As one of only a handful of critics that considers the Jackass films to be resonant works of anarchic art (seriously), I was destined to warm to Jay Cheel’s Beauty Day. This bare-bones documentary recounts the eccentric, self-destructive life of Ontario’s mid-'90s cable-TV daredevil Ralph Zavadil – a thrill-seeking nutcase who was snorting raw eggs and sailing down snowy rooftops before Johnny Knoxville had self-inflicted his first paper-cut.
Zavadil developed a cult following for his frizzy-haired, denim-shorted alter-ego Cap’n Video when the eponymous series premiered to like-minded denizens of the dark in the midnight slot of a community cable channel. Though Cheel’s film opens with the full three-minute video of the time Zavadil broke his neck leaping from a wobbly ladder into a backyard pool (an excruciating piece of footage), Beauty Day settles into a fair degree of fan-boy adulation for most of its first half. The Cap’n Video legend really comes alive in the recollections of those who lived in fear he would one day go too far (namely, his mother Barbara and best friend and part-time accomplice, Robert Buick).
The film is at its most affecting when it delves into Zavadil’s psychology: footage of his 73-year-old father leaping from an outdoor setting hints at a shared affinity and macho one-upmanship; past run-ins with the law over marijuana cultivation and an all too obvious love of Canadian beer, fuel questions about Zavadil’s clarity of mind. The life-force that won over and inspired Zavadil’s true love, champion motorcyclist Nancy Dewar, may have been in the service of a latent death wish.
At its most insightful, Beauty Day examines a life that has stalled and seems unable to move beyond the dreamy potential of what might have been. The less engrossing second half follows Zavadil as he tries to resurrect Cap’n Video for a 20th anniversary special. In the name of 'art’, the 40-something struggles to recapture the zaniness that once came so naturally to him; performing a symbolic resurrection, he shatters a TV screen from within and emerges covered in gooey 'afterbirth’. It reeks of desperation and Zavadil subsequently slashes his arm (though refuses stitches, preferring to super-glue the wound shut).
Cheel embraces the coarseness of the Cap’n Video show, with all footage – bar the traditional fixed-camera interviews – matched with the rough-hewn, backyard-quality of Zavadil’s original output.
Beauty Day honours both the frantic immediacy and lack of forethought that made Cap’n Video a suburban hero. If the legend lives on today only in the mind of its creator, that makes its place in Canadian pop culture and reality TV history no less worthwhile.
