Best known for his monotonal lead performance in Scanners (1981), writer-actor-painter Stephen Lack had portrayed a hyper-tonal manic pixie drug dealer a few years earlier in Allan Moyle’s The Rubber Gun (1977), a would-be Québécois classic recently restored by Canadian International Pictures and primed for rediscovery. Lack and Moyle co-wrote the script, which concerns a housebroken Manson family of idealistic drug dealers entirely uninterested in ultraviolence. Instead, they’re content to bend each other’s ears about Conan the Barbarian when not otherwise occupied with communally parenting a toddler, making art, and having (off-screen) sex. The darknesses of dope life eventually intrude, as they must, but where the drug crew subgenre dutifully shoehorns abscesses and prostitution, Moyle and Lack substitutes brutish cops and manipulative group dynamics. Watching irritated cops struggle to get through wiretaps full of Steven’s florid ramblings is one of the film’s comedic highlights.
Lack’s character (also named Stephen Lack; Moyle himself plays Allan Moyle) is the prime mover and gravitational center of this micro-utopia, which is largely confined to a spacious loft. His presence is embodied in a cacophony of tantalizingly astute musings, pansexual seduction, and total bullshit. He recruits Moyle’s anthropology student at a bookstore on McGill’s campus, and the latter joins the group for a sunday breakfast where they teasingly inquire about his sexual orientation and the status of the status quo. Entranced by Stephen, Allan soon informs his adviser that his reconceived master’s thesis will now investigate dope’s “vitalizing” effect on the group, in defiance of popular wisdom. The movie understands the naïveté of this project, just as it vaguely recognizes the naïveté of its own soft-gloved treatment of an unsustainable dream of sex, drugs, and painting. But the innocence of the twin Moyles—the film director and the anthropology student—capture our longing to rethink domestic and civic modes. Plenty of brilliant minds have been entirely undone by hard drugs, but plenty of others avoided being undone or weathered the storm. For every Kerouac, there’s a Ginsberg; for every Jimi, a Lennon. Moralistic storytelling conventions have always struggled with this set of facts, but Moyle plots a middle way that honors the righteousness of altered consciousness and considers the multitude of outcomes for psychonauts. The film laments the unviability of Lack and Co.’s pursuit of a life outside of the workaday, but can’t take its eyes off of the corona surrounding them.
Moyle sets his characters loose during long meandering conversations with the highwire feel of improvisation. The film’s characters and script are loose and unpredictable, shambling from scene to scene, unsure of whether to push the threadbare plot forward or enjoy a sexy riff on the divide separating hips and squares. The approach keeps attention on the credible culture critiques and authentic insight the gang’s bloviating coughs up. When worsening habits take over, group cohesion breaks down and Stephen nostalgically opines that agoraphobic ritual has replaced spirited exploration. What’s most refreshing about The Rubber Gun is its enjoyment of, and respect for, its characters on their own terms—both their euphoria and their doubt. The group’s halting consideration of self-destruction is more honest and thoughtful than that of the narcos stalking a bus station locker containing the latest shipment. The cops are too busy beating up drag queens to ascend the moral high ground.
The Rubber Gun screens this evening, March 11, and on March 15 , at the Roxy.
