It’s All Gone Pete Tong (Michael Dowse, Canada)

By Steve Gravestock

Mike Dowse made his directorial debut with Fubar (2002), a mockumentary about two suicidally dim Calgary headbangers. Scruffy and ramshackle, the film was a cult hit, in part because of its decidedly unique principals, Dean and Terry, and due to its unpredictable, shaggy dog approach to narrative. Fubar shares a number of similarities with movies made by the alternative culture/bohemian group of filmmakers that has emerged from Canada in the last five years. Like Blaine Thurier (Male Fantasy), Andrea Dorfman (Love That Boy, 2003), Noam Gonick (Stryker), Simon Sauve (Jimmywork), and Mike Clattenburg (TV’s Trailer Park Boys), Dowse clearly loves subcultures, and Fubar’s lead characters essentially formed a subculture of two since virtually nobody was crazy enough to hang out with them.

The members of this group appear to have created their own aesthetic, one that operates in a radically different sphere than the filmmakers who preceded them. In place of the European-influenced cinephilia that often drives the work of people like Atom Egoyan, Peter Mettler, and even to some extent Bruce McDonald, this next generation of filmmakers has substituted an alternative DIY ethic and an entirely different version of film history, one which canonizes indie icons like Cassavetes, cult flicks like American Movie (1999), and elevates sheer eccentricity to a pervasive metaphysical malaise. It would take a long time to find anyone more preternaturally annoying anywhere than Love That Boy’s hyper go-getter Phoebe; Male Fantasy’s Robert; or Fubar’s dangerous party animals.

Fubar also belongs to the most benighted and problematic of subgenres: the mockumentary. As a form, the mockumentary relies on monomaniacs completely devoid of any sense of humour about their obsessions (see, for instance, any Christopher Guest movie). More often than not, the fictional filmmakers are caught up in a similarly humourless, utterly unselfconscious pursuit, though most documentaries—Man Bites Dog (1999), which Dowse cites as an influence, being a rare exception—gloss over this detail. It’s a genre that affords neophyte filmmakers a virtual paint-by-numbers formula to begin with, but the rewards tend to shrink with each new effort, while the limitations only seem to grow. (The genre appears to hold particular attraction for Canadians, maybe because of all those years we were forced to watch often-staid NFB productions in school.) Dowse pushes the formula as far as he possibly can. By the end, Fubar is much more than an account of two semi-loveable losers, turning into a rather scurrilous, no-holds-barred send-up of documentaries and documentary filmmakers.

Dowse’s follow-up, It’s All Gone Pete Tong, takes things even further, suggesting that he’s on an entirely different path than his colleagues. Slicker and far more ambitious than Fubar, the film is part mockumentary and part biopic, recounting the rise and fall of celebrated DJ Frankie Wilde (Paul Kaye), the toast of Ibiza, the dance music/rave capital of the world. Frankie is treated like a god by the thousands of ravers who attend his performances. (He first appears sporting a crown of thorns as he flies over the crowd, then crash-lands in a makeshift moat.) He’s a relentless panderer to his audiences, which I suppose must be part of a DJ’s job description, but he’s also clearly addicted to the adulation and power that comes with the position.

Stoned, drunk, or both about 100% of the time, Frankie is Fubar’s Dean without the socializing, salutary influence of Terry. In other words, Frankie is essentially an idiot, fond of hatching dumb schemes (like marketing his own line of hummus) that are inevitably supported by his rather sluttish wife, Sonja (Kate Magowan) and his sweaty, bellowing manager, Max (Mike Wilmot). Basically, his relationships are mutually exploitative: he doles out money, and people put up with his drug-addled behaviour. (He usually greets the day with some sort of excrescence hanging out of an orifice, while his favourite party game appears to be projectile vomiting.) Frankie’s also haunted by a figure identified only as the “Coke Badger,” a creepy looking, giant stuffed animal with a rotting snout who materializes any time Frankie tries to moderate his cocaine consumption.

At the same time, Frankie is far less obnoxious than the crew that lives off of him. His manager Max is borderline psychotic, always ranting, raging, and perspiring. As Wilmot plays him, Max suggests Bob Hoskins on a serious Viagra overdose—with more than a pinch of voyeur thrown in. Wife Sonya is more concerned about redecorating than dealing with Frankie’s various addictions. Central to the film’s success, though, is Kaye, whose preternaturally icy blue eyes are capable of suggesting reservoirs of pain and confusion, a pain exacerbated by the fact that he doesn’t understand what’s going on, or, more likely, can’t remember what caused the pain in the first place.

For its first half, Pete Tong pretty much sticks to the “rules” of mockumentary, offering up some pretty bang-on shots at the music industry. One of the best comes courtesy of Jack Stoddart (Neil Maskell), a British executive who explains that he cancelled Frankie’s recording contract because he didn’t want his company “touched with the deaf stamp.” Music, he explains matter-of-factly, has traditionally been the province of those who can hear. There’s also plenty of Euro-trash bashing, notably in Frankie’s puerile, sexist video, where—armed with a harpoon and his eyes ludicrously caked in kohl—he chases Sonya along a rocky beach and eventually lassoes her.

Still, one senses Dowse straining at the confines of the genre, frequently dropping or abandoning the formula. Testimonials give way to depictions of Frankie’s Howard Hughes-like breakdown. In fact, Pete Tong is as much a parody of biopics as a mockumentary, and it’s fairly packed with pretty subtle allusions to other films, from Raging Bull (1980) (see Frankie’s entrance into the clubs where he does battle, flanked by dancers) to This Is Spinal Tap (1984) (when Frankie gets his hearing tested, the machine’s metre goes up to 11); as well as copious amounts of pop mythology.

Everything changes when finally Frankie realizes that he’s quickly going deaf, at which point the film shifts gears radically, switching from a sharp, but relatively familiar mode to something else entirely. (There are echoes here, of course, of Fubar’s third-act focus on Dean’s refusal to deal with his testicular cancer.) On the surface, it may seem like the film becomes a more straightforward drama about redemption. Abandoned by everyone, living in a soundproofed room and snorting copious amounts of coke, Frankie finally sees the light and sallies forth to learn lip reading and sign language. Yet it would be a mistake to take the proceedings entirely straight up. In fact, the parodic aspects just become less overt and familiar. For one thing, the film does claim that a deaf DJ is so brilliant he can construct a hit record; for another, there are Max’s attempts to exploit Frankie’s situation; lastly, in the film’s penultimate sequence, we see Frankie remains as addicted to audience approval as ever.

At their best, Dowse’s two features recall the early, satiric work of Brian De Palma (most notably his two counterculture parodies Greetings [1968] and Hi, Mom! [1970]). Like De Palma, Dowse seems reluctant to adhere to generic codes, and, in Pete Tong in particular, sets himself up with rather sizeable technical challenges: specifically, establishing hearing loss in visible terms, and simply explaining exactly what a DJ does. The scenes where Frankie realizes he can feel rhythm—even if he can’t hear it—are virtual tour de forces. Frankie’s discovery is communicated through a combination of audio and visual means, an approach that effectively drops us into his head in a matter both unsettling and fascinating. Dowse represents something new within the confines of Canadian cinema, which remains largely dominated by art films. While he possesses decidedly commercial instincts, at the same time his hipster sensibility gives his work a decided edge—a welcome addition to a cinema that can sometimes seem simultaneously too arty and too safe.

Steve Gravestock

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