The Button Of Rubber

However, on the emotional level, I've always considered the sequence to be Joe's trip, even though we see shots of him. I feel like it is his gaze on himself. I've never been sure then, if he was actually carrying a gun that night, and playing with it or if that was his own mind and dark desires churning. Joe on the scarecrow cross seems to be a bit of self pitying feeling of suffering and persecution at the hands of the word, and Billy, and the BEING shot by another gun seems partly a kind of wish fulfillment, to have the choice of self destruction taken away, and the pain ended. It also seems to be part of his rock and roll fantasy...the rock and roll tragedy, the rock and roll assassination. Joe himself talks about it right away, in the first interview sequence. When he's talking about Bucky. At 1:40 or so, he calls it maybe a "Chapman-Lennon thing." And then he says that Bucky was "robbed" This is around 2:00. OK, the first few times I saw the movie, I guess I imposed my own feelings on that remark. Bucky being robbed was Bucky having both his fucking legs amputated. It never dawned on me till I read Hard Core Roadshow that the intention in the script, by everyone who worked on it, and the actors was...Joe is saying Bucky was robbed of his being made into a legend by LIVING. He was robbed of his legacy as a rock and roll assasination, like John Lennon. Joe talks about Lennon multiple times in less than a minute, and also mentions the great rock and roll suicide...less than 2 minutes into the film. He thinks that it is a high acheivement.

If it IS intended as Joe's trip, perhaps the fakey film school style is Movie! Bruce's conception of how Joe sees things?

I have no choice but to believe that Joe has been considering suicide for months or years, partly as a means to what he thinks of as glory, and partly as an end to real pain. I do think the actual act at the end of the film was somewhat spontaneous, though. I think he really had plans all along to try to get Billy back and make a go of it. When that went away, I think the pain was too much, and he'd just lost too much to want to continue, and he figured it was just time to grab what he thought was his path to being real rock and roll god. Which is not to downplay his pain one bit. I think his pain was real, and completely overwhelming, so what he might have been chosing to believe about why he was doing it wasn't real at all. He didn't go out with the bravado he might have been aspiring to all along.

I am dreading HCL2, and haven't decided yet whether or not to ever see it. Despite how crazy the whole writing and filming of HCL was, and how pasted together it seems to be, it came together almost perfectly, IMO. I think adding anything on could just ruin it for me.

Thanks again for the interesting essay.