AFF: The Dopeness

AFF "Comedy Vanguard" film Who Is KK Downey? is the comedy shit and that is no lie, unlike J.T. Leroy, who was a total fabrication and still managed to sell about a gazillion books and one Asia Argento. Loosely based on the Leroy business (not to mention James Frey's Million Little Pieces kerfluffle), KK Downey plays out like some deranged Kids in the Hall skit if the Kids in the Hall were actually the Kids at the Beauty Bar doing clandestine rails in the bathroom stall. But, you know, in a good way.

Writers Darren Curtis, Pat Kiely, and Matt Silver play a failed rocker, a failed writer, and a failed altweekly music critic with Bona Drag/Kill Uncle-era Morrissey hair, respectively, and all three inhabit their roles with such a degree of manic, leering, utterly unhinged genius that hyperbolic praise is rendered moot: you've got to see it to believe it. (Lucky for you it's screening Wed, Oct. 22, 7 pm at Dobie Theater.)

Kidnapper Films has done some amazing shorts in the past -- they're available on their site -- but Who Is KK Downey?, directed by Curtis and Kiely, is nothing short of brilliant. Its vicious, hilarious savaging of the indie-hipster scene (apparently and unsurprisingly not unlike Austin's own) is deranged in the best possible sense. Ultimately, this is a film about friendship and the perils of and addiction to fame (or anything approaching it), but Who Is KK Downey? never deigns to kowtow to anything approaching the ordinary. It's surreal. It's outrageous. It's choke-on-your-soda-until-it-comes-out-your-nose hilarious.

Seriously. We're going to get the director to burn us a press screener as soon as possible and then we're going to jam that sucker in our DVD player, superglue the tray shut, hit "repeat all" on the remote, and throw a "Dude, you've got to watch this!" party. Consider us blown away and doubled over, another victim of KK Downey's freakishly awesome charm attack.