Second Time Around

Films of Jerry Barrish
We all know at least a few actor/waiters, screenwriter/bicycle messengers, and so on. But local boy Jerry Barrish deserves special mention as surely the only filmmaker/bail bondsman around.

During the 1980s, Barrish wrote, produced, and directed three 16mm features that were cheered on the film festival circuit but never attracted mainstream audiences, perhaps because of the often uneven acting and Barrish's refusal to resolve plot points. Still, Barrish is a keen observer of the minutiae of desperate love affairs, his characters both uplifted and brought down by sheer emotional need, while his films give the curious impression of being shot in real time, perhaps because the camera lingers overlong on the characters as they grapple with each other and their own failed expectations.

In Barrish's most recent film, 1989's Shuttlecock, local comic Will Durst convincingly sketches a two-timing "gutless prick," as his German chanteuse neighbor calls him. Ann Block registers strongly here as one of Durst's lover-victims.

Recent Sorrows (1984) reconstructs two parallel failed love stories -- one gay, one straight -- that intersect violently during a surprise murder-suicide, while Dan's Motel (1981) explores the redemptive possibilities of love in a series of brief, troubled encounters.

-- Gary Morris

Shuttlecock screens Saturday, Sept. 5, at 8 p.m., and a double bill of Dan's Motel and Recent Sorrows screens Friday, Sept. 11, at 8 p.m. in the Screening Room of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission (at Third Street). Admission is $6; call 978-