When James Robert Baker’s shot-on-video masterpiece BLONDE DEATH premiered at West Hollywood’s EZTV Video Gallery on October 6, 1983, it instantly became the closest thing that the space had to a “hit”, playing as a late-night movie for months. BLONDE DEATH made a full return to the space the following July as part of a “patriotic” program and art show timed with the 1984 Summer Olympics called AMERICAN PERVERSIONS. For this one-night-only screening, we’ll reproduce this program by pairing BLONDE DEATH with Betsy Newman and Elin Stein’s short NANCY WITH AN “N” and Ken Camp’s experimental thriller HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS — with videomaker Ken Camp in person.
NANCY WITH AN “N” (1984, 7 min.)
The First Lady is interviewed on the set of her television special. Video by Betsy Newman and Ellin Stein (New York).
BLONDE DEATH (1983, 98 min.)
“Gidget meets Badlands” is how writer-director James Dillinger describes his visceral, action-packed, black comedy feature. Tammy, a teenage timebomb, arrives in Orange County with her ignorant redneck parents, and eighteen years of bottled-up frustration give way to a summer of lethal excess. Get out the body bags; call in the SWAT team!
HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS (1984, 60min)
The Los Angeles freeway killer takes a drive to Las Vegas—and back. This video by Ken Camp is both trancelike and troubling, taking the viewer across the desert of California, through Nevada, and into “the frightening zone where lay the genetic codes and memories that make us all killers.” In STEREO sound.
About The Series
Video Capital of the World: 45 Years of EZTV in L.A. is an expansive weeklong screening and performance series programmed by Elizabeth Purchell and Hollywood Entertainment. The series honors both the diverse range of artists, videomakers, and communities that have found a home at Los Angeles’s EZTV over the course of its first 45 years of existence and the global influence that it has had on the development of video, digital, and performance art. Featuring a wide range of unique events at REDCAT, Brain Dead Studios, Whammy! Analog Media, 18th Street Arts Center, the Velaslavasay Panorama, Los Angeles Filmforum, and online, Video Capital of the World: 45 Years of EZTV in L.A. is a first-of-its-kind tribute to a still under-understood L.A. institution.
