Watching the kaleidoscopic fever dream that is Rob Fatal’s La Bamba 2: Hell is a Drag leaves the viewer with the indelible impression that the very zeitgeist is having a revolution.
As the title suggests, La Bamba 2 is something of a spiritual sequel to the 1987 film starring Lou Diamond Phillips, which, in of itself, is a bit of a conundrum. After all, how does one make a sequel to a film that is based on such true, extremely finite events as the life of Richie Valens? If you’re Rob Fatal, you do it with panache, surrealism, and no small amount of camp.
La Bamba 2, which will have its world premiere at the San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival (hosted by our own Peaches Christ and Sam Sharkey), is as much an ode to Valens as it is to Fatal’s own personal and cinematic explorations of self and culture. Moreover, it is a film that isn’t confined by any one set of rules, utilizing the biography of an icon to explore the hopes and dreams of an individual seeking an identity of his own.
The plot of La Bamba 2 mostly concerns itself with the character of Rob Fatal (playing some semblance of himself), whose idolization of Richie Valens has led to a lifetime of yearning and identity crisis. However, Fatal gets the chance to come face-to-face with his hero when the rocker is taken captive by the forces of the underworld, and Fatal is pulled down to Hell to help in the search.
Utilizing a gender-bending cast (the secondary title is Hell is a Drag, after all), Fatal’s journey through the inferno is intercut with bizarre recreations of moments from Valens’ own life. What results is a surrealistic parallel of two men trying to find themselves in worlds that seemingly contradict who they are meant to be. It’s fantastically deranged, fully realized chaos…and it’s delicious.
I suspect that when my dear ghoulfriend Peaches Christ pointed me in the direction of Fatal and his campy mind-trip of a film, it was with the knowledge that unusual cinema is my bread and butter. With its evocations of the work of David Lynch and Kenneth Anger, La Bamba 2 showed me that in Rob Fatal I had found a kindred spirit in the world of weird. Eager to talk with the burgeoning filmmaker, I was happy when he took some time from preparing for his premiere to sit and discuss the motivations behind his movie.
Fatal acknowledges his filmic influences, and he wears his adoration of cinema on his sleeve. However, much like La Bamba 2, there are many layers to what led him to commit the story to film. From a dissatisfaction with the world of Chicano cinema to revelatory thoughts on why the original La Bamba still resonates, Fatal shared with me all the details of what made him take this cinematic journey to Hell and back.
First and foremost, your film is about to premiere at the San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival. That’s got to be exciting. How are you feeling?
Among other things, I’m feeling excited, grateful, humbled, and anxious about the premiere. It’s been two long years making La Bamba 2 come to life, and now it’s about to be shown as a fully realized project. Moreover, to have the film premiere as part of Peaches Christ’s festival is a dream come true. I’ve been an admirer of Peaches’ work for a while. It is like the stars aligned and my film found its way to Peaches and Sam. I’m so excited to have it premiere at the SFUSFF. It’s like home.
In an earlier conversation, I mentioned that the film had echoes of Kenneth Anger, and you told me that he was one of your major inspirations. In watching the piece fully, I can see all sorts of influences at work in La Bamba 2. The film calls to mind a range of artists and works, including David Lynch, Jodorowsky, and Richard Elfman’s The Forbidden Zone, yet it remains wholly unique. Rather than have me tell you what I think I saw, I’m interested to hear from you directly what works influenced you in the creation of this piece. What artists and filmmakers, if any, did you look to while making this film?
During the emotionally brutal summer I spent writing the film, David Lynch and, in particular, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s films found their way into the script. Their surreal worlds and characters became my escape and language to understand all of the chaos that was around me. Specifically, the journey plots and visual cues of Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, El Topo and Fando y Lis. As for Lynch, I guess his spirit just hovered about the project, but I know he’s in there. There’s definitely some Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and moments from Blue Velvet and Muholland Drive. Stanley Kubrick’s precision, geometry, and classical grandeur was a cornerstone for the film. The other opposing cornerstone was the brutal and heartfelt trash of John Waters (my hero), such as Pink Flamingos and Polyester. All of this mixed with Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, which is arguably how we created the costume for the character of Bob. Also, the Kuchars’ Sins of the Fleshapoids and Hold Me While I’m Naked essentially equal La Bamba 2: Hell Is A Drag.
On a similar note, I have to ask: Why La Bamba? Why not the sequel to something else? What drew you to this material? Based on a prior interview you gave, I understand this isn’t the first time you’ve written a sequel to something from the popular culture canon.
When I was younger, La Bamba was, and maybe still is, my favorite film. At first it was because it was something my family came together around: We watched it a lot. We owned the soundtrack, and would dance around to it together. In high school, the film was a cultural reference for me and other Chicanos. We would quote it to each other like a sort of secret code none of the other kids could understand. From that connection in the Chicano community, it became a source of pride. We had something that was powerfully ours. As I got into college and began to make my own video art, I began to understand the rarity of La Bamba. It was one of the highest grossing Chicano films of all time, a generation bridge between those of Ritchie Valens’ time and those decades later who would see his echo in the film. It was a Chicano film, and it helped me come into my own identity as a person of Mexican descent, particularly as someone who was often labeled “white washed” and couldn’t speak Spanish, much like Ritchie in the film. I feel like he and I had something in common. But, like all relationships, mine with La Bamba was gray, to say the least. As I began to study intercultural media communications, feminist theory, and queer theory, I began to see some really dark points in my own Chicano culture, and thus in my own family and identity. The portrayal of women in La Bamba and Chicano films tended to be merely as objects of a man’s desire. They were either wife, mother, or sex object. I began to understand that Chicano films as a genre were loaded with stereotypes of men and women, and used many of the same plots over and over: Assimilation vs. anti-assimilation, migration, gang wars, etc. I noticed how nearly all of these mainstream Chicano films, including La Bamba, were from the perspective of straight Chicano men, thus, ALL queer people were totally invisible. This changed with La Mission, but that film is, again, arguably from the perspective of a straight Chicano gang member machismo man. As my own identity became more complex, I was seeing myself less and less in La Bamba.
As I entered graduate school and fully committed to my life as a video artist, I found myself again engrossed with La Bamba. This time, it was not with the color of my skin and the location of my family heritage, but in the desires of the characters within the film. I was a dreamer who was a fame glutton, just like Ritchie, struggling to find myself between many cultures. I was an insecure outcast, like Bob, desperate to be recognized and loved. I wanted family, communion, and connectivity, yet shuddered at its toxic nature and trauma. I found elements of fate and mysticism in my life that helped guide me forward to some unknown fate, a theme that runs deep in La Bamba. Similar to Ritchie, I’m scared of death, but want to live as much as possible…even if death is a byproduct of that.
For all of these reasons, La Bamba is my favorite film of all time, and the only film I could dedicate two years of my life scrutinizing with simultaneous parody and homage. It is a vehicle to speak about many topics in Chicano film: Identity, spirituality, etc…
What, if anything, would you like audiences to take away from their viewing experience of La Bamba 2?
My reason for making this film is very selfish. I want to see if other people are questioning the same things as I am: Spirituality, obsession, purpose, desire, and identity. I want people to resonate with this film, and know they are not alone, which is exactly what I get out of it when I see people who “get” La Bamba 2. I know I’ve found other people to travel with on this long and winding journey. I want to build community and dialogue with this film. In a more simple sense, I want people to be entertained and provoked.
What can fans of your work expect next? Is there a new feature in the works?
Aside from the wonderful short video art pieces I am doing with my collaborators Jessica Leimone and Cara Levine, my next feature length video work is about a woman living for ten years in isolation in a cave in a post-apocalyptic future as a way to protect herself from the barbaric world outside. It is heavily influenced visually and thematically by Bela Tarr and P.T. Anderson. This story is told simultaneously with another story about a guy who was a film director before the apocalypse, and deals with the uselessness of his “talent” as a filmmaker now that he is in a post-apocalyptic world without electricity, theaters, and money. He is trying to tell this cave woman’s story and goes on a journey to recruit a film crew, having a series of philosophical debates with potential crew members about spirituality, survival, creation, art, fantasy, and reality. I haven’t finished writing it yet, so I don’t know if he makes the film or not. Stay tuned.
