"three bewildered people in the night" is 1 of 2 films by gregg araki in his early days before he really got out there in the indie scene. i would call these his college films. ever since watching "totally fucked up" in 1996 or 1997, somewhere around there, i've just really liked his work, though my feelings have waned since discovering robert rodriguez. though they are 2 different aesthetics, both filmmakers have a common thread of doing as much of the film yourself and focusing on the soundtrack. gregg is particularly focused on the soundtrack whereas robert has formed a band to work on the soundtrack.

tonight, after years and years of searching and just about giving up, i have finally seen "three bewildered people in the night" thanks to a screening at visual communications, an asian-american pacific islander non-profit film group that i became aware of several years ago at the tofu festival held in conjunction with nisei week in los angeles.

it was an odd screening because visual communications is one group housed at a former church that is now occupied by artist groups. there were no signs on where to go for them nor were there instructions in the email. there was another event going on so at first i had no idea i was in the wrong part of the building. we walked to the back and around the corner and things seemed odd. then, there were like ziplock bags of water on the outside of the building. their office isn't really setup for screenings and few showed up. on top of that, we watched a copy taped off of tv years ago.

the film very much felt like a draft for "totally fucked up". this was in black and white and only had a few characters. it felt like it should have been a short but gregg araki stretched it to say he made a full-length feature. it just went on for 30-40 minutes more than it had to. the characters pausing or just doing nothing became annoying whereas that is part of the charm of his other films. i'm glad to have finally seen it but it's nothing i'm going to demand for a dvd release.