I did not know Mike Vraney. In 1986 when the Dead Kennedy's, the band Mike was managing at the time, disbanded, I was readying my claws to tear through the womb I was so cruelly imprisoned within. His death two days ago came at the moment he was almost exactly twice my age. As I made these numerical comparisons I came to a realization: I was treating this as the death of a friend. The only times I ever crunch numbers of age come with the passing of those close to me, those moments when one foolishly sees life scored by some phantom rubric using an equation akin to years lived + X = ?, where X equals ridiculous intangible unquantifiables such as work output, goals achieved, lives touched, etc. This of course is followed by existential dread over our own life's inherent meaning or lack thereof. Finally we realize we took the death of another and made it about ourselves, paradoxically with 100% selfishness and selflessness.
Werner Herzog said of Roger Ebert that he was one of "the last soldiers of cinema." With the passing of Mike Vraney we lost a general, only one who happened to preside over an entire battalion of those too sleazy to ever be drafted into The Dirty Dozen. His perpetual mission to preserve films considered too lurid , pornographic, artless, or simple commodities, and the fact that for a prolonged period he was the only one with the balls to do it prove how this titan of trash was the most forward thinking man in home video. Without his endless archaeological spelunking of archives, private collections, condemned warehouses, and every last canister marked "destroy", it is wholly possible that we would only know of the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, David F. Friedman, Andy Milligan, Barry Mahon, Doris Wishman, Joe Sarno, and countless others solely from the writings of John Waters and the memories of those far more interesting than we can ever hope to be. He rescued hundreds if not thousands of features, shorts, trailers, educational schlock, nudie loops, and so much more from eradication and in doing so preserved for future generations a very specific, immensely important part of American and global cinematic history.
Exploitation films are often a perfect time capsule, exhibiting what a city resembled on an exact date or how public interest/social trends leaned in a specific month. They were churned out with such speed and force that we see whatever was going on that day, as there were no funds or time to create an ongoing false reality for silly reasons like "continuity" or "accuracy". Vraney not only loved these films but also saw their necessity to educate us about our own culture, the slimy side that so many attempt to disregard without accepting that it is the yang to the artistic yin. By founding Something Weird Video and distributing these nasty entertainments to the public, he used Steve Jobs' business tactic nearly two decades prior to the release of Apple's infamous tablet: he created demand by providing what the masses did not know they needed. In this case it was a forgotten slice of history so many were entirely ignorant of, and in the process he achieved some kind of American dream by profiting off his own toil that just happened to involve the cinema he loved most of all. Something Weird releases are as important to artistic culture as those of Kubrick, Godard, Antonioni, Tarr, Jancso, Herzog, and every other canonical director deemed an "artist." They exemplify the breadth of what cinema is, both as art and commerce. I say without a hint of irony that Vraney's obsessive and expansive work is equally as vital as that done by The Criterion Collection, Masters of Cinema, Kino Internation, Second Run, the BFI, and so many other boutique labels that preserve our flickering history. I am also certain that without Something Weird proving the marketplace yearns for the grungy, foul, and bizarre, other fantastic labels like Code Red, Mondo Macabro, Scorpion Releasing, Distribpix, and the relatively young Vinegar Syndrome would not exist to carry the torch and rescue long forgotten tarnished gems from oblivion.
I feel like I lost a close friend, peer, and fellow fighter with the far-too-early passing of Mike Vraney. My discovery of Something Weird Video in 2009 plugged up a sizable hole in my cinematic heart. i seem to be the rare breed that desires to endlessly discuss Stefan Uher and Jean Epstein yet simultaneously adores these grindhouse exercises where often, no matter how hard a director tried to make a pure product, some semblance of artistry would seep in. I do not "love to hate" these supposed dregs of moviedom but honestly and earnestly feel affection for this era of filmmaking. I write this blog hoping to share some of my discoveries with the patrons of The Internet, perhaps transforming a lost soul who searches Prostitutes Protective Society for some reason into a full-fledged exploitation aficionado and even future preservationist. I will continue to write here, make my own films, and work within the art form I love so dearly, but no matter what I achieve in the following 27 years and beyond, I don't know if i can ever attain the level of passion Mike Vraney so blatantly exuded for the world projected at 24 frames per second.
But damnit I'm going to try.