From the New York Times:
“ZOO,” the new film by the Seattle director Robinson Devor, arrived at this year’s Sundance Film Festival better known as “the horse sex documentary.” But as festival audiences discovered, this description, while not incorrect, was also misleading. The film revisits the true story of a man who died in July 2005 after a sexual encounter with a horse in rural Washington State but does so with a lyricism startlingly at odds with the sensational content.
“This topic is not something people want to think about,” Mr. Devor said in an interview at Sundance, summing up both the challenge of marketing the film and the reason he and his writing partner, Charles Mudede, were compelled to make it.
Speaking at the premiere Mr. Mudede called “Zoo” a “thought experiment.” He added, “If someone can go there physically, I can go there mentally.”
Contemplating an unorthodox merging of man and beast, “Zoo” (which is set to open in New York on April 25) is itself an exotic hybrid: a fact-based film combining audio testimony with speculative re-enactments that feature a mix of actors and actual subjects. (The title is the subcultural term for a zoophile, a person whose affinity for animals sometimes extends to the carnal.)
“Zoo” obliquely recreates the events of the fateful night that caused a media frenzy in the Seattle area two summers ago. Shortly after being dropped off at an emergency room in Enumclaw, Wash., a 45-year-old Boeing engineer named Kenneth Pinyan – known in the film only by his Internet handle, Mr. Hands – died of internal injuries resulting from a perforated colon. The police investigation led to a farm and turned up videotapes and DVDs that showed several men engaging in sexual acts with the resident Arabian stallions. Bestiality was not illegal in Washington at the time, but in response to the Pinyan incident the State Senate voted last year to criminalize it.
Mr. Devor and Mr. Mudede, a columnist for the Seattle weekly The Stranger, noticed a disturbing uniformity in news coverage and public opinion surrounding the case.
“There seemed to be two responses: repulsion or laughter,” Mr. Mudede said. “People didn’t want to have any connection or identification with these men. Early on Rob and I said to each other, ‘We’re going to revive their humanity.’ ”
Leaving aside that there’s a certain condescending new-agey presumptuousness to such a statement—after all, do men who willingly allow their bumpers be rocked by Arabian horse cock actually want their “humanity” revived, or is it possible they’re looking in some other direction for an identity?—the tone of the article itself is strangely reverential, almost in precise inverse, one imagines, to the derision we’d expect the progressive Times to heap upon the kind of puckered Biblehumpers they envision might oppose lyrical musings about men who dig being buggered by stallions.
So, to recap: chocolate Jesus giblets and stallion fucking = edgy, arty, and worthy of “thought experiments” that attempt to “revive the humanity” of their subjects; whereas “under God” in the Pledge = intrusive, while cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed? How dare you question the Otherness of the Other?
Writes Robert Schwartz, who emailed me the Times article, “If this is not the end of the world, you can see it from here…”
…which he would have had except for those stupid, fascist Christo Godbags wouldn’t let them teach about Equine Condoms®!
Damn fundie meddlers…
I would most likely tend towards “laughing” while viewing this, I’ve got to admit. And honestly, why should anything else be expected?
I find the notion that I shouldn’t laugh at this idiocy astonishing, frankly. This guy doesn’t warrant any respect for having died doing this. How does this differ any from plushie play or auto-erotic asphyxiation? Sure, you want to get off…but if you die doing, don’t expect to be anything other than a funny story when you’re gone.
Dude! It’s not like they’re not mammals!
Shit, where did those goalposts go?
I have to admit this is not a movie I anticipated being brought to the big screen or would enjoy watching.
So, what is the correct slur to be directed at someone like myself who finds this a bit, should we say, repulsive?
Bestialitiphobe.
Oh, sure… but just try making a movie about an orthodox merging of man and beast and see how far you get… damn lefty artists, it’s always about the alternative lifestyle with them…
From where I come, you have a sexual encounter with a barmaid. If you’re getting fucked by an Appaloosa, he’s probably not going to call.
Unless of course eHarmony found you to be compatible with the horse on over 40 personality traits. NEIGH!! WHINNY!!!
…….put me down for laughter.
Dude could get a tax abatement for it in Kansas City, if he did it in the right part of town. http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/16989694.htm
You’re only laughing because it’s a male horse. If it was a female horse you’d be, Idon’t know…Welsh?
Is there a seperate categary for eeeewwww!?
As for the double standard; it’s been perfectly OK to mock Jesus and Christianity at any time and in any place ever since the Mapplethorp exhibit. If us dumb, peaceful Godbags would just behead a few artists this sort of thing might not happen.
Ok, we’ll just firebomb a museum. That way, we won’t have to deal with the icky blood cleanup.
sarcasm generator smoking…
If only he had had a comprehensive sex education class in elementary school to instruct him in the proper method of mating with a horse . . .
“This topic is not something people want to think about,” Mr. Devor said in an interview at Sundance, summing up both the challenge of marketing the film and the reason he and his writing partner, Charles Mudede, were compelled to make it.
There you have it.
who wouldn’t!
Somebody call mona, I need remedial English edjumacation help…
Drag racing and equinophilia. What a concept!
Put the stallions in fluffy pink gowns and send them around a track while mounted by hairy guys wearing leather camisoles.
I don’t think truer words were even written.
This incident wouldn’t have happened, but self-constraint went out the window after a couple of Frothing Insinuations.™
Horse’s ass kilt hisself.
Wrecked him? It killed him!
(Hey, somebody had to say it.)
This kind of thing requires a lot of planning.
So. Is the problem here these guys don’t have more normal hobbies to take up their free time, like stamp collecting or drag racing?
Yep, your Dad was right when he said:
Any time a man dies with his pants around his ankles and a look of pain on his face, its funny.
“Who did this to you?”
“My neighbor.”
It thinks this is where cynn’s horse weighs in with a “that’s not funny!”
Oh, just kidding, just kidding, cynn.
The tone of the article and attitude of the “filmmakers” reminds me of yet another Important Life Lesson uttered by Homer Simpson: “Less artsy! More fartsy!”
Yea, Craig;
Nothing says artistic triumph/bankrupt filmmakers like making a movie about a topic no one wants to contemplate.
They will be able to sigh in satisfactions at teh art triumphant whilst paying off their maxed credit cards.
Oops, I forgot! I’m sure that the NEA will step right in, prompting me to have a mild seizure at the satisfying use of my tax dollars.
Must.Go.Lie.Down…
Geezer:
Must.First.Clean.Keyboard (heh)
Isn’t there an implicit irony in using “Rosie O’Donnell” and “bestiality” in the same sentance?
Or is it simply redundant?
That, to me, shows that people are still fairly sane out there. No end of the world until the response is heartache or deep, contemplative thoughtfulness.
Heh….more:
“My Very Good Friend Flicka”
“Three Men and a Pony”
“The Horse Wankerer”
“A Stable Relationship”
I don’t know about yous guys, but I’m calling my broker and going long on KY…this thing’s bound to catch on, at least in the Episcopal Church.
Perhaps Mr. Pinyan should have practiced a while longer with gerbils or other small rodents before moving up to equine relations.
And where’s PETA on this? Shouldn’t somebody be providing counseling to the poor horse? Damn thing must be traumatized, through no fault of it’s own, of course.
May I also suggest that “Zoo” is a poor title for the flick? Here’s a few alternative suggestions:
“BrokeButt Mounting”
“The Thick and the Dead”
“Last Stall on the Left”
I think its necessarily to point out that Rosie O’donnel thinks that people engaging in bestilaity are actually far less radical and dangerous then conservative christians.
Buy Chariots Afire now, and save 20% on Hot to Trot.
TW: course85
Damn thing misspelled coarse.
You.are.evil.
I wish I had thought of that first.
W I L B U R, W I L B U R, am I gonna “ you know “ see you again or am I just a one night stand.
Actually, wouldn’t it be:
“My Friend with Benefits Flicka”?
A few more title suggestions:
“The Really Big Black Stallion”
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Stables”
“Horatio Horseblower”
“Diddler on the Hoof”
“Two Mules AND Sister Sara”
Not that I really want to know, but how did he get the horse “interested” in his ass?
His nickname was “Sweet Cheeks.” You figure it out.
TW: Yes, as a matter of fact I am going to hell83
Okay, you can stop with the movie titles already. At this point, you’re just beating a dead h…
no, your horse is beating a dead…
you’ve been beaten dead by a…
Dammit! It’s the perfect place for it, and I can’t use the damn sadistic necrobestiality joke!
Whenever I hear “Hi ho Silver”, it’s gonna seem different now.
Oh, and Trigger sure sounds like a pretty good name for a fuck buddy…if you ask me.
Mr. Ed ‘Til I’m Dead.