Tom Waits is that rare breed of artist who has equal amounts of cred­i­bil­i­ty in the art house the­aters and on the punk rock street. His depres­sion-era every­man blues and drunk­en skid row laments ring just as true as his high-con­cept vaude­ville the­ater act and cock­tail lounge per­for­mance art. Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to con­vinc­ing­ly set his brow high or low makes Waits an excel­lent ambas­sador for film, a medi­um sad­ly riv­en by brow height. While cable TV and Net­flix may be the art hous­es of the 21st cen­tu­ry, let’s not give up on the cul­tur­al reach of lega­cy archives like the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion just yet. Not before we hear Waits weigh in on his favorite art films.

Waits’ fil­mog­ra­phy as an actor is itself a tes­ta­ment to his brow-span­ning abilities—from such wide-release fare as Drac­u­la and Sev­en Psy­chopaths to the scrap­py, inti­mate films of Jim Jar­musch, and more or less every­thing in-between. The threads that run through all of his film choic­es as an actor are a cer­tain sur­re­al sense of humor and the off-kil­ter human­i­ty and for­mal anar­chy we know so well from his musi­cal choic­es.

We see sim­i­lar pro­cliv­i­ties in Waits’ film favorites, as com­piled by Chris Ambro­sio at Cri­te­ri­on. Most of the choic­es are of the, “Ah, of course” vari­ety in that these films so per­fect­ly explain, or illus­trate, the Tom Waits uni­verse. We might imag­ine many of them with alter­nate sound­tracks of songs from Real Gone, Sword­fishtrom­bones, Bone Machine, etc.

First, up, of course, Fellini’s neo­re­al­ist La Stra­da, a film about the sad­dest, sweet­est, gruffest trav­el­ing cir­cus act ever. Waits also con­fess­es a pas­sion for all of the beau­ti­ful­ly over­wrought films of Carl Theodor Drey­er, includ­ing the pro­found and dis­turb­ing 1928 The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc and 1932 hor­ror clas­sic Vampyr (both above). You can see the full list of Waits’ favs below. Let your pas­sion for art film be rekin­dled, and when watch­ing the silent films, con­sid­er putting on some Mule Vari­a­tions or Blood Mon­ey. You’ll prob­a­bly find it fits per­fect­ly.

1. La Stra­da, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (U.S. read­ers: watch Fellini’s films free on Hulu)
2. Zato­ichi: The Blind Swords­man
3. Put­ney Swope, Robert Downey, Sr.
4. Every­thing by Carl Theodor Drey­er
5. Amar­cord, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni
6. 8 1/2, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni
7. The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton
8. Wise Blood, John Hus­ton
9. Two-Lane Black­top, Monte Hell­man
10. Eraser­head, David Lynch
11. Pick­up on South Street, Samuel Fuller
12. Ikiru, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa
13. Ver­non, Flori­da, Errol Mor­ris
14. In a Lone­ly Place, Nicholas Ray

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free on Hulu: Stream Fellini’s 8 1/2, La Stra­da & Oth­er Clas­sic & Con­tem­po­rary Films

Tom Waits, Play­ing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Clas­sic 1978 TV Per­for­mance

The Tom Waits Map: A Map­ping of Every Place Waits Has Sung About, From L.A. to Africa’s Jun­gles

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Grow­ing up in the Wash­ing­ton, DC sub­urbs in the 80s and 90s among a cer­tain sub­cul­ture of dis­af­fect­ed youth meant that the short cult doc­u­men­tary Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot had an espe­cial­ly leg­endary sta­tus. Every­body seemed to know a friend of a friend’s old­er broth­er or sis­ter who had been caught on cam­era by film­mak­ers John Heyn and Jeff Kru­lik out­side that 1986 Judas Priest con­cert at Largo, Mary­land’s Cap­i­tal Cen­tre (RIP). But geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty alone to the tit­u­lar park­ing lot does not explain the 17-minute video’s pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Since its first screen­ing at a club called DC Space, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot has become one of the most beloved of rock films world­wide, a “soci­o­log­i­cal study of head­bangers,” writes Rolling Stone, who rank the short at num­ber 33 in their list of the 40 Great­est Rock Doc­u­men­taries. “Decades before the inter­net made shar­ing video clips as sim­ple as post­ing to Twit­ter or Face­book,” writes The Verge, “Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot caught on, not through offi­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels, but through an under­ground net­work of fans that would dub VHS copies and pass them along.” (The movie got a big boost when the film­mak­ers gave a copy to DC-area native Dave Grohl, who kept it on reg­u­lar rota­tion on the Nir­vana tour bus.)

What makes this exposé of met­al fans so spe­cial? Although there’s undoubt­ed­ly a seg­ment of its view­ers who laugh at the film’s col­lec­tion of most­ly anony­mous mid-eight­ies met­al fans, for the most part, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot’s appeal has not been that of so much viral inter­net content—mean-spirited com­e­dy at the expense of naïve ama­teurs. Thought it’s tempt­ing, as Rolling Stone remarks, “to mock these mul­let-afflict­ed met­al­heads… there’s an unde­ni­able sweet­ness that per­me­ates” the mini-doc and its sub­jects’ “inno­cent quest for rock & roll kicks.”

The sheer goofi­ness and joy­ous aban­don that is 80s heavy met­al con­tributes to the film’s char­ac­ter. And much of the love of Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot comes from the same nos­tal­gic place as that for Dazed and Con­fused except that its char­ac­ters are the real deal. The doc­u­men­tary presents an authen­tic record of mid-80s sub­ur­ban youth in Amer­i­ca. It’s like­ly cos­tume design­ers of Richard Lin­klater’s fol­low-up peri­od piece Every­body Wants Some!! stud­ied Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot in detail.

Like Lin­klater’s testos­terone-heavy films, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot is large­ly dom­i­nat­ed by dudes—metal bros who “may occa­sion­al­ly be inar­tic­u­late, sex­ist and obnox­ious.” And yet, even fans of the film who grew up in more enlight­ened times and places—and who may not have had friends who looked just like these guys—have found much to love in the movie. The slice-of-life char­ac­ter stud­ies and inter­views cre­ate “a time cap­sule,” Kru­lik told the Verge on the doc­u­men­tary’s 30th anniver­sary screen­ing, one sur­pris­ing­ly still “a lit­tle bit shock­ing.”

On the oth­er hand, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot remains a vital, time­less record of fandom—of the unvar­nished, uncrit­i­cal devo­tion young lovers of any pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­non bestow upon their object. And like cer­tain oth­er doc­u­men­taries about fandom—such as 1997’s Trekkies—Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot allows its sub­jects to ful­ly be them­selves, with­out judg­ment or con­de­scen­sion. Even as ordi­nary, most­ly name­less, most­ly stoned and shirt­less kids in the sub­urbs, those selves prove to be as at least as enter­tain­ing as the flam­boy­ant band they came to see.

Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Above you can also watch, “Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot Alum­ni: Where Are They Now,” the sequel to our fea­tured film. 

via The Verge/Dead Spin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Punk & Heavy Met­al Music Makes Lis­ten­ers Hap­py and Calm, Not Aggres­sive, Accord­ing to New Aus­tralian Study

Heavy Met­al: BBC Film Explores the Music, Per­son­al­i­ties & Great Cloth­ing That Hit the Stage in the 1980s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness