Everyone Alone All the Time

I Think We’re Alone Now (2008) is about two very different people who arrive at the same conclusion: late-80s two-hit wonder, Tiffany, is the missing piece in their lives. With her love, whatever emptiness they feel would be filled.

Jeff Turner is a man who lives alone in a cluttered California home. He has (as it’s put in the movie) “Asperger’s” and obsessively collects clippings about Tiffany. Once he tried to give the popstar chrysanthemums and a katana. Amidst his piles of junk, he indicates and selects special psycho-technic technology (wires and a bicycle helmet) that allows him to communicate with Tiffany “on spiritual level.” Jeff even cherishes the newspaper write-ups about Tiffany’s “dangerous stalker.”

Kelly McCormick was born intersex, raised as a girl by her mother, raised as a boy by her father, and now identifies as a trans-woman. In the 80s, she suffered a horrific bicycle accident that landed her in a coma. Tiffany, whom she swears she had never heard of before, came to her in a dream before she awoke. And, wouldn’t you know it, Kelly’s sister handed her a Tiffany CD just as she returned to consciousness. The two are meant to be together: the Universe says so.

Sean Donnelly’s film is neither idolizing nor apologetic. The movie’s rhythm moves from the broad creepiness of their fascination to humanizing interviews with their friends and loved ones back to the more unsettling or dangerous elements of their personalities. Jeff had a strict military stepfather. He’s a committed evangelical Christian. Donnelley (who also edited the film) intercuts Jeff at a porn convention getting photos of Playboy Playmates signed with his glowingly announcing his ministering to the poor sinners to the congregation at his church. At no point do we feel he is lying. In his own mind, he did just that. Jeff’s friend tells us he knows secret information, information about the Satanic cults fighting it out in the streets, stuff about the real governments that run the world. Again, we believe that Jeff believes that he knows.

Kelly’s best friend is a gay man who takes her out to gay clubs. At first, he found it awkward. She identifies as a lesbian, does not look traditionally feminine to gay clubgoers, and wears her shoes with no socks, laces tied around her ankles. Over time, however, he feels that he understands her “a little bit better.” His heart has opened, even as Kelly drinks pints of vodka and Jaegermeister, smoking in her apartment, cursing the society that has failed her.

Both Jeff and Kelly live on government assistance. Neither Jeff nor Kelly has a job.

By appearances, Jeff seems more normal, more capable of acclimating to society’s conventions. His friends even insist he could easily find a position somewhere, that he knows way more than we might think. He looks something like a boat salesman, all white sneakers and polo shirts. But then we learn about the Satanic blood guilds. Kelly is intersex and trans in a time before either was much discussed. She constantly runs around in baggy jogging sweats. Yet her Tiffany obsession has an accessible psychological basis, some origin that we the audience can understand. Her speech, while stilted (presumably from the accident), never veers into unreality.

In both, we find a common humanity and an immensity of distance. That’s no small feat in a tale of obsessives.

Documentaries like I Think We’re Alone Now occupy a special class because they leave us with no moral and much to consider. It is obvious that both Jeff and Kelly suffer from mental illnesses. Donnelly’s updates on them (uploaded on YouTube last year) find them still suffering, still barely making it in a world not made for them. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re all losing it a little. Of course, to varying degrees and in differing ways. We’d do well, however, to remember that, whatever may be “wrong” with the film’s subjects, each had a life and experiences prior to their obsession with Tiffany. In Kelly’s case in particular there is a volta, a specific trauma that initiates her love beyond love.

I don’t mean to suggest that life in the ruins of the 20^th century’s promises is the same as having autism or being born intersex. The strains we face, however, are growing, and the means of inundating ourselves with both more information and greater distraction are growing handier and more complex by the day. We are all alone now. I can’t say I quite understand how that relates to Jeff and Kelly. But that’s not the point. To find a documentary that actually made me think: that’s worth cherishing.