Review: Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt

Friday September 4th Cissie and I went to a sold out screening of Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt, at the Hollywood Theater.

Someone who worked on the film lives in Portland, and he gave a quick introduction that included the director’s house burninng down, and he got in and saved his cats and this movie. Thank you Tom Stern! Not only for saving the movie but for making it in the first place. It’s an incredible doc, and I loved it so much.

It’s hard to review a movie without spoiling it, but I’ll do my best. The Viewer Discretion advisory was hilarious. They talked to almost all the band members (they had way more bass players then I knew about). They interviewed people that I’m like “why are you in the movie?” then later I understood why they were included. Not one gratuitous interview! So rare! the archival footage was incredible, especially the live performances.

I stopped paying attention to the Buttholes in the time when Theresa left, they were suing Touch and Go, and playing at Lallapalooza. So, I learned a lot about what was going on after I stopped paying attention. Maybe it was the first time I heard the Number One Song? First time I consciously did anyway. I learned a lot about Paul Leary, who I admired for sure, but no surprise that the drummers were my favs.

They used lots of formats to demonstrate stories, the puppets were so awesome and I was in awe of the puppetteers. There was some animation that was super impressive and some I didn’t like. My only other criticism was they only ID-ed people once, so if you don’t know who people are, it’s hard to remember.

I looked up the trailer to send to a friend and some one commented “Spoiler alert: this isn't going to be the whole truth. I guarantee you there's stuff Gibby doesn't want in a documentary.” which I find so annoying and why I don’t read comments usually. First, of the 3 things this person mentioned, 2 are actually addressed in the doc, and second, it’s not the WHOLE truth it’s the HOLE truth. Duh.

All in all, one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen and I hope it makes it back to Portland so I can see it on the big screen again.