Slipping into town under the cover of darkness is Jon Moritsugu's Fame Whore, which is screening on Thursday, Feb. 26, in the Memorial Union's Fredric March Play Circle at 7 and 9 p.m. (admission is free, and Moritsugu will be on hand to answer questions). Moritsugu, the force behind such flashy/trashy titles as My Degeneration, Hippy Porn and Mod Fuck Explosion, cites Godard and Fassbinder as his directorial influences. I'd say Fassbinder more than Godard, with an additional, unacknowledged debt to Warhol. Like Warhol, Moritsugu sees fame as the 20th century's highest-priced commodity. But Warhol used to slobber all over celebrities. Moritsugu prefers to spit on them. In Fame Whore, Moritsugu and his Not Ready for Cable Access Players present three stories about fame's warping effect on the famous, the would-be famous and the won't-ever-be famous. The newly appointed number-one tennis player in the world--a guy who makes John McEnroe look like a choirboy--watches his life crumble after a French newspaper reveals (mistakenly?) that he's gay. Meanwhile, a richly obnoxious, obnoxiously rich woman assembles all the components of fame except talent. And, over at the dog pound, a lonely guy invents an imaginary friend, à la Jimmy Stewart in Harvey, in order to have somebody to talk to.
The line between auteur and amateur is a fine one in a movie like Fame Whore, and Moritsugu straddles that line like a pro. Still, I was surprised at how relatively tame the movie is--not as out-there as, say, My Degeneration, with its talking pig carcass. Moritsugu may come to us from beyond the fringe, but here he's dangerously close to the middle of the road.
