Director Steve Buscemi’s taut, no
bull shit handling of a skinny young pot dealer’s struggle to avoid being a
punk in a tough state prison cellblock is must viewing for a queer audience
eager to get a non phobic treatment of the dicey issues of men abusing men
behind bars.
The story opens as Ron, (Edward
Furlong acing what he would later call his first adult role) a scared wisp of a
boy with bags under eyes from sleepless nights in the county lockup, gets a swift
reality check as the guards explain the rules of his new home. Middleclass to
the core Ron quickly grasps that he has three choices: become some stronger
con’s fuck thing, feign a psychotic reaction to scare potential predators away,
or worse yet turn up horizontal in the prison yard with a knife in his back.
Ron is swiftly adopted by a white
prison gang, led by a wily lifer, Earl (Willem Dafoe is compelling and oddly
gentle as the con who really runs the joint) – Earl sees something in the boy
that evokes a desire to be his guardian angel.
In a beautifully underplayed
moment, that without sentimentality or inappropriate humor unfolds as a
platonic date -- impeccably scripted by Edward Bunker and John Steppling,
(based on Bunker’s novel) -- Earl and Ron enjoy the warden’s special bequest of
a steak dinner to lay out their cards. Earl tells Ron that he wants him to take
a job in the prison barbershop as well move into Earl’s special wing in the
prison – adds Earl softly, almost romantically, “half of knowing how to do time
is getting the right job.”
“What’s the other half?”
“Where you live.”
“You know what, man, I feel really
paranoid – feel like I have to hold one hand on my dick and the other on my
asshole. This thing in peoples’ eyes, not just if they’re friendly man, it’s in
everybody’s eyes.”
“Look, I’m not scheming you -- of
course, if I’m to be completely truthful I probably wouldn’t help you at all if
you were ugly. But that’s my problem, not yours. The little I’ve seen tells me
you’re neither stupid nor weak.”
“Man, I’m just not in my element
here.”
“What’s the best way to explain
this? It’s a need to feel something, something I don’t get from Paul or Vito or
TJ, I love those guys but this is different. It’s not about fucking you, I
could have done that already if that’s all I wanted. The last thing I want is
for you to get a jacket as a punk, you do and you carry that with you wherever
you go, any prison you go to, even twenty years from now. All the convict has
is his name among his peers, remember that.”
Animal Factory is an
authentic feeling tale of how two improbably paired buddies learn to trust each
other and run the gauntlet of the worst a maximum prison has to offer.
A special delight for queer viewers
is Mickey Rourke’s fearless, sassy take on a con cross-dresser who confesses
his dream to fly out of the prison and live in Paris.
The DVD package features excellent
cast interviews and a jocular commentary from Bunker (he was Mr. Blue in
Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs) who take cogent swipes at the sorry
state of the California penal system (circa 2001) explaining how the system is
geared to turn out two kinds of ex-cons: “girls” (men who submit to sexual
abuse) or guys who resist and become total maniacs.