Drunken Geriatric Murder Threats and Moral Implications

It wasn’t called “going viral” back then—it was called tape trading, where you’d make a copy of the two drunken geriatric neighbors you’d recorded through your apartment window for a friend, who’d make copies for other friends, etc., etc., etc., on and on, until Daniel Clowes was drawing the main characters, Devo was sampling their rants, and producers were looking for exactly who to sign away the rights for the big-screen adaptations. That’s how it happened for two friends and roommates, Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitchell D (pictured above), who in the late 80s spent hours and hours and hours documenting on cassette the outrageous drunken fights between their two neighbors, Peter Haskett and Raymond Huffman.

The whole phenonmenon’s been turned into a documentary called Shut Up, Little Man!, which opens today in Los Angeles and New York (everyone else gets to wait a bit, but it’s coming; or if you'd prefer you can also find it On Demand, on Amazon, and iTunes). We talked with director Matthew Bate about it.

VICE: So how does a Brit living in Australia get introduced to underground tapes from 1980s San Francisco?
Matthew Bate: I made a film ages ago called What the Future Sounded Like, which was about the early genesis of electronic music. And there was a guy in my friend’s record store called Ron--one of those guys that just turned you onto music you never heard of--that really loved that film and knew I was into weird electronic music and recordings. So he said, “You have to hear this recording called ‘Shut Up, Little Man,’” and wrote the name down on the record bag. I went home, Googled it, found the recordings, illegally downloaded them, and it just blew my mind. It was unlike anything I’ve heard, this seemingly gay man and this rampant homophobe living together, hating on one another constantly.

What was the next step?
That’s when my documentarian brain sort of took over, looking for a grand narrative. Eddie Lee Sausage’s website describes how it all happened, how him and Mitch, these two young punks, left the Midwest and went to San Francisco in the great American tradition of going west. So there was this narrative of two young men with everything to live for living next to two old men with nothing to live for. And then you had the fact that Dan Clowes decided to illustrate them, and Devo had sampled them, and Nirvana used to play them on the tour bus. And then the themes that this thing throws up, like the idea of art versus exploitation and the nebulous morality around the whole thing … it’s juicy stuff for a documentary filmmaker.

In the film, I wasn’t sure if you had an opinion about whether these recordings are exploitative or art.
I didn’t really want to give you one. I’m not a big fan of films that preach. I basically wanted to walk you to the cinema and spin your whole compass and ask you where it lands.

When you initially listened to the tapes did you ever think it was exploitative?
My relationship with the recordings kind of evolved. It starts out by being incredibly hilarious, and very mysterious because you’re trying to work out who these guys are and what the fuck is going on. Why are you living together? Can’t one of them move out? And you realize this thing is endless, it just goes on and on, it’s 14 hours of material. And then you start to picture the guys--that’s another beauty of the recording. It doesn’t tell you how they looked, you have to use your own imagination. And then you start to question why you’re laughing and who recorded this and how come these guys don’t know they’re being recorded. Originally I thought they were recording through the wall, but as it turns out Eddie and Mitch stuck the microphones in the window, which makes it more morally nebulous.

Have you ever been to the People Of Walmart website by chance?
Oh, I have been there. I’ve been to this website. Did you laugh when you went there?

Sure.
That’s what I mean. That’s the thing about Shut Up, Little Man!, and that’s what I wanted to do in the film. It is quite funny. What they’re saying is quite hilarious. I mean, looking at the People of Walmart, I remember seeing that and thinking, “Oh my God, look at those teeth on that guy,” or whatever it was. And as soon as you laugh in that first act, you’re morally implicated. There’s something about this stuff where we’re such voyeuristic creatures. We love to look behind other people’s curtains and look at things we shouldn’t.

From your initial listen to the tapes to now actually doing press for the finished film, how has your opinion about all this changed?
Actually, it’s gotten more confused in a way. One thing I do know is the death certificate thing for me is probably too much. [Both Raymond and Peter deceased in the 90s; Eddie sells replicas of their death certificates on his website.] That’s what tips it over the edge. I mean, they started recording it as evidence in case something happened because they were threatened with murder. And then it turned into something else. But then to turn that into a commercial venture to sell T-shirts, it does start to get very confusing.

But how much money is Eddie really getting from this?
I tried to get that out of him and he would never tell me. Although I did read recently in an article, it could have been the New York Times, where he said he only sold 400 to 500 CDs. Which I find low and very hard to believe.

But a lot of them were passed on or downloaded…
Maybe, maybe.

When you were making this film, did you have to worry about legal rights?
We had to buy the license for Shut Up, Little Man from Eddie. And according to Eddie and his lawyer, it was legal--although I’ve heard conflicting opinions on this. In the state of California it’s legal to record somebody if their voice was in the public domain. Because Peter and Ray were arguing so loudly and they recorded on the balcony outside their apartment, it’s in the public sphere. But these recordings have been around a long time and they haven’t been sued so far, so it seems OK.

What are you working on next?
I’ve just found a guy recently who filmed himself every day for over 35 years since he was 17. He’s this guy obsessed with time and memory and you see him grow up on film. It’s this intimate diary portrait of a very, very strange man. So I’m investigating that.

Are those videos online?
Yeah, it’s called “35 Years Backwards Through Time” and the man’s name is Sam Klemke. The video went viral earlier this year. He cut it himself, so he starts off as this fat, schlubby, bearded 50-something-year-old and goes back. You see him grow young, Benjamin Button-style, into this brace-toothed 70s teen. It’s quite amazing. But what you see in that video is just tip of the iceberg. He’s another one of these lives lived on the Internet, or lived on film. An obsessive-compulsive recorder.

There’s the weird element where if you’re making a recording for others to see, you’re not putting out who you are but just the best parts of who you are.
Totally. That’s right. And I just got a hard drive in the mail from this guy, and it’s so much fucking weirder than the stuff on YouTube. The stuff he’s talking about is so much darker and stranger. So he’s put the edited highlights on YouTube, but the reality of it is so much more interesting. But yeah, we all put up our best portrait.