for 7 May 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

I am writing you to applaud
the story on Jerry Springer.
I have never laughed so much
in my life. The tears flowed
just as the words were read
on the page. The phrase "hit
the nail on the head" comes
to mind. Also, while I was
driving to work the other day,
I heard Jerry Springer is
going to make a guest
appearance on America's Most
Wanted. Why you ask? Well, in
case you didn't know one of
the most wanted is Jerry's
former guest.

<twilson@UU.NET>

We've heard this is in
preparation for a new hybrid
show - Springer's Most
Wanted. The rationale being:
AMW has never really
presented an adequate sense
of closure. Sometimes, a
fugitive is caught, but then
he's just led away in cuffs.
On the Springer version,
fugitives will meet their
victims face to face on
stage, for more visceral
justice, supposedly. We're
looking forward to the show's
debut.

Huck

Kudos to a job well done with
the Jerry Springer piece. I
especially enjoyed your
comments about kicking
Oprah's ass up and down. I
agree that the show may slip
into the SOS category without
some reshuffling. Here are
some additional ideas:

1. Mike Tyson and Evander
Holyfield reunion-hopelessly
desperate artists speak out
... should be an earful.

2. Twenty strung-out crack
addicts handcuffed to one
another playing Twister.
Winner gets a new pipe
autographed by Jerry.

3. Jerry make-over segment. A
drag queen, 12-year-old
hooker, and Hollywood
pornographer compete to
design a new look for Jerry.
Winner receives a lifetime
supply of smack and gets his
or her hotel paid for.

<mmcfee@thegrid.net>

Let's give Tyson a shot at
competing in the make-over
contest, too.

Huck

"... they kick less often
than William S. Burroughs in
Tangier...."

That is the most gratuitous
pseudo-intellectual reference
I've read in a long, long
time - and in a column about
the Jerry Springer show, no
less. Oh, how it brightened
my day!

<nietojo@bc.edu>

That was the most gratuitous
pseudo-intellectual reference
you've read in a long, long
time? Clearly, you're not
reading Suck often enough,
Jose.

Huck

I can't believe you left out
the most important part of
the Jerry Springer story -
the portion that every red-
blooded Buckeye knows by
heart. He was forced to
abandon his gubernatorial
ambitions because of the very
thing he exploits in his
guests, base LUST. When Jerry
was running for Governor of
Ohio, the story got out that
he had bounced a check ... to
a hooker in the Sin City of
Newport, Kentucky (conveniently
located over the river from
that bastion of righteousness
that is Cincinnati). The
outrage was not that he used
the services of the
occasional "hootchie woman,"
but that he was dumb enough
to pay for it with a check
and doubly dumb enough not to
have the funds available in
his account to cover the
transaction. Jerry blamed the
bad weather on election day
for a low turnout, the rest
of us knew the real reason.

Sounds to me like the hooker
who took a check and didn't
get paid was the dumb one.
That Jerry's pretty sly.

Huck

Finally, I have found you
back on the pages of Suck.com
only to find you more
bitter/sardonic than ever.
What happened during your
hiatus?

<:jnovak@darkwing.uoregon.edu>

Can't you tell? I've been
hanging out and watching
Springer....

Huck

Wrong Answer

Dear Hypatia,

Lovely work as always. I've
been fuddled by the
near-complete lack of
meaningful criticism on
Gummo, at least in any
popular forum. As you pointed
out, the caustic blather of
hacks (no offense to present
company) like Paul Tatara (CNN) and
Wendy Wilson (RoughCut)
refuses to evaluate the film
in any but the starkest moral
terms, and then drops the
ball on that count, too.
Admittedly, Korine himself is
not much of an improvement as
a source of enlightenment
(although the ridiculous
reach-around between Korine
and his idol Werner Herzog
presented on Fine Line's
official site for Gummo is at
least worth a chuckle).

Gummo seems to do its best
work on levels almost beyond
its director's own
comprehension, or at least
his ability to articulate.
The one bit of Korine's
self-important schtick that's
gotten, er, schtuck in my
head was something about how
Gummo uses a "different
syntax" from conventional
movies, and one that's
supposed to register with
younger viewers. I think the
kid's onto something here;
watching the movie, I was
struck by the way the sound
elements seep in and out of
scenes, the end of one scene
overlapped by 10 seconds of
live sound from the next
scene, which then dissolves
into musical accompaniment,
or silence, or Spazz, or some
mucking around with tape
recorders. Periodically, the
sound and picture jar into
phase with each other, and
the movie lurches into one of
the "vignettes" it's
supposedly composed of. I
actually found these moments
of relative clarity less
interesting than all the mess
involved in shuttling us
between them.

Korine may have actually
stumbled onto the first major
breakthrough in cinematic
style since Hollywood
discovered MTV in about 1988,
although as long as critics
like Roger Ebert continue to
herald the cut-and-paste
futuristic tripe of Dark
City as "visionary," it may
be a while before anyone
notices.

Z

P. S. I can't confirm this,
but the Internet Movie
Database (IMDb) lists Jacob
Reynolds (Gummo's Solomon) as
the son of actress Debbie
Reynolds, who also spawned
Carrie Fisher. The idea of
some weird half-sibling
connection between Solly and
Princess Leia is too
irresistible to sacrifice to
fact-checking.

I think your point about the
"mess shuttling between" the
moments of clarity being the
heart of the movie is very
acute. Isidore Isou said "I
believe first of all that the
cinema is too rich. It is
obese. I announce 'the
destruction of the cinema,'
the first apocalyptic sign of
rupture in this fat organism
we call film." He suggested
that the history of film from
the '50s on would be a
history of erosion -
reduction of the massed
inventory of techniques that
had been built up since
Lumière - until it was
whittled back down to pure
light, sounds, letters, etc.
In light of the constricted
range of Hollywood technique
today, Isou's prophecy seems
to come true in a way he
could hardly have imagined.
Gummo's innovations then read
like the rediscovery of fire
on the part of some benighted
gimp, avec Black Metal.

Hypatia

Hail,

As someone with a stake in
the success of Gummo and its
foremost accessory, the
soundtrack, I howled
grievingly at the
winterdarkmoon when
media-designated "gifted
young talent" status slipped
out of Harmony Korine's hands
last fall, to be snatched by
those prats Ben Affleck and
Matt Damon-DiCaprio. The
lesson here is that newcomers
have to be demonstrably more
square than baby boomers to
be endorsed by Hollywood, and
Dustin Hoffman and Tom Hanks
are slightly better-looking
than real retards. Of course,
while thrice-nightly ads
during The Simpsons for Good
Will Hunting have come and
gone, Gummo continues to draw
crowds on the one modest
screen it started with in New
York.

Ave,
Dark N¦rd

Unchain the Wolves, fucker!
At midnight at the Angelika
in NY.

Hypatia

Dear Hypatia,

I thought I was the only
person who saw Gummo. I
thought surely if others had
seen it, they would be
talking. I haven't heard
much, but truth be told I
haven't said much either. I
didn't know what to say. It
was pretty powerful stuff.
Beyond that I couldn't really
articulate what I saw and
thought. You did. Very well.
I couldn't agree with your
Suck piece any more. Thanks
for the good read.

regards,
cedward

Just doing my job.

Hypatia

Subject: The Gummo Generation

Another reason mainstream
critics trash Gummo is their
utter alienation from its
glue-sniffing white trash
world - a bleak place they
only encounter on daytime
talk shows.

Gummo exposes baby boomer
critics' self-indulgent
belief that they're immune to
a generation gap by virtue of
their radical youth.
Nostalgia for abandoned
social and sexual revolutions
has blinded them to the fact
that the youth of today have
taken up the old causes,
albeit in our own perverted
and commercialized way.

Korine's outlook is familiar
to children of a violent,
sex-crazed, and drug saturated
world. I can't relate
directly to Xenia, OH, but
most anyone in the Gummo-aged
demographic will find
something in it similar to
their own urban or suburban
American wastelands. The
Leave It To Beaver generation
may have ducked, covered, and
gone to Woodstock, but we can
proudly claim the warping
effects of crack, AIDS,
cable, and hydroponic herb as
our own.

Moronic, self-righteous
disses of Gummo aside, we
shouldn't taunt our elders
when they can't comprehend or
just dislike new standards of
coolness and beauty. It
doesn't bode well for the
millions of current hipsters
who are determined to stay
cool forever.

Then again, maybe it's just
the stupid people who don't
get it.

Brian
<dolan@mediaone.net>

Ah, the stupid people. Always
taking the blame for
everything from bad TV to bad
taste to bad fries. Some day
the stupid people are going
to rise up and overturn the
oppression they've endured
from the smart people for
years now, with its onerous,
over-serious fixation on
education and "worthwhile" or
"enriching" activities. Leave
us to our insipid little
lives! Maybe we're happy in
our anonymity and our
inanity! Maybe we couldn't care
less about the reduction of
the massed inventory of
techniques that have been
built up since Lumière! Is
that so wrong?
Power to the stupid!

Anonymous, Inane Suckster