Art vs. Trash

“Why is it called Grindhouse?” The question came from the back of the room during a panel discussion at Austin’s SXSW Film Festival last month. Robert Rodriguez peaked out from behind his Mexican fedora and didn’t hesitate. “Grindhouse confused people at first,” he replied. “They thought, ‘Well, it’s a horror movie called Grindhouse, so there must be a house where they grind people up.’ It’s called that because of grindhouse cinemas. They were called that—I think that the reference was that they would show double or triple features that were just grinded together.”

Rodriguez—who collaborated with noted cinephile Quentin Tarantino to create a retro double bill—nailed the salient answer, minus the gritty details. The micro-budgeted productions of grindhouse yore didn’t have the strength of affluent distribution companies to bring them wide audiences, partly explaining why they ended up in places like the trashy theaters sprinkled throughout Times Square. There they were ground together with pornography and primarily watched by lewd characters in search of dark rooms to indulge their hedonism. If the recent box office disappointment of Grindhouse itself recalls the miniscule awareness of original grindhouse movies, then the movie has managed a brilliant bout of performance art. It helps define the B-movie appeal: Devout audiences are willing to sit through anything thrown their way, as long as it gives them a good time. The people who choose to see Grindhouse—and stick around—prove their dedication. In that sense, grindhouse refers to a state of mind—sort of like New York, where the theaters left an indelible imprint on the Deuce.

Given their underground prominence in the gritty land of ’70s-era Manhattan, it’s an unfortunate byproduct of misunderstanding that prevented any real discourse between the exploitation scene and a thriving group of independent experimental filmmakers taking shape in the Downtown area. In the preface to Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square, coauthor Bill Landis recalls a time when Anthology Film Archives founder Jonas Mekas scolded him for leaving a grassroots publication centered on exploitation movies in the lobby of Mekas’ theater. Granted, a guy like Mekas might not want to deal with anything titled Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, since the video diarist spent the early years of World War II producing anti-Nazi fliers while hiding out in Lithuania. But the incongruity of two anti-populist movements within an insular film culture is a curious situation that undoubtedly contributed to the further marginalization of grindhouse movies.

“Mekas was the ultimate art snob,” Landis said via email. “He resents seeing anything fresh or for the fun of it. He would have people waiting for hours in line to see [the Andy Warhol opus] Chelsea Girls, whereas I would get a print from Ondine and pack Club 57 for a good time to be had by all.”

Now Club 57 is long gone—as are the Times Square grindhouses, which all became victims of the city’s transition into a safer, more luxurious environment. But even if New York’s urban evolution killed the miniscule commercial viability of grindhouse cinema, the early disinterest from established curators may have contributed to its demise. “For Mekas, it was worth taking an obscenity bust for publicity for Flaming Creatures,” said Landis, referring to the subversive Jack Smith production that got Mekas arrested after a screening. “But would he do the same for The Devil in Miss Jones, or a pioneering gay movie like L.A. Plays Itself? I think not.”

But Mekas, whose decades of hard work helped kickstart endless careers and continues to this day, is hardly aware of such disappointment. “I am not sure that I remember this Landis guy,” said Mekas, now 84. “I don’t even know what you mean by grindhouse cinema.” It’s no surprise that the movies fell below his radar. The eccentric rarities screened in grindhouses, which daringly fixated on visceral shocks and audience enthusiasm, epitomized a dying counterculture that began to shrink significantly in the mid-’80s. When B-movies got bigger budgets, much of the Hollywood product resembled grindhouse movies with all their bold, brash liveliness sucked out of the frame. In essence, the soul was gone.  

And that, more than profit, is the tragedy Grindhouse seeks to rectify. The intently un-Hollywood path created by Tarantino and Rodriguez practically demands a niche audience. The movie is less grindhouse cinema in its true sense than it is a guidebook to the homage-based technique that Tarantino and Rodriguez intend to perfect. Easier said than done: When Rodriguez and Tarantino released their own deeply contextualized double feature last weekend through the Weinstein Company, it’s possible that some people still mistook it for the aforementioned single bill of horror. Or they didn’t feel like sitting through three hours of pus-popping zombies, heavily stylized car crashes and an overabundance of fake trailers filled with heaps of guns, gore and more than a little bit of nudity. And some people just stayed home on Easter.

Whatever the reason, the opening box office numbers for Grindhouse made the industry frown. The $11.6 million that the lengthy movie grossed between Friday and Sunday didn’t cover anywhere near the production costs. That doesn’t bode well for the rest of its theatrical life. Considering that the easiest way to fit such an uncommon release into the studio dynamic is to call it a horror movie, opening weekend gross is key.

If some people still don’t comprehend what inspires the filmmakers’ passion for esoteric projects, that may be part of their point. Grindhouse harkens back to movies that weren’t popular on a mainstream scale, so its minor audience almost seems appropriate.

Not that the creative forces involved give a damn about the box office. “That’s not something that we normally talk about,” explained Zoe Bell during a Saturday morning phone conversation, while the numbers trickled in. The veteran stuntwoman left such an impression on Tarantino for her work on Kill Bill that he gave her a role playing herself in Death Proof. “I was just hearing really positive feedback,” Bell said. “The movie was shaking people up and making them think about what movies used to feel like.” Freddy Rodriguez, who plays the machismo slaughterer of the undead in Planet Terror, agrees. “All those guys want to do when they put a film out is try something different,” he said. Obviously, Tarantino validates the theory. “First of all, the movies—Planet Terror and Death Proof—have to work,” the director explained a week before the national opening of Grindhouse. “But we put them together with these trailers to create this whole experience you would get that would be like a night out at the movies at a grindhouse in the ’70s. Add to that the audience participation that we want to happen: Whether you’re going ‘Ooh! Ahh!’ at the terror, or the grossness, or the explosions or the special effects … that’s a communal experience that we want people to have.” Compared to other acclaimed directors, Tarantino’s career has been light on moviemaking and heavy on moviegoing. He hosts an annual QT Fest in Austin filled with obscure titles from his personal collection and lugs around a full head of familiarity with film history that allows him to practically double as an academic. Rodriguez has been more prolific, but operates equally free of commercial pressures. As an artist, he’s something of a one-man band, typically shooting, editing and composing music for his projects, a tradition maintained with Planet Terror.

“Their love of moviemaking makes people gravitate toward them,” said Danny Trejo, who stars as the hero of the movie’s first blood-soaked trailer, Machete. “If Rodriguez and Tarantino are having a conversation, and you get in between, you will get electrocuted,” Bell concurred. “Quentin has this energy when he’s thinking that’s obvious and contagious,” she said. “Robert can be kind of quiet and insulated, but when you get them together, it’s pretty intense to listen to them.”

Both men demonstrate a unique ambivalence toward the business side of mainstream filmmaking, which explains why nobody seemed to pay much attention to their reactions when Grindhouse tracked out to fourth place behind forgettable family fare. It’s possible that they just wanted to see some good, old-fashioned genre movies. “There are a lot of directors, ourselves included, who are trying to recapture the fun of what made people excited about cinema in the first place,” said Edgar Wright, the director of the successful genre-knock-offs Shaun of the Dead and the soon-to-be-released Hot Fuzz. He also created Grindhouse’s most innovative fake trailer, Don’t. “In this day and age, so much that comes out is shitty, mediocre stuff,” added Wright. “DVDs are killing [theatrical exhibition]. Quentin is doing his best to stop that from happening.” One viewer at a time, of course.