Boys to men

A big Dick, a Thumbsucker, and Violence in Bush's America.

By Johnny Ray Huston

DICK CHENEY, the constipated creep with the bad porno moniker, looks down at the teeming masses at the Republican National Convention in New York City and speaks with the voice of Al Pacino in Scarface: "This town is a great big pussy just waiting to get fucked." Cue roaring crowd. Replete with slightly tweaked Fox News graphics, SF-based Bryan Boyce's short film America's Biggest Dick is a crude stroke of genius – the visual equivalent of Gary Indiana's hilariously vicious RNC play-by-play in the recently published Schwarzenegger Syndrome, the rough, oddball highlight (along with Nagi Noda's poodle-rific you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it Ex-Fat Girl, a workout parody that makes "fitness celebrity" John Basedow look normal) of this year's ad-slick ResFest, and the type of obvious culture-jamming we definitely aren't seeing enough of these days. If anything, Boyce's movie gifts BushCo with a charisma it doesn't deserve. "In this country, you gotta getta the money first," the twisted mouth of Cheney declares, shortly after horrifying onlookers with an impromptu clit-licking demonstration. "Then when you getta the money, you getta the power. Then when you getta the power, you getta more money."

Peel away an all-American facade, and you'll find a murderous gangster underneath: The same message that waves like a vulgar, pixilated flag – or a "Cheney Rocks!" poster placard – in Boyce's short lurks a bit more subtly through David Cronenberg's feature-length A History of Violence. The doc-like title of Cronenberg's latest (adapting a graphic novel of the same name) is par for a director whose vision has always been coolly antiseptic, and the first "big word" in its title is anathema to contemporary amnesia. Nonetheless, this lean and mean family tale has definite mainstream cross over appeal; Cronenberg's version of national allegory trumps Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, not least because it favors genre (Out of the Past, anyone?) and archetypes over bogus realism. From the Lynch-like diner small talk about coffee and pie to the foreboding, shiny black car slowly creeping into sun-bathed golden settings, Americana fits the Canadian auteur like a surgical glove. The result is his best movie since Dead Ringers.

The symbolic obviousness of names like Dick Cheney and Dick Armey – too fantastically awful for fiction – scream out the theme of ever-roiling US masculinity that's the true source of Cronenberg's gore, and as usual, he never flinches from showing bullet-ridden and bloody bodies spasming like bugs sprayed with pesticide. In comparison to the big Dicks, the name of History's protagonist, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), seems muted. There's a reason why Tom's name is so plain, so benign, though he's loathe to reveal it to wife Edie (Maria Bello), son Jack (Ashton Holmes), and daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). A friend of mine pointed out that the latter is a clone of E.T.-era Drew Barrymore, just one of a few Spielberg subversions – check out Edie and Tom's first initials, carved into the rustic decor – at play.

Cronenberg's peak works showcase a rare symbiosis between director and actors. Bello fits a certain female type – tough with a trace of remaining girlishness – that he tends to confront with the duplicity of male split-personality, and the plot puts her through a variant of Genevieve Bujold's ghastly discovery that she's been two-timing in Dead Ringers. Edie's reaction is fiercer, though; she switches from wife to attorney and back again in a sequence that exploits the power-struggle capabilities of a stairway with a brute impact that Nicholas Ray would admire. Mortensen's Mt. Rushmore of a face is the film's riddle, allowing a pair of wonderfully outsized Mafia turns by a sarcastic Ed Harris and a hilarious William Hurt to effectively steal scenes, if not lives. The secret star might be Cronenberg's longtime musical collaborator Howard Shore, who initially bathes the Stalls in John Williams-like woodwinds that are too sweet, too heartwarming, too good to be true. But when creamy-faced teenage Jack beats the shit out of a mulleted bully, is Shore's score inspirational, or infused with dread? Either way, the sins of the father are passed along to the son – with a tearful embrace, of course.

A History of Violence's rough rites of initiation serve as a master narrative in comparison to the more "sensitive" masculine coming-of-age quandaries found in Mike Mills's Thumbsucker, a likable, pointedly critical American snapshot that nonetheless illustrates the current – somewhat immature?  0; US indie tendency to cling to liberal milieus rather than infiltrate conservative ones. (Ah, for the likes of Todd Haynes's Safe.) Given Mills's fondness for silly slogan T-shirts, black-hair-by-Clairol teen sirens, and off-kilter characters – Keanu Reeves's New Age dentist is a genius stroke of cameo star-casting – he has a kinship of sorts with Miranda July. He isn't quite as prone to turn eccentrics into human security blankets, though. Or perhaps it's just the hard edges an experienced actor like Tilda Swinton brings to a part – mom who gets job at rehab clinic to cure famous crush – that would be cutesy in lesser hands.

There's something potentially radical about a thumbsucking main man, though Mills never really investigates the psychosexual aspects of the first addiction favored by ADHD high-schooler Justin (Leo Pucci) beyond father-substitute Reeves's assertion that he's found a replacement for Mom's breast. (A hotel sequence that brought out the homoerotic undercurrents of Justin's rela ti onship with a teacher, played by Vince Vaughan, has been trimmed, though a certain tension remains.) Television and psychopharmaceuticals are the two main targets Mills takes aim at from a postrecovery vantage point. Thankfully, he's too irreverent to be righteous, letting wisecracks (Ritalin is "three molecules removed from cocaine") and Justin's debate-club travels prove his po ints.

Justin's emasculated, failed-jock dad (Vincent D'Onofrio) works at a sporting goods store. A History of Violence's Jack realizes something's wrong with the Norman Rockwell-perfect picture he calls his life when he looks up from his Honey Bunches of Oats to find Mom greeting Dad at the door with a cocked shotgun. Such are the perils of Caucasian boy-to-manhood in American movieland these days. This is undeniably a time when the big Dick gets the last word, even if – or especially because – the movie he's in is the smallest. "You know what capitalism is?" Cheney asks at the start of America's Biggest Dick's credit sequence. "Getting fucked." Once Lynne Cheney begins speaking with the voice of Michelle Pfeiffer, you can bet it's an afterthought.

'A History of Violence' opens Fri/23 at the Metreon, 101 Fourth St., SF. 1-800-FANDANGO. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for showtimes.

'Resfest 2005' takes place Sept. 21-25. Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon St., SF (America's Biggest Dick screens Sun/25, 6 p.m. as part of the "Cut and Paste" program. $10-$15. For tickets or more information, call (866) 468-3399 or go to www.resfest.com.

'Thumbsucker' opens Fri/23 at Embarcadro Center Cinema, One Embarcadero, Promenade level, SF. (415) 267-4893. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for showtimes.