Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (2011)

"You always giggle falsely!"

Director
Matthew Bate

Cast
Eddie Lee Sausage
Mitch Dupry
Ray and Peter

Before YouTube, Facebook, or any social media platform, or before the internet, and before everyone carried a camera in their pocket, when the word "viral" only referred to viruses, there was Peter Haskett and Raymond Huffman.
The documentary Shutup Little Man! covers the rise to fame Ray and Pete, two cantankerous drunks living together in a low-rent apartment complex at 237 Steiner Street in San Francisco's Lower Haight District, never felt the "joys" of.
Had it not been for two 20-something year old punks, Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitch Depry, spreading their wings out of Wisconsin and into the bright pink Steiner Street Apartment, which they dubbed the "Pepto-Bismol Palace," back in 1987, Ray and Pete would have just been barely even a memory in the faint recollect of anyone who came into contact with them. What was their claim to fame? It was their nightly drunken fights that often went well into the early morning hours.
As a result of their tumultuous fighting, they've been written about in Rolling Stone Magazine, Vanity Fair, Playboy, and other various big publications since the early nineties. They're lives together have been portrayed in plays, skits, comic books, and parodied in a variety of shows including SpongeBob SquarePants. There was even a 2001 movie (one I have yet to find a copy of) called Shut Yer Dirty Little Mouth based entirely on Ray and Pete. I even read that these two guys where the inspiration behind the noisy neighbors in Disney's Zootopia.
And when Ray and Peter were still alive, they had no idea just how popular they'd become nationwide, particularly in underground cassette trading circles known as "audio vérité" or "found sound." 

Well, Peter was informed about all the attention later on in the mid-nineties (he died in 1996). But it seems Ray, who died in 1992, may not have known.
Peter was a homosexual man living with Ray who drank a lot and had a way with words. And Ray? Well, in the documentary Eddie describes him as a Cro-Magnon of a man who drank, and drank, and belittled Ray for being "queer", and then drank.
As Eddie describes in the film, for the first three or so nights of moving into the apartment, he was awoken by the mysterious shouts of "Shut up little man! Shut up little man! SHUT UP LITTLE MAN!" coming from the neighbors next door.
Not only did this make him frantic, the fact that Mitchell wasn't hearing what he was hearing made him frantic. So, unable to take anymore sleepless nights, Eddie walked over to the apartment one early morning, pounded on the door, and was greeted by a behemoth of a man who could barely stand. That was Ray.
He basically told this guy to shut up. And Ray responded with "Hey listen, you c---sucker! Shut your 

f---in' mouth and go back to bed. I was a killer before you were born and I'll be a killer when you're dead."
Eddie also noticed the neighbors kept a fake skull in the front window. Welcome to the city, guys!
So, they began recording these nightly arguments for the sake of documentation in case Ray carried through with being a killer. But the arguing quickly went from maddening to intriguing and entertaining. Eddie and Mitch would even prank call Ray and Pete just to get them going.
To record their nightly tête-à-têtes, Eddie and Mitch would attach a microphone to a ski pole and extend it to their neighbors window.

Raymond Huffman (left) and Peter Haskett

They would play back the recordings for Ray and Peter in the hopes they'd get the message. 

Still, their neighbors in apartment three argued despite hearing themselves. 

Eddie and Mitch distributed their recordings to their friends, who distributed them to other friends, and before Eddie and Mitch knew, they were being contacted by San Francisco based publication Bananafish Magazine asking them to release the tapes commercially. Thus began the fame of Ray and Peter, who didn't realize any of this was going on. Peter was later discovered and interviewed, as shown in the film, in 1995 so he could sign a release form.
Their ever-so quotable and colorful phrases uttered in the anger and alcohol enriched moments of temper, such as “You always giggle falsely,” “Something happened with the dinner because you crucified it,” “If you wanna talk to me, then shut your f--king mouth,” “Don’t call me ‘goodnight'," and my personal favorite, "I am the human race" would easily be recognized if emblazoned on a t-shirt. Of course, heavily sprinkled in all these catch phrases is the colorful profanity usually spewed forth. You’d think these guys were married!

The spread of these audio recordings at a time when the term "social media" didn't exist is intriguing. 

And according to the documentary, the recordings of Ray and Pete were the holy grail of audio vérité. Mitch and Eddie also discover that a third person, Tony Newton, was often in the apartment with them. Of course, he was just as much a lush as Peter and Ray, but didn't quibble like they did. He can still be heard in some of the audio. 

I’ve listened to the sounds of Raymond and Peter several times on YouTube. At first, I felt guilty sitting there listening to drunk-fueled arguments between two grown men. It felt really intrusive, especially knowing this was a surreptitiously recording debacle. 

But something drew me back to them. Call it a sick curiosity? I don't know. After listening to it for the first time, which was after I watched this documentary, their voices continued to replay in my head. I wanted to go back and see it all over again for my own curiosity and (why lie?) to get some laughs. 

I've even had their arguments playing in my headphones as background noise while at work. 

Recordings of two drunks arguing is certainly not art. As the documentary attests, what people do with the recordings might be considered art by modern standards. When all the layers are peeled back, what's left is the misery of two long-gone drunks who (again, as the documentary proves) actually cared for each other when they were sober. 

Otherwise, their misery in the last few years of what may be considered pissed away lives is what we're given. They didn't have much say in the matter. It's like they were forced to give the world, who didn't otherwise care much for them before Shutup Little Man, a little something extra pulled right out from the darkest areas of their last years on earth whether they liked it or not. 

Anyhow, the story behind all this, the ethical questions that arise, the legality in certain aspects, and the role media plays here is simply amazing to me. 

The documentary tackles ethical issues such as the legality or illegality of recording people without their knowledge and distributing it for profit, and even attempting to copyright it. Mitchell argues in the documentary that Ray and Peter were so loud, their arguments were heard outside the confines of their apartment, making it public domain. There's a story on their Shut Up Little Man website that corroborates just how loud these two were.
The movie is fascinating to watch, especially when Mitchell and Eddie discover at the time of filming that Tony Newton is still alive - the last vestige of the Peter and Raymond legacy. They find him still living in San Francisco, and after a couple of attempts persuade him to agree to an interview, he agrees to one.

Eddie Lee Sausage (left) and Mike Dupry.

Shutup, Little Man is certainly a media story to top other media stories. The hypothetical issue of how Ray and Peter would fair on platforms such as YouTube if they were alive and loud today is talked about, as so many altercations no matter how private, or embarrassing, or violent, or damaging, are shared for everyone to see for the sake of entertainment and personal recognition. It all comes down to the question, why?  Is it just our fascination with people we don't know? It's a media topic that's crucial in this day of viral videos and privacy.
Ray and Peter are the stuff of urban legends. Whether they like it or not, they've been shoved into the realm of San Francisco history. May their legacy live on, and may they continue always giggling falsely.