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Tarnation
- Director: Jonathan Caouette
- Writer: Jonathan Caouette
- Producer: Vanessa Arteaga; Jason Banker
CGiii Comment
With executive producers: the big-named Gus van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell - you would expect something of merit...
It cost $218 to make...but, rose to $400,000, once music and video clip royalties were bought and included.
This is a video diary that took years to film.
Instead of it being the story of growing up with a schizophrenic mother (as it is marketed) - it is, in fact, an elongated showreel for Caouette - the stuff with his mother is almost mercenary in order to get him the publicity that he so obviously craves.
Congratulations - he got it - by selling his soul and stretching the truth to breaking point.
Self-serving junk - endorsed by big names is tantamount to the criminal offense of fraud.
If he wasn't gay...we would never have heard a peep...terribly convenient.
It won awards...what do we know?!?
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
Part documentary, part narrative fiction, part home movie, and part acid trip. A psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s pop culture, and dramatic reenactments to create an epic portrait of an American family travesty. The story begins in 2003 when Jonathan learns that his schizophrenic mother, Renee, has overdosed on her lithium medication. He is catapulted back into his real and horrifying family legacy of rape, abandonment, promiscuity, drug addiction, child abuse, and psychosis. As he grows up on camera, he finds the escapist balm of musical theater and B horror flicks and reconnects to life through a queer chosen family. Then a look into the future shows Jonathan as he confronts the symbiotic and almost unbearable love he shares with his beautiful and tragically damaged mother.
Cast & Characters
Renee Leblanc as Herself;
Jonathan Caouette as Himself;
Adolph Davis as Himself;
Rosemary Davis as Herself;
David Sanin Paz as Himself;
Joshua Williams as Himself;
Michael Cox as Guy cussing in short film;
David Leblanc as Himself;
Stacey Mowery as Herself;
Michael Mouton as Himself;
Greg Ayres as Himself;
Vanda Stovall as Herself;
Dagon James as Himself;
Vivian Kalinov as Herself;
Steve Caouette as Himself