Nick Name and the Normals
DIRECTED BY HOWIE SKORADirector Howie Skora opens his “rockumentary” on an ex-Mormon-missionary-turned-incensed-gay-punker with the question “Who is Nick Name?” Viewers unfamiliar with Name and his straight bandmates, the Normals, soon discover that the rural Utah-born spitfire has the body of a Chelsea gym bunny, the voice of Elvis, and a potty mouth that could put Eminem to shame (try these lyrics on for size: “I fucked your boyfriend / He squealed like a pig”). Yet this unapologetic tableau, which chronicles the group’s tour of the Pride Festival party circuit, fails to ever really answer its initial inquiry, for Name is far too complicated a character to pin down. On stage, the shirtless, hirsute rocker spews out the F bomb, bears his rear, and threatens heterosexual audiences, prophesying a gay insurgence (“Gays are gonna rise up and kick your asses! We all work out at gyms!”). Nevertheless, interviews with his “honorary gays,” the Normals (Ben Morris and Rachel Rattner), and former collaborators, Helmut and Ryzie, reveal a different side of Name; beneath his expletive-emblazoned T-shirts and venomous demeanor lies a secret vulnerability: A discouraged Name (a.k.a. Kent James) fears a physical assault after one of his raucous performances; he laments about the rampant hypocrisy and closeted homosexuality in his former religion (“The more I preached, the less I believed”); and—in perhaps the most disquieting moment in the film—he holds his head in his hands while listening to a moving ballad he recorded when he sang country western, a genre he now eschews. Skora depicts Name (who made a brief cameo as himself in this year’s queer slasher flick, Hellbent) as a bitter, aggressive, perpetually angry, and irascible rabble-rouser. What is more noteworthy about this portrait, however, is its commentary on a half-naked bad boy desperately afraid of being exposed. (The DVD contains no bonus features.) Jason Lamphier
