Confessions of a Sociopath, and other provocations

Loved the movie

A word of caution, a word of warning: This volume should be prohibited to the weak-willed, the faint-of-heart, and the well-behaved (Gibbons would pistol-whip me if he found out that I had used - unintentionally, mind you - a cheap device like the alliteration that mars the beginning of this review).This is a DVD I would wholeheartedly recommend to deathbed atheists and foxhole converts alike; certainly to those practitioners of the dark arts of psychiatry and psychotherapy, and no less to open-minded jurists, district attorneys, and mental health workers. These videos are the products of the artist's research over many years into the dark recesses of human behavior. Disdaining the artifice of "acting," the filmmaker cultivates mental aberrations and psychic disorders that express themselves in behaviors and actions followed to their logical, chilling conclusion.For this fearless method he has paid a heavy price: legally, socially, professionally, and personally. But through these signal states a profound truth emerges (I hope he never reads this review - he slapped me once for using the word "truth"). For only through sickness can we know what true health is, to paraphrase the late, great existential philosopher George Kuchar.Confessions of a Sociopath is necessarily a work-in-progress, because the artist, a man who cultivates sickness like a horticulturist cultivates orchids, understands that to effect closure is to sign his own death warrant. And there you have a metaphor that would make the artist cringe. Because in this DVD you will find not a single metaphor: that tired poetic trope, that quaint linguistic conceit that communicates only a poverty of direct expression.Each video plays out a particular psychopathology. See if you can guess what they are. But let me reiterate my warning: these aberrant states are highly communicable!

Joe Gibbons films are almost always funny, thought-provoking, transgressive, crypto-autobiographical, strange, and technically interesting. This 2-hour disc features films representing some 30 years of his work. For me the best here is the title piece, a sort of lightly fictionalized autobiography involving art theft, alcohol, book theft, heroin, filmmaking, unpaid bills, Spalding Grey, and parole officers. The actual film clips were shot over 20 years or so. Other tracks include Joe inculcating genius in a young child; confiding in his camera; punishing flowers; and peering through rain-covered windshield. Good stuff!