Beaver Trilogy Views
The Beaver Trilogy combines three separate vignettes that were filmed at different times, in 1979, 1981, and 1985. The first, entitled The Beaver Kid, is a short documentary about the exploits of Groovin' Gary , a performer that filmmaker Harris happened upon while filming for a Salt Lake City, Utah news station. Harris was testing out a color videocamera that the station had just acquired in the parking lot of his workplace when he stumbled upon Gary taking photographs of their news helicopter. Gary immediately launched into a number of celebrity impressions, including John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone. Although Gary is seemingly very personable and humble, he also alludes to intense needs for fame, recognition and mass approval.
Part one of the trilogy: the year is 1980, and documentarian Harris comes across, one day on the road, a video natural: Larry Huff, 21. A manic gabber who drives a '64 Impala named a"Farrah.o" Larry talks on and on about his beloved home town, Beaver, Utah, where he's well known, he says, for impersonations. n"I'm the Beaver Rich Little,/" he brags, whose specialties are imitating Barry Manilow and Olivia Newton-John.
Harris is not a brilliant director or dialogue writer (though he did pick the perfect Olivia Newton-John song). The Orkly Kid comes off a lot like an after-school special, but the point of The Beaver Trilogy is the viewer and the viewer’s gradual realizations. It’s not even manipulative, except maybe at the end of the last filmo… Apparently, the idea to put the three films together didn’t come around until 1999 or so, which explains why Harris didn’t exactly catch onv….
On a final, sad and oddly coincidental note, a few days after watching the film and writing this piece I learned that Richard Griffith, the original Groovin3rs" Gary, passed away peacefully at the age of 50. He died a married man, though childless: read into that what you will. It felt strange after watching ls"The Beaver Trilogy
Beaver Trilogy Images
