The Gia of Kong

Last two movies watched: Gia (1998) and King of Kong (2007). I am delighted to offer my combined insights to you, my readers.

Gia is mostly famous for Angelina Jolie spending a good chunk of the film naked. Carla has often insisted that I watch this film, since it is so awfully awful, and there is a hilarious scene involving an "artsy" photographer, Jolie, another woman, and a chain link fence. The most Carla-quoted exchange?

Photog: "Who wants to make some art?"
Gia: "How do you make art?"
Photog: "Keep the fence. Lose the clothes."

The rest of the scene is pretty much what you might expect. Ok, let me back up. Gia is a made-for-HBO biosploitation of Gia Carangi, the first "supermodel." She worked in the late 70s/early 80s, and ended up dying of AIDS in 86. So the movie is kind of odd to watch, because you have young Angelina Jolie being young Gia Carangi, and I strongly suspect that Jolie put her own imprint on the character of Gia, like, a lot. The bisexuality, the knives, the bad-assery, etc. There's also the point that Angelina Jolie is in fact a lot more sexy/interesting-looking/magnetic than the original was (I know. I checked the interwebs). But that's movies for ya. As an aside, Gia was born in Philly.

I was prepared to laugh at the clunky lines, the soft core lesbian porn (oh, HBO, can you let it go just once? I guess not.), the predictable storyline, the improbably naked-even-for-scenes-where-it-doesn't-make-sense Angelina. And for the first hour, Gia delivered. Also, the movie is jam-packed with actors that look so freaking familiar that I spent much of the time going "Where did I see them? WHERE? GAH!" So I IMDBd the film, and it turns out that in fact I haven't seen any of them in anything (except for Faye Dunaway and Jolie, of course). It's just that the whole cast looks almost like someone else, which gives you that trippy déjà vu experience, for two solid hours. That's probably not any clever move by the HBO dudes, rather it's an insight into my own thought process.

But then, an odd thing happened. The movie got serious. It was as if the guys filming it acquired a conscience halfway through. The second half of Gia is like a completely different film grafted onto the first half in order to trick HBO into airing it. The characters all stop acting like soap extras and everything gets really gritty and doom-impendy. Gia's increasing sickness is handled very well, and the end is – dare I say it? – touching and… tactful. Tactful? HBO? GIA? CARLA?! In fact, yes. I was surprised too. The end result is that I really felt angry at the injustice of it all – no one knew what the fuck AIDS was when Carangi got infected (probably with a dirty needle or twenty – the girl was a serious drug addict), so no one could even realize that they were engaging in risky behavior. It's one thing to run into oncoming traffic. It's quite another to have a car plow into your house – through the attic.

Even a few years in, AIDS was still presumed to affect mostly gay men. So Gia Carangi holds the dubious distinction of being the first famous woman to die of AIDS. Yay for her. Anyway, see it if you like to watch pretty girls become pawns of fate. Or if you just want the girl-on-girl action. It starts about 26 minutes in, and goes for about ten minutes. Just sayin.

The very next day, the boy and I headed out to the theaters to watch King of Kong, a documentary about Steve Wiebe, a laid-off, OCD-afflicted dude who wants to beat the world record on Donkey Kong. Seems simple, enough, right? It's not.

In a way, Wiebe follows the fate of Carangi, as he starts with virtually nothing, is vaulted into the stratosphere of competitive gaming (not modeling), and endures the drama/unfairness/ultimate bizarrity that surrounds said world. The world record holder, Billy Mitchell, has held the record since 1983, and it seems that after twenty-plus years, no one can possibly beat him. Certainly, he thinks that's the case. Then Steve Wiebe shows up on the scene, and Mitchell gets nervous.

What happened next is fucking amazing. It's everything high school was, and more. Those of you who know/are geeks will recognize every personality in this movie, and you will probably want to alternately hug/hit them all. King of Kong showcases the absolute madness of humanity: all the quirks, the rationalizations, the blindness, the sheer fucked-up-edness of human society. It's a lot more universal in its story than Gia, in fact, although it's just as infuriatingly tragic. It's also much, much funnier.

The filmmaker has apparently already been approached to do a fictionalized version of the story, but I'm telling you now, that version will be only a pale echo of the real deal. So go. It's worth the price of theater admission.


For future reference, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (out in Oct.) is officially blacklisted. It will suck. I will put money on that.