Long Live the Puppets and the People: The Journey to Bob Baker Day 2022
“Within the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, resides the city’s very own wonderland: Bob Baker Marionette Theater. Entering the theater is akin to stepping into a childhood board game — the green lobby floor is dotted with daisies, the walls are painted pastel shades of pink and blue, and the main showroom itself is draped in bright red curtains, flanked by puppet dioramas of some of the theater’s most notable productions. A grand organ sits in the corner of the room, whilst over 2,000 of the theater’s marionettes wait idly backstage, neatly tucked away on various racks and rafters…”
Sex, violence, and the open road
“Audiences can now see The Doom Generation the way it was always intended: uncensored on the big screen, where Araki’s distinctly 90s queer-punk-neon-alternate-reality version of Americana comes to life. It is clear that this movie is an amalgamation of his interests and the culture that surrounded him during the period it was made. The Doom Generation features oddball cameos from Parker Posey and Heidi Fleiss, music by Nine Inch Nails and Slowdive, and dialogue straight from Araki’s journal.
“This movie was so personal to me. It was like a diary to me,” he says, during a Q&A at Los Angeles’s Alamo Drafthouse theater late-April.”