Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (2011) Heart of Darkness

Extended excerpt from the documentary Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure.

In 1987, Eddie and Mitch, two young punks from the Midwest, moved into a low-rent shithole of an apartment in the Lower Haight district of San Francisco. Through paper-thin walls, they were informally introduced to their middle-aged alcoholic neighbors, Raymond Huffman, a raging homophobe, and Peter Haskett, a flamboyant gay man. Night after night, the boys were treated to and terrorized by a seemingly endless stream of vodka-fueled altercations between the two unlikely roommates. Oftentimes nonsensical and always vitriolic, the diatribes of Peter and Ray were an audio goldmine just begging to be recorded and passed around on the underground tape market. For 18 months, Eddie and Mitch hung a microphone from their kitchen window to chronicle the bizarre and violent relationship between their borderline-insane neighbors.

Not satisfied with simply documenting these outlandish events, director Matthew Bate has concocted a darkly comedic exploration into the blurred boundaries among privacy, art, and exploitation.