An open letter to AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER series creator Shane Ryan
Dear Mr. Ryan,
I first heard your name in the Summer 2008 issue of Penny Blood magazine but had never seen any of your work until last week when I stumbled across the three films of your AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER series sitting on the shelves of my local movie store. As they were used copies at $2.99 a piece, I decided to pick them up. Why not? That's less than I was going to be spending on lunch that day and, as a horror fan, I will purchase virtually anything in order to grow my already substantial collection. Now, I must be honest, I never read that Penny Blood interview before - I gave up about 1/3 of the way through the magazine; I simply can't excuse their apparent lack of an editor or seeming refusal to use a spell check program - but, after watching your films back-to-back one night, I gave it a go. I discovered quite a bit about you. This letter will, more than likely, never reach you but, in the end, that fact doesn't really matter. Everything I'm about to say will, more than likely, fall on deaf ears anyway.
You decided to shoot your films in a faux snuff style, a clever way to disguise the fact that you had no money with which to shoot your film proper. That's fine. But you seem to be disconnected from the reality of the format. Instead of presenting the footage as (a) continuous, unchanging take(s) - and thus keeping the faux snuff feeling through the entire piece - you consistently break away to various sex scenes and, even worse, alter the color and texture of the image itself. It's amazing how someone could have chosen this format without realizing what one has to do in order for it to work. It's astoundingly simple. But, like the amateur you are, you completely disregard the reality you have chosen to represent. What exactly was the motive behind those stylistic choices? Someone should have told you that just because you CAN add all sorts of nifty effects using low cost consumer grade digital editing systems, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Fifteen minutes into your films and you've already destroyed the very purpose of the films themselves and their modus operandi. Congratulations. Everything after that becomes useless.
I'd now like to discuss a few things contained in the Penny Blood piece on you and your films.
In his introduction to his interview with you, Penny Blood writer Barry Meyer begins with this statement:
"Your average moviegoer might be reluctant to describe AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER as "art"".
He then goes on to make the following observation:
"If comfort is an important ingredient in the standard cinematic experience... (AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER) might not even be considered a "movie", let alone art".
Well, let's discuss for a moment the definition of "art". Art is defined, in part, as being
A. "the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful, or of more than ordinary significance" and
B. "the class of objects subject to the aesthetic criteria; works belonging to this realm, as paintings, drawings, etc.".
The first part of definition A would seem to allow for only that which is beautiful but corrects itself in including anything exemplary - Gustave Dore's engravings of scenes from Dante's Inferno are quite remarkable even though they are hideously grotesque. Definition B is more wide-reaching. This would include a child's stick figure drawings or feces smeared on a blank canvas. Any creation, as it were, is art.
This is problematic for me. By the criteria of beauty and significance, AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER is not art. Not even close. But, unfortunately, I must concede that it is art in the same way that shit smeared on a canvas is also art simply because you created it in a medium that is "subject to the aesthetic criteria".
If I go by the philosophical definition of art, you fare even worse. As there is no one set philosophical definition or presupposition for art, I'll pick the simplest.
"If something is done well, with skill or learnt by study and practice" it is considered art.
You fail again.
Art may be subjective like beauty is subjective in that each person's definition of art shifts and distorts to fit their own aesthetic judgments. Only in the most simplistic, idiotic and culturally bereft individual would your films fit any definition of art. That anyone would suggest to you, personally or through a magazine article, that your films should be classified as art or, in some way big or small, constitute art is a ludicrous fallacy. I think it is important for you to realize this.
Meyer's talk of "comfort" as being "an important ingredient in the standard cinematic experience" is also misleading. There's little comfort in tragedy and even less comfort in the horror film. Comfort is not required, nor is it essential, in film. What Meyer seems to be confusing is the idea of "mainstream cinema" and "cinema" in general. There are no requirements in cinema to coddle the audience and make sure they're smiling on the way out. If mainstream cinema - that is, cinema designed to reach as many people as possible without offending, depressing, or condescending to any major demographic - chooses not to indulge in nihilism, that is not a flaw of the cinematic mechanism so much as it a good business decision on the part of the producers. Film is, after all, a business first and an art form second nowadays. But, as AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER and its sequels were never intended for mainstream consumption - and how could they be? - this point is invalid.
Meyer continues with his line of reasoning:
"And what makes a filmmaker an artist?... is it the willingness to confront the stuff people don't usually talk about?"
"Don't usually talk about"? Does he not read newspapers with their numerous mentions of all sorts of horrors and tragedies? Does he not watch television or read books? We've been discussing and theorizing over the dark side of human nature for decades. Your films present no new taboos to be whispered about, no new ideas and no new insights. They exist as yet another example of representation in a long line of cinematic (and otherwise) representations of dark human nature. They have no significance in those regards. Welcome to the flock.
In that interview, you claim that AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER is
"... a feminist movie. What? Yeah. It proves you don't need a weapon, or force, to rape a woman. It's in the girl's defense, if anything."
Clearly you have no understanding of feminism and no idea what would constitute a "feminist film". How does showing the gradual degradation, rape, and murder of young women - all the while inserting shots of women in various stages of undress or engaging in sexual acts with yourself and others - equal a "feminist movie" or do anything to express feminist views? You must think that showing a man abusing, raping and murdering women points out the raging misogyny that still exists in our society and that you are doing some small amount of good in the area of women's interests. You'd be wrong. AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER is most definitely NOT a feminist film. It is a sadistic rape fantasy from which no amount of knowledge can be gained. Nothing more.
Later on in the interview, you are asked by Meyer what you think about "torture porn" films, which AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER clearly is. You respond:
"See, the problem with those films is that they try to entertain you with the gore, and then say it's a social commentary. But you can't do that. It contradicts itself... if you're trying to make a social statement you can't show a girl being hung upside down naked while another naked girl masturbates to her blood. That's a complete contradiction."
A contradiction? You made a horror/porn hybrid in which you spread the female lead's butt cheeks apart to stick a finger in her asshole. You made a horror/porn hybrid in which the female characters are completely naive, under-developed and emotionally void, serving no purpose but to be fucked on film before being unconvincingly slain. You made a horror/porn hybrid in which the narrative ceases in order to give us short bursts of hardcore pornography, stripping girls and ego-glory shots of your erect penis. And yet you think you justify this in your earlier statements!? All of this is acceptable in your mind because it's really a "feminist movie"!? Do you see the contradiction? Do you see the hypocrisy?
I suppose you have never seen any of George Romero's films? Or CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST? Or LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT? All of those films have used the horror medium for the purpose of making a social statement of some sort. None of them have shied away from graphic violence to do so. It's not a contradiction. It's simply your inability to distinguish the commentary from the presentation.
If people don't see the worth you argue is in your films, your "point", the "message", don't blame the people watching it. Blame yourself for not having the intellect or skill to bring that point home with any efficency. You have done, in the Penny Blood interview - and no doubt during your career - exactly what you accused Eli Roth of doing with his HOSTEL films. You feel that Roth made a film of questionable content and then had the audacity of calling it a commentary. The social commentary present in the HOSTEL films - while not fully realized or executed well - is very apparent. Had it not been for you stating in that interview that AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER is meant to be a "feminist film", I never would have guessed it. And you wouldn't have looked like such an idiot because of it.
You seem proud of these films. I wouldn't be. You've done nothing special. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that two people and a camera can equal a movie. But you're far from a filmmaker. These are home movies at best, the quality of which is dwarfed ten times over by the vast majority of short work you can find on YouTube. You mentioned in the Penny Blood interview that you always wanted to be an actor but couldn't get work. So you made these films. I suppose that could be true. I also suppose it's equally possible that you figured "hey I got a big dick and a video camera, why not make a porno?" Surely you weren't thinking that this slop would pass as serious film? Surely you weren't thinking that this slop would somehow get you respectable work as an actor? If the AMATEUR PORN STAR KILLER series truly provides a sampling of your talents, you'd be better off picking a different vocation. Or just have the decency to admit that your sole purpose of making these films was to get laid and make money doing it? At least admit that!
As it stands, your little films will survive in the public memory only as long as people like me keep bringing them up. You may have fans - people are very easy to please - and you may have more films on your resume now than most aspiring filmmakers will ever have but, in the end, it's all for naught. You have created disposable work of no value to the cinematic landscape, empty, nihilistic nonsense that fails as porn, horror, and, ahem, feminist film. Three films into your series and you have yet to offer anything of worth. Time to give up and move on.
Regards,
David Grant
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