Cucalorus Watch '08: The Aftermath

Well, Cucalorus 14 is said and done. Thanks to the recent political sea change, the mood at this year's festival was decidedly chipper and optimistic. As a result, politically charged documentaries like Crawford and Secrecy were skipped in favor of more lighthearted fare, such as Good Dick, a comedy about a young video store employee who becomes obsessed with the girl who stops by and rents nothing but porn, and We Are Wizards, a documentary delving into the wide span of Harry Potter fandom.



The eccentric characters of Chicago were represented in a pair of documentaries, one of whom was present for this year's festivities. Vincent: A Life in Color, directed with an experienced eye by first-time filmmaker Jennifer Burns, follows Vincent P. Falk, who takes breaks during his programming job to dress up in flamboyant suits and dance on the bridges of the Windy City for the benefit of passing tour boats. Burns premiered the film at Cucalorus, and brought Vincent (as well as her editor, Christine Gilliland) with her. Vincent proved to be a fascinating figure, both on film and at the festival. He and Burns frequented many of the films my friends and I did, including Wesley Willis's Joyrides, a doc about a similarly eccentric Chicago figure, albeit with a somewhat more tragic story. Willis achieved modest success for his mathematically-precise artwork, but it was his disjointed and offbeat music (which has appeared in Super Size Me and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law) that made him a star of the underground rock scene. Directors Chris Bagley and Kim Shively spent equal time focusing on Willis's art and his music, as well as the strange circumstances that turned this sometimes-homeless, borderline-schizophrenic into a household name, until his death in 2003 due to leukemia.