just stuck on the focus of organs and the sensory overload of it all. From Viggo Mortensen’s constant grunting in pain to the way Scott Speedman chews & eats. Everything is so heightened… 

Naturally, this film draws some serious visual & thematic comparisons to Sick: The Life and Death Of Bob Flanagan. Cronenberg also drew a lot of inspiration from performance artists Orlan…

I do know ORLAN do you know her? She's a French performance artist who's got horn implants and done a whole lot of things, surgery, public performance of surgery on her own body - David Cronenberg, GQ Magazine

Carnal Art / Crimes Of The Future

Carnal Art / Crimes Of The Future

Sick / Crimes Of The Future

In addition to the dialogue & imagery concerning organs & organ transplantation, the characters in Crimes Of The Future are constantly poked, sliced, jabbed & prodded by all kinds of surgical tools. It will more than likely go unnoticed but Viggo Mortensen gives one of the best physical performances in years simply from his constant grunting & moaning from chronic pain due to all the experimental medical/artistic procedures he goes through. The last few years of my dad’s life were filled with groans & grunts due to constant pain on top of the daily dialysis he had to do. Seeing someone with tubes hooked up to their stomach (something we see quite a bit of in Crimes Of The Future) reminds me of not only my dad’s dialysis, but the semi-regular biopsies I have to endure to make sure my Uncle’s transplanted kidney is still working (at 15 years I’m still considered stable by the way).

Another fascinating element about Crimes Of The Future is that Cronenberg seems to draw from the imagery from almost all of his previous films. This comes a year after Julia Ducournau’s Titane which felt like one big Cronenberg mixtape. 

In 2022, Cronenberg makes his own mixtape of his own greatest hits…

eXistenZ / Crimes Of The Future 

eXistenZ / Crimes Of The Future 

eXistenZ / Crimes Of The Future 

Naked Lunch / Crimes Of The Future 

Shivers / Crimes Of The Future 

Videodrome / Crimes Of The Future 

Videodrome / Crimes Of The Future 

Crash /
Crimes Of The Future 

Videodrome /
Crimes Of The Future

Crash /
Crimes Of The Future

Dead Ringers /
Crimes Of The Future

The Fly /
Crimes Of The Future

Crash /
Crimes Of The Future

Crash /
Crimes Of The Future

Scanners /
Crimes Of The Future

Crimes O The Future (1970) /
Crimes Of The Future

The Fly /
Crimes Of The Future

Dead Ringers / Crimes Of The Future

The Cronenberg self-references are so deep that there are visual similarities/reveals that can be traced to his underseen television work...

Friday The 13: The Series / 
Crimes Of The Future

Other similarities don’t need to be shown visually. The medical tools shown on display in the art museum in Dead Ringers carries over in to Crimes Of Future where we see medical procedures presented as art performances. We also see a very similar “twist” right out of Eastern Promises. The autopsy of the child in Crimes Of The Future is also right out of a moment in The Brood...

Videodrome /
Crimes Of The Future 

The Brood / 
Crimes Of The Future

There are only so many clips and trailers available online but Cronenberg also subconsciously pulls from filmmakers like Carl Theodore Dreyer

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc/ Crimes Of The Future

to Luis Buñuel…

L'Age d'Or / Crimes Of The Future

L'Age d'Or / Crimes Of The Future

And I could be reaching here but Viggo Mortensen’s “Saul Tenser” resembles Cronenberg himself at times…

There’s even some Alien franchise imagery in the film which comes right back to Cronenberg himself…

Prometheus / Crimes Of The Future

Ron Shusett, who’d had a lot of success with Alien, which, I have to say, took a lot of stuff from Shivers. There’s a parasite that lives inside you? Burns its way out? Jumps on your face and goes down your throat? I did all that before Alien and Dan O’Bannon (who wrote Alien) certainly knew my work - David Croenberg, "David Cronenberg: Interviews with Serge Grunberg"

KEVIN GEEKS OUT ABOUT MONKEYS: UNCLE BOONMEE...

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a Thai film set in the jungle which makes it a monkey movie by default (Monkeys & Thai jungles kind of go hand-in-hand). There are monkey's all over this film...

Monkeys even serve as the default soundtrack to this movie. Uncle Boonmee doesn’t have a traditional score or a soundtrack using standard instrumentation. The ambient jungle noises (which feature lots of monkey sounds) serve as the default background music.

Uncle Boonmee also has a coincidental connection to quite a few other monkey-based movies and monkey-based urban legends.

Take the most iconic/memorable shot from the movie. Right away, what are we reminded of when we look at this side/profile shot of a humanoid/monkey looking directly in to the camera?

Bigfoot…

Uncle Boonmee/Big Foot

Now…things don’t have to be identical in order to be a reference. I know Bigfoot doesn’t have red eyes and he was walking through a forest rather than a jungle, but unless you’re a very nitpicky person I think you can see the similarities.


But it doesn’t stop there. Take some more notable images from Uncle Boonmee like this one…

Uncle Boonmee/Princess Mononoke

To me, this is an obvious subconscious nod to Princess Mononoke. I mean – from the way the monkeys are gathered around each other to the obvious red eyes, there’s no way in my mind that director Apichatpong Weerasethakul wasn’t aware of this cartoon. The similarities are too strong.

Uncle Boonmee also has some strong connections to another monkey-heavy film in the form of Jumanji. Here we see characters from both films transitioning to monkeys...

Uncle Boonmee/Jumanji

And this isn’t the first time Apichatpong referenced Jumanji (in reality I’m pretty sure he didn’t really reference Juamnji but in my mind I like to think he did). In his 2005 film Tropical Malady (another Thai film set mostly in a jungle) we witness one of the main characters transition in to an animal...

Tropical Malady/Jumani

And still – it doesn’t stop there. Uncle Boonmee has some visual similarities to Harry & The Hendersons…

Uncle Boonmee/Harry & The Hendersons

As well as the art of Max Ernst…

Uncle Boonmee/Max Ernst 

So even though Uncle Boonmee is the epitome of what a modern art house film is (slow, minimal dialogue, weird, surreal, strange, mildly pretentious, etc), it still branches off and connects to more popular/accessible movies.

It is my personal opinion that Uncle Boonmee is one of the five best movies of the decade so far, but that doesn’t mean I blindly recommend it to any & everyone. Those key words I just used do very much describe this movie (slow, minimal dialogue, surreal, strange, mildly pretentious, etc). But if you have an open mind I do recommend checking it out (after having a cup of coffee and a strong attention span). And perhaps if you think of the subconscious influences & references to more popular films like Juamnji, Max Ernst & Harry & Hendersons, perhaps it will help you enjoy Uncle Boonmee a little more.

King Kong

Now…I picked this movie because I have a strong personal connection to it. I admit that when Kevin first asked me to be on this show I just blindly accepted without having a movie in mind. I just love these shows so much I wanted to be a part of it. But after a day of thinking it over, I realized this was the movie to cover. I don’t really have much of an opinion or attachment to stuff like King Kong or Planet Of The Apes outside of the subconscious racial undertones that both movies have.
If I could just divert for a second and be the black guy to talk about racial stuff for a minute, it doesn’t take too much deep thought to perceive that both movies could be seen as alternative theories about white people’s fear of Black people. The N-word isn’t the only racial slur that people have used to describe Black people over time. Monkey has certainly been used as coded language to describe black people. And when you take a movie like Planet Of The Apes which deals with a group of monkeys taking over the world, or the way black people are depicted in King Kong – it really isn’t too far-fetched to see the possible racist undertones. But that’s a whole other conversation that we don’t need to get in to right now. Sorry if I ruined King Kong or Planet Of The Apes for everyone in the audience right now. I’m certainly not implying that if you like these movies you’re a racist or anything like that. I could totally be clutching at straws with my theories on these films.

Back to the movie at hand…

Uncle Boonmee is about more than just monkeys. A big subplot of this movie deals with the main character dying from Kidney disease which is something both my father & I struggled with (we both had kidney transplants). I mention my father because 5 days before I was supposed to present at the January show about rip-off cinema he passed away from an unexpected heart attack (sorry for bringing the mood down). After I called my family & close friends, Kevin was the next person I called. Obviously out of courtesy I had to call him to let him know that I wouldn’t be able to do the show but it hit me how powerful it is that Kevin was one of the first people I called regarding my father’s passing. So Kevin Geek’s Out will probably always make me think of my dad in some form.

On a lighter note, I will say that my father wanted to come to the January show and he was super excited to see me present (he liked movies quite a bit). So I’d like to dedicate this presentation to my dad. Without him I probably wouldn’t have the obsessive love for cinema that I have today.


I don’t want to leave things on a completely down note so I end this presentation with a hilarious monkey-themed scene that got cut from Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back…

THE WHOLE HISTORY OF MY LIFE PART SIX: UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (THE PINK SMOKE)

Check out the latest (and most personal) installment of the Whole History Of My Life series over at The Pink Smoke where I talk about my father, kidney disease and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (click here or on the image above).

KIDNEYS ON FILM PART FIVE: POUND OF FLESH

Jean Claude Van Damme & Kidney transplantation. Two key elements that make up the fabric that is Marcus Pinn.

Like any young boy that came up in the late 80’s/early 90’s, I grew up on Van Damme’s filmography (Cyborg, Bloodsport, Lionheart, Kickboxer, etc). And as some of you know, I had a kidney transplant back in 2007 (December 18th to be exact), so it’s really special to see one of my childhood heroes tackle kidney disease when so many other films still haven't.
It’s also pretty cool to see that Van Damme is still pulling off new innovative ways to do the splits in all of his movies...

Ever since I started doing the Kidneys On Film Series, friends often ask me whether or not kidney disease/kidney transplantation is accurately portrayed on film, and, with the exception of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, it usually isn’t (I still find it odd that Uncle Boonmee gives such an honest portrayal of kidney disease because the rest of the film is incredibly strange).

one of the few scenes from Uncle Boonmee that shows the tedious dialysis procedure...

I would never expect a straight-to-video action film to be 100% medically accurate in the vein of Human Centipede, but there are a few things that did make me throw my hands up in disbelief and go “Oh c’mon!” while watching this...

In Pound Of Flesh Jean Claude Van Damme plays a kidnap & rescue agent currently in the Philippines to give his niece one of his kidneys. But after a wild night of partying, he wakes up in a bathtub of ice only to discover that one of his kidneys has been stolen. With the help of his estranged brother and an old buddy who happens to live in the area, he now has 10 hours to get the kidney back so he can get it to his niece in time.
Only a few hours after having his kidney ripped from his body, we see Van Damme roaming the streets & kicking ass in an effort to track down his stolen organ. Now...I’m no endocrinologist but I feel like no one, not even Jean Claude Van Damme, would be able to pull off roundhouse kicks & deadly throat punches HOURS after losing a kidney in what was probably a sketchy surgery job to begin with (his kidney is stolen while he’s asleep in his hotel room which can’t be sanitary. You mean to tell me he didn’t get any kind of an infection? Isn’t that why doctors scrub their hands before an operation? I feel like kidney thieves don't wash their hands thoroughly).

On the flipside however, Pound Of Flesh touches on certain technicalities of kidney disease & kidney transplantation that I have yet to see any other movie touch on. Even with all the terrible-looking CGI gun shots, green screens & predictable dialogue, this is the first movie I’ve seen that touches on the fact that transplant recipients have to take medication for the rest of their lives.
Taking anti-rejection medication for life is not that bad. In fact it’s not bad at all. All you have to do is take 20-30 pills daily for life (depending on the dosage). If that honestly sounds like a hassle, imagine plugging your stomach, neck or arm in to a dialysis machine on a regular basis. Any time I hear of a kidney rejecting from a recipients body due to someone not taking their medication I literally have NO sympathy. In fact it pisses me off. Someone gave you an organ in order for you to live and all you had to do is take some pills at various times throughout the day. Sounds like a good deal to me. It blows my mind that some folks can’t even manage that (if you feel like complaining about the ridiculous number co-pays you're stuck with for the rest of your life...then I understand)

Pound Of Flesh also shows that just because you’re a blood relative doesn’t always mean you’re going to be an automatic match. There’s a common belief that an immediate family member can donate a kidney with no problem but that’s not always the case (I received my Kidney from my uncle by law). In the film, Van Damme’s brother isn’t a match for his own daughter (there’s a little bit more as to why that is but I won’t say anymore). 

We even see a list of foods to avoid after a trasnplant (see the image at the beginning of this review). I feel like Pound Of Flesh didn't intend to be this detail oriented in terms of kidney diseas but it just kinda worked out that way (I don't see Van Damne doing organ donor research during pre-production to get in to character).

There's an interesting turn in the final act of the film when Van Damme & company figure that his kidney has probably already been transplanted and they're now going to have to steal it back directly from the mysterious recipient's body. This made me wonder why Van Damme didn't just steal the kidneys of all the various henchmen he killed off earlier on in the movie. They're dead. They don't need their kidneys anymore. The body count by the halfway mark was at least five people. Five cadavers makes the odds a little better for his niece to find a match.
This movie also cuts itself short when it came to the time frame given to retrieve the kidney. Typically, you have somewhere between 20-30 hours to use a (properly stored) kidney once its been removed from a living body instead of the 10 hour window in Pound Of Flesh. Cutting the window in half added more tension to the movie and pushed the story along (Pound Of Flesh, which clocks in at 90-something minutes, takes place over a 36 hour period).

So while on one hand this is a typical “Jean Claude Van Damme kicking ass in southeast Asia” action movie, it still shows some respect to the kidney transplant process, and it does tug at the heart strings a little bit, so I can’t completely dismiss it.

KIDNEYS ON FILM PART FOUR: BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE

For the last few years the most prominent films on the subject of hip-hop culture have focused mainly on Tupac (Resurrection, The Death Row Records documentary, Tupac & Biggie) and/or Notorious B.I.G. (Notorious). And by "Prominent" I mean films that didn't just go straight to DVD but rather got some kind of a run in theaters. What's even worse is that these films focus more on the violence surrounding Biggie & Tupac's deaths rather than their music. Tupac and Biggie are both icons in Hip-Hop (and you have to admit that whether you're a fan or not) but after four films in a few short years all essentially focusing on the same thing...I think it's time to move on. I recognize there are exceptions like The Hip-Hop Project, Scratch (which played at Sundance), Freestyle: The Art Of Rhyme (which gained a lot of popularity through word of mouth and on DVD) but these days, generally speaking, if it isn't a tupac/biggie-related film it doesn’t get much play. Just off of that alone this Tribe Called Quest documentary was necessary. Now, Beats Rhymes & Life wasn’t without its own controversy (the documentary was in a mini-post production hell mostly due to Q-Tip and Michael Rapaport not seeing eye to eye on the final cut), but after the smoke settled we were left with a solid documentary (which was eventually co-signed by three out of the four members) that was long overdue. Furthermore, this documentary serves as an unofficial guide, especially for young African American males and young diabetics, on the subject of health. Beyond the group's history and behind the scenes turmoil, a major part of this documentary focused on Phife Dawg's battle with his diabetes-induced kidney disease and struggle to find a kidney donor. This is something I relate too pretty much 110% as I'm a type-2 diabetic who needed a kidney (and got one courtesy of my Uncle Dennis) because I was careless, stubborn and lived my life as if I didn’t have diabetes. Phife, who at times came off a little whiny in the film, is the epitome of that stubborn relative or friend we all know with diabetes who acts as if they don’t have it because you don’t usually see the effects of diabetes right away like you would other diseases. Diabetes is known as a "slow killer". But slow or not, diabetes can still KILL. Quite a few diabetics put too much emphasis on the “slow” part of that phrase and less on the “killer” part – “I can eat this candy bar or drink this soda. It’s not gonna kill me right away, so whatever.” But the problem is many diabetics (specifically type-2 diabetics like Phife Dawg) think like that too much and too often and end up going overboard. Next thing it’s the loss of your vision, a limb...or a kidney transplant. Just look at everyone from Heavy D (another hip-hop legend like Tribe) to Patrice O’Neal in recent years (both overweight black males). The subplot involving Phife's kidney transplant alone (he eventually got a kidney from his wife) would have made a great film. Let my story, as well as Phife's, be a lesson to you all - Diabetes is nothing to play with. However…had I not gotten kidney disease you all wouldn’t have this great "Kidneys On Film" series so it’s kind of a blessing in disguise, right?

It goes without saying that A Tribe Called Quest deserves to have their story told on the big screen. From Q-Tip's voice, to their iconic red, black & green album covers, to the their conscious lyrics (a term that's gotten a little played out over the years, but whatever...), to their innovation in jazz sampled-based production to their influence on so many artists or being part of one of the biggest/greatest (yet at times distant) hip-hop collectives; "Native Tongues" (de la soul, jungle brothers, black sheep, queen latifah, etc etc) - they're legends. In the last decade or so there have been a few hip-hop-based films like Q-Bert's Wave Twisters or Scratch to play at big festivals like Sundance, New York & Toronto, but those films, which are do serve a purpose, only represent subcultures within a subculture, whereas ATCQ is fairly universal and speaks to a lot more people than strictly DJing & turntablism. Naturally a lot of people initially expected someone like Spike Lee or even John Singleton (Q-Tip has worked with both directors in the past) to direct this documentary but I think Michael Rapaport (in his directorial debut) did a great job. From 'Zebrahead' (a movie that was originally meant for MC Search and also gave Nas a big push early on in his career with the song "Halftime") to working with people like Talib Kweli & Madlib (who did the soundtrack for Beats, Rhymes & Life), Rapaport has always been cool in my book. And on a side note, his performance in Bamboozled is one of the most criminally underrated supporting roles of the last decade. Beats, Rhymes & Life gives you the typical introduction & history of ATCQ intercut with their 2008 reunion for Rock The Bells which was filled with quite a bit of animosity and old feelings between Phife and Q-Tip (the main reason Tribe reunited in 2008 was so Phife could get money from the tour to pay for his kidney transplant and medical bills). For the most part, the right people were interviewed (De La Soul, Questlove, etc) and I was especially happy to see The Jungle Brothers interviewed because as I mentioned earlier, Natives Tongues, although legendary, are quite possibly one of the most distant & disassociated collectives in hip-hop history (this would make for another interesting documentary). I get the feeling that this documentary also shed a lot of light on Q-Tip's role as producer in the group. Up until this documentary many people have expressed to me in conversation (I won’t name names) that they always thought Ali Shaheed Mohammad handled most of the production when in fact it was Q-Tip.
Even if you aren’t the biggest fan of hip-hop this is still a film that can be enjoyed by most film lovers.
In the documentary Rapaport goes over Tribe's discography (with more of an emphasis on The Low End Theory & Midnight Marauders) and kinda grazes over their fourth album (Beats, Rhymes & Life). Besides the fact that’s the name of the documentary, it’s also the groups "cult album". In the summer of '96 when this album was released, it was initially met with mixed reviews and quite a few fans felt the album was just "ok" or disappointing. But over time people warmed up and it was eventually considered a classic like their first three albums. The documentary didn’t really get in to that or the fact that the Beats, Rhymes & Life album pretty much introduced Jaydee/J-Dilla (one of the most influential producers in hip-hop) to the world. But rarely has there ever been a film that’s so personal to me on more multiple levels, so it kinda gets a pass. Putting the diabetes/kidney subplot aside, not only was I born in St. Albans (Tribe's stomping ground) and lived there the first 7 years of my life (right around the corner from the famous St. Albans mural that’s featured heavily in the documentary) but The Low End Theory was literally the first rap album I ever bought as a kid.
Hopefully this documentary will pave the way for other long overdue (respectable) hip-hop documentaries on groups ranging from Wu-Tang to De La Soul.