Due to what seems like a lot of improvisation, The Rubber Gun feels a lot like a Canadian Slacker, except with everyone being out in the open about their drug dealing. It is uneven on purpose, which defies convention but inhibits engagement. It does maintain its momentum by adhering to a clear storyline, but the trunk of the narrative does have many meandering branches. However, some of the branches bear some very strange fruit, the kind you are not likely to see.
Also, director Moyle is certified Generation X royalty, as he followed up this movie with directing Times Square, Pump Up The Volume and Empire Records. This fact alone makes his debut here worth checking out for not only historical purposes, as it is fun to see Moyle unvarnished versus how much polish he mastered later on.
“Thanks to a miraculous remaster…lines sharp enough to cut lines with…”
In the end, The Rubber Gun is the Stephen Lack show, as he came up with the narrative and has got all the major speeches to make up the majority of the content. Lack is famous as the lead in Scanners, which he was remarkably restrained in as a psychic struggling to control his powers. Here he lets all his psychic hair hang down, as we get flat out unrestrained Lack.
When Lack cuts loose, he just doesn’t give it in double barrels. He also empties six other barrels as well. Like the movie itself, it is a mixed bag. Sometimes we get magnificent insight, such as when Lack laments that his crowd used to get wasted to go do stuff, while now they just get wasted for getting wasted’s sake and doing nothing. Other times, it is an incongruous brain scramble, like an omelet made with beets and carrots (true story, that diner is now closed). But Lack’s rap here is unusual and completely unlike anything else before or since, even in the indie sphere. It is also organically queer in many places in a natural and unguarded way, also unusual for the time. This is one of the rare ones that show how a lot of folks in the queer community back in the day were caught in hard drug distribution due to societal marginalization. That and they knew everyone at the club. The Rubber Gun doesn’t always shoot straight, but is more than worthy of rediscovery amongst the connoisseurs of cult artifacts.
"…more than worthy of rediscovery amongst the connoisseurs of cult artifacts."
