In "Movie Man" Walker Percy's character argues that nothing is "certified" until it appears on film. The point is arguable. But the people who are going to be buried in this cemetery would no doubt agree. They make a videotape before they die, to be played at their services and made available for viewers afterward.
Hollywood Cemetery used to be a junkie, overgrown, fallen-down necropolis with a handful of old-time, half-forgotten celebrities like Fatty Arbuckle. It was recently taken over by entrepreneurs who are turning it into a high-end place to spend eternity. It's kind of like Tom Joad surviving the depression and opening a chain of salad bars in Santa Ana.
At first I thought this documentary was supposed to be a spoof of better-done films like "Gates of Heaven" or any other Errol Morris piece, since the interviewees come on so enthusiastically with Hollywoodian locutions like, "This is very unique," and, "It's a very, very, very nice place." The owner is described as, "A nice guy; he looks like a movie star." A salesman tells a customer, "We all want to be remembered, but we want to be remembered the way WE want to be remembered." "The very first statue bought by Dr. Eaton was the duck girl, a young little girl."
"Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" plays in the background. (It ought to be a trained seal playing "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on the bicycle horns.)
Forest Lawn is held up as the model towards which they strive. And these guys are serious. They are very, very, very much aware that they're characters in a film and have an audience to convince, and some of them see it as free advertisement. "I've heard that there are secret make-out spots around," says one touter, "and it's a very romantic place."
There was something engaging about Morris's interviewees and about the excerpts we were shown. But there's not much new here, not in the way of technique anyway. What is still surprising, still amazing, is the plumbless depths to which Orange County vulgarity will sink. It isn't enough to have simply heard about it. It needs to be experienced.
We are given a tour of Forest Lawn, the holy of holies, by an unctuous business-suited blonde who explains that Dr. Eaton decided to buy it and fix it up years ago because he found it depressing. For instance, none of the statues of Jesus were smiling. So he had smiling Jesus statues constructed. Also Disneyesque bronze fauns, a replica of Michelangelo's David (no frontal nudity, but surely he wears a fig leaf) that crumbles after every earthquake because "he's weak in the ankles", a replica of Copenhagen's little mermaid, a stained-glass replica of "The Last Supper," and so forth. All that's missing is "The Pissing Mannequin" of Brussels.
Dr. Eaton's goal was achieved. Forest Lawn is no longer depressing. It's either one hundred percent hilarious or one hundred percent emetic, depending on your taste for irony. The content of this documentary is so shockingly repugnant in every way -- the insights shallow, the iconography hair-raisingly schlocky -- that it makes for compelling watching. It's more like "Mondo Cane" than like "The Thin Blue Line," but that's what makes it worth watching.
It is said that people get the governments they deserve. Is the same thing true of their monuments? There we have Karl Marx buried in Old Highgate Cemetery in London, under a bronze bust, surrounded by all of the most rapacious capitalistic pigs of the industrial age. In the afterlife perhaps they refer to him as "Old Pinwheel Karl." Maybe all monuments are ultimately ironic.
Hollywood Cemetery used to be a junkie, overgrown, fallen-down necropolis with a handful of old-time, half-forgotten celebrities like Fatty Arbuckle. It was recently taken over by entrepreneurs who are turning it into a high-end place to spend eternity. It's kind of like Tom Joad surviving the depression and opening a chain of salad bars in Santa Ana.
At first I thought this documentary was supposed to be a spoof of better-done films like "Gates of Heaven" or any other Errol Morris piece, since the interviewees come on so enthusiastically with Hollywoodian locutions like, "This is very unique," and, "It's a very, very, very nice place." The owner is described as, "A nice guy; he looks like a movie star." A salesman tells a customer, "We all want to be remembered, but we want to be remembered the way WE want to be remembered." "The very first statue bought by Dr. Eaton was the duck girl, a young little girl."
"Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" plays in the background. (It ought to be a trained seal playing "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on the bicycle horns.)
Forest Lawn is held up as the model towards which they strive. And these guys are serious. They are very, very, very much aware that they're characters in a film and have an audience to convince, and some of them see it as free advertisement. "I've heard that there are secret make-out spots around," says one touter, "and it's a very romantic place."
There was something engaging about Morris's interviewees and about the excerpts we were shown. But there's not much new here, not in the way of technique anyway. What is still surprising, still amazing, is the plumbless depths to which Orange County vulgarity will sink. It isn't enough to have simply heard about it. It needs to be experienced.
We are given a tour of Forest Lawn, the holy of holies, by an unctuous business-suited blonde who explains that Dr. Eaton decided to buy it and fix it up years ago because he found it depressing. For instance, none of the statues of Jesus were smiling. So he had smiling Jesus statues constructed. Also Disneyesque bronze fauns, a replica of Michelangelo's David (no frontal nudity, but surely he wears a fig leaf) that crumbles after every earthquake because "he's weak in the ankles", a replica of Copenhagen's little mermaid, a stained-glass replica of "The Last Supper," and so forth. All that's missing is "The Pissing Mannequin" of Brussels.
Dr. Eaton's goal was achieved. Forest Lawn is no longer depressing. It's either one hundred percent hilarious or one hundred percent emetic, depending on your taste for irony. The content of this documentary is so shockingly repugnant in every way -- the insights shallow, the iconography hair-raisingly schlocky -- that it makes for compelling watching. It's more like "Mondo Cane" than like "The Thin Blue Line," but that's what makes it worth watching.
It is said that people get the governments they deserve. Is the same thing true of their monuments? There we have Karl Marx buried in Old Highgate Cemetery in London, under a bronze bust, surrounded by all of the most rapacious capitalistic pigs of the industrial age. In the afterlife perhaps they refer to him as "Old Pinwheel Karl." Maybe all monuments are ultimately ironic.