THE BEAVER TRILOGY (Trent Harris, U.S.). 85 minutes. Friday (May 15), 10 pm, Cinecycle. Rating: NNNNN
There is no precedent for Trent Harris’s bizarre triptych of performance pieces, shot between 1979 and 1985, which explore the mystique of Groovin’ Gary, a genial weirdo Harris met while testing out a new camera in the parking lot of a Utah TV station.
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Gary babbles to Harris’s camera for a while, shuffling and joking. Later, Harris recorded him at a talent show performing Olivia Newton-John’s Please Don’t Keep Me Waiting in drag.
Harris follows the Groovin’ Gary footage with recreations of the same material by Sean Penn and Crispin Glover, who evoke Gary’s barely sublimated pathos and desperation in radically different ways. Groovin’ Gary died earlier this year, and Inside/Out’s screening is dedicated to his memory.