Trash Cinema 101 – Analog Artist Digital World

On January 19th, I went to the second installment of Trash Cinema 101 at The Venue (511 Virginia Drive, Orlando, Florida). Trash Cinema 101 is a live, interactive experience, with bad films, good friends and ZERO class! Each month, Logan Donahoo guides you through his own cinematic wasteland, and brings you out the other side with drinking games and trivia – all wrapped in a campy, lewd, irreverent shell! The January film was “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die!” In the lobby of the Venue, one woman came in with a basting pan around her neck.

The film was laugh out loud funny. That wasn’t the directors intent but with Logan pointing out all the intricate flaws, the evening became hilarious. A Doctor and his wife go for a car ride. There is a crash and the one thing the doctor recovers from the wreck is his wife’s head. In his basement lab, he keeps his wife’s head alive in a basting pan with tubes of goo snaking all over the place. He spends the rest of his time searching for the perfect new body for his wife. Where does he go? To a burlesque show of course. There is a classic cat fight between two dancers where the camera literally zooms in on a picture of a cat and a cats meows on the sound track. The fact that there were Skill focus Burlesque dancers in the audience made the scene even more hilarious. At one point when a doctor gave up on a patient on the operating table, Ruby Darling shouted out, “That’s not how it works on House!”

The wife’s head in the basting pan kept muttering “Let me die.” Everyone had to sip their drink every time she muttered that phrase. Trust me, everyone had a good buzz thanks to that undead brain. Besides keeping his wife’s head alive, the good doctor also had a deformed Frankenstein monster in the closet. The monster was never seen, but the wife’s head insisted that together they had to stop the doctor from killing in the name of science and sex. You will have to see for yourself how it ends, but even without a body, the wife was a cunning schemer. Most women would die to get a better physique.

February’s screening was “Plan 9 From Outer Space“, the next screening is March 16th at the Venue. Tickets are $10 and there is plenty of free parking and an open bar.

Trash Cinema 101 is a live, interactive experience, with bad films, good friends and ZERO class! Each month, Logan Donahoo guides you through his own cinematic wasteland, and brings you out the other side with drinking games and trivia – all wrapped in a campy, lewd, irreverent shell! For the month of December Logan promised to screen a 1964 holiday cult classic called “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” The screening was at The Venue, (511 Virginia Drive, Orlando). The Venue is a new performance space that Blue Star established in the Ivanhoe Village district. She had to make some major renovations to satisfy the Orlando code enforcement including a huge wheel chair ramp onto the stage. The stage is rather small, so the ramp effectively takes up one third of the foot room.

I knew Logan had to paint on his signature magenta face mask prior to the screening, so I arrived early so I could sketch him doing him makeup. I had never been to The Venue before. The front building, a steep A frame structure was used as the lobby where people can grab a drink and mingle. There was a photo of Great Aunt Grace hanging on the wall. A couple arrived wearing tin foil beanies with a uni-horn. The Beatles were performing on a big flat screen TV. Keyvan Acosta arrived and paid using a credit card. The ticket person had an iPhone with one of those square swipe devices. He signed his name with his finger on the iPhone screen. There was a 30 cent service charge but it must be worth if for the high tech cool factor. Keyvan lamented the fact that every girl he dated ends up leaving town. Just as he starts to get to know a girl he has to meet someone else and start over. It is like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle where the image on the pieces keeps changing. Orlando is a rather transient city.

Logan was running late, and so the makeup was done quickly with the audience seated in the theater. He used two strips of masking tape to create a clean hard edge to his mask. A patchwork quilt covered the upstairs dressing room entrance. There was a candle on the table I sketched from in the theater. The film was every bit as strange and quirky as Logan promised. Children martians had thick face paint that looked like black face on film. Logan’s ongoing commentary on the low budget film made the screening laugh out loud funny. I’m a newly converted Trash Cinema fan.