My Degeneration

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1990

My Degeneration
Jon Moritsugu
USA, 1989 70 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: Apathy Productions
Producer: Jon Moritsugu
Screenplay: Jon Moritsugu, Daryl Chin
Cinematography: Jon Moritsugu, Lisa Guay, Helen Stickler
Sound: Shirley Kwan, Helen Stickler
Original Music and Effects: Craig Jennings
Music: Vomit Launch, Government Issue, Halo Of Flies, Poison 13, Bongwater, Fuzzbombs
Principal Cast: Loryn Stosky, Amy Davis, Leslie Grant, Ann Trumbore, Lynn Mullins, Andy Luck

The cinema of greed, scum and festering semiotics? Meet Jon Moritsugu. His metaphors of choice are severed pigs heads and stupid teenagers. His films cost ridiculously little to make. The names of his characters come from John Hughes movies and Justine Bateman’s Satisfaction. The music is by Vomit Launch and Government Issue. His earlier films, Der Elvis and Sleazy Rider, disgusted hordes of respectable film people. He plays with groovy experimental techniques, like scratch animation and negative picture. His story concerns three girls in a mondo rock band called Bunny Love. They are going nowhere until ‘‘discovered"’ by the American Beef Institute, who change their name to Fetish. The band then becomes wildly successful as beef promoters, chanting slogans such as ‘‘Meat Is Love.” Throughout, our heroine Amanda Jones (the bass player) carries on a passionate if rather conversationally one-sided affair with a pig’s head. A dinosaur with a laser beam destroys their beautiful relationship, which is only resumed in heaven. Ostensibly about the sleazy world of rock’n’roll, the film keeps its politics close to the surface, wildly attacking modern consumptive behaviour and abuse of economic power. Welcome to the new no-budget enfant terrible of underground art cinema himself. Welcome to the world of Jon Moritsugu. —Noah Cowan