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| Not as awesome as you might think. |
And when I discovered said documentary was entitled Nazi Pop Twins, I did wet myself and nearly soiled myself, too. Imagine: a full hour of embarrassing caterwauling from the twins' band Prussian Blue and whining about persecution from white power stage mom April.
Well, I finally watched what should have been cinema gold. It was kind of a let-down. Let me recap and you can see for yourself (spoiler alert!).
The movie kicks off with a little introduction to the Gaedes. One of the twins is shown saying, "Blacks have the more tendency [sic] to rape people" and April is filmed reading the ABCs with her (admittedly adorable) youngest child Dresden (yes, really). Of course, with April, A stands for Aryan and B stands for Blood. At least it won't be difficult to find an example word for X in April's alphabet.
Next we have the pleasure of meeting April's dad, Bill, who looks like he might be the black sheep sibling of Santa Claus and is wearing suspenders over a t-shirt. Bill is shown buying an M-16 military assault rifle, which I'm sure is illegal. He claims Mexicans had sex with his mare (he says he's personally shot six "muds") and marks his cattle with swastika brands. You can practically smell the flop sweat, Copenhagen and wolf piss through the screen.
April holds up one of the infamous Hitler smiley-face baby tees Lynx and Lamb were photographed wearing years ago and says she doesn't understand why people didn't think they were "hysterically funny." April is practically giddy talking about all the media attention the t-shirts and the girls got. She's a gigantic sloppy frump, but she swears she's not living vicariously through her kids.
At the radio interview, the girls look to April for cues on how to answer the DJ's questions before saying things like "illegals act nasty and they don't throw their toilet paper in the toilet." I've got news for you, girls: that's a universal issue. Based on the bathrooms I've been in lately, it seems like hipsters in particular have the same problem.
Soon, we start to see the tiny cracks that are forming in the little white utopia April seems to think she's created for her family. Lynx and Lamb are actually much more normal than I expected, and when they think April is asleep, they share their reservations about their white power lifestyle with the filmmakers. Hmmm, now this is starting to get good!
Actually, now it starts to get really, really ooky. The girls are shown talking on the phone with their pen pal David Lane, a white nationalist leader who is serving a 190-year prison sentence (you read that right) for killing a Jewish radio show host. Just the kind of guy you'd want your teenage daughters befriending, right? It quickly becomes evident that April has managed to score some kind of esteem with David by pimping out the girls to him. Over the phone, David says "I better be careful what I say, but right away I thought of Lynx and Lamb and their blue eyes. They were like daughters, fantasy sweethearts." Oh god, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, yucky, icky, shower, shower, shower! Bleeechhhh! When April hands Dresden the phone to say hi, I vomited on the TV and had to go by a new one to finish watching the movie. Luckily, David Lane is now dead, so the girls are safe from at least one letch for the time being.
Next up, we're treated to a "branding party" at Bill Gaede's ranch and this is where everything really starts to go south. April is policing the filmmakers and making it very clear they shouldn't speak to her mother, Dianne. When they get Dianne alone, it's clear why. She says, "All because if this goddamn nazi shit, it's just fucking ruined my life. It really fucks you up. We've lived here 30 years and I don't have a single friend because he's so hateful. My kids are just torn apart by it. Not April—she loves it." Awesome! I love grannies who cuss!
Tensions are reaching a fever pitch all around. While having lunch at a cafe, April starts yammering about her "vision" for the girls' next music video, but Lynx and Lamb are in no mood to be managed. "A lot of people think we're a bunch of psychos!" one whines. "We want to take a break!" April opines that the new music isn't pushing the nazi agenda. Who does she think she is...Stacey Keach?
Anyway, a bomb is dropped. Bill reveals that April was once attacked and almost raped by a black man. This was back when she had big dreams of becoming a rodeo commentator. The truth comes out! Luckily, Dianne has higher hopes and bigger plans for Lynx and Lamb. She interviews that she and the twins have made a plan that when they turn 18, they'll get a car and all go up the California coast together and look for a place to live. Shit, this is really sad! Dianne says she wouldn't put it past her husband to kill her. Cripes! Let's all band together to save Dianne!
At this point, it's evident that April and Bill are completely nuts and grandma and the girls are living under an iron thumb and they want to crawl out. If the filmmakers would have run with this storyline, the doc would have been a winner. But instead, much like the SVU squad, they start getting too close to the case, as you'll soon see.
Lynx and Lamb are performing their new songs in a bar and they're pretty bad, but they're singing the material that isn't pushing the white power agenda and are pretty warmly received by the crowd. April starts going around the bar passing out Prussian Blue CDs. Then she starts saying things like, "'The Stranger' is about wanting to be around your own people," and the patrons start to see what's going on. With "Paul Revere" thumping in the background, the Gaedes are kicked out of the bar. April screams that people are intolerant and the girls scream at her to shut up. "The media is so biased about white pride, people—even rednecks in a bar—are scared shitless," April foams. "They've castrated the white race." Lynx and Lamb are clearly embarrassed. And I'm suddenly reminded of how RockitPop always yelled, "Meet me in the Sears hardware section at 1 p.m. or I'm coming to find you!" in front of everyone at the mall. It was really embarrassing and sort of like this. Only not racist.
So, say you're a white power stage mom and your two blonde, teenage meal tickets are starting to think you're a big douchey weirdo and are pulling away from you, thus potentially crushing your dreams of being famous like David Duke. What do you do? Why, what anyone in any classic abusive relationship would do, of course: move to Montana!
Six months after the bar debacle, that's exactly what April did. But it wasn't a quiet transition; local news caught wind that the infamous Gaedes were moving to their small town and protesters came out in full force. April bitches that people went door to door warning that nazis were in the neighborhood. The FBI got involved because people were making death threats against the family.
Of course, instead of just keeping her mouth shut for once, April uses the community backlash as a chance to showcase herself as a martyr again. It's April versus the Big Sky State now! And the more the twins pull away, the more April tries to make Prussian Blue happen. She shows off all the merchandise she's had printed up: Prussian Blue mugs, mousepads with Dresden's picture on them (um, ew!), white pride rubber bracelets. And, like any self-respecting enemy of the people, she starts broadcasting a whiny radio show from her home.
Meanwhile, Lynx and Lamb are really starting to go sideways. One even says, "I'm not a white nationalist. The whole issue made me smarter and think about stuff more before you say it and do it." The even discuss a Martin Luther King Day project they did at school that made them feel guilty about their home lives.
April forces the girls to autograph Prussian Blue posters and they are vehemently resisting. "Put on a happy face and be nice," April blasts. "Then you can act like as much of a cunt as you want for the rest of the night!" Jeez, testy! And I hate to say it, but I'm actually starting to like the twins!
April starts to blame the documentary crew for putting ideas in the girls' heads and causing them to lash out at her. "You're such a self-hating white person," she yells at the filmmakers. "You suffer from white guilt. You're very manipulative with that fake British accent!"
This could be the best part of the movie. But instead, it all falls to shit when the director starts sniping back at April. "The more people that hate you, the happier you seem to be," he says in his fake British accent. Now they are all fighting and yelling at each other.Take a time out, Detective Stabler! Too close to the case!! But now, the twins are crying about the Hitler t-shirts, saying they thought it was a joke at the time, but they threw them away and never wore them again.
Back in California, more chaos is erupting. Bill Gaede confronts Dianne about her interviews and she screams that YES she told them how she felt and, goddamn it, she really enjoyed it! Bill says semi-threateningly to the camera, "I hope you guys don't try to destroy us so you can get a decent little story." Bill and Dianne continue their shouting match in the driveway, and then...
Cut!
Yep, that's it. April and Bill refuse to let the film crew back for anymore interviews. We come to find out later that April's husband (Dresden's dad and the twins' stepfather) left her during the filming of the documentary. Certainly he didn't want to be part of the project, because he's nowhere to be seen or even mentioned. The twins' father has come out against the racist ideologies April spews, and it appears that the girls, now legal adults, have taken their father's last name and are living apart from April. Filmmakers, can we now get a follow-up, since the girls can make up their own minds about what they want to do? It might make up for the slappy fight that put an end to the original story.
I found a somewhat recent article that says Lynx and Lamb are now into Buddhism and TM. I'll keep an eye out and see if these two pop up online anywhere, because it might be interesting (and heartening) to see what they're up to now that they don't have to report to psycho April anymore. Maybe they really are living on the coast in a secret location with Grandma Dianne!
Anyway, maybe I'm being too hard on the documentary. What do you think? Check it out for yourself (for free!) right here, bitches.
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