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Counterpropaganda: Contract Killers in Cinema, "Hit Man", Linklater Sus Check, & the Church of the SubGenius
🕑 Added 2024-07-15 02:09:08 +0000 UTCMomentary interlude from "Diddy Declassified".
Counterpropaganda is a new intermittent series on PPM—and this is an opening salvo. We're christening it w/ a multiplying feature of films depicting contract killers & hit men—our impetus is the anti-hitman thesis of Linklater's new screwball noir flick on Netflix ironically titled "Hit Man", a piece of subtle albeit messy copaganda that masquerades as a lighthearted psychological thriller packed w/ meditations on identity, but which is mostly a sexy romp glorifying entrapment stings, sexifying confidential informants, and attempting to deconstruct the existence of hit men (all things Klonny is decidedly not about...). The movie also possesses a mercenary streak that its writers Richard & leading man Glen Powell might have thought would serve as an indictment of us & trickstery subversion, but I think it gets lost in its own sauce & genre dalliances. So your neighborly noid is here to unpack why I disagree w/ the film's framing of (supposedly nonexistent) hitmen & law enforcement moreover, which spills into multiple parts as we dive into a number of IRL "retail" contract killer case studies to pick at the film's seams, resulting in one becoming a full-on, deep history of a little known serial contract killer named Glennon Engleman aka the Killer Driller, a sus dentist who moonlighted as a murderer-for-hire, mastermind of insurance schemes, & Black Widow keeper—and we discover that these serial contract murders, which are a little off the beaten true crime path, cohere w/ McGowan's PTK framework or more recent works like "Eye of the Chickenhawk" to a surprising degree. That investigative research arrives in Pt. II.
In this ep, we discuss:
The Trump ear nicking assassination attempt (foreshadowing future Counterprop I'd reckon); We cram in a litany of the noir & contract killing films & TV that Klonny's been watching or thinking about in preparation for this, including - Hit Man, The Killer, Kill List, Le Samouraï, Sicario, The Day of the Jackal, The Parallax View, JFK, Rampart, The Shield,... etc. We talk a little Boyhood & A Scanner Darkly, which prefigures our eventual diving into the ins & outs of the Charles Harrelson federal judge John Wood Jr. murder-for-hire case a little later on & his ties w/ Chagra crime ring in El Paso by way of his sons Woody & Matthew, who've both worked w/ Richard Linkllater, imagine that... (working title was Klon-terion Collection). I give my Noid-er Ebert review of "Hit Man".
We conduct a perfunctory SUS CHECK on Linklater, which is primarily made up of examining his role in furthering Alex Jones's platform—the Bill Cooper, Ron Paul, & Branch Davidians-connected, fellow Austinian conspi-radio broadcaster & parapolitical research shitcoater.
Which means we have to take an obligatory look at JONES'S C I A MOM & POPS, including his sus, implants-designing dentist of a father David Jones, who'd affix microphonic crowns on Agency teeth's (foreshadowing Glennon Engleman in Pt. II, nice) & may have been an operative in his own right... Even provided covert financial support to CA death squads... And Carol Hamman, Alex's Ma, who would help to secure housing accommodations for East German defectors in Texas in the '80s... And then there's Alex's Uncle Bill, who was a heli pilot in 'Nam, conducted Black Ops missions, & likely was involved in the Phoenix Program's extrajudicial assassinations (possibly a Hit Man connection only 2 degrees from Linklater).
The other primary focus of our brief SUS CHECK (Verdict: Less Sus Than Most Amerikan Directors But Still a Lil Sus):
THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS
The irony cult cum performance art troupe cum zine collective cum PA TV show cum ARG that Richard Linklater is affiliated with, learning how he's has championed said highly conceptual oddball project's in the documentary JR "Bob" Dobbs & the Church of the SubGenius. We get into how these exemplars of Austin high weirdness had an indelible impact on Linklater's oeuvre, seemingly inspiring his first film Slacker via their gnostic/sexual elemental force dubbed SLACK. We explore how this not-quite-fake cult started by Austin outsiders Ivan Stengs & Philo Drummond, which preaches a sexual & recreational gospel that is also rooted in a voracious syncretizing of basically every conspiracy theory known to man, might just have become a second Scientology if its founders had been a little more zealous. We learn how said group has courted controversy at various points in its history, with their edgelord, Merry Prankster-descended ethos driving conceptual "devivals" that freaked out attendees, sowing chaos & worrying folks that they were actually dosed w/ LSD like the Acid Test days... Or else how certain edgelord schismatics unleashed a firestorm when they sought to manipulate Columbine into a media spectacle to boost their legend & began calling into national radio shows claiming that the Trench Coat Mafia was a Subgenius offshoot (some SubGeniuses advocate a holocaust of all "normies/pinks"). We mention how their pantheon includes Lovecraftian, Cthulhu elder gods like Yog-Sothoth... And then we get into the litany of outsider celebs who have called the Church home: David Byrne, Nick Offerman, Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller (not Magic Circle, checked), Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, Pee Wee Herman (lol), and Matt Groening (most sus).
From there, we close w/ a lightning round of contract killers setting up our Killer Driller hit man deep dive in Part II—
Julio Santana, The Iceman, Frank Sheeran, Mad Dog Coll, Canadian Witness Protected informant & pedo biker Yves Trudeau aka the Mad Bomber, who was a Popeye MC & eventual Hells Angel
We read passages from PTK on reports that a biker gang-run, Process-adjacent Satanic Murder Inc has displaced the OG Mafia Murder Inc of the early 20th century, learning about two particularly mean sonnabitches Thomas Creech & Bernard Hunwick.
We unpack how capitalism is criminogenic, how it is mercenary-conducive, and we talk the POSIWID aspects of the macroeconomy of violence. There's a shit ton I'm forgetting—may revise.
Songs:
| Morphine - "Murder for the Money" |
|Kate Bush - "James and the Cold Gun" |
Clips:
From Variety interview w/ Linklater, Hit Man trailer, "JR Bob Dobbs & the Church of the SubGenius" doc, Alex Jones 9/11 "prediction", and other SubGenius video materials.
