World premiering at DocFest was Ilko Davidov's UNAUTHORIZED AND PROUD OF IT: TODD LOREN'S ROCK N' ROLL COMICS. An ironic documentary about Loren and his line of faux historical comic books about the lives of rock and roll celebrities, the film emulates the anx and sacrilege of Loren's Revolutionary Comics while simultaneously showing it's early MTV roots.  Part VHS, part digital video, part animation, the film uses interviews with Loren's co-workers to flesh out a story of the controversial personality who was loved as much by his friends as he was hated by his enemies.

The incredulous and unsacred tone begins with the story of Loren's murder. Mimicking the non-invasive camera work of TV news, the footage shows us the exterior of Loren's apartment building while the voice over of an ex-collaborator and friend bluntly explains, "the next door neighbor heard gasping and thought he was having sex but it turned out he was bleeding to death." It's hard to tell if the participants are disaffected or just unromantic. They did, of course, make their livings on these bare bones, straight to the grit comics that carved their names into a generation and left wood shavings all over in the process.

Revolutionary Comics made "history" out of legend. Featuring the "unauthorized" story of rock stars and sports heroes, Revolutionary Comics took the legends and the icons and repackaged them to look like super-heroes who got head from countless groupies and screwed over lawyers and record labels. The "unauthorized" label of Revolutionary creates an ideal vehicle for the stories of the "bad boys" of entertainment. Alice Cooper is interviewed in the film saying the comics were marketing tools. We hear Gene Simmons of Kiss offer permission to Revolutionary on the grounds that they don't make enough money to sue for and we cut to Simmon's little comic book mini-ego spinning it's guitar, (complete with rough cut edges). The verity of the comics is only a temporary issue of contention. Cynthia Plaster Caster, famous roadie who made her name (literally) plaster casting the genitals of famous rock icons, goes on record saying she feels her depiction in the Jimi Hendrix comic was "about right." "I guess they looked like that", is a phrase with a lot of resonance.

At first the film seems a merciless representation of unglamorous fact, but eventually it emerges with a truly intelligent mixture of fact, fiction and legend that consciously and impudently commits Todd Loren to "history" the same way he committed so many controversial legends to "history" before his untimely end. In the process, the film presents a really explicit bias and somehow ends up representing Loren, his death, his friends, his enemies and Revolutionary Comics in a way that feels balanced and fair in its own off kilter, rambunctious, totally abominable way. Sure there is no authority, sure there is no clean history, sure there is nothing to put your faith in, but we are talking about celebrity after all, and if we can't undermine celebrity, what can we do with it?