Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (2011)

Directed by Matthew Bate
Starring Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitchell D
Runtime 90min. - Not Rated (profanity)
3 Stars (out of 4)

"Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure" is part of my quirky documentary series.
Available on DVD and V.O.D platforms.

"An audio misadventure" is surely the best description of this film's story. Imagine you've moved into a new apartment. Next door, there are neighbors who get drunk every night and have loud arguments. What do you do? Do you confront them? Call the police?

Mitchell D and Eddie Lee Sausage (real names) had just such a conundrum. It was 1987 in San Francisco and they had just came to town. They found a pink apartment building that fit their budget. They lovingly call it the "Pepto Bismol Palace". After a few nights of enduring their neighbor's tantrums, one of them knocks on the door. When the door opens he gives his neighbor an earful. The neighbor retorts, "I was a killer before you were born. I'll be a killer when you're dead."


Mitchell and Eddie are stunned. Now what do you do? Personally, I'd call the police. I'd call them every night until my neighbors got the point. Eddie and Mitchell take a different angle. After weeks and weeks of violent arguments they start to realize that their neighbors are all bark and no bite. A light-bulb moment occurs and they tie a microphone to a stick and put it up to their neighbor's window. They couldn't have realized the repercussions of this simple idea.

The noisy neighbors are Peter Haskett and Raymond Huffman. I won't attempt to summarize their arguments. It's all just incoherent babble that's laced with profanity and the repeated phrase "Shut up little man!". It's a babble that draws laughs from nearly everyone who hears it.

Mitchell and Eddie record the arguments to cassette tapes. They include sound bytes on mixtapes that they give to friends. Pretty soon those friends are making copies for friends. The sounds turn into a pre-internet viral phenomenon. Ray and Peter inspire stage plays, comic books and movies. They even have their own CD's and merchandising. There's just one problem. They don't know it.

The filmmakers are documenting Mitchell and Eddie's attempt to right that wrong. They go on a mission to track down their old roommates and let them in on the secret. One of them is dead before they have a chance to find him. They do track down Peter and a third, part-time roommate named Tony. They offer these men $100 a piece for their part in the tapes. To me, that amount was tragically low.

The movie is also educational on the topic of audio audio vérité. I wasn't previously aware of the phenomenon. It's audio that has been shared without the knowledge or permission of the subjects. One of the other examples in the film includes Orson Welles flubbing the lines to a radio commercial and then cursing out the producers. The one problem associated with this act is its ethics. That's the question that plagues Mitchell and Eddie as well. Their neighbors probably didn't deserve ethical considerations, but isn't exploitation wrong regardless of who's involved?

The movie asks some deep questions and fails to answer them. The director focuses on the people and their relationships, but there's little context or perspective to be found. It's still a very entertaining piece that's carried by repetition of the source material. I was left wondering how things would've turned out if someone had tracked down Peter and Ray sooner and set them on a sober path. Attempting an intervention would certainly have a better chance of helping them than exploiting them for profit.