After playing extremely well before Sundance Film Festival audiences, someone (Tribeca Films) has finally made the no-brainer picked up of Matthew Bate’s docu-tragicomedy Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure. A VOD and theatre August 26th/September expanded release is planned — I’m betting it’ll mimic the viral/cult success that the phenomenon had when it was in its “audio form”.
Gist: In 1987, Eddie and Mitch, two young punks from the Midwest, moved into a low-rent tenament apartment in the Lower Haight district of San Francisco. Through paper-thin walls, they were informally introduced to their middle-aged alcoholic neighbors, the most unlikely of roommates—Raymond Huffman, a raging homophobe, and Peter Haskett, a flamboyant gay man. Night after night, the boys were treated to a seemingly endless stream of vodka-fueled altercations between the two and for 18 months, they hung a microphone from their kitchen window to chronicle the bizarre and violent relationship between their insane neighbours…
Worth Noting: Dan Clowes was one of the many folks to have been “inspired” by the recordings.
Do We Care?: Have no worries if you’re not lured in by the trailer below, the docu shifts in tone, refrains from what could have been a one note portrait of a a pair of a misfits recording other misfits, as it weaves into an unexpected discourse on the notion of exploitation, copyright infringement and the human condition.