By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 1, 2020)

“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

— Charles Bukowski, from his novel Women

You have likely heard the cliché that the Inuits have 50 words for “snow”? This is, of course, not 100% true. What we have here, is failure to communicate. What we do have here is a case of “polysynthesis” …which means that you have a base word (in this case, “snow”), which is then attached to many different suffixes which change the meaning. In this context, people of the north have hundreds of ways of describing snow (I know. This sounds like something the drunk at the end of the bar would say…stay with me).

Anyone who has ever spent a few hours down the pub knows there are as many descriptive terms for “drunks” as there are for “snow” . Happy drunks, melancholy drunks, friendly drunks, hostile drunks, sentimental drunks, amorous drunks, philosophical drunks, crazy drunks…et.al. You get all the above (and a large Irish coffee) in the extraordinary, genre-defying Sundance hit Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.

Co-directed by brothers Turner and Bill Ross, the film vibes the “direct cinema” school popularized in the 60s and 70s by another pair of sibling filmmakers-the Maysles brothers. It centers on the staff and patrons of a Las Vegas dive bar on its final day of business. At least that is the premise I bought into hook, line, sinker, and latest issue of Angling Times. It was only after I saw it that I discovered this little tidbit via IndieWire:

Except that in reality, that bar is still open, it’s in New Orleans, and the patrons gathering for one last hurrah were cast by the filmmakers Turner and Bill Ross.

As Johnny Rotten once said, “Ever feel like you’ve been cheated?” Sheepishly, I read on:

The night before the film premiered to rave reviews at Sundance, the Ross Brothers sat down, at a bar over beers, for a 70-minute interview with to discuss how they made “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” and the inevitable questions they knew it would unleash. From the Ross Brothers’ perspective, this, their fifth feature film that has everyone at Sundance talking, is simply the natural evolution of their process as filmmakers.

“With our first film we cast a broad net, we spent 100 hours and a year of life with people until we realized you could fish, how you could wait for these moments, find these moments, and then as we got further and further along, how can you can feed a situation where you create a dynamic situation that might be conducive to what you are looking for,” said Turner. “And we’ve gotten further along into this fifth feature. Well actually can we create a dynamic scenario where we could provoke or create situations where we might elicit these authentic found moments we’re looking for.”

That their work has been embraced and supported by the part of the documentary community that sees nonfiction filmmakers more as artists using form than documentarians practicing journalism, has given the brothers a supportive community and place in the filmmaking world. The flip side is that it’s an association that puts them on one side of the increasingly useless binary of nonfiction vs. fiction that defines most film festivals, and that their latest film confounds.

I hadn’t felt this much like a dunce since the night I happened onto Zak Penn’s Incident at Loch Ness while channel-flipping and got sucked into what I assumed was an obscure Werner Herzog documentary about the Loch Ness monster that I had somehow missed. I had no idea it was a mockumentary until the credits. Hook, line, sinker, and fake Nessie.

My bruised ego aside, I rather enjoyed Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (whatever the hell it “is”). Populated by characters straight out of a Charles Bukowski novel, the film works as a paean to the neighborhood tavern and a “day in the life” character study. It is also a microcosm of human behavior, infused with all the alcohol-induced bathos you’d expect.

“Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” is now playing via SIFF’s Virtual Cinema platform.

Here are 2 fun facts I learned watching Allison Ellwood’s rock doc The Go-Gos. I never realized they were the first all-female band who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to have a #1 album (I suppose that says something about the music biz that it took until 1982 for that precedent to be set?). I had also assumed they are inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They are not (WTF?) That shows how much I know.

The band has also been overdue for a feature-length career retrospective; Ellwood’s film offers an absorbing portrait of the groundbreaking quintet’s rise, fall and resurrection(s).

The film begins with their D.I.Y. roots in the burgeoning L.A. punk scene of the late 70s, and goes on to recount the shuffling of various personnel that eventually settled into the now-classic lineup of lead vocalist Belinda Carlisle, rhythm guitarist and vocalist Jane Weidlin (both original co-founders) guitarist-keyboardist and  backing vocalist Charlotte Caffey, bassist Kathy Valentine, and drummer Gina Schock.

The doc does play like a glorified episode of “VH-1’s Behind the Music” at times, with the inevitable tales of bruised egos, backstage squabbles, drug addiction (and don’t forget rehab!)…but hey, that’s rock and roll. It’s nice to see the band recognized for their talent, influence and perseverance (hard to believe they have been around for 40 years). It’s also inspiring to see them together and producing new songs. They’ve still got the beat, baby!

“The Go-Gos” is now playing on Showtime cable and VOD.