Rodney Werden

Modern Love is the story of Xerox operator, Robin, who falls in love with a sleazy show business type named Lamont Del Monte. Their disastrous love affair is paralleled by a frustrating relationship between Heidi (who only speaks German) and Pierre (who only speaks French).

A sequel to Modern Love, Bad Girls chronicles the rise and fall of Robin and Heide at the Cabana Room as a two-woman band called Robin and the Robots. They are terrible and become an overnight success. The worldly European, Heide, becomes a cocaine addict, but plays her cards right, keeps her mouth shut, and becomes the new (solo) Diva of the Cabana Room with an avant-garde swastika and combat-gear skinhead act. Robin does talk shows (and gets sued), has a lesbian affair with her manager, the fascistic Ms. Susan (and gets burned), and finally does a nude photo session (and gets fired).

Mary Brown, the head of Ontario's Censor Board, spends an afternoon with the gals cut, cut, cutting.

The audience observes the parallel events of a prostitute servicing a client intercut with a film producer visiting an old friend and guiltily offering him money for sex. "In a month of the blue moon a victim may rail with heroic defiance, but humiliation and restoration of order are inevitable." -Andrew Paterson, Parachute, February 1984

Two main characters, a young gay man, and his female (heterosexual) boss exchange stories about their personal problems, (his difficulties about being gay, and his fears about losing his job because of it). She talks of her neglectful husband whom she suspects is having an affair with another woman.

A stationary woman is asked to repeat words as commanded by a voice off-camera. Say......

"Male model available for life drawing and photography. Call Roger 961-1310". As Roger poses provocatively for a still camera, respondents to his newspaper ad provide the voice over.

An eighteen year old male talks of his up coming sex change and how he imagines life as a woman. The talk is frank and informative.

"Money Talks Bullshit Walks is a quote from a prostitute I picked up off Church Street in the winter of 1985. During this time, I picked up and interviewed nine hookers. The tape is an assemblage of this information." -R.W.

An anonymous off-camera group examine a nude woman for "agreeability." Sexual themes and allegorical structures serve as the vehicle for the narrative. The tape consists of close up shots of a nude woman with off-camera voice over.

The punishment for guilt and remorse is carried out for the video camera through several brisk strokes with a riding crop on bare buttocks.

Location, the gravel pit. Two adolescent women debate the premise, Whatever Is A Colour Is Necessarily Red, while their contemporaries cheer and heckle their efforts. The debate, Whatever is a colour is necessarily red, is a Buddhist classic written for very young students who merely have to memorize their parts. The purpose is to set the paradigm for unscripted debating and to instill the value of discussion. There is no winner or loser, only a challenger and defender who both desire to know the truth of something as revealed through the process. In practice monastic debating is a sport performed outdoors in front of an audience who cheers, hisses and boos often at any hesitation or incorrect responses. In my representation of the monastic debating I use the metaphor of throwing and catching a ball.