{"id":556,"date":"2008-06-11T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T07:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/06\/i-dont-wanna-be-your-amputee\/"},"modified":"2008-06-11T16:15:57","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T23:15:57","slug":"i-dont-wanna-be-your-amputee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/11\/i-dont-wanna-be-your-amputee\/","title":{"rendered":"I Don’t Wanna Be Your Amputee"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the New York Observer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Brace Yourself! Kinky Amputee Drama Spins My Wheels<\/h1>\n

Another fabulous performance by the underappreciated Vera Farmiga. Plus, the tale of literary lion Christopher Isherwood\u2019s longtime union with a willing boy-cub<\/p>\n

BY<\/span>\u00a0REX REED<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0JUNE 10, 2008<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pull<\/p>\n

zeitgeistfilms.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Pull up a seat: Farmiga and Stahl play a somewhat perverse pair.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quid Pro Quo<\/strong>
\nRunning Time 82 minutes
\nWritten and\u00a0<\/em>Directed by Carlos Brooks
\nStarring\u00a0<\/span>Nick Stahl and Vera Farmiga<\/em><\/p>\n

Look high and low, but you won\u2019t find a weirder movie than\u00a0Quid Pro Quo<\/em>. In 1989, a high-speed car crash kills the parents of a boy named Isaac Knott, leaving him an orphaned paraplegic. Eighteen years later, confined to a wheelchair, he\u2019s a 26-year-old investigative reporter who tells odd stories of life in New York City on public radio. (Same job Jodie Foster had in\u00a0The Brave One<\/em>, which should have been a warning. Must be a dangerous career choice, because this one also leads to trouble.) Tracking down a story about a man who pays a doctor to cut off his perfectly good leg, Isaac (played by the gifted Nick Stahl, from\u00a0In the Bedroom<\/em>) discovers a sordid underworld of fetish freaks who get off on amputations.<\/p>\n

What a story. \u201cWannabes\u201d who want to be paraplegics just like himself! But Isaac isn\u2019t your typical invalid. He swims. He works out. He stays strong. He can have sex. He gets a mysterious e-mail tip signed \u201cAncient Chinese Girl.\u201d But when he meets her, she\u2019s a vibrant blonde named Fiona (played by the feral and fascinating Vera Farmiga, who made a lasting impression as the prostitute opposite Jude Law in Anthony Minghella\u2019s doomed\u00a0Breaking and Entering<\/em>). Fiona leads Isaac to a pathetic subculture of perverts divided into three groups: the \u201cdevotees\u201d who live in wheelchairs but are merely phonies; the \u201cpretenders\u201d who wear their braces but don\u2019t belong to the \u201ccause\u201d in any authentic way; and the \u201cwannabes\u201d who crave disabilities and amputations. \u201cI\u2019m already paralyzed,\u201d says Fiona. \u201cI\u2019m just trapped in a walking person\u2019s body.\u201d To Isaac\u2019s horror, she likes to strut around her apartment in her lingerie with her shapely legs strapped into torturous, medieval \u201cMilwaukee braces.\u201d According to this film, there are thousands of these wackos, wearing prosthetic devices in secret and dreaming of being paralyzed. It\u2019s described as a strange new American dream\u2014a way to improve yourself, one dead limb at a time. Up to this point,Quid Pro Quo<\/em>\u00a0reminded me of\u00a0Crash<\/em>, the nauseating 1997 David Cronenberg horror show about lunatics addicted to broken bones acquired in deliberately planned collisions, wrecks and highway fatalities (not to be confused with the overrated 2005 Oscar winner with the same title by Paul Haggis). But just when you think you can\u2019t bear another minute of this dismal self-indulgence, the film hangs an abrupt left turn and heads in another direction, as the suspense builds like a racing car with both doors open.<\/p>\n

Seduced into a sexually charged affair with Fiona, Isaac suddenly experiences a miraculous \u201ccure\u201d when he dons an odd pair of \u201cspectator shoes\u201d that give him the power to walk. While his healing is a cause for joy, her downward spiral into deformity is just beginning. Unfortunately, when he throws away his crutches, it coincides with her withdrawal from normalcy and her decision to live in her own wheelchair 24\/7. He feels normal when he walks. She can\u2019t feel like a complete person unless she\u2019s paralyzed, too. So she steals his magic shoes and threatens to cut them to shreds unless he finds a way to cripple her permanently. Research reveals several ways\u2014including puncturing the vertebrae with a four-inch spinal drill, a fate from which we are fortunately spared. She settles on a drug called \u201cGinger Jake,\u201d which is supposedly used to soften plastic. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

(Listen, I don\u2019t make this stuff up; I just sit there in the dark, taking notes.) Just when the film looks like it can\u2019t get any more squirrelly, it takes another right turn in the direction of coherence. No spoilers, please\u2014but when you find out why Isaac is crippled, and why Fiona wants to be, you\u2019ll be floored. Solving the mystery, Isaac gets the best story of his radio career\u2014himself!<\/span><\/p>\n

Inspired, no doubt, by the alarming art of Hieronymus Bosch and the kinky writing of everyone from Tennessee Williams (One Arm<\/em>) to Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff<\/u><\/em>), this freshman feature by writer-director Carlos Brooks shows both style and imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

[ click to read full review at NYO<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the New York Observer Brace Yourself! Kinky Amputee Drama Spins My Wheels Another fabulous performance by the underappreciated Vera Farmiga. Plus, the tale of literary lion Christopher Isherwood\u2019s longtime union with a willing boy-cub BY\u00a0REX REED\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0JUNE 10, 2008\u00a0 zeitgeistfilms.com Pull up a seat: Farmiga and Stahl play a somewhat perverse pair. Quid Pro Quo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}