DOUG AND MIKE, MIKE AND DOUG
1984
A fascinating portrait, filmed before the moment when the precocious, 22-year-old Starn twins would conquer the New York art world with their idiosyncratic, scotch-taped, cutup photographs. The identical-image Rimbauds overlap each other speaking on the soundtrack, reflecting on the outs and mostly ins of looking alike, acting alike, being roommates and best pals,and making art together. The filmmaker shoots the Starns in the same frame, in Persona-like dissolves, as Citizen Kane-like walking reflections in a mirror, as flashing split screen images. She pans up and down a couch from Doug to Mike to Doug. Or is it from Mike to Doug to Mike? The Starns face that bafflement often: “Which if us is which?” Gerald Peary
