I Am A Knife With Legs
directed by Bennett Jones and Will Crest
starring Bennett Jones and Will Crest
Pop music doesn’t have enough surrealism today, but I Am a Knife with Legs makes a good run at it. Internationally obscure pop star Bené (Bennett Jones) lost his girlfriend in a café suicide bombing. His first thought was “I’ll kill that suicide bomber!” but then a better plot point occurred to him. Someone issues a fatwa against him and he flees to a sublet in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. There he hides out with his friend, manager and assistant Beefy (Will Crest). They plan a next tour, eat éclairs from the local Vietnamese shop, and wait for the assassin. When the Cue Reaper (Ashley Koiso) shows up we achieve the climatic fight scene so long promised. It’s the start of a new life for Bené.
Bené speaks in the flat, oblivious dead pan delivery of any self-absorbed pop star, but he spits out some viciously funny material: “What are those stains on the road? Are the poor people leaking?” Among other innovations he’s invented the “ab-hole shirt” which carefully shows off your abdominal muscles assuming you have any. Beefy is the sane one, he keeps things on track, fetches food, and deals with their sublet landlord Tommy (Tommy Malatesta). As a filmatic creation Bené has depth, there’s an actual album of his music for sale out there on the internet. It’s not bad, but pay attention and you’ll pick up lyrics like “Scooping Feces off Train Tracks in China.” Rock music certainly can spawn comedy, so long as it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Bené is full of himself, but the rest of his little world just pretends wherever he does is normal, reasonable, and not nearly as funny as it truly is.
The film is part of the 2015 Florida Film Festival.
