Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure

After a number of shorts tackling issue such as Hollywood stardom and the British electronic music scene, Australian filmmaker Matthew Bate’s first feature length documentary Shut Up Little Man! follows two ex-roommates attempting to track down a group of old alcoholic neighbours who became famous for their insane drunken rows.

Friends Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitch Deprey recorded these middle-aged alcoholics screaming incessantly about homosexuality, the war, and most often how much they hated one another, by taping a microphone to a pole and hovering it near their neighbor’s window. This voyeurism was taken to a viral level before the Internet was born via the medium of cassette tapes, and the popularity of these recordings grew to such an extent that record labels were vying to get the rights to use this wacky delinquent material.

Pete and Ray, the main culprits in these recorded arguments, were clearly friends as they slept in the same room, but when they drank, all hell broke loose. Bate was fascinated by this strange love hate relationship, however the film’s comedic edge turns somber as the audience is taken through the moral and ethical questions that are raised by this fairly exploitative form of viral entertainment.

When offered money for his unwilling contribution towards the material, Pete reluctantly agrees, however the $100 hardly compares to the thousands Eddie and Mitch have made since their website began to sell CD’s, shirts, and even fake Ray death certificates. The film touches on this aspect and asks the question as to whether the recordings themselves were obtained ethically but focuses more on the story of Pete and Ray and where they are today.

Although a documentary, a majority of Shut Up Little Man!’s narrative aspect came about purely by chance, as Pete was found through an online database for sex offenders in San Francisco. The filmmakers along with Eddie and Mitch then pushed to interview him on camera, which he was clearly uncomfortable taking part in, but what ultimately ends the film with an interesting inside look on Pete and Ray’s very unique relationship.

The film uses a combination of interviews, stock photos and reenacted footage of the recorded arguments. Cut in-between these are cartoons drawn by indie comic book artists Daniel Clowes and Ivan Brunetti, which were inspired by the outrageous characters that they had conjured from listening to the tapes.

Shut Up Little Man! eventually asks more questions than it answers. This is not uncommon for a documentary however less time could have been spent on the story of the pair and more on the ethical questions the film raises. For the most part, though, the film is a good laugh and is interesting enough to carry the audience, but falls short on analyzing why it is we are actually laughing at the misery of two retired alcoholics.