with Dr. Vern Pullen

(Dr Pullen is Professor Of Advanced Psychotronics at the international Jim Jones Mail Order University and inventor of the grunge care bear)


It's amazing what a week in the country will do to get the hate and nastiness and venom out of your system. Admittedly my mail box was absolutely jammed packed with old pizza boxes, Tandy catalogues, a dead cat and a kilo of hate mail when I returned home but by golly, my week at the West Wyalong Meditation Centre and a bottle of Herbalife has worked wonders.

This week there will be none of my usual vindictiveness directed at ex Birthday Party roadies, street kids, hustlers, pimps, shysters, drug addicts and those GPS fancypants who stomped the shit out of me when I was a mere toddler. This week, all spitefulness is flushed down the Manzil Room toilets as I devote my column to one of Sydney's warmest and most beautiful human beings, Dr William "Jean Luc Goddard" McCoy - former fifties rock star, existentialist, underground film maker, conceptualist, late night radio personality and on stage celebrity at the Oxford Sex Cinema.

As I reported in last week's OTS, Mr McCoy is currently engaged in a massive re-editing of the seven hour Russian version of "War and Peace" which he hopes to condense to three minutes and sell to the Venus Chain of sex shops for exclusive distribution on their peep machines. Failing this the shortened version will be offered to The Cramps for their new video clip. During a break from the editing table I managed to engage the good doctor in some fruitful verbal intercourse over croissants, a Chile bowl and a banana spider at Toppers Cafe (348 Victoria Street in Darlinghurst). Dr McCoy was quick to express his disillusionment with art house movies and took great delight in dismissing French, Italian, German and Polish cinema as a "crock of old shit".

Needless to say this came as quite a shock as in the 1960's McCoy was widely regarded as one of the most brilliant underground avant garde, conceptualist and dare I say it, art house directors. Who could forget his brilliant 1967 tour de force "La Grande Grot", shot entirely on location on South Molle Island and starring Simone Signoret as a hell raising ex fascist conspirator who returns home after the Spanish Civil War only to discover that her former lover has opened up a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. When in 1969 he joined forces with Italian turd king Pier Pasolini to make "La Grande Grot - lV", he was hailed in Cahiers du Cinema as the best thing to happen to contemporary cinema since the invention of dolly tracks.

Now it seems McCoy has turned his back on the patent snobbishness, back stall semiologists and gold ticket holders of the art house circuit and embraced the more down to earth, "tell it like it is" sex and sleaze, grind houses such as the beloved Hub at Newtown and the 'action packed' Oxford Street Sex Cinema, where Doctor McCoy has himself appeared 'live' on stage. Turning his wrath on the New Mandarin Cinema and their forthcoming Fellini festival he has openly accused the proprietors of this former grungepit of succumbing to arthouse lobby groups and gavouring films such as "The Virgin Spring" instead of the obvious "Cage Virgins", not to mention their feeble attempt to pawn off the recent splatter classic "Three On A Meathook" as a prize winning Polish documentary on sausage making.

So intense has been his criticism that the New Mandarin has now decided to pacify the good Doctor by allowing him to stage his own very special "grind house" shows on a late Friday night. McCoy has been given a completely free reign and as such has decided to transform the cinema each late Friday night into a genuine replica of a New York style 42nd Street "grind house".

Dr William McCoy's "GRIND HOUSE" kicks off this coming Friday, 14th February, at midnight with a special, screening of Jim Jones favourite film, "TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE". Dr McCoy has promised free fortified wine for all patrons plus a special wake up service for those who wish to sleep through the film.

Next week I'll be discussing the new grunge synthesiser which simulates a wide variety of manic screams, groans and apocalyptic roars, thus relieving the vocalist of much pressure during psychic freakout. Next week . I'll be unwinding a ball of string, slashing my wrists, dining at Don Burrows Supper Club and engaging in other bizarre metaphysical pursuits. Until next week, if next week ever comes...