EMAV Review: LVLT's 'Quarantine Monologues' brings new, local theatre online

Final streaming dates found at lvlt.org

Did you watch the Mouse roar with the Disney+ streaming telecast of “Hamilton?”

Though I personally refused to feed the Mouse any more cheese than he’s already eaten, it’s a new era for the performing arts. Like it or not, here we are.

A number of Broadway shows are permanently gone, others are holding on until venues can reopen. But across the country, more and more regional and community theatres are jumping on board to save their companies from going under. And, they deserve our support.

Davenport Theatricals of New York (“Kinky Boots,” “Hairspray”) is a great champion for local theatre. They’ve sponsored a playwriting challenge this summer as a means to get the creative juices flowing. Why?

Because the big boys (well-known playwrights, their agents and royalty houses) have put a great big foot down and are refusing to allow scripts to be produced for streaming. It makes things both more difficult and easier. Difficult, because how do you attract an audience and retain patrons with unknown authors? Easier, because at least the producing organizations can save a few bucks on royalties. And, believe me, the next Neil Simon or Stephen Sondheim IS out there.

Las Vegas Little Theatre jumped into the new era with “The Quarantine Monologues.” A slate of locally written pieces describing what it has been like for all of us over these past months. So, I sat in my armchair, turned on my TV and logged onto the Zoom link. Evidently, my Smart TV isn’t smart enough for this new age of corona virus: Zoom decided it’s “not compatible with this device.” I hauled out my laptop, and kicked back. Felt like a kid again watching a 15-inch color television.

The monologues are a mixture of comedic (“Twelfth Day of COVID,” “In Line”), dramatic (“Socially Distant”), touching (“Germs Are Everywhere”), and one in particular is a might spooky (“I Don’t Like the Way My Cats Are Looking At Me”).

The acting and directing are top-notch here. The writing sometimes lacked. While Nicole Unger gives a wonderful performance as a mother trying to put on a happy face in “COVID Support Group for Moms,” the script is too long. Once it went to homelessness in India on train tracks, I stopped caring what this woman had to say. It was too focused to be unfocused stream-of-consciousness rambling.

When all things came together, as it did in “The Bored Room,” when Kim Glover let loose about her cell phone snapping indiscreet pictures of her, she imbibes wine and then put CheezeWhiz on a HoHo, it was laugh-out-loud funny.

Like other regional and local production companies, these have been recorded. You aren’t logged in to an actual Zoom meeting. It may not be the same as sitting in a darkened theatre, listening to the reactions and applause of fellow patrons. But, think of the perks: No noisy candy wrappers, no 6’-6” person sitting in front of you, no audience members near you talking over crucial lines of dialogue.

If you haven’t given this new attendance deal a shot, I encourage you to do so. It may be a while before we all meet back at the theatre and welcome the in-person annoyances.

“The Quarantine Monologues” has its final streaming tonight, July 20, 2020, at 7:00pm. Log onto LVLT.org for tickets.

Editor's Note: Additional dates have been added since this article's first publication. See lvlt.org for more information.

EMAV Film Review: 'Viena and the Fantomes' now available via VOD

Back in the early 2010s, local film production company Lola Pictures got the chance to bring major indie filmmaking to Las Vegas with two feature films, Matthew Ross’ “Frank & Lola” and Gerardo Naranjo’s “Viena and the Fantomes,” thanks to support from Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project and the then-new tax credit program for filming in Nevada. “Frank & Lola” premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and went on to moderate acclaim and a small-scale release, and it stands as one of the better onscreen depictions of Las Vegas, with its use of Downtown locations in its story of the relationship between a volatile chef (Michael Shannon) and his fashion designer girlfriend (Imogen Poots).

“Viena and the Fantomes,” however, spent six years in limbo after being shot in 2014, with rumors about behind-the-scenes troubles and a difficult editing process. It was finally released to VOD on June 30 with almost no promotion, ending up as a footnote to Downtown Project’s moviemaking efforts (which never went beyond the two movies) and the tax credit program (which has since been scaled back). It’s also a footnote in the career of writer-director Naranjo, who was an indie-film sensation after his 2011 festival favorite “Miss Bala,” and had set “Viena” as his major follow-up project. Instead, as “Viena” sat on the shelf, Naranjo spent his time working in TV, directing episodes of “Fear the Walking Dead” and “Narcos,” before returning this year with another festival favorite, “Kokoloko.”

It’s impossible to say what “Viena” would have looked like in Naranjo’s original conception, and the version that was eventually released has the feel of a compromised movie, with a brief running time and a choppy, impressionistic structure that comes off like it has pieces missing. “Viena” isn’t a success, but it isn’t entirely a failure, either, and even this truncated version has some strong thematic and artistic elements. Chief among them is the performance from Dakota Fanning as the title character, a sort of combination roadie and groupie for post-punk band The Fantomes (the movie appears to take place sometime in the 1980s, but like a lot of the plot elements, it’s not entirely clear).

Viena tags along with the band as it travels across the country, in a sort of caravan of trucks and RVs, with band members, support staff and hangers-on. She first hooks up with fellow band employee Keyes (Frank Dillane), but when drummer Freddy (Jeremy Allen White) dumps his girlfriend Susi (Evan Rachel Wood), Viena steps up to fill that role. Susi also may have been the band’s road manager, although no one has a particularly defined role in the operation. Even the band itself is barely defined, shown onstage only very briefly, and it takes at least half the movie to figure out which characters are musicians and which characters are part of the crew.

That hazy approach is frustrating, but it’s also an effective way to convey the blur of life on the road, where every town looks the same, and shows are just brief breaks from the monotony of driving and partying. Viena is both desperate for approval from the male band members and defiantly independent, and her treatment as the equivalent of currency between Keyes and Freddy shows the casual misogyny of the supposed counterculture. Those themes are as indistinct as the plot details in the movie’s first half, but Naranjo coasts by on the burnout rock and roll vibe, which makes it even more jarring when the plot suddenly asserts itself in the final act.

When Jon Bernthal shows up as the band’s manager (or possibly an A&R rep?), pressuring Viena to placate the increasingly volatile Freddy, the movie turns dark and violent, losing its gauzy sense of lost time in favor of unmotivated assault. Rather than seriously exploring the nastier side of rock and roll excess, the shift in tone feels exploitative and ill-considered, ending the movie on a clear sour note rather than the undefined unease that preceded it. Even so, Fanning remains a strong presence as Viena, who refuses to be controlled by the men who push her around.

The movie’s delayed, low-profile release also means that Lola Pictures never got a chance to show off how well they could utilize Vegas-area locations to stand in for other parts of the country. “Viena” doesn’t take place in Vegas and doesn’t feature any familiar Vegas landmarks, instead making use of surrounding wilderness and highways, along with nondescript buildings and alleyways in town. It goes along with the movie’s dreamlike feel, in which times and places all run together as the band travels along a never-ending tour. Buried somewhere in the disjointed edits, uneven characters and abrupt plot developments, there might be a movie that gives those themes the resonance they deserve.

“Viena and the Fantomes” is now available via all major VOD outlets.

EMAV Film Review: 'Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets' captures the feeling of dive bar life

If you go into “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” without any background knowledge, as many viewers did when the movie from filmmaking brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross played at a number of prominent film festivals (including Sundance, Berlin and True/False) earlier this year, you’d probably assume that it’s a documentary about the last day of a Las Vegas dive bar called The Roaring 20s. The Rosses are known for their artistically constructed documentaries, including “Tchoupitoulas” and “Western,” which have been festival and critical favorites. At first glance, “Bloody Nose” seems like another slice-of-life documentary, capturing real interactions in the moment, without any reflective interviews or contextual explanations.

Except it’s not. The Roaring 20s is not a real Las Vegas bar, the patrons that inhabit it were all recruited via casting sessions and given narrative arcs to follow, and aside from a handful of brief exterior scenes, the entire movie was shot in New Orleans. The Rosses aim to capture a feeling more than an actual place, and “Bloody Nose” is more about dive bar culture than it is about Las Vegas. Early on, genial bartender Marc (Marc Paradis) groans at a news story about Vegas institution Bonanza Gifts being sold to a new owner, complaining that the town has changed and Celine Dion might as well just take it over. But aside from that clichéd lamentation about Vegas being better in the old days, the movie doesn’t have anything to say about the town itself. The working-class bar patrons never mention casino or service industry jobs, and while the Rosses provide some haunting portrayals of functional alcoholism, nobody in the bar seems to have a gambling habit.

Sure, the bar TVs show news broadcasts from local Vegas station KTNV, but aside from the Bonanza Gifts story, the clips just feature traffic reports or promotional segments about cruise lines. The Roaring 20s could be in Vegas, or it could be in New Orleans, or it could be in a forgotten corner of any city, and that’s really the point of the movie. Whatever they do when they’re not at the bar, the people here form connections with each other when they sit here drinking, and with the bar closing, they’re all losing an important part of their everyday lives.

For bartenders Marc and Shay (Shay Walker), that means losing a job. And for Michael (Michael Martin), the closest the movie comes to a main character, it may mean losing a literal home. Michael shows up at the bar early in the morning as soon as it opens, and he stays until the wee hours of the next morning, occasionally sleeping on the couch. He cleans himself up and gives himself a shave in the bathroom when he arrives, and he carries more bags with him than anyone needs to bring into a bar. No one ever says that Michael is homeless, but it’s pretty clear that once the bar closes, he has nowhere else to go. His tragic arc forms the emotional core of a movie that often feels shapeless, in which other characters fade into the background, just part of the often indistinguishable noise of the bar.

That indistinguishable noise is what gives the movie its air of authenticity, though, as the Rosses capture snippets of drunken conversations that go in circles, sometimes suddenly turning belligerent and then just as suddenly turning back to affection. As in real life, characters show up, hang out for a bit and then head out, and the movie lets them go, leaving viewers to guess at what their lives are like outside the confines of The Roaring 20s. As affecting as Michael’s bitter regret can be (especially in a long speech he gives to a younger bar patron about the missed opportunities of his life), other small dramas make less of an impact, including Shay’s relationship with her burnout teenage son and the pain felt by a pair of military veterans who bond over being forgotten by society.

Even if it isn’t a documentary, “Bloody Nose” still has the lived-in feel of sitting at a bar next to someone who’s done plenty of hard living and has the stories to prove it. You won’t find The Roaring 20s in Vegas, but if you’ve spent time in local institutions like Champagne’s or the Dispensary Lounge or the Huntridge Tavern, you’ll recognize it.

“Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” is now available via virtual theatrical release.