Dirty deeds

HAIGHT FILM

In the late 1980s, right around the corner from O'Looney's Market in the Lower Haight, dwelled two bitter souls. Immortalized in the cult Shut Up! Little Man recordings, the colorful bons mots uttered during Pete and Ray's frequent spats filtered into the lingo of all who heard them. Of course — while they fully realized their neighbors were taping them — neither Pete nor Ray (both since deceased) could have anticipated that fans as far away as New Zealand would be quoting their death threats in casual conversation: "I can kill you, and I will do it from a sitting-down position!"

The tapes spawned a stage play and then a film, Shut Yer Dirty Little Mouth!, which had its world premiere at the 2002 San Francisco Independent Film Festival and returns Friday, Feb. 24, to the Roxie Film Center (see Rep Clock for showtimes). Director Robert Taicher pretty much shoots the play, confining most of the action to the grungy apartment occupied by Pete (Glenn Shadix, Beetlejuice's fey psychic) and Ray (Gill Gayle, who played the role in both the Los Angeles and New York theater productions). There's a certain sadness at work here — the two men were obviously raging alcoholics, and the film shows precious little sympathy for them. The film also reframes arguments (often re-created verbatim) in a context that includes presumably invented incidents (Pete dances around wearing only a Santa hat; Pete dumps a colander of spaghetti on Ray's head).

While the endless arguing can get tedious, and the blatant we-are-laughing-at-you tone can be skeevy at times, Shut Yer Dirty Little Mouth! does present a unique mash-up of the surreal (the dialogue: so fucked-up no screenwriter could invent it) and the real — as every budget-conscious San Franciscan knows, living next door to some freak show at some point during your rental-housing drift is, in a word, unavoidable. Also, as the sleep-deprived neighbors point out in the original Shut Up! Little Man liner notes, "You have to wonder how much right to privacy a person who's screaming at the top of his lungs expects." (Cheryl Eddy)