What’s it rated? Unrated
When? 2011
Where’s it showing? Amazon Prime
It’s 1987 and two friends from Wisconsin—Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitch Deprey—decide to head to San Francisco and try their hand at big-city life in the lower Haight. They end up renting an inexpensive apartment with paper-thin walls, and they quickly discover their neighbors—bigoted loudmouth Raymond Huffman and gay and proud Peter Haskett—have an ongoing and endless screaming match with one another. Eddie and Mitch begin to record the conflict, and soon their audiotapes get distributed and reach underground cult status.
This dark and sad documentary explores how over the ensuing years the recordings take on a life of their own and inspire plays, comics, and even a failed movie deal. Various artists and fans are interviewed, and greed rears its ugly head. Viewers basically get an inside look at a toxic relationship, which becomes mean-spirited entertainment. It’s weirdly fascinating and certainly a guilty pleasure to witness this exploration of humanity’s corruption. (90 min.) Δ
This article appears in Apr 23 – May 3, 2020.