Adventures in Mendocino's swine country and Jerusalem's lone gay bar

By Michael Fox

"Horror films can hold a lot of crazy ideas and political ideas and no one blinks," says author Robert Mailer Anderson, "and that serves our purposes now, coming from a lefty background and the green state of San Francisco." Best known for his novel Boonville, Anderson is the co-writer and producer of Pig Hunt, a funny, grisly, over-the-top frightfest about a group of city pals on a backwoods outing gone wrong. The movie’s crammed with all the usual goodies: motorcycles, lesbians, shotguns, Grade A weed and a 3,000-pound boar with a really bad disposition. We caught up with Anderson by phone in Toronto, where he was completing the final edits and color corrections following the movie’s premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival and also meeting with distributors in town for the festival. "They want to market it as a slasher film, but I think it’s for anyone who ever bought a truck or a six-pack or hunted," Anderson declares. "We’ll get the horror crowd, and they’ll like it, but this is a bigger part of America."

There’s the temptation to look at smart people making genre movies as though they’re slumming, perhaps because so many scary pictures are exploitation flicks devoid of ambition, creativity or craft. In Anderson’s case, he’s tapping into his Mendocino County roots. Pig Hunt begins in San Francisco (where the production shot for three days), and the rest takes place in and outside of Boonville, where he went to high school. "My problem is I side with rednecks more than with the yuppies coming up for their hunting trip," Anderson confesses. That explains why he played a local in the movie (even doing his own stunts), and why, he says, "For me, aside from the 3,000-pound pig, it’s just home movies."

Like a lot of 20th Century American kids, Anderson relates, "I was raised partially at the drive-in. Even though horror may not be my favorite genre, I still remember seeing Peter Fonda in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and Burt Reynolds in White Lightning and the Gator films. He was a king horse drive-in hero for me, and a lot of people in America." If you’re guessing that Anderson and director Jim Isaac (Jason X) might have been under the influence of the ’70s when they shot Pig Hunt, test your hunch and check out the trailer at www.PigHuntMovie.com.

Anderson chose a horror film for his first foray into the movie business as the likeliest way to reach an audience, repay investors and lay the groundwork for his next project. But he couldn’t resist shoehorning some social commentary in amongst the bloodletting.

"It’s there if you look for it but it’s not overt, because there’s nothing worse than to wear your politics on your sleeve and have a political dissertation," Anderson says. "But fairly deftly we deal with race, class, the war in Iraq."

Anderson is well aware, of course, that what ticket buyers really want from Pig Hunt are thrills, chills, mayhem and malarkey. "At the end of the day, it’s just anarchy and a very fun ride. And a joyful ride. A lot of horror films are very mean-spirited and they’re gruesome in a way that’s not fun. It’s a smart film that loves being a movie."

Make mine a double

In 2002, Yun Suh was dispatched to the Middle East to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Pacifica radio. A few months later, with tensions peaking during the second intifada, she heard about a straight bar in the Israeli capital that held a weekly Gay Night. "It was the most diverse gathering in Jerusalem," she recalls. Even Palestinians, who aren’t usually allowed to travel to west Jerusalem and aren’t exactly welcomed once they arrive, were greeted warmly. After that watering hole closed, a gay city councilman filled the void by opening a queer-oriented cabaret and bar. In this peaceful, passionate meshing of Arabs and Jews, Suh would one day find the seeds of a documentary.

It was somewhat unexpected, to say the least, given Suh’s undergrad career as a biology pre-med major at UC Berkeley without any training in film. But back in the States after her war-correspondent gig, working as an assignment editor at KRON-TV, Suh dreamt of making a long-form piece. She took classes at Film Arts Foundation, won a grant, and embarked on Freedom on the Rocks. Suh made six trips to Jerusalem in the last two years, and has a rough cut that she intends to finish in time for the 2009 festival circuit.

A Korean Buddhist who immigrated to the U.S. when she was eight, Suh must have the most unusual story of all the filmmakers who’ve ventured into the morass of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "In South Korea as a child, I lived in constant fear of the North Koreans invading," she explains. "I would always devise places in my house I could hide. I thought North Koreans were devils with horns, and that’s how many Israelis see Palestinians. I also got a firsthand experience of what it was like living under the Occupation. I understand both sides."

Trying to make a documentary halfway around the globe presents obvious hurdles, but Suh turned obstacles to her advantage. "I have, obviously, no Israeli or Palestinian or Jewish or Muslim roots. I don’t speak the language, I’m not of their community. If I was Israeli or Palestinian, they could be wary of me. The fact that I was such an outsider helped me in some ways."

Freedom on the Rocks is inevitably an optimistic film, for the bar (which was also featured in Jerusalem is Proud to Present, a doc in the 2008 S.F. Jewish Film Festival) was an oasis where anybody could come, be themselves and be accepted. But Suh is a pragmatist, and a realist. "It’s not a romantic view, because the film explores the barriers between the groups. I have a gay Israeli, a proud Zionist who’s not willing to give up his house in a settlement. It’s not a model for what peaceful coexistence can look like, but it’s a step in that direction."

Suh’s concern is that people’s eyes glaze over when they hear the phrase "Israeli-Palestinian." So she describes her film as a universal parable that transcends borders. "Every society deals with different beliefs, different groups and how those different belief systems coexist. For me, that’s what the film’s about."

topics: authors, bay area, cult cinema, directors, documentary, film festivals, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, horror

09.17.2008