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Santa Cruz Sentinel Newspaper
Alekz Londos collects wild and dangerous experiences, and puts them on DVD
June 12, 2005
You’ll see him occasionally, skulking around the south end of Pacific Avenue, and even down in that neighborhood, where everybody and their housecat looks a bit ... shall we say, freespirited, he stands out.
He’s the one with the facial hair that’s almost cartoonishly bizarre, little stalagmites of tufted beard that shoot out from his chin like some species of sea urchin. He cultivates an edgy/scary look, like Rob Zombie’s abandoned son, but it’s no pose.
Yes, sometimes you’ll see him on Pacific Avenue, but most likely you won’t because he’s always traveling, up and down the coast, out into the American interior. It’s what he does, wandering, collecting experiences, living out of reach of corporate-provided comfort.
Aleks Londos, you see, is an independent filmmaker.
No, not that kind of independent filmmaker, not the kind who makes quirky/funny coming-of-age films with an eye to landing a three-picture deal at Paramount. Londos is a really independent filmmaker, so independent he hawks his DVDs on the street on a Saturday night for $15 a pop, so independent he uses music that he doesn’t bother to license, so independent that "independent" is not even the right word for him. Fringe is better. Underground is better yet.
His masterpiece is a thing called "PSYCHOSiiS" and it’s not really "about" anything in the conventional sense. It’s really just a collection of clips, supercharged little bursts of imagery that all carry a you-don’t-see-that-every-day novelty. His subjects are the touchstones of the young male psyche: sex, violence, kicks and adrenaline-spiking stunts. For those of us who live soft, predictable, mortgaged lives, it’s a glimpse of the anarchy of being free, young and reckless with life and limb.
Essentially "PSYCHOSiiS" is the result of a guy looking for cool things to photograph and mixing them together in one ever-evolving piece, and in that sense, it’s a living thing. Londos says that some of the images date back more than nine years, many of them shot by other photographers, though he says he’s done with it. It’s in a finished state. It’s on to another project.
"My next video is going to have a different look," says the 24-year-old Londos. "It’s not going to have all the meaningless violence and destruction. It’ll be more visuals, more girls, music, interviews."
But oh that "meaningless violence and destruction."
"PSYCHOSiiS" is nothing if not a catalog of how the human animal can creatively hurt himself. It’s "Jackass" on crank.
Here’s your plot synopsis: mountain bike crashes (lots of those), skateboarding wipe-outs, falling bodies, cars tumbling down hills, mattress surfing, fist fights, guys taking electrical shocks, guys being sprayed with mace, people drinking gasoline, a snake eating a rat, bike jumping, footage of wild fires, lightning strikes and collapsing buildings.
There’s also images of nude young women in body paint (though the sexual material wouldn’t be anything out of place in a R-rated movie). There’s people showing off their surgery scars, skaters encountering concrete face first.
And there’s Londos himself, the self-mythologizing star of his own film, performing short monologues of menacing intensity, provoking the camera as if it were someone picking a fight "Take it further," he’ll shout.
In one scene, Londos cuts the flesh of his lower leg with a blade, followed by an image of a priest performing the Eucharist. In another scene, Londos is shown sewing his mouth shut with needle and thread.
"I’ve put myself so far out into the open, that I don’t think anyone my age has dared to go out that far yet," he says. "I don’t really know if I respect myself for that, but hopefully it will get me somewhere."
Wiley Schmitt is Londos’s best buddy. They’ve shot video together, traveled together. "He’s got an unbelievably high pain threshhold," says Schmitt. "He’s very mentally strong. He works himself up to do these things."
The two worked out together at a health club a lot when they were roommates in Capitola, and Londos worked out like a fiend, says his buddy. "He’s just very intense and he really pushes himself."
Londos grew up being whipsawed back and forth between Santa Cruz, where his mom lived, and Reno, where his dad lives. His mother has since moved to Grass Valley, but Londos still considers Santa Cruz (and Reno) home. As a kid, when he first started getting interested in filmmaking, he was a BMX biker and helped build a dirt-bike jump on an empty lot near Brommer and 30th Avenue in Live Oak. Much of the content of "Psychosiis" comes from that period.
Londos has had a few bumps with the law. According to court records in Santa Cruz, he’s been arrested three times, but convicted only once, for providing a fake ID to police. His footage often skirts close to the edge of the law, and he’s mindful of staying out of trouble. He recently took out an image of what appears to be someone injecting illegal drugs in his arm.
"When I originally came out with the VHS version, I expected for years that I might go to prison because of the video, and I’m still willing to suffer the consequences if necessary. I’ve already paid thousands of dollars in fines and medical bills and spent time in jail."
He’s also paid the price in terms of damaged, lost or stolen equipment. He’s on his ninth camera, he says. He rarely insures anything and often has to work construction in Reno to save the money needed to replace his equipment.
Londos has only a crude system for selling "PSYCHOSiiS" as well. He’s got a Web site – www.PSYCHOSiiS.com — but most times, he relies on his wits and talent for salesmanship to move units.
"I just go up to people and say, ‘Are you interested in an underground video? Have you heard of "PSYCHOSiiS"?’ I use a number of different angles and that’s all I do, and I do it pretty well. I can make $150 in three or four hours, if I’m in a zone."
Isn’t this the kind of entrepreneur spirit we celebrate in people without scary facial hair?
"I hate working," says Londos, referring not to work in the general sense, but in the deadening 9-to-5 sense. "I’m not going to work all my life. I don’t like answering to anybody. I like leaving town when I want to. I like being free."
"When people first meet him," says Schmitt, "there’s a wide array of first impressions they get. Some are intimidated by him because of how he looks. Others think, ‘Wow, this must be a cool guy.’ But once you get to know him, he’s like the nicest guy in the world."
If you’ve been to the Asti Café near Laurel and Pacific in Santa Cruz, there’s a chance you’ve already seen bits of "PSYCHOSiiS." The owners of the Asti say that the video is in regular rotation on the café’s TV screens, which makes a for a mutual back-scratching arrangement. Londos has a ready place he can direct people to see the video, and the Asti benefits by Londos shuttling people into the place.
The video has played at parties and on public access TV. Londos has made a couple of crude endorsement deals – he gets his piercings for free, and he’s taken advantage of it, by the looks of him. He’s made T-shirts and bumper stickers.
This is how legitimate careers get built. But so far, no one has visited Londos with promises of big-money deals. You gotta wonder: If he gets used to doing things his own way, is he ever going to be able to conform to some system? Is there a future in selling DVDs on the street?
Londos prefers not to linger on such questions. "PSYCHOSiiS" to him is a chronicle of a life lived with ferocious abandon, an experiential record for when mere memory just won’t cut it.
"I don’t do drugs," he says. "My energy doesn’t come from any form but wanting to do everything I can with my life. I mean, how much can one person see in a lifetime? I’d like to find out."
Contact Wallace Baine at wbaine@santacruzsentinel.com...
