Hold Me While I’m Naked

A film in which we see through the eyes of a frustrated director who is desperately attempting to realise his ‘vision’. An assault on ‘good taste’, this film-within-a-film is lead by the vocal directions explaining and interrupting the scenes and performances of the ‘no-talent actors’. An actress (in a poorly synced overdub) is heard protesting that she is “sick and tired about being naked in almost every scene”. A distorted soundtrack of scratched records evoke faded Hollywood clichés – suspense, romance, drama – often clashing with otherwise banal rehearsed scenes.
This early Kuchar film is typical of a signature kitsch style which seems to simultaneously mock and celebrate an earlier ‘golden-age’ of Hollywood cinema. Gaudy and colour- saturated the film is at once trashy and light-hearted but at the same time also reflects an underlying sense of melancholy and frustration.