Screens: March 9, 2001
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=80851
"I wish we could get the film out to more younger people," says The Trouble with Lou's producer Teddy Newton. "I feel that even at festivals it tends to attract people over 30, and when we play it for people who are, say, 17 to 25, the response is just amazing."
That's to be expected with a film as insidiously lowbrow-yet-hi-test as Lou, a sly parody of those 1950s mental hygiene films routinely screened for nervous high schoolers in between duck 'n' cover exercises. Films with titles such as Dating Dos and Don'ts, The Last Prom, and Narcotics: Pit of Despair regularly sought to guide hormonally challenged young people along a safe and narrow path to adulthood, and The Trouble With Lou marches right alongside, albeit to the beat of a different, uh, drummer. Directed by the single-monikered Gregor and featuring Lou Romano as Lou Romano, the film replicates the grainy, poorly staged ambience of this nearly forgotten chapter in cinematic history and infuses it with a healthy dose of contemporary sleaze, just the way we like it.
But what is the trouble with Lou, you ask? I won't beat around the bush: Lou's trouble is -- gasp! -- chronic masturbation, a case so severe that he's too ashamed to even approach a real girl and instead spends his days locked in his bedroom surrounded by hand lotions and girlie mags. Lou's situation changes (sort of) when he meets the comely young new girl at his school (Katheryn Cain) and promptly falls in love. From here the film cleverly riffs on both the joys of onanism and the undeniable need for human contact other than one's own hand, with occasional forays into the surreal. It's touching, really, to see how Lou finally comes to grips with his troubles and gets things well in hand, tackling the situation head-on with the help of his newfound lady friend. (No, seriously, it is.) As for the men behind the man with his hand in his trousers, Newton (who attended Cal Arts with Romano) and Gregor (late of USC film school) met in high school and eventually began working as animators at PIXAR Animation Studios (Toy Story), where they hatched the plot for Lou in 1999.
Rarely has there been a more fertile topic for a comedy-love story, but what sets this film apart from the Porky's and American Pies of the world is Newton and Gregor's unique, weathered, educational film style, achieved through a combination of 16mm and running out of money all the time.
"We had written another film first and didn't have any money to do anything like this script we wrote," says Newton. "We were terribly depressed until Greg had this idea about doing a film about masturbating. At the time I thought it was an awful idea, but the notion of using Lou, who was a friend, and then setting it in the Fifties made it somewhat less icky to me."
The end result -- the climax, if you will -- of Newton and Gregor's endeavor is a triumph of giddy retro-camp, a two-fisted comedy like no other, whacky in all the right places. (Bad Dog, 3/9, 9:30pm; Alamo, 3/12, 11:30pm; Bad Dog, 3/15, 9:15pm) -- Marc Savlov