#THE RESIDENTS THEORY OF OBSCURITY FULL#
#THE RESIDENTS THEORY OF OBSCURITY TRIAL#

Of course, if the band's output really is 60 albums (plus all sorts of other ephemera), then no single 90-minute film is going to be able to do justice to any one aspect of their career.

#THE RESIDENTS THEORY OF OBSCURITY FULL#

Why can't the makers of these types of documentaries understand that fans would really want to see an entire song? Especially in the case of the Residents where the visual and multimedia aspects of their show are so astonishing! There are a couple of songs from the Commercial Album played on the 2013 fortieth anniversary tour that do run their full (short) length but that tour seems stripped down in comparison to earlier tours. There are some great clips but they never show you enough. My regret is not really with the content shown (which is often truly weird) but instead with the rather formulaic approach taken here - this is really just another one of those music docos where you've got talking heads (including with fans/accomplices) interspersed with short clips of the band playing. Of course, we still don't know who the Residents actually are - but some of the old guys being interviewed sure seem to know a lot about their history. But, of course, they may have, because director Don Hardy appears to have had access to a lot of presumably unseen footage from the early years of the 40-year-old band and members of the Cryptic Corporation (that oversee the business dealings of the band) were actively involved in editing and in front of the camera. Hello.The main reaction I had to this documentary about The Residents is a wish that the band had made the film themselves. The film will fill in gaps you didn’t know existed. I’m glad filmmaker Hardy has put their history in order, although you never know exactly what it is they want you to believe.ĭoesn’t matter. The Residents have had a profound effect on my creative life. The moment you hear Homer Flynn’s voice in the film, it is obvious that he’s one of the guys singing. I played along as he talked in third person about the ensemble.ĭidn’t matter. I’ve interviewed Hardy Fox a couple of times, completely convinced that I was talking with one of the real Residents. The members themselves? Without their eyeball masks or other trappings of obscurity, it’s as if you didn’t really want them to be normal humans.

It is best seen with some history of listening to their music. If you get it, you probably already have your tickets to see this film. If I had to explain the Residents to you, words wouldn't work. Feeling lost in strange images and sound and knowing their coming from your own mind. To many (most?) they are incomprehensible.įor me, and I own around twenty albums of theirs, they represent the bad acid trip that scares the living fuck out of you…while at the same time you’re aware that these hallucinations are your own. They are accessible on many other levels, of course as mere absurd figures playing strange music, for one.

On the other hand, if you accept these tenets, embrace them, you’ll have a horrifyingly merry old time. If you don’t think that existence is either laughable or a perverse hell, you may be one of those who run screaming from the Residents. They make us laugh at the hell of existence. Not sexual perversity, but a view that life, itself is a perverse act. But they have created their own universe of perversity. Hardy tries to explain their history, why certain famous people love them (Penn Jillette, Jerry Harrison, Les Claypool of Primus, Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening and members of Neurosis, Henry Cow and Ween), why they did what they did and why they’re still doing it, but when it comes to explaining what exactly they have to say, what they’re about.he’s less successful. It’s also not what’s important about The Residents, anyway.

#THE RESIDENTS THEORY OF OBSCURITY TRIAL#

Nobody’s on trial for anything, and by now it’s not even important that they keep their identities secret. But you’d have to be a dope not to see through their decades-long ruse.įilmmaker Don Hardy interviews several people who are identified as representing the Cryptic Corporation. Not that the film Theory of Obscurity: A Film About the Residents, explicitly tells you. If you’ve ever wanted to know who comprises the famed anonymous band, which has not revealed the identities of its members in the forty years of its existence… Saturday, January 16, 9:30pm as part of Northwest Film Center's Reel Music Festival. The Residents: 'Theory of Obscurity' - Reel Music Festivalīy TOM D'ANTONI // Why? Who? What for? Forty years of delightful, scary incomprehensibility revealed.

The residents theory of obscurity