“I had fun in this class! I learned a lot,” wrote Jon Moritsugu in his course evaluation for intro to film theory and aesthetics at Brown University. His instructor, though, had another opinion: “Jon’s performance this semester was profoundly dismal. . . . Jon has ably demonstrated that he has not learned any of the course material. Trying to work with this student was a thoroughly unenjoyable experience for me.”
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That was in 1984. He finished school in 1987, and, now based in San Francisco, he’s made nine films since then, all straddling the line between satire and camp. His first–the full-length feature My Degeneration, financed with $5,000 from a settlement he received after his arm was mangled in a conveyor belt at work–follows the exploits of a fictional rock band that makes it big and also plays music for the beef industry. “It was a film I had to make,” he says.
It’s that, plus Moritsugu’s low budgets and use of nonactors, that have brought comparisons to John Waters, though Moritsugu doesn’t see it. “I don’t think there are many similarities,” he says. “Maybe on the surface there are some similar elements. I don’t like his movies, although I respect the way he started making them with his very do-it-yourself, fuck-the-rules point of view. But he’s a studio director. I have no desire to become part of the studio system. It’s like signing up to become part of a concentration camp.”
