Behind the Mask (2006)

[We are continuing to publish the film reviews of Graveyard Frank Trautman as we find them. The following, written on the back of a diner menu in Wichita, was found and sent in by one our intrepid readers who wishes to remain anonymous. Given the clues therein, we expect it was written sometime in July. Thanks for you patience, the editors.]

Frank is slumped behind the wheel gasping at the air conditioner. Its 117 with the heat index. His job? Its terrible and rotten today and this is all he has. He has been riding fences in Kansas for months now, by which he means endless miles of prairie archaeological inventory and survey; he has been directing. It was a chance at a good job for once. Actually it’s a great job, aside from being on the road a lot. It’s too bad Sugarloaf Jones, his former gal could not respect that. While the cat’s away… as the old cliché goes.

Anyway Frank now detours slightly for McPherson, Kansas to check out two roadside attractions he doesn’t want to miss. The first is the old MGM Lion, or what’s left of him anyhow. The skin of Leo is on the third floor of the McPherson Museum in a glass case in the African room. This lion is the first MGM lion from the silent-movie-era. His roaring protégée from talkies is buried in New Jersey. Leo the rug was bought around 1922 by a McPherson banker and found his way into the museum.

The second McPherson icon he’s determined to find galls him somehow, though he had hoped sight of the giant chimney sweep that he’s heard tale of will give him at least a laugh. It doesn’t.

The Happy Sweep, as he is known, is just off the side of I-135 between Wichita and McPherson Kansas. If you’ve ever eaten at one of the few Happy Chef diners dotting the Midwest, you’d recognize him, almost. Happy Chef is based in Mankato, Minnesota and known for serving breakfast all day. The first Happy Chef Restaurant opened in 1963 and still operates today. Originally all Happy Chefs had a big statue of a smiling man in a chef hat holding a spoon. These roadside icons were about 40-ft tall and would play recorded audio messages when a button was pushed. The Happy Chef told 22 jokes or dispensed 1950's style Midwestern wisdom when you pressed a button. Unfortunately, the chain has retired the Happy Chef statues. Today, only the original Mankato location still has its Happy Chef statue.

It’s sad that as a culture we’ve out-grown the wise and good natured Happy Chef. Frank has a job to do. Sugar has random guys to fuck. The country has pre-emptive wars to fight and pop stars to idolize. There’s no room for ole H. C.’s brand of folksy wisdom. [Okay, okay, Frank has no idea what this wisdom was, and promises to look into it.]

The Happy Sweep used to be one of these large bakers poised in front of a Happy Chef in McPherson or Manhattan, Kansas. When the place closed a couple of years ago he was bought by an entrepreneur and renovated. His wooden spoon was refashioned into a broom and his chef’s hat replaced by a top hat. His body repainted into a tux. They also added a whole lot of Christmas lights so you can see the old boy at night. The Happy Sweep was born.

To Frank, standing in the wet grass on the side of the highway while Angry Jamie snaps a few photos, the Happy Sweep’s big fiberglass smile bugs him. Frank guesses he’s smiling because he’s found a new job. Fired from his restaurant, he is now reborn. A new career in the lucrative fireplace maintenance industry. Frank, also alone too in that field, has a new job too…

…but at least that fat cold dead bastard smiles. Frank doesn’t.

He is cut and bruised by miles of barbed wire fences not to mention the poison ivy, ticks, mosquitoes and horseflies, coyotes and angry badgers. And if you’re out there Barry, you won’t smile much longer either, you’ve got yourself an unfaithful girl there.

It seems his darling Sugarloaf was fucking around on him while he toiled out in the Midwest dodging flash floods and tornados in order to make a living. That hurt. He can’t smile, good job or no. She was throwing up obstacles like a girl half her age because at 39 she was still afraid at being in a good relationship. She fucks around to prove she doesn’t need anyone in her life, yet can’t resist ensnaring the weak Frank who just wants to be loved. Seven months on her wasted.

She proclaims tears and despair and love to Frank when she breaks it off. Frank had spent a weekend traveling back to Atlanta, but it’s not true. Frank doesn’t believe in love that is told in terms of convenience. To her, out of sight, out of mind. The first time she needs him to shoo some punk kids from her stoop, a new man finds his way to her bed. If she loved him she would love him. Better to have loved and lost?

Green eyes, the lousy Coldplay (A Rush of Blood to the Head 2002) song she played for him drones on the radio and he tells Jamie to switch it off.

And oh! The pimps from Behind the Mask, The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Glosserman 2006) have been bugging Frank’s Myspace page. It is a DVD now. The first 10 min are Okay. It’s kinda funny to see a “supernatural killer" as the kind of douche bag that Sugarloaf’s with now. After that its just Scream (Craven 1996) meets Man Bites Dog (Belvaux et al 1992) with out apology. It sucks.

But that giant chimney sweep, out alone in his field. At least that fat cold dead bastard smiles!

Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies (1994)/ Moulin Rouge! (2001).

[Note: Frank Trautman was last seen in his ’73 Impala, hurtling down Rte 66 in the vicinity of Joplin, MO., some time last whenever, a quarter past forever, on a day ending in a Y. This blog entry is reproduced, as is, from his journals. In the coming months, we will continue to publish his notes where possible. Should the worst have happened, he is known to be survived by a pair of size 13 Frye’s left under the bed of his former love, Sugarloaf Jones. For now, Thanks for all the good wishes from his fans. Now that he’s on the road constantly, Graveyard Frank is sincerely missed. Thanks. D. Franz, Editor, Rocks and Bones Productions.]

Frank has had to learn to drive with two arms and two lips free. He misses co-pilot Sugarloaf Jones, kissing her on the straight-aways and squeezing her on the curves. (That’s not as dirty as it sounds!) More than once Frank has unconsciously caught himself about to grope the unsuspecting traveler in the passenger’s seat. Angry Jamie is an amiable enough chap, but it isn’t the same.

To make matters worse, he had caught a stomach virus on their recent side trip to see the world’s largest ball of twine in Cawker City, Kansas, and had spent several days in a motel shivering, feverish and intensely in pain. A bemused Sugar would joke that he had caught the bug kissing Jamie, her errant, temporary replacement. But his lovely brown beauty would also send him out a care package on the road to cheer him up. It contained a stuffed Curious George doll, to replace the rubber chimp on his dashboard that creeped her out, and also a copy of Moulin Rouge! (Luhrmann 2001). Angry Jamie, not to be out done, sent over a bootleg of Hated (Phillips 1994) the documentary on deceased rocker GG Allin and his band, the Murder Junkies .

After three days Frank, clutching the bedspread was finally well enough to slink down to the floor in front of his laptop to eat some saltines and watch a DVD. But which could his ailing stomach handle? A documentary on a punk rocker who eats piss and shit, or a campy musical starring Nicole Kidman? Frank figured he’d better take both in small doses.

Hated is a straight forward documentary in style, though it fails to carry much information or insight on the shocking antics on GG Allin. Moulin Rouge!, on the other hand is a frenetic blur of romance and song. It is easy to see the appeal to Sugarloaf. Also, she tells him, “Ewan MacGregor is the greatest actor of his generation.” Note also “All You Need is Love” by the Beatles (Magical Mystery Tour; 1967) is prominent in both her favorite films, MR! and Love Actually, (Curtis 2003) and her two favorite characters (or 3 counting Frank) are writers.

There are some small irksome bits. What does Nicole Kidman not know about her own TB? Why does she live in Lucy the Elephant from the Jersey Shore? Why does poor Toulouse Lautrec portrayed as a goof with a lisp and not the tragic figure he really was. This sticks in frank’s craw a bit.

And oh, as for the ball of twine, Frank won’t mock, those kids growing up under its immense fibrous shadow have enough to live up to. Go see it yourself. Have a ball, so to speak.

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fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck. Bemoans a newly broken Frank. This blog’s a long time in coming. And millions of unsent postcard and silent prayers are scattered between its start and its end.

For in truth Frank’s GG Allin soul fails to live up to the McGregor’s beautiful innocent writer. The writer Sugarloaf wants to love. The man, Frank, is not singing and dancing here. Halting optimism is crushed under the boots of his failure to be good enough for her. Good, yes. But not good enough.

He’s said it before: no one wants to fight for anything in this damn world. We slam on the brakes at the first pot hole. Turn around. Kisses de-evolve into friendly handshakes. Clocks tick out the moments in the darkest of night and in the morning. The cruel fanged sun scowls on a grey horizon and love is gone, tattered, wasted, ruined and all follows in its wake. The winds, more ill than fair, pick the course again. Boots are buckled as are dreams and souls. A jacket against the outside cold. The inside is icy nonetheless. The hero stumbles one shaky foot in front of the other and is away again. Beasts and demons reign again whipping around his coattails unheeded.

No one had ever chosen to be with Frank before. And Sugarloaf has signed the register as the exception to prove the rule. As the tired clichéd script dictates, she tells him how lovable he is and how she cannot love him. Not in that way, of course. She says he not a loser, just that he hasn’t won. He is everything yet nothing to her.

FUCK Moulin Rouge!