Beyond the Multiplex

Lipsitz's two heroes are a New York actor named David Jung ("C-Diddy," in the air-guitar universe) and a real-life rock musician named Dan Crane who airs as "Björn Türoque." These guys represent, if you will, the venerable collision of expressionism and impressionism, and perhaps of classicism and romanticism, translated into the idiom of rockhead idiots pretending to play invisible guitars. C-Diddy is an arrogant, braggart showman in the Gene Simmons vein, full of tongue-waggling, finger-picking histrionics. He wears Spandex pants in barfy shades and a Hello Kitty backpack, facing forward, as a sort of breastplate just above his ample tummy. As he tells Lipsitz, his secrets are "Asian fury and air supremacy."

Björn is also "kind of a dick" (Crane's phrase, not mine) but in a different spirit of dickness. He's a standoffish, introspective art-rock air-god in aviator shades, with a bit of Keith Richards and Johnny Thunders in his DNA. He's clearly a vain and untrustworthy character, but girls flock to him and other guys crave his approval. Onstage, he clearly believes he's doing us a favor just by showing up, but when he's in the groove and adequately medicated, he rocks that nonexistent Les Paul like nobody else.

It's true that Lipsitz has made another of those documentaries that goes spelunking into some neglected subcultural realm -- like spelling bees or crossword puzzles or or balloon twisting or, I don't know, beekeeping ("Buzz! On Hives and Humans") -- and comes back with a few goofballs, a few yucks and the message that people are people no matter where you find them.

But the oddness of air guitar turns out to be an especially rich kind of oddness: Björn and C-Diddy and their competitors understand that they're doing something inherently silly and self-referential, and they've constructed personas to match. Along the way they've also become convinced of the truth in an apparent paradox: that pretending to play along with Jimmy Page or Yngwie Malmsteen is a pure, uncommodified form of expression, and that within its arbitrary limits and apparent meaninglessness lies artistic freedom.

In some mysterious way, the level of self-awareness behind the braggadocio of air guitar made me care more, not less, about the bitter and finally respectful competition between these two air-maestros. (In "Murderball," by contrast, I found the macho intensity of the quadriplegic rugby athletes ultimately wearying.) Lipsitz captures the electric night in Oulu, Finland, when Björn, having already lost to C-Diddy in New York and Los Angeles and paid his own way across the pond, enters a qualifying round in a nightclub and blows the doors off with a legendary display of airness, a performance so great it will forever be remembered wherever fast-food employees solo with brooms in walk-in refrigerators. I don't know whether to call it interpretive dance for dudes or performance art or just a highly developed form of wanking. Who cares? It seriously rocks. (Said with just the faintest ironic penumbra.)

"Air Guitar Nation" opens March 23 at the Angelika Film Center in New York; March 30 at the Nu art Theatre in Los Angeles; April 6 in Honolulu; April 13 in Austin, Texas; April 20 in Boston and San Luis Obispo, Calif.; April 27 in San Antonio; May 2 in Portland, Maine; May 4 in Jacksonville, Fla., Madison, Wis., Nashville, Portland, Ore., and San Francisco; May 11 in Atlanta; May 18 in Seattle and May 25 in Denver, with other cities to be announced.

"Color Me Kubrick": Ludicrous outfits, a bad accent and a cackling darkness at the heart of the celebrity dream
While we're on the topic of movies that strongly resemble reality TV -- a proportion slowly creeping toward 100 percent -- anyone who still thinks that being a celebrity would really be kind of fun should check out Brian Cook's directing debut, "Color Me Kubrick," in which John Malkovich plays Alan Conway, the London con man who impersonated Stanley Kubrick during the famous director's last years.

Conway is a juicy role, and Malkovich gnaws on it with all the gusto you'd expect from Mr. Art-Movie Hambone Actor himself. Not only had Conway never met Kubrick, he knew almost nothing about him and had never seen any of his films. As played by Malkovich, Conway is a pathetic, flaming queen who wears nonsensical outfits he thinks will make him seem bohemian. His "American" accent sometimes sounds like an aging New York Jew and sometimes like Blanche Dubois, with stopovers in Korea, Scandinavia and the East End. (Malkovich has said he wanted Conway to sound as if he were making mistake after mistake with total confidence.)

Watching Conway perpetrate outrageous scams on gullible commoners, in the name of a so-called celebrity most of them had only dimly heard of, makes for jaw-dropping, head-scratching fun, at least for a little while. As I wrote when I saw the film last year at Tribeca, it's never clear what the point is once you get past the shock value of Malkovich's performance. What sticks with me, I guess, is what arduous drudgery Conway's ruse was: Sure, he got free drinks at a few upscale clubs and sex from a few particularly stupid rent boys. But he remained a bitter, sick, impoverished fellow, who could have made a much better living putting his talents to work selling insurance or used cars.

Director Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin were both intimates of the real Kubrick, which I guess counts for something. But for what, exactly? Does it uniquely qualify them to make a mean-spirited, trashy and intermittently funny film about a guy who wasn't Kubrick?

"Color Me Kubrick" opens March 23 in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and other cities, with more to follow.

Next page: A dark tale of revenge with an inscrutable heart