In which the acclaimed artist and sometime filmmaker Robert Longo utilized the music video scene of the late eighties as DEMENTIA/DAUGHTER OF HORROR (1955) did the 1950s drive-in market, and YOUNG PLAYTHINGS (1972) the 70s smut movie scene: he delivered an avant-garde film in the guise of an Elektra Asylum music video compilation of a type that was once ubiquitous on VHS. Note how the songs heard on the soundtrack from Anita Baker, The Doors and others, are prominently listed on the packaging, even though those tunes don’t register very strongly in the film itself.
…an avant-garde film in the guise of an Elektra Asylum music video compilation…
Longo was one of the most prominent eighties-era art world superstars (it was he who created those “Men in the Cities” photos of people assuming weird poses that were ubiquitous back then). With the 33 minute ARENA BRAINS Longo took his side job, of directing music videos by New Order, Megadeth and REM, to its next logical step in a project that may have been intended as a satire on New York’s privileged class in the 1980s, or as a warm-up for Longo’s later, more consequential directorial assignments (which included a 1992 episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT and the 1995 feature JOHNNY MNEMONIC), or possibly just an excuse for Longo to show off his many famous friends. I say all of the above!
…an excuse for Longo to show off his many famous friends.
Following some abstract, dissolve-heavy imagery we’re thrust into a multi-part NYC-set ramble, with several tenuously connected vignettes held together by electric guitar scored transitions (apparently a “Longo trademark”). First up is an artist (Ray Liotta) who claims “All of man’s knowledge to make art comes out of his impending tax audit,” arguing with a critic (Richard Price) on the streets of Manhattan. The two later attend a party in somebody’s loft (with guests that include Sean Young and Tom Gilroy), where Price has a medical emergency and Liotta takes a picture of his contorted-in-pain face that’s turned into an art exhibit by, in a technique utilized quite extensively by Longo himself, tracing over a projected image of said picture.
“All of man’s knowledge to make art comes out of his impending tax audit.”
A comedian (Eric Bogosian, essentially playing himself) does an especially aggressive, pissed-off stand-up routine about New York, “where the rich eat the poor and get indigestion.” We also see a restroom packed with shallow and obnoxious poofy-haired women, one of whom (Jessica Cardindale) ends up at the venue where Bogosian is doing his stand-up routine and precipitates an act of shocking violence.
Steve Buscemi (who was known at the time as a performance artist) headlines the following segment as one of a pair of thieves attempting to steal a radio out of a parked car, during which a nondescript wanderer (REM frontman Michael Stipe) approaches and is given a quarter by a woman in a taxi. After attending Bogosian’s fateful show Stipe enters a deli, where he uses the quarter to help pay for a sandwich made by an especially surly clerk (Richard Schiff).
As with many an experimental product from a past age, this once-innovative production tends to fall woefully flat nowadays. The rambling reportorial format tends to bore more often than not, with lengthy dialogue exchanges (such as the restroom banter and Stipe’s encounter with the deli clerk) that were evidently supposed to be far more interesting than they actually are.
As with many an experimental product from a past age, this once-innovative production tends to fall woefully flat nowadays.
As an eighties nostalgia piece, though, ARENA BRAINS has real value, with a portrait of NYC’s painfully hip upper crust that’s as savage and on-target as those of THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and AMERICAN PSYCHO. Plus there’s some evocative footage of the World Trade Center, which may have been intended as either window dressing or industrial symbolism; either way that footage assumes a much greater resonance today than it did in 1987.
Vital Statistics
ARENA BRAINS
Elektra/Nonesuch/Pressure Pictures
Director: Robert Longo
Producer: Jonathan Bender, Victoria Hamburg
Screenplay: Eric Bogosian, E. Max Frye, Robert Longo, Emily Prager, Richard Price
Cinematography: Tony Jannelli
Editing: Rick Feist
Cast: Ray Liotta, Richard Price, Eric Bogosian, Jessica Cardindale, Anne DeSalvo, Jodi Long, Emily Prager, Allyson Suprenant, Mark Boone Junior, Ginger Garrett, Donna Lupie, Dana Daffer, Heather Pleasants, Steve Buscemi, Wm. Kirk Baltz, Sammy Jade, Sean Young, Ron Vawter, Tom Gilroy, Peggy Atkinson, Stuart Arbright, David Herskovits, Judy Hudson, E, Max Frye, Richard Schiff, Michael Stipe