Why You Won't See a Listing for Foxy Brown at the Dark Room in the SF Weekly Print Edition

The Dark Room Theater is awesome.

However, while doing our Arthouse film showtimes listings for the print version of SF Weekly, we noticed the tiny theater's "Bad Movie Night" series was in Blaxsploitation Month, which includes Shaft and Foxy Brown. Shaft we could handle, barely, but when it came time to write "Bad Movie" and Foxy Brown in the same database entry formbot, it wasn't gonna happen. We've been at these listings since Bad Movie Night started, in 2005 and we've never given a crap what they've screened before. We have gone to it many times, yelled insults at the screen along with the hosts (who call it "Mystery Science Theater 3000 live") and died laughing.

The series has a slight history of misunderstanding us in nearly insignificant ways: The organizers still think that we joined in with the self-appointed defenders of filmic art who complained to them about including It's a Wonderful Life. We did no such thing since It's a Wonderful Life is corn, right off the cob, and deserves to be grilled once in a while; we enjoy laughing at it as well as crying with it.

But if loving Foxy Brown unironically and uncritically is wrong, we don't wanna be right. Pam Grier is a superhero for practically anyone who's never had one! The awesomeness -- shit, the fashion alone -- completely outweighs the off-kilter filmmaking, etc. etc. Obviously, you should go see it and decide for yourself.

Upshot: You won't see Foxy Brown listed in the Weekly under the heading of "Bad Movie Night." Ha ha ha ha! But you will be able to see it at the Dark Room April 10 at 8.

In the introduction to Unthology 1, the editors offer the following comments:

'Constraining the short story to a one or two thousand word limit…often produces what seem like protracted poems, all glittery surface but with no room to manifest a greater sense of significance or surprise. The longer story, the story unafraid to chase a few clouds, to play with chronology and form, the story that might have some semblance of plot-drive risks dying of neglect.'

While I personally disagree that reduced length is necessarily a hindrance to telling a good story (consider Ernest Hemingway's economical and oft-cited 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn'), I think it is fair to say that Unthology 1 largely achieves what it sets out to do in terms of 'showcasing unconventional, unpredictable and experimental stories' and 'inject[ing] fresh venom into the shorter form'.

Indeed, the 17 pieces in the anthology present strikingly different narratives, albeit with varying degrees of success. A case in point is Tessa West's 'Parallax', where the recurrent definitions of photographic terminology provide an effective counterpoint to the main story about a relationship teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Ending with the definition of parallax ('the difference between what the viewfinder sees and what the camera records, especially at close distances') is a brilliant touch, but unfortunately one that has already been somewhat undermined by the too-obvious snatch of dialogue a few lines before:

"'It's important for us. It means something. I want you to see what's happened.'"

More problematic (but for far more prosaic reasons) is Sherilyn Connelly's 'The Last Dog and Pony Show'. Here is a narrative that sensitively reveals how even 'in the midst of the kinkiest of the kinky', one can still be 'an alien':

'i am alone. there is only me. i am here without her, just as i would be if she sat back down next to me.'

The subject matter is definitely intriguing, and animal role play is described here with a refreshing directness, but the 10-page account is sadly marred by typographical errors, consisting of repeated words and misplaced letters. The typographical issues do crop up occasionally elsewhere in the anthology, and the odd slip is certainly understandable, but an average that works out to one per page is surely too much for a single story.

On the other hand, there are many other points at which Unthology 1 rises to a level that has earned my profound respect. Michael Baker's narrator in 'Bleach' manages to come across as both deeply unhinged and sympathetic, a tough effect to pull off. James Carter's 'Herringbone', unlike many of the other stories, is unconcerned with human relationships, devoting itself instead to an extended meditation on the titular object/pattern that culminates in a stinging twist that really deserves not to be spoiled here. With 'Waiting Room', Martin Pond conjures up a near-futuristic world in which a boy is about to take a test, except no one will tell him what it is about, which has disastrous consequences for him.

The two novel extracts on offer also make for arresting reading. Viccy Adams's extract from Doing it by the Book is a disquieting, Kafkaesque exploration of a man steadily losing his identity, although the 'why' is presumably addressed elsewhere in the full novel. Sarah Dobbs's extract from The Lemonade Girl also ends on a mysterious note that left me wanting to read more, precisely because of how she had built up her protagonist in the preceding pages, this writer-professor with an enviable life who is now fighting his longing for an ex-girlfriend that seems tied to a sinister event in his past.

My highest praise, however, is reserved for editor Ashley Stokes's 'A Short Story About a Short Film', which is exactly what its title says it is. The story that unfolds is told via footnotes to a screenplay of a short film Kaliningrad, recounting the circumstances of its conception and filming. The method recalls Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, or more recently, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, and the technique is put to interesting effect here because the reader learns a lot about the character of Lloyd Fernery from what he says and how he says it. His obsession with the faithless and fickle Lucile Delph is both amusing and menacing in its intensity, particularly since the footnotes are explicitly directed at Lucile, as if she were watching the film. I can think of no better compliment to pay Stokes than to say that after I finished the story, I went and bought his first novel, Touching the Starfish, also available from Unthank Books.

It would be impracticable for me to discuss all 17 of the stories in Unthology 1, but as far as fulfilling its self-declared aims goes, I would say that Unthank Books has generally succeeded with this anthology. The stories are 'unconventional, unpredictable and experimental', and the overall effect 'hard-hitting, hilarious and entertaining'. As an avenue for showcasing the short story form, which I agree with the editors tends to fall into the cracks between the markets for novels and poetry, I genuinely hope that the publisher continues putting out more volumes in this series. Given the judgement they have shown in assembling this one, the next anthology should prove an interesting read.