Saw this the other night at the Psychotronic Film Festival (a weekly freakout of hard to find cinematic gems here in Savannah) and I really enjoyed it. If you are an afficianado of "junkie" movies then your collection is not complete without checking out the world of Dusty & Sweets. Essentially, this is a film that is quasi-documentary (the junkies shoot junk for real) with a story wrapped around the junkie stuff concerning scoring and dealers in LA circa 1970 that was shot later to fill out the documentary footage. It is a real time capsule vividly shot by Lazlo Kovacs and I was just mesmerized by it - it was just a very free & creative time for filmmakers and it shows - it's a real experiment (that did not work) but looking back at it now, it's a wonderful document and a piece of art. It has no real linear plot: just people driving around, shooting dope, laying around on beds talking shit & scoring. Anyway, it showed for maybe a week at some grind house in 1971 and then was sucked off the planet to God knows where (it was directed by Floyd Mutrix who also made one of my old guilty pleasures,
The Hollywood Knights and also
American Hot Wax and
Freebie and the Bean - which was directed by Richard Rush who made
Psych-Out with Jack Nicholson (LSD man! Turn On!) and
The Stunt Man with Peter O'Toole ("how tall is King Kong?") - it's all circular in the land of the freaks). As someone said, more people talk about
Dusty & Sweets McGee in almost mythic tones but few have ever seen it (I remember the Stones movie
Cocksucker Blues carrying alot of the same mythic weight - it's too HEAVY to be seen man! I own it and there are many scenes that would be right at home in
Dusty and Sweets. I betcha Tarantino saw it - Reservoir Dogs cops the whole solid gold 70's weekend soundtrack - and I have no doubt that Gus Van Sant did not see it - there are a lot of elements that wound up in
Drugstore Cowboy.
