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DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY

By Peter Bowen

Photo: Matt Zane
In his piquantly titled gonzo porn series Backstage Sluts, rocker/filmmaker Matt Zane points his camcorder toward all manner of fetishized foot fights, groupie fellatrixes and barely legal couplings in the dressing rooms of bands such as Insane Clown Posse and Limp Bizkit. Now, in his sloppy second act, Zane has released Contrasting Views of People Living within an Artistic Lifestyle, a half-hour documentary consisting of his encounters with an aspiring serial killer, a drunk girl obsessed with aliens, a priest and others whose intense views have, in the Society One frontman’s words, turned their lives into "a piece of art."

Employing Sluts’ low-fi production values, Contrasting Views plays out like a mysterious piece of found art, with the distance between Zane’s fin de siécle theorizing and the lumpen realities of his subjects profound. "My life was the camera that connected and captured these individuals," he says. And as for his decision to slide out of the porn arena, Zane simply remarks, "I think you can only go so far in one genre of movies. I don’t like moving backward, so there wasn’t a choice for me. Either I did this, or I welcomed death." [Contrasting Views can be purchased at www.evilnow.com.]

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