# For 'Tarnation' Filmmaker, Life Becomes Art



## Revelation_old (Aug 9, 2004)

*For 'Tarnation' Filmmaker, Life Becomes Art*
BY ROB BAILEY
c.2004 Newhouse News Service

Jonathan Caouette's life is an open movie.

He started filming it when he was 11. Two decades later, his home videos, audiotapes, photos and diaries flesh out a visceral portrait of mental illness and its impact on a young man from Texas.

Caouette's documentary, "Tarnation," reaped international acclaim at the Cannes, Sundance and New York film festivals. Now it's drawing crowds at art-house theaters nationwide. The film rattles the family skeletons that made Caouette the man he is today.

"At one point, after seeing a rough cut, I thought, `What the (bleep) have I done? What am I trying to prove?"' said the now 32-year-old director. "Psychically, between me and my mom, we must have both had small coronaries, but we came to a place where we thought we had a poignant story to share."

The debut film manages to be simultaneously sad and funny as Caouette struggles to make sense of his dysfunctional family tree. His journey is framed by an intoxicating barrage of pop culture influences -- everything from "Rosemary's Baby" to "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and PBS' "Zoom."

The overall vibe recalls experimental films circa the 1960s, but with one crucial element they lacked: heart.

"Tarnation" begins with a photo montage of Caouette's mother, Renee, a gorgeous local model and pageant winner until a fall from a roof left her in a confused state. Believing it was all in her head, her odd parents ordered up the first of several series of electroshock treatments.

Afterward, Caouette said, "She would walk outside, and feel as if the sun would make her evaporate."

Renee became a medicated teen bride whose husband bailed when she became pregnant in 1972. She burned through a series of psychiatric hospitals.

In 1975, while "in a psychotic state," Renee hopped a bus to Chicago with her toddler son -- and no money or a place to stay. Once there, she was raped in front of Jonathan by a stranger who picked them up on the street.

During the bus ride home, Renee was kicked off for pestering passengers and arrested. Caouette was put in foster care, where he was beaten and sexually molested. Back in Texas, his grandparents put Renee through more shock "therapy."

By the early '80s, the director was back with his grandfolks and escaping into home movies. Scenes of Caouette dressed up in his mother's clothes, acting out her life as a battered woman, are devastating in their power.

Those scenes are the only ones that still make him cringe.

"I was 11 years old emulating my mother, and I start sounding like Judy Garland," said Caouette, chuckling uncomfortably. "There was this waddle thing happening in the back of my throat ... ugh, it is embarrassing. I'm not the type of gay guy who's really into Judy Garland."

At 13, Caouette faced his burgeoning sexuality in typically forthright fashion: "I've always been gay," he whispered into a tape recorder. "I don't know if it's from the molesting or not. I'm just lusty for everything."

By 1986 he was disguising himself as a petite goth girl to get into clubs. A drug dealer gave him two joints that turned out to be PCP-laced and dipped in formaldehyde. Afterward, he was diagnosed with depersonalization disorder.

Feeling as if he was "living in a dream," Caouette began staging weekly suicide attempts.

That same year, Caouette started shooting Super-8 horror flicks like "The Ankle Slasher." In high school, he staged a musical version of "Blue Velvet," with Marianne Faithfull songs.

Along the way, Renee became more than just a series of answering machine messages from mental institutions. Mother and son formed an unbreakable bond as she playfully mugged, danced and sang for his relentless camera.

The audience hears a teen-age Caouette say, "I love my mother so much."

Watching Renee's tortured but still lovely face is chilling. That impact is later magnified when her medical records suggest that, before the initial shock treatments, doctors saw no true signs of mental illness.

By 1997, Caouette pursued his theatrical bent to New York City, where he found a supportive mate and a sense of peace.

He was a struggling but working actor in 2002 when he auditioned for a film to be directed by John Cameron Mitchell, the star and director of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." As part of the audition, Caouette submitted a rough cut of his life story.

"I was incredibly moved by the unbreakable bond of love between Jonathan and his mother. It kept them both alive," said Mitchell, who encouraged Caouette to complete his film.

But "Tarnation" stalled in 2003 when his mother overdosed on lithium back in Texas. Caouette returned home to find his brain-damaged mother living in squalor with his invalid grandfather.

Over a period of five months, both tired of his relentless on-camera questioning about their family history of neglect and abuse.

"We can talk, Jonathan. That doesn't mean it has to be on film," Renee wails off camera. Gramps simply calls the cops and kicks them out to avoid questions about locking Renee in a closet as a child.

Caouette brought Renee home to the Brooklyn apartment he shares with his boyfriend, David. He filmed her constantly, all the while fearing he'd one day end up like her.

"I can't escape her," he says on camera. "She lives inside me."

After a brief, truly hard-to-watch reunion with his deadbeat dad, Caouette settled into his role as caretaker and finished his debut film with his mother's blessing.

Of course, 160 hours' worth of VHS and Beta tapes required some unkind cuts. Missing is footage of the child Caouette fathered at 16, as is an important formative relationship with his Big Brother, a film critic for the Houston Chronicle.

Much media fuss has been made about "Tarnation's" $218.32 budget. Caouette edited and mixed it on an iMac, using iMovie software to create its visually arresting aesthetic.

"I was trying to create an emulation of schizophrenia, a sense that reality can't be trusted," Caouette said in an interview. "With any mental disorder, there's this plethora of information constantly coming at you. I tried to give that feeling with text on screen, soundscapes and images."

Another $400,000 -- raised with the help of indie film mavericks Mitchell and Gus Van Sant, who served as executive producers -- covered music and film clip clearances, video-to-film transfer, sound mixing and 35 mm duplicate prints.

Caouette said he's awed by how successful "Tarnation" has become.

"This subject matter, mental illness, is so often white-washed. I'm so glad the story is getting out there. It's a miracle and maybe it can help be some kind of wake-up call for the human condition. I'd love to see that sense of humanity -- the one that stopped when the '80s came along -- rekindled."

Oct. 21, 2004

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## red.lithium (Mar 9, 2010)

This film is awesome. I actually watched it and totally related to it before I knew I had this disorder, and was kinda shocked when I realized i had the same thing. Sound track also rocks.


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## Babble (Mar 9, 2010)

I really love this movie. Jonathan is an amazing director.


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## ZachT (Sep 8, 2008)

I liked this movie a lot too.


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