Gummo

April 17, 1999

Glue sniffin’, cat killin’ country folk – kind of reminds me of growing up in small town Texas. Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad where I grew up…there were parts of town where you couldn’t have dogs because they would end up as fajitas in a week…a friend of mine almost bought an UZI in the parking lot before school, but he didn’t have $80 on him…I went to the prom with a married man…enough about my scary high school years and back to Gummo.

First I heard of Gummo, my friend Sean said that I should go rent it, it’s by the guy who made Kids, see if you can make it through the whole thing, because he sure couldn’t. Then I totally forgot about it. A couple of months later, I saw a copy of Gummo on my boyfriend’s shelf. He had borrowed it from some guy he worked with and said I was welcome to borrow it, but he wasn’t able to get past the first glue sniffing scene. A week or so later, I finally got around to watching it…

I managed to make my way through all of it. I have no idea why it is called Gummo. There is no plot, just horrible vignettes of sex, drugs and cat killing. I won’t describe any of the atrocities contained within this film – it would ruin the shock value, which is the only value this film has. I can say that I do not think I could have made it through this film sober.