Tonight I went over to a friend's house and watched a DVD of some movie that aired on Showtime about the Mitchell Brothers, the two guys behind many a porn-flick and the O'Farrell Theater strip joint. Long story short, the two became even more infamous when one shot the other.

First of all, can you do a movie about the porn industry that doesn't involve lots of coke and a rapid descent into murder and violence? Sheesh, talk about a depressing genre.

Anyways, all you need to know about the movie was that it starred, as the brothers, Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. Not only that, it was directed by Emilio and is billed as "A Film by Emilio Estevez." Need I say more.

For whatever reason, I have a particular fondness for movies such as this one. It was, for lack of a better word, awful. It was badly acted, badly written, super-cheap looking, and one cliche after another. Among other things, it was one of those movies/tv shows that try and do the 60's but looks even less authenticly 60's than if you went to a 60's theme party. The worst part of the movie, though, had to be the super-cheap wigs Charlie and Emilio wore to make them look balding. Several times I kept on thinking the wig was about to fall off.

But somehow, I liked the movie. Kind of. Not only that, I kind of admired it for it's crappiness. Because while it was badly done, you could get a sense that Emilio wanted this movie to be his "Citizen Kane." So as a director, he completely goes for broke. You name the artistic bell and/or whistle, and he did it. Jump cuts? Check? Sudden shift into black and white? Check. Weird random point-of-view camera angle? Jerky hand-held camera motion? Tweaked cinematography for dramatic effect? Check, check, and check. But the thing was is that none of it worked. It was all showy and pointless and just plain old badly done.

But for whatever reason, I love those kinds of movies. I respect those kind of movies. Because Emilio could have gone conventional, he could have chickened out, but no, he said I'm going to be an auteur. This despite any evidence to the contrary that he has any talent to even contemplate going the artiste.

It kind of reminded me of those BH 9'er episodes that were directed by Jason Priestley. Whenever his name came up as the director, friends and I would cheer in anticipation of what would come. Priestley also thought he was an auteur and Beverly Hills 90210 worth the cineaste approach so he'd throw in lots of trippy camera angles and weird surrealistic bits and none of it was ever appropiate and none of it had a point to it and it was all for freakin Beverly Hills 90210 yet Priestly thought it worthy of giving it the David Lynch treatment.

It was brilliant.

So yeah, the movie was crap, but I still kind of liked it.