Some hear the term “Beautiful Losers” and think of the Leonard Cohen book. Others think of the massive 1990’s-inspired art exhibit that, in 2004 and 2005, roved throughout the world with an unparalleled collection of street, graffiti, and outsider art. The exhibit, which still manages to stir up nostalgia of special time in contemporary art, brought together a smorgasbord of work from the likes of Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Margaret Kilgallen, Harmony Korine, Ed Templeton, and many others. The show has since inspired a book—and now, a documentary. More than just a book, documentary or exhibit, the term Beautiful Losers has come to represent a specific artistic time period that saw a criminally-disposed group of losers, taggers, skateboarders, and otherwise creatively-minded lost souls coalesce in early 1990’s New York. It captures the fractured essence and style of a downtrodden, yet extremely productive arts community – at least that’s what directors Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard want you to think. Beautiful Losers is the cinematic debut for Rose, also known for Alleged (a gallery in New York) and ANP Quarterly (a multifaceted art magazine). Both he and Leonard, also an artist and friend of Rose, were successful in producing a remarkably polished film that does its best to glorify an era in art which capitalized on the infrastructure and groundwork laid out during the 1970’s and 80’s by some of the most extreme graffiti artists ever. Almost every documentary about a particular artistic time period claims that it is either “lost,” “forgotten” or somehow “under-represented” in the mainstream. This walks a fine line between being objectively informative and pretentiously self-serving. In that regard, Beautiful Losers is no different than any other art documentary, and at times during the 90 minute film I really thought Aaron Rose might actually pull out his dick and suck it himself. But once you get past its pretentious misgivings, Beautiful Losers opens up into an artistic Horatio Alger story where the friendless, socially inept adolescent from a broken home discovers creative expression, becomes an artist, and is shunned by the mainstream art world at first. But through diligent partying, drug use and fucking around, he is eventually accepted by the mainstream – only to be co-opted, exploited and ultimately thrown back under the bus – nihilism at its most optimistic.

“Hey, my friend Samuel’s head was found right there back in ’86.”

Splicing together dozens of hardly-intelligence-flattering artist interviews and old grainy footage with just the right amount of scratches on the negatives, Rose and Leonard craft a compelling narrative of this guy’s pals’ fortuitous ascents to the top of the artistic food chain. Though it was sometimes hard to watch so many highly appreciated, well-known and respected artists talk as if they were virtually unknown, their humility was gratifying. At one point during the documentary, fellow filmmaker Harmony Korine returns to a playground in his Tennessee hometown and tells a story of how a childhood friend who’s severed head was found in the center of the playground. “These kids play where Samuel’s head used to be ... I guess that’s a good thing. You can’t really have a memorial to his head in this place,” Korine says to the camera as children play in background. “Hey, my friend Samuel’s head was found right there back in ’86,” he yells to one of the kids. It’s those scattered moments of genuine brevity that give much needed balance to the film’s consistent claims of hardship for the artists. But the film glosses over what happened after the artists in Beautiful Losers made it into art’s mainstream. That story of artistic intent and moral issues is much too complex and subjective to discuss in this happy-go-lucky flick. By the end of the movie one thing is clear, the folks in Beautiful Losers didn’t invent a new type of street art or graffiti, but they made it in a way that was all their own, and that is enough to be respected. by James H. Ewert, Jr.