When Morgan Spurlock made Super Size Me it was to show the effects of too much fast food. Now two Irish film-makers have decided to show the effects of too much beer
With all the brazen self-confidence of the young, 25-year-old Robert James boasts that his new film, GuinnessSize Me, is "a subversive and avant-garde masterpiece of highly informed idiocy". A fractured account of a shambling and self-indulgent seven-day drinking binge might be a more accurate, if less flowery, description. The film, which is being shown next week at Belfast Film Festival, follows the antics of Belfast-based James and Chris Kelly, who is 24, as they set out to discover the consequences of consuming nothing but stout for a week. They agreed to abide by five rules: to eat no food, to drink only Guinness, to consume more than 25 units of alcohol a day, to stay together at all times and to neither wash nor change their clothes. As you might expect, the results are not pretty. As the pair lurch noisily from Belfast to Dublin and Galway, copious urination, vomit and an adolescent preoccupation with the effect on the bowels of excess amounts of the black stuff are the leitmotifs of this "comedic documentary".
It's not really so surprising that a pair of twentysomething wannabe film-makers should conceive the idea of a protracted bender dressed up as an existentially-challenging voyage of discovery. After all, it's just an amplified version of their day-to-day reality. "We were out drinking two Christmases ago, and neither of us had eaten for a few days. We were having a laugh about it, and before we knew it we'd talked ourselves into making a film. The whole thing took on a life of its own." Why did they choose Guinness as their signature tipple? "It's the iconic Irish drink: it represents the heavy-boozing Irish buffoon, the bar-room know-it-all."
James is keen to emphasise that the project is more than an irresponsibly laddish jape. (Kelly isn't around: in time-honoured fashion he's left Belfast to "travel the world", leaving James to defend the questionable integrity of their film.) James insists it is a serious attempt to "reflect the psyche of the drinker" and to provide a darkly comic insight into binge-drinking culture. He rather quixotically maintains that taking on the self-imposed challenge was both "hugely intellectual and fantastically thick".
But it's not long before the bombastic front drops, and James confides that he's a bit worried about the way he and Kelly appear in the film after sinking 17 or 18 pints a day. "I'm not looking forward to my mum watching it, actually. She might not like seeing her son falling about, urinating in the street. It's all a bit humiliating." Didn't he enjoy it, then? "Not in the slightest. It was challenging, sore, uncomfortable: a ridiculously absurd thing to do to our bodies. Chris and I almost came to blows at one point. We probably come across as two loud-mouthed misogynistic scumbags."
He could be right. In the film, women are admired for their "pert breasts and lovely bottoms" and loudly advised by the Guinness-sodden pair "not to get pregnant on the way to the pub". Why go for the entirely unexpurgated approach? James answers piously: "I believe that honesty makes the best cinema."
The name of the film is an evident nod to Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock's hit film, in which he subjects himself to a month-long McDonald's-only diet. But James scorns "populist" quasi-educational documentaries such as Super Size Me and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. "They're striving to be worthy, but really they're just vapid and empty, preaching to the converted. They're so patronising. I mean, of course eating fast food for a month is going to do you harm." So why choose such an obviously derivative title for their own effort? "I guess it's just to show that we're doing the opposite. We're not going to learn anything. We're striving to be unworthy."
James credits the film's voiceover, provided by the "nihilistic Scottish poet" Paul Grattan, with lifting the documentary above the level of a Jackass sketch. "It's layered, profound, beautiful." Grattan's mournfully ironic, lyrical musings on the capers of "the boys" and their "shallow learning curve" do give the film a measure of cohesion it would otherwise lack. And he's probably being kind when he refers to them as "professional film-makers, popinjays and erstwhile bon viveurs".
Caught between faux intellectualism and sheepish bravado, it's as if James and Kelly can't quite decide what their film is about. Is it an incisive critique of Irish drinking excesses? Or is it merely a meaningless and chaotic lurch through a series of Irish cities? Standing in a field towards the end of the film, the two men ponder the point of it all. "Was this a good idea or a bad idea?" asks Kelly. "It wasn't good or bad, just a very stupid idea," answers James. If nothing else, they test to the very limit the old saying that Guinness is good for you.
GuinnessSize Me is at Village Cinemas, Belfast, on Monday at 9pm as part of Belfast Film Festival, which runs until April 1st. Bookings on 048-90330443 or www.belfastfilmfestival.org