Daniel Bowers is throwing a party for a ghost.
This Friday, August 15 he is staging a DVD release party for a short documentary film, Gus, that he made and premiered a number of years ago.
It purports to be about a man who is still alive, St. Louis’ own Gus Torregrossa, but it is mostly about a shop, Gus’ Fashions, which is gone.
Gus’ – for decades a hotspot for fashion, shoes and outrageous characters at 1201 Washington – was a casualty of the downtown development boon.
The Bogen Luxury Lofts now stand where cops used to shop for shoes and local aspriting rappers would take the mic behind the counter to spit a few bars.
This brief film is not equal to the gigantic characters of Gus and his shop, but it does suggest enough of them to show what we have lost. Gus’ shop and Gus himself were crossover phenomena of a kind we don’t see enough in St. Louis.
Both the local and national hip-hop set were at home in this strange Italian-owned store, that stocked the hottest and most retro hip-hop fashion items and hosted impromptu ciphers using a microphone Gus otherwise used to badger his sidekick and adopted son, Jimmy Vitale.
It is striking that Gus seemed just as comfortable and trusted among the hip-hop glitterati (Tupac Shakur, Flava-Flav, Easy E and Nelly) as among the true believers in the Sicilian Cultural Association. He was friends with cops and thugs.
We also receive first-hand testimony that he could be relied upon for seasonal philanthropy, such as donating “a mountain of toys” and some money to the Cochrane Community Center at Christmas time. Gus also prided himself in helping out the homeless that drifted into his shop.
I was more impressed by the simple report of one black adolescent (Bowers is, unfortunately, spotty about getting and providing people’s names). This young man says of Gus, “He treats all customers equally. I really appreciate his service. I hope he doesn’t go out of business.”
That’s the line that breaks my heart in this film.
Presuming this young man is a neighborhood kid, we know he has few businesses downtown that interest or cater to him, but here was one. We can also guess that a skinny black youth did not feel equally welcome in every store downtown. In this one, he did.
He hoped it wouldn’t go out of business. It did. And until he jumps up an income bracket or three, there will be no place for him in a luxury loft.
It’s a credit to Bowers’ brief film that it suggests any number of longer films he might have made. But I also think he just didn’t gather enough of the rich material that is available to do his subject justice. There is, overall, an accidental quality to the sources he was able to assemble.
One reason we know he didn’t get the widest range of sources available is many of these stories have been told before.
Former Riverfront Times staff writer Wm. Stage did a profile of Jimmy Vitale in the RFT on May 2, 2001 that uses Gus as a primary source. Bowers was a young filmmaker when he embarked upon Gus, while Stage was a veteran local reporter when he did his piece, so it’s no surprise that Stage’s long story is more deeply sourced than Bowers’ short film. But that’s the danger when a young artist takes a crack at a twice-told tale about a local icon.
Stage did a great job showing Jimmy’s humanity and complexity, while revealing that he is a troubled character who is often the butt of jokes. I found Jimmy’s treatment in Bowers’ film insensitive, bordering on cruel. In his press release, Bowers says the very tiny Vitali is “affectionately known as Jimmy the Midget,” when in fact Vitali despised that nickname.
“Keep the street names and call me what I want to be called,” Stage reports Vitali telling him, tersely. Vitali never gets in a lick like that on Bowers in Gus, though he is used several times for humililating comic effect.
Bowers shelved this project after shooting it in 2003 and showing it at some significant festivals. He went on to make the mockumentaty A: Anonymous, which also features Gus in a small but hilarious role. A: Anonymous is a great achievement – the best independent film ever made in St. Louis, for my money.
Maybe because it’s a lot more fun to laugh at fictitious people in a mockumentaty than at real people in a documentary – real, local people who live in the same town as us.
The Gus DVD release party will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday, August 15 at Mad Art Gallery, 2727 South 12th St. (12th & Lynch in Soulard). Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. Free copy of the DVD with the first 200 tickets sold. To purchase advance tickets, contact George Malich at 314 647-4197. The film will also be available through amazon.com and lacklusterpictures.com.
