Hey–What Am I Doing Up on That Screen?
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The 45-minute piece was conceived by Joe Carducci, whose relationship with Brewer and Watt dates back to the mid-80s, when he worked at the label they recorded for, SST. For most of the 90s Carducci has run Provisional, his own film and video distribution company, which released most of Sikora’s work. Sikora met both Carducci, who lived in Chicago from 1986 to 1996, and Brewer here in 1992, when the latter visited the former and played a few impromptu gigs with the local band Repulse Kava. In 1996 Carducci and Sikora went in on a digital video camera and decided to shoot My Char-Broiled Burger With Brewer to break it in. In a takeoff on My Dinner With Andre, Brewer and Watt, playing characters based on themselves, engage in a quasi-philosophical conversation about the meaning of their punk-rock days. Watt often has to pry responses from Brewer, whose behavior ranges from excruciatingly awkward to mildly indifferent–when he’s not mumbling, he’s nervously stuttering.
After the first shoot, Sikora sent some of the rough footage to Brewer, who was not pleased with the results. He says he told Sikora as much, but Watt persuaded him to come back and do some more. “They had this idea to do this movie so I went along with it,” says Brewer. “It didn’t work. The guy has made some really good movies, so I don’t know why he would want to show this thing. For me it’s really embarrassing. It’s just some people speaking philosophically with nothing to say. I thought what would’ve helped it was to use some running commentary, like Beavis and Butt-head, to counter the pretentiousness of it. I’m not as stupid as I appear to be in the movie. I don’t think I’m a person that expresses himself well verbally, which is probably why I write poetry and lyrics.”
My Char-Broiled Burger With Brewer will be screened Tuesday at 5 PM at the Fine Arts Theatres, on a program with Jeff Economy and Darren Hacker’s hour-long video documentary about tribute bands, An Incredible Simulation.
