PURE SKUM

Salespeople recognize everyone, that’s what they do. Jeanne Griffith once recognized a woman walking down the street from the back that she hadn’t seen in 12 years, and the last time she saw her was when the woman was 15 years old. Oh, we were in a car traveling at 40mph. I can’t sell shit, and hence, I don’t recognize anyone. If you run into me somewhere, and we haven’t been face to face within the last 30 days, you’ll need to tell me who you are, because we’ll be talking away, and I won’t have a clue.

Hart Baur is a salesman supreme. What he sells best is himself, a quality badly lacking in most underground filmmakers. Most filmmakers do well in cognitive manufactured universes and intellectual expanse, but are usually somewhat inept in the real world. About three quarters of the way through a movie in a cinema on Miami Beach, I whipped out to make a quick run to the mens room. Geezers can’t set for three hours for anything except porn, I pulled up to the stall, and noticed a well built man in his late thirties standing there washing his hands. “Hey Tom, how are you?”  I experience panic right away. “Who the hell is this?” Good salespeople assume others don’t have their skills. “Hart Baur!” Hart casually refreshed my memory without a hitch.

The last time I had seen Hart was maybe 10 years previously. He had called me at about 2AM, I’m a married man with three kids living at home at that time, and he wanted me to meet him at a rapidly deteriorating rock club on the other side of the tracks. This was a Tuesday night I recall. “Sure, this ought to be good.” Cognitive dissidence is a phrase used to describe inputs to our brain that are so out of whack that the brain gets confused and says this can’t be true, but all my inputs say they are. Jeanne wakes up, “What’s going on?” “I’m running over to Rollos to hang out with Hart Baur and his brother.” Jeanne crashed back to the pillow, with that “this is just some bullshit dream, just keep on sleeping and it’ll get better” sort of look,

Hart and our oldest daughter had dated...sort of....when she was a senior in HS, and he had just graduated from William &Mary . It wasn’t unusual for him to call in those days after 2AM. The first time you’re sort of pissed, but after 50 or 60 times, you either except it or you don’t. We got used to it. Daughter went on to college and law school, and the not quite romance, got even less so, and the relationship eventually fizzled totally.

That brings us to SKUM. The reported reason for the 2AM call was to listen to the latest SCUM tapes. That didn’t happen that night, as by the time I got there, the lads were so blasted, they couldn’t find their car. I’m a cheap drunk. They were firing shots of tequila like it was diet Coke. For me, a good whiff of any sort of Panther Piss and I’m feeling strange, two, and I’m likely either on my way to jail or the hospital. At 5 AM, I called my daughter to come and pick me up. She was on summer break from Law School at the time. She queried me as to what this was all about. I told her. That cognitive dissidence thing kicked in again when I explained. I never saw Hart again until the mens room encounter.

Hart and his brother were both serious soccer players at Bill & Mary’s. Brother went pro, Hart hooked up as coach and history teacher at a prestigious Miami Catholic HS. I found this interesting because, perhaps Hart had a partially paralyzed lower lip or something similar, whatever, enunciation was never his strong attribute.  That obviously, made his late night phone calls even more entertaining. Since the school had a lot of Hispanic immigrant kids, who’s English may not have been perfect, you have to wonder what their interpretation of American History was upon graduation. Shortly after accepting the position as teacher-coach, Hart started SKUM. He put out an album, nicely done up and produced, ( he spent real money on it). SKUM started playing out here and there. Jeanne and I went to a couple of the concerts, and was presented the album as a gift. The relative quality of a punk band is best left to the discerning ear of a true punk. That’s not me, but, to my ear, SKUM sounded pretty good. Hart was a decent front man, good looking, in great shape, and entertaining. Plus he had written a couple of slick little tunes. Simple, but slick nonetheless, with solid hooks. One, “Bad Checks” was so catchy, I covered it with local musician and actor Mike Walker and blues gal, Lilly Brijt, and stuck it over the beginning credits of my 1988 featurette, “Bad Sex Dreams”. Life and people move on, and often times art gets left by the side of the road for more practical endeavors. Hart placed a few more early morning phone calls after Rollos, and during the last one, he told me SKUM had broken up, and he was pretty much calling it quits on the music biz. Such is life.

At our chance encounter at the cinema, Hart told me, he had gone into biz with his brother and his father. They were selling a variety of stuff, mostly made in China and sold over the net, and from a small store front they had in an apartment complex in downtown Miami. They were doing good. He said he’d stated writing screenplays. Yeah? So is me and half the rest of people in Miami! He said he would send me one, and he did. I half assed read it, and ....well, it didn’t grab me by the throat.

Fast forward another 5 or 6 years. Get a spurious email from Hart, offering me a part in his movie.

Seems he was making a bit of a mockumentary of the band getting back together. I was supposed to play the original video director for SKUM’s video of “Hanging Out With Fred”.  Cool! I elected to include Jeanne in on the part. Hart sent me a basic outline of what to cover during the fake interview, and from there on out, it was shoot from the hip. Jeanne and I worked out answers to the supposed questions.  We showed up at his storefront to film the part.

Today Hart is 46, married, has a kid, and works the family biz. He looks great, still like a pro athlete, and still coaches in his spare time, whenever that is. The child is a typically wired 1 plus, and since both Hart and wife work, they share the responsibility of child rearing and family maintenance. His diction is much better.  The biz is working. Pretty much the standard upper middle class existence for the family. The guerilla artist in him isn’t readily apparent. We did our part, he loved it. He and his one person crew could barely keep it together through our scene. Afterwards we had a glass of wine at his apartment and dinner later at a local watering hole. While in his home, Hart, like any first time filmmaker, was anxious to show us his stuff. We watched a number of clips, mostly about the current state of the band members, and of people who were familiar with the former band, voice their opinions on the proposed reunion. Is the movie any good? Who knows? Who Cares? Doesn’t matter.

Enter Hart the salesman. Seems one of Hart’s classmates at Bill & Mary was John Stewart. Hart talked him into doing a spot in the movie. Not just a little spot mind you...a big one. What would have cost anyone else a half million $, came for free. Hart wrangled interviews with other Miami visiting celebrities, and talked the folks into playing along with the gag. Among others, Phil Donohue and Traci Lords, and yes at forty she still looks...ah well...extremely hot. He sort of created script and story line around the celebrities he has had available. He managed to secure the old Cameo theater for a few hours, to stage the reunion of the bands debut. He filled the place up with friends and passersby, played a gig, and then got them to go on camera for enthusiastic reviews. A significant coup. He gonzoed scenes at Dunkin Donuts, Wendys, and basically anywhere else he wanted to.

Will it sell? I’m betting yes. Is this the sort of thing that makes serious dramatic underground filmmakers slit their wrists....yes! I would have slit mine, but I hate blood, particularly my own. Should any high school senior who wants to be the next big time Hollywood director forgo his tenure at UCLA or NYU for a few months hanging with Hart, learning the filmmaking ropes? Most likely. You could maybe pay for your stay with Bad Checks. Is Hart a real artist? Or just a another wankert with an extra special ability to talk people into doing shit they wouldn’t normally want to do...and of course, a set of super sized balls. Who makes those decisions? Whom ever does, I’m sure Hart would just as soon they stayed away. For that matter, I don’t want them around me either. Who would? Art is what it is, and for sure SCUM is.

As for my daughter, she and her husband are both super power attorneys with a kick them in the ass and leave them by the roadside approach. They’re not jillionaires yet, but they will be, they’ve got the right stuff. There’s 2 kids, a new red Volvo, a Lexus, and 4000 square feet of covered luxery in the suberbs. When we told her about our exploits with her long ago friend, she just grimaced it off. I know what she was thinking. “What a bunch of nonsense” I’m betting she goes to see the movie though. She has to. Mum and Dad are in it.

A sampling of SKUMie movie making below. Facve it, we all have a touch of the anarchist in us.