Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure

Imagine, if you will, a couple of cartoonist Harvey Pikars living in the next apartment in 1987 San Fran; only these two aren't savage cartoonists and don't have Harvey's wit or wide-ranging interest in humanity. They're just a couple of aging men, roommates, one gay one straight.

Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure is the strangest documentary you'll see this year or almost any because nothing really happens except that filmmakers Mitchell D and Eddie Lee Sausage tape their two old neighbors, who, when drunk, verbally abuse each with the same repetitive expletives, the most memorable being Ray's, which is the first part of the film's title.

Two elements of the experience are worth noting: a viral fame came by way of a world-wide network of lending tape organizations (remember, no You-Tube or Internet), and talk of litigation about privacy rights appears and then vanishes.

These two topics could have been the heft needed to counterbalance the repetition of Ray and Pete's rants, which are strangely uninteresting except for our voyeuristic interest in loser humanity and the sheer banality of their lives, perhaps reminding viewers of their basest moments of stupidity and anger against a loved-one.

The doc is peopled by geeks who spend a large part of their lives pursuing these tapes as if they were the private conversations of Charlie Sheen. Wait! That's the answer: We love the salacious, degraded moments of someone else's life because we feel superior or we need to know that others have the same weird moments we do. I must admit to a fascination with the rhythmic patterns of their language, poetry from the tenement but not T.S. Eliot.

Its lowness mystifies me, an art house fan, and yet attracts me, as a winsome prostitute might. I know she's not part of my life, but for some reason I'm compelled to invite her in.

From director Mathew Bate comes the stunningly well put-together documentary "Shut up, Little Man: An Audio Misadventure." It tells the complete story behind the infamous audio tapes that have been circulating around the globe for around 20 years. For those unfamiliar, the tapes are real-life recordings done by two college graduates of their drunken, next-door neighbor's violent, profane and often hilarious verbal (and occasionally physical, as is implied) brawls. They were essentially a viral sensation long before the age of the internet took over, and circulated throughout the US. (and eventually the globe)

This documentary, as mentioned in the subject line, feels like two different documentaries on a common subject, "smooshed" together. The first half of the film follows the two guys, who in the late 80's made the initial recordings and helped facilitate their distribution. It follows their stories, and how the audio grew beyond expectations, spawning everything from comics, to small plays and even eventually a film.

The second half of the film is a more comprehensive look at the two main subjects of the audio- Ray and Eddie, a homophobic violent drunk, and his gay and equally as drunk roommate. It pieces together their story and we are eventually able to learn more and more about them, and their relationship as friends/roommates/enemies.

The film is presented in a very interesting way, and the method by which the production team chooses to develop the subjects is fascinating and very cool. Lots of cool visuals, stock footage set to the audio, and other visual tricks give the documentary a level of eye-candy, and there is rampant humor throughout. If you've seen the fabulous documentary "Winnebago Man", you will know the sort of thing to expect, because the latter half of the film is in much the same vein.

It's also interesting seeing "Eddie Lee Sausage" and "Mitchell D", the two men who made the recordings, and how their lives have been affected by it, both for the better and for the worse. Some scenes focusing on the morality and exploitive nature of the audio and the "art" it inspired are exceedingly though-provoking.

That being said, the film does get a little lost at times. Some scenes focusing on "fans" of the audio feel out of place and don't add much to the story, there is some redundancy in how the film keeps coming back to the same themes over and over again (but not in a clean, poetic way, but in a forced, contrived way), and it does drag at times.

However, that being said, it's still a fundamentally solid and extremely fun documentary, and I'd highly recommend it. I give it an 8 out of 10.

The story of Raymond and Peter, mean drunks and awful roommates whose constant shouting matches - committed to tape by frustrated neighbors - made them an unwitting, unsuspecting pair of underground celebrities. Like the thematically-similar Winnebago Man, the quest to learn more about these clueless cult legends is much more rewarding than what's actually at the end of the trail. While the focus hovers on revisiting the tapes, hearing the men who recorded them reminisce about the glory days, and watching dozens of talking heads throw on a headset and burst into genuine fits of laughter, it's a light, cheery smile a minute. Later, when the inherent humor of the material begins to run out, the whole picture begins to look downright pathetic. Hearing about the legal struggles that surrounded the story's film rights, witnessing the self-important ruminations of the guys who held the mic, seeing how confused and flabbergasted Peter was about the phenomenon, captured on film years later... these actually take away from what made the tapes so enjoyable in the first place. As a momentary distraction, an escape from the mundane to voyeuristically laugh at the worst state of the human condition, the tapes are in their element and at their best. This level of over-inspection only rubs away the veneer and many of the laughs.

I tried as hard as I could not to laugh at the recordings of two drunks hurling abuse at each other. It was impossible, my moral code failed beneath the sheer brilliant beauty of the dialogue that takes place. Some of the lines from Peter and Ray are pure comedy gold, I wish I could remember as many of them as possible.

The film itself is very well made, weaving together exciting visual eleemnts to accompany the auditory subject matter. There is a distinct nod to Erroll Morris in the Interrotron, to-camera style of interviews as well as the re-ennactment of the scenes taking place inside the Pepto-Bismol Palace.

This film is a riot, great for fans of the tapes and those who know nothing. Highly recommend.

It may actually be a plus that the director takes no moral viewpoint about the material, but it is disturbing that no one really sees the ugly moral, if not legal, ramifications of the exploitation of the two drunks. Yes, it is difficult not to laugh at any colorful alcoholic, as comedians have alway known, and the recent suppression of such humor may only add the laughs we are indulging in when we hear these two.

The pranksters, of course, went way past that and harassed them with prank calls, still, it could have been viewed as edgy, if caustic, humor. Those who went crazy for this stuff, however, are the type of people who kick a cripple, and watching the attempts to turn this fad into a big Hollywood payoff is car wreck time, you want to look away but you can't.

It's funny that the identity of the big name comic who wanted to do the movie is protected, the two losers are granted no such compassion or dignity. Indeed, the director displays no real interest in them other than as push pin dolls for comic derision. Who were they, really, and how did they get to such a desperate state of life? To ask these questions might have spoiled the fun of deriding them.