"Whatever Happened To Susan Jane?" Screens at Oddball Films January 22, 2010

Event: “Whatever Happened To Susan Jane?” Guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present the world premier DVD release party for Marc Huestis’ cult SF film “Whatever Happened To Susan Jane?”. Released in 1982, Susan Jane captures the anarchic early 1980’s San Francisco gay/punk/new wave scene in all its wild, campy glory, featuring music by cult/underground bands Tuxedomoon, Noh Mercy, Indoor Life, and the Wasp Women. Filmmaker Marc Huestis will be on hand to talk about the making of the film, answer questions and will have DVDs available for purchase. PLUS, rare video of Tuxedomoon, Indoor Life and Chrome, the Sex Pistols and crowds at their final show in SF, and a screening of “Behind Every Good Man”, a rare, groundbreaking 1966 short profile of a proudly out, young Black transvestite.
Date: Friday, January 22, 2009 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Susan Jane_PR.pdf

“Whatever Happened To Susan Jane?”
Screens at Oddball Films

"Superior to any John Waters film, and ten years ahead
of the last thing Andy Warhol did." -Bay Area Reporter

On Friday, January 22, guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present the world premier DVD release party for Marc Huestis’ cult SF film “Whatever Happened To Susan Jane?”. Released in 1982, Susan Jane captures the anarchic 1980 San Francisco gay/punk/new wave scene in all its wild, campy glory. Featuring music by cult/underground bands Tuxedomoon, Noh Mercy, Indoor Life, Wasp Women and out of print for years, the film has been digitally remastered and looks better than ever! Filmmaker Marc Huestis will be on hand to talk about the making of the film, answer questions and will have DVDs available for purchase. PLUS, rare video of San Francisco underground favorites Tuxedomoon, Indoor Life and Chrome, the Sex Pistols and crowds at their final show in SF, and a screening of “Behind Every Good Man”, a groundbreaking 1966 short profile of a proudly out, young Black transvestite.
Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Films Include:

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SUSAN JANE (Color, 1982, 58 mins.) is Marc Huestis' truly underground Tales of the City, featuring a vibrant soundtrack by San Francisco based bands Tuxedomoon, Noh Mercy with Esmerelda, Ben Bossi of Romeo Void, The Wasp Women, Indoor Life with Jorge Socarras and others. This camp classic follows Marcie Clark (Ann Block), a polyester suburban housewife dissatisfied with her bouffant-and-barbecue lifestyle hot on the trail of an old high school chum, Susan Jane Smith (Francesca Rosa). When she reconnects with Susan Jane (now Sujana), Marcie stumbles into the wild and wacky world of San Francisco bohemia circa 1980, replete with wild drag queens and glitter, kooky artists, Mohawk hairdos, new wave slackers, and a pool of well-known celebutants. She gets high and finally gives herself over to the intoxicating whirl of a wild party.
The colorful cast features appearances by Lulu, Coco Vega, members of the legendary theatre group the Angels of Light, Rodney Price, Silvana Nova, Tommy Pace San Francisco Chronicle critic Edward Guthmann.

“Behind Every Good Man” (B+W, 1966, 8 mins.)
Quite probably the very first film portrayal of an out-of –the-closet gay African-American, this extremely rare film by Nikolai Ursin avoids all the standard stereotypes and clichés of the day and rather focuses on his meditations on love, queer life in the 1960s, and gender transgression.

PLUS- Rare video performances by Tuxedomoon, Indoor Life and Chrome, circa 1978-1980, and footage from The Sex Pistols final concert at SF’s Winterland Ballroom, including some great crowd shots!

Watch The Wasp Women perform “Kill Me” from “Whatever Happened To Susan Jane?”


Curator Biography:
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave. A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro Theatre.

Upcoming Programs
Fri Jan 15 – Style Wars & Electric Boogie
Sat Jan 16 – TBA
Fri Jan 22 – Whatever Happened To Susan Jane? – DVD Release party with Director Marc Huestis in attendance!
Sat Jan 23 – Strange Sinema - Oddities from the archives
Thu Jan 28 – Lost Animation Fest - The Fabulous World Of Jules Verne (1957)
Fri Jan 29 - Lost Animation Fest – 2 programs! (8:00PM Eastern Europe/Soviet Bloc and 10:00PM American Animation)
Sat Jan 30 - Lost Animation Fest – 2 programs! (8:00PM World Animation/10:00PM Banned! & Censored!)

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.  
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educationals, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Official Website: http://www.flarerecord.com/?p=466