Fine, as long as you watch it while doing something else.

Not quite a documentary but certainly not fiction, Chop Suey occupies an interesting nether region between fantasy and reality, gay and straight. The Frances Fay footage is a real highlight.

A really interesting, unique vibe. 

Weber tells the stories that brings these still images to life. Some of them are dead, some of them are gone in other ways but they’re all crystallized on film forever.

[Published October 10th, 2001, Show Business Weekly]

Chop Suey is a mildly diverting collage movie from photographer/director Bruce Weber. It switches its focus from one subject to the next in an attempt at creating a cohesive universe of disparate characters. The major three are Peter Johnson, an obscenely attractive male wrestler, Frances Faye, a musician, lesbian, and gay community cult icon, and Weber himself, whose voiceover connects the threads. It’s being advertised as a film, though it looks like a video blow-up to 35mm. It finally reveals very little about the people involved, instead separating them into an impenetrable and arrogant world that is Weber’s alone to exploit. I have to admit that Chop Suey’s slightness was only more apparent since I had just come from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. More on that masterwork, and its hopefully long reaching effects, next week.

From my TIFF 2001 review:

The most self-indulgent film I've seen at the festival is Bruce Weber's CHOP SUEY, a look back at forty years of obsessing over transitory beauty. There are things of interest in the film, and I could review this more kindly, but too much of it was too empty, and it put me off it.

Fine, as long as you watch it while doing something else.