July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

Director, writer, producer, editor and composer John Valley made this comedy which is also tragedy, in the best of ways, and one that reminds me that in the last five years, the world has gotten so weird that even the conspiracies in this movie seem wonderfully wholesome by comparison to the reality we’re living in.

Well, I mean, as much as ritualistic lizard alien sex abuse can be wholesome.

First, let me explain something.

Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory that went viral in 2016. Supposedly, hacked emails between John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, and politician Anthony Weiner contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring.

One of these places was Comet Ping Pong Pizza in our nation’s capital. The rumors of that place having a child sex ring were debunked, yet on December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina, opened fire inside the building.  He told police that he planned to “self-investigate” the conspiracy theory and ended up in jail for four years, dying five years later when he pointed a gun at a cop when stopped.

An arsonist also tried to set the building on fire and fake customers even called to jam up the phone lines. Since then, Pizzagate morphed into Frazzledrip, which is all about Hillary Clinton killing a child and drinking its blood, as well as posts about giving children panda eyes. Amazingly — but not at all — these stories often come from white supremacist social media shared on Twitter, 4chan and Reddit before being reported by Alex Jones and his ilk. After all, who doesn’t want the kind of political firepower that comes from the left wing being exposed as a Satanic cabal of New World Order moving children all over the world for sex?

QAnon rose out of this and well, you know how that all went.

Depressed by the fact that the fun world of conspiracies was ruined, like everything else in the world, by these people? Well, maybe we can talk about this movie.

Karen Black (Alexandria Payne) used to work for Terri Lee (Lee Eddy), a very Alex Jones media person who is worshipped for telling the truth in the face of the mainstream (read that as Jew, they sure want to say it) media. Terri wants everyone to know that lizard aliens — or, more specifically, one soccer player who once thought he was Jesus– have a Road to Damascus moment, and this happens. They’re real and are eating children beneath an Austin, TX pizza place. Fired, Karen decides to prove her theory by filming at the pizza shop. But who can take her?

This brings her to a militia meeting, where she meets Duncan (Tinus Seaux) — the film was once called Duncan — a redneck, ultra-right man who believes Terri Lee, her cause, and her claims. He also has a rebel flag on the front and back bumpers, a huge Nazi tattoo and racist ideals, which soon take a backseat to how he feels about Karen. I mean, he shoots another white guy who calls her the n word, but is that because he sees himself as the hero in his own The Turner Diaries or is he truly noble?

The question is, once Karen and Duncan get there, will they find anything? The movie goes to black and doesn’t tell us exactly what happened. Were there lizard aliens? Did they make it to the basement? All we know is that Duncan has opened fire and killed plenty of people, at least one of whom we’ve watched on screen. Now he’s on the run and has nowhere to go but to be another lone nut killer.

That is, unless he can get to Terri Lee. She’ll know what to do.

But can even the people we depend on to guide us through conspiracies not be complicit? How did people feel when Alex Jones was figured out? And now he’s turned on the President, so what happens next? Man, at least Art Bell took a last ride to the other side before we’d have to hear him support that side or take another twentysomething wife so soon after the last one died. It’s hard to have heroes when everyone is bought.

I’ve never been more cynical or more sure that everyone is out to get me than right now, and yet here I sit, down deep in my movie basement, writing my little articles and making dick jokes. The Pizzagate Massacre is, however, a stunning work of art that gives me hope, that shows me that people get it and makes me miss the days when weirdos could just be weird and not running the show.

You can watch this on Tubi.