It's Cool I'm Good

MOVIE #1,136 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 09.04.23 I was all set to do a Monday TRUE RANDOM but then I realized that the film which the machine selected (1967’s Countdown) was actually directed by Robert Altman and I definitely plan on doing a full Altman Director Focus at some point so I decided to pivot and watch a 35-minute experimental art movie instead. I discovered this one just the other day via Megan Boyle’s LIVEBLOG 2.0 and I loved it. The IMDB description is very funny but also accurate (“A bandaged woman with mysterious injuries wanders aimlessly around, telling jokes and other patter to the camera held by her volunteer nurses”) and I also love that Mel Blanc is listed as one of the stars there because towards the end a Bugs Bunny cartoon is shown playing on a TV. (You can watch the whole thing here via the artist's vimeo.)

The editing is really good here, both video and sound. Almost unexpectedly so given the context/fidelity of the medium. I liked the mix of added and diegetic sound, a lovely blend of pop music and more abrasive stuff that collides together in bursts alongside the scattered, nonlinear ‘narrative’. To that point: they clearly didn’t have the rights to any of it, making it impossible to release in any commercial/official capacity (it strangely isn’t even listed on Letterboxd, though a number of her other films are). It makes me wish more movies were made in this rogue style, where you can film yourself playing the flute alongside the album version of “Stairway to Heaven” without giving two shits.

The content of her mostly one-sided convos range from animal biology/habitats to civil engineering to this deranged bologna butt fable/joke…


It’s an incredibly funny movie which is a rare treat in something that’s also so firmly grounded in the world of experimental film.

The commentary also felt simple enough: existing in this fucked up world is hard, but we can (or should) always try to find levity in that struggle.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,135 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,137 ⫸

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In It's Cool, I'm Good, a bandaged and injured protagonist (Kahn), seduces, entertains, harasses and charms a slew of nurses who have agreed to hold the camera. The "patient" is at once selfless and narcissistic, verbose and elusive, vulnerable and manipulative. It was released on January 1, 2010.