PUBLIC ACCESS HOLLYWOOD - INSIDE PULSE

It all started in the mid-70s, when Chicago-born puppeteer David Hart left the chilly Midwest and headed West to take a shot at becoming an actor. Due to bit parts on Chico and the Man and the Richard Pryor vehicle Brewster’s Millions, Hart thought he was destined to become the next big star in Los Angeles. Sadly, like many before him, Hart struggled to find any follow up roles and soon he was forced to take a more extreme approach to making his name.

Hart — who also goes by David Nkrumah Liebe Hart, David King Liebe Hart, and David Unger Hart — decided to fall back on his puppeteering and started his own Christian Science children’s show on a local public access station. Raised as a Christian Scientist from an early age, it was Hart’s personal experiences with racism from his fellow worshippers that drove him to succeed as a religious entertainer.

Using Jim Henson as direct inspiration (he often claims that Henson was his Sunday School teacher), Hart built his show around distinct characters and sang his own hymns that fit the message of each show. Starting in 1988 with the assistance of his ex-wife, Hart set his program up like a variety show, offering a talk show format in which various local guests could come in and perform. If David Hart’s story was only so simple, he would probably be a respected regional children’s entertainer, if not a minor national religious figure. But instead he conceived the most baffling kid’s program ever produced, The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show, a weekly dose of outrageous brilliance fueled by Hart’s sincere (and almost tragic) will to succeed.

Hart calls upon a menagerie of bizarre puppets to deliver his message, including Chip the Black Boy, Teddie Eddie and Doug the Dog. These aren’t so much different characters as they are various sides of Hart’s complex personality, offering a cherished peek into the mind of Hollywood’s strangest outcast. Hart’s religious philosophies have been hopelessly twisted by UFO encounters, a painful divorce, and loneliness, which adds a dimension to his show that no other public access program could ever hope to achieve. Add a heaping helping of monotonous (and lengthy) self-penned hymns and a parade of whacked out local celebrity guests and you’ve got the most bizarre show

Tape traders flipped out over Hart when he was first discovered, and soon his programs were a hot commodity among the seekers of the bizarre. The late, lamented Melbaworld website offered a fantastic tape with episodes of The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Showpaired with other religious TV oddities like Captain Hook andBibleman, while the twisted minds behind the Lost and Found DVD series included Hart on the second edition of their series.

DEATH TO SATELLITE DISHES!

While many a young collector took great joy in showing their Hart tapes to unsuspecting friends, one man took this fascination further: director Will Peragine. Peragine is the director of Public Access Hollywood, a hypnotic look into the strange world of Los Angeles’s many public access celebrities. While many Hart fans still take a condescending view of his show, Peragine saw him and his fellow minor TV stars as an unfairly ignored cornerstone of L.A. entertainment, and saw fit to tell their story in a genuinely touching way.

Fittingly, Peragine’s camera never feels intrusive when following these Hollyweird types. Almost all are born performers, and their personalities bubble over into their every day life as well. No example is more telling than Dan Kapelovitz and Giddle Partridge, a real life couple whose obsession with both psychedelia and TV has manifested itself into a California-based cult in which members of the Partridge Family are used as deities. Their show, The Threee Geniuses, is an improvised mish mash of music and colorful imagery that takes the limited technology of their public access studio and twists it into a throbbing explosion of visual stimulation.

A lesser filmmaker could have easily made Kapelovitz and Giddle seem like a pathetic joke, but Peragine paints the pair as the Sonic Youth of television, passionate defenders of low tech entertainment that are knowingly on the fringe and loving it. Kapelovitz and Giddle are so entranced by the public access scene that they even make frequent appearances on Hart’s show, often as modest Bible verse readers (although Kapelovitz has been known to break out his guitar at hilariously inappropriate moments). In turn, Hart appreciates the help and makes his own appearance on The Threee Geniuses, although he mostly just chastises Giddle and Kapelovitz for their sinful ways.

While Hart may be the most interesting character in Peragine’s documentary, the charming Francine Dancer is the film’s emotional core. Francine, a former bikini dancer who now finds herself homeless and in a wheelchair, has the number one public access show in Los Angeles. While an unspecified back problem keeps her from walking, every Friday night she dresses up in skimpy outfits and climbs out of her wheelchair for a half hour of live televised go-go dancing. Francine is over the average age and weight of most sultry bikini dancers, and she’s well aware of it, but she knows that she fulfills a strange niche and cheerfully obliges without a word of complaint.

As Peragine follows her from the doorway in which she sleeps to the television studio, he finds plenty of Francine fans along the way, most of whom can’t believe she’s in a wheelchair. In his many conversations with her, Peragine reveals a kind and lovely woman who doesn’t pretend to understand her success, even if it doesn’t translate into a career. Her fellow public access stars adore her and often let her sleep at their apartments, which transitions nicely into a birthday party scene where everyone from the studio treats Francine to a nice dinner. It becomes obvious that they really are friends outside of the studio, and seeing the way they interact is genuinely touching.

Of course, Public Access Hollywood isn’t just about these three shows. Call in shows like Michael Devine’s Hollywood and Devine and The Jim Berry Show, which are shot in the same studio, are given plenty of time as well. While Berry and Devine are certainly odd, they don’t quite have the zest of the documentary’s other subjects, leaving them as somewhat secondary characters. Neither are unlikable, which can’t be said for the obnoxious Zuma Dogg Show, a headache inducingAli G rip off in which a beach bum talking in a fake voice runs around with a camcorder and bothers people.

The only show that feels short changed is the intriguing Dr. Susan Block Show, which is barely featured despite being in the middle of a publicized controversy in which a conservative cable company owner tried to stop the show from being aired. Certainly more time could have been spent on the situation, but Peragine chooses to briefly cover the incident before moving on to other things.

With this minor complaint aside, Public Access Hollywood is still a fun and interesting look into downtown Hollyweird. From David Hart’s twisted religious puppet show to the Threee Geniuses’ psychotic TV freak out, there’s a lot to discover here for cult film enthusiasts. While there isn’t necessarily an easy way to get the film right now if you don’t live in L.A.