Guest Contributor #1: Patrick Ripoll

A dear friend of mine contributes to the 5 Years Project with answers to my interview questions regarding film, music and food!

Hi, I'm Patrick Ripoll. I used to host Director's Club with Jim. Sometimes I still do. He asked if I would like to appear on this Substack and answer a few questions. I have an hour before the pharmacy fills my Valium prescription, so let's do this.

1. What is a movie that you think people should know about that speaks to you in some way?

I'm not an expert on much of anything, but there are a few areas of film I'm devoted enough to that I come close. One of those is SOV (shot-on-video) horror. The emergence of the home video market in the 1980's created a need for product that Hollywood, skittish at the prospect of cannibalizing their theatrical profits, was slow to truly embrace. In that vacuum emerged artists who saw the democratizing power of the video store shelf and produced works for tiny budgets, shooting on videotape rather than film. Suddenly sensational box art and a little bit of technical know-how was all it took for the wannabe filmmaker to become a homegrown movie maven. Many SOV films are of low quality and almost all of them have the stink of the amateur, but it's also a field dominated by idiosyncratic, personal, and enthusiastic works in an era when the mainstream's horror output was extremely cynical.

There is perhaps no SOV horror film more idiosyncratic, personal, and enthusiastic than Shatter Dead, a 1994 art-house zombie apocalypse fever-dream by Scooter McCrae. What separates Shatter Dead from so many other horror films of it's day, from SOV to major studio, is the way it marries it's relentlessly bleak artistic ambitions with a genuine glee for sex and violence. The zombie apocalypse of Shatter Dead is distinct from what we're used to: the undead here retain their memories, their minds, but lose all hope and tangible connection to the world around them. Theirs is a pandemic of surrender, closer to Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse than George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and often it's hard to tell the difference between the hopelessness of the dead and the hopelessness of the living. It's the end of the world via The Hollow Men.

But Shatter Dead doesn't whimper. Shatter Dead bangs. Packed into a relentlessly paced 84 minutes, in between the musings on the nature of humanity and the apathy of God, is a parade of sex, gore, and transgressive imagery that dazzlingly walks the line between middle-finger punk provocation and genuine emotional commitment. A silly death-cult straight out of Troma's The Toxic Avenger raids a house the protagonist is holed up in, gleefully splattering the blood and brains of those inside all over the walls. But when a pregnant woman (inseminated by an angel in the film's sacrilegiously erotic opening) takes a shotgun blast to the stomach, she tragically marches up the stairs into the shower, delivers her undead fetus through her newfound Caesarian section, and feeds it as her own blood flows in rivulets down her breast. The moment is absurd but the power of the image, hope in the face of meaninglessness, remains. The past decade saw modern audiences developing a taste for art-horror but those films almost always err on the side of tasteful austerity, a fear that a snobbish audience might consider baser pleasures beneath them. Shatter Dead is totally unafraid. It's brilliant but also, crucially, it's fucking awesome.

2. What is a favorite song that made you excited to explore a band / artist's career further?

This usually doesn't happen to me. Often hearing a great song just makes me want to listen to that song again, especially these days. Usually diving deep into an artist's catalogue becomes an exercise in diminishing returns. Life is short. Why listen to five Guided By Voices albums when I can listen to Bee Thousand, the best Guided by Voices album, five times? Or, more likely, listen to Bee Thousand, and then Straight, No Chaser and then Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and then Hellbilly Deluxe and then The Heat Is On. This is why I'm not an expert on anything.

But when I was younger that wasn't the case. I don't have a lot of memories like this, but I know exactly how I felt the first time I heard the buzzsaw guitar of The White Stripes' "Fell In Love With A Girl", watching the video on MTV2 in my basement with my math homework in front of me. I thought I liked punk rock, but my understanding of punk rock was Dookie and Enema of the State. This was what I was waiting for, it was a sound I needed, a cure for a sickness I didn't know I had. I liked the iconic Michel Gondry music video too, of course, but more because it's ragged DIY stop motion reflected the raw sound of the song than anything else. It was the sound I needed more of.

As soon as I could I bought the album White Blood Cells. Then, the day after Christmas, I used my Christmas money to buy De Stilji and their self-titled too. I devoured these albums, years of constant rotation, Apple Blossom on repeat as I laid on the floor doing my science homework. A couple months after Elephant came out a friend burned it for me. A definite downgrade from White Blood Cells, but still a handful of songs that drove into my heart. Black Math all day long. Then Get Behind Me Satan, again the same friend burned for me. A much steeper downgrade. The White Stripes were over, but 3 and a half great albums was still a heck of a run. Icky Thump I think I got from a torrent and listened to a handful of times, but I had already moved on. I've never had a desire to listen to any post-Stripes Jack White stuff. What's the point?

3. What does your perfect comfort meal consist of?

It's a little embarrassing but I love binge eating, so I'd probably just say a pizza buffet. Fat Chris's Pizza and Such in Andersonville used to do a pizza buffet for lunch before the pandemic and when you talk about the pure intensity of the pleasure centers of my brain lighting up, I've probably never been more happy in my entire life than when I was sitting down eating ungodly amounts of Detroit style pizza, their pepperoni rolls (they call them Chubbies) and a couple token plates of salad to justify the entire experience to myself. I have way too much anxiety about inevitable future health crises to eat like that anymore but I still fantasize about it at least once a week, like Al Bundy reliving his glory days as a high school football star.

4. What is something that moves you to tears (film, song, book, anything)?

The last time a movie made me cry was the climax of The Bridges of Madison County, the lovers last look at each other, that one shot through windshield in the pouring rain. I did not think much of Clint Eastwood as a director and now I'm reconsidering that.

In general books don't make me cry, I usually experience emotions that are too complex and distanced to really get hit on a gut level like that. I will say that the end of The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel absolutely wrecked me and left me emotionally tender for days. It's the third book in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, following Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and the way she wrote Cromwell's execution was absolutely overwhelming, had me shaking. I still can't wrap my head around it.

Most of the time songs make me cry it has more to do with myself than the song. "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc. once made me cry because it's refrain of "Gotta move on" hit me right after a difficult break-up. Another right-song-right-time tear-jerker is "Book of Soul" by Ab-Soul, which I listened to on repeat after the funeral of a friend. I have gotten to the point where I can listen to "This Tornado Loves You" by Neko Case and "Nightswimming" by REM without crying, but that wasn't always the case.

I also cry laughing a lot. My partner says I cry more than any man they've ever met.

Patrick Ripoll is a podcaster living in Chicago. You can hear his work on 96 Greers (https://ninetysixgreers.podbean.com), a podcast covering the filmography of Judy Greer, Uptown Song Club (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2039079), a book-club style music podcast and Tracks of the Damned (https://www.nowplayingnetwork.net/tracksofthedamned), a horror film commentary track podcast. He is also a regular guest on Director's Club (https://www.directorsclubpodcast.com), Genre Grinder (https://www.genregrinder.com/podcast).

All guest contributions available here: https://5years.substack.com/t/guest