American
Movie
Rated R
Cinema 21 616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515
7 and 9:10 pm Friday-Thursday, Feb. 4-17; additional showings
at 10:55 pm Fridays-Saturdays; noon, 2:15 and 4:30 pm Saturdays-Sundays.
$6
You can order Mark Borchardt's short film Coven for
$14.95 at www.americanmovie.com.
Moments after the Portland premiere of Chris Smith and Sarah
Price's award-winning documentary, American Movie,
the couple fielded questions from an enthusiastic Key Film
Club audience at Cinema 21 on a Sunday morning. A theme ran
through viewers' responses. "I can't believe these people
are real," stammered one woman. "I guess you can't
write anything better than this." Indeed not.
American Movie takes a candid look at the life of
beer-guzzling, working-class Milwaukee indie filmmaker Mark
Borchardt. Borchardt talks faster than Martin Scorsese,
often about 10 topics at once, and despite his limited resources
(when we first meet him, he's shuffling through bills and
finds a four-leaf clover: "Kick fucking ass!," he exclaims.
"I got a MasterCard!"), he harbors dreams of greatness.
Borchardt works a variety of odd jobs (including caretaker
at a mortuary/graveyard), and his film crew consists of
his mom and a couple of dedicated friends, the most endearing
of whom is Mike Schank, a bearish but gentle drug casualty
who maintains a sense of childlike wonder and is more devoted
than a lap dog. But, as the film opens, none of this has
deterred Borchardt from launching production on his first
feature film. It's titled Northwestern, and, aptly,
it explores his experiences growing up in the northwest
sector of Milwaukee. Before American Movie is even
20 minutes old, Borchardt is forced to abandon Northwestern
and resume work on a smaller, in-progress project, Coven
(pronounced Borchardt's way, with a strong "o": Cove-en)--a
35-minute, ultra-low-budget horror film that the director
hopes to sell 3,000 copies of via the Internet so he can
continue work on Northwestern. The first line of
the film uttered by Borchardt is, "I was a failure...I can't
be a failure," and as the film continues, we watch his endless
struggle to avoid the fate of becoming a typical Midwestern
factory worker.
This capsule of the film doesn't do it justice. American
Movie is a great film--it's sometimes disturbing, occasionally
hard to watch, but packed with funny, poignant, exceptional
sequences and is ultimately more inspiring than a Knute
Rockne speech. In addition to Borchardt's mom (scenes of
Mark trying to turn her into a cinematographer are both
uproarious and excruciating) and Schank, the film contains
more colorful characters than the entire Flannery O'Connor
corpus--from Borchardt's cantankerous 82-year-old Uncle
Bill to his creepy brothers (two words: Hooters T-shirt)
and the strange cast of Coven. Smith and Price, two
filmmakers who dedicated more than four years of their lives
to bringing these vibrant people to the screen, have crafted
a masterpiece. It's a film about the lure of the American
Dream--ambition and drive and passion in the face of unimaginable
obstacles. It's also a painful look--the equal of Burden
of Dreams and Hearts of Darkness--at the frustrating,
desperate details of making a film. These larger themes
are flecked with idiosyncratic tales of the American Midwest
and examples of loyal friendship, family and community.
Not a bad accomplishment for a pair of struggling independent
filmmakers who until now had never made, or considered making,
a documentary. During a recent lunch discussion, Smith said
he'd had no intention of following around someone as manic
as Borchardt for so long. "I met Mark at the summer of 1995,
when I was finishing editing my first film, American
Job," he says. "I didn't really know who he was. I saw
him at the editing facility working on something, but it
was nothing that I wanted to get involved with. They were
just these crazy people down the hall working on a movie."
Eventually the two met, and Smith found out that Borchardt
was heading to the Toronto Film Festival to raise money
and form connections for Northwestern. What struck
Smith, however, wasn't Borchardt's commitment; it was that
he was bringing his parents to one of the hippest film festivals
in the world. "Most people like this would go up to the
festival and try and look cool, but Mark was bringing his
mom," he laughs. Smith says that he hadn't shot anything
since finishing American Job (a terrific, though
numbing, debut about a guy who wanders from one meaningless
job to another) and decided to use his remaining
film stock by following the Borchardt family to the festival.
The footage was "incredible," Smith says, and after returning
and meeting Borchardt's friends and more family, he decided
to keep shooting. Smith says Borchardt's initial response
to being a documentary subject is cloudy in both their minds.
"He said something like, 'It's a free country," Smith recalls.
"His whole theory is everyone's got to do what they got
to do. The thing I liked about filming Mark was he's so
into his own projects that he's not thinking about how he's
coming across [on film]; he's thinking I got to get this
shot together, and I got Mike and my mom, and that's all
that I have."
Price, whom Smith met while the two attended the University
of Iowa, says she originally signed on for six months to
do sound, but when that time had elapsed, it had become
obvious that they were just starting. "We had shot so much
footage that I couldn't back out, and plus, I loved being
around these people," she says. Shooting continued for well
over two years (the couple shot more than 132,000 feet of
film, or more than 70 hours), and the editing process took
another 18 months. In the end, of course, it was worth it:
The pair took their finished project to Sundance in 1999,
where it became a festival favorite and won the Grand Jury
prize in the documentary competition. Sony picked up the
film in a $1 million distribution deal and promised to open
it across the country (remarkable for a documentary).
When Smith and Price discuss Borchardt, Schank or any of
the other folks from American Movie, their faces
light up like new parents. Their love for everyone in the
film is obvious, and Borchardt's struggle is something they
can personally understand (try getting funding for a film
with a pitch like this: "Well, we're making a film about
an unknown filmmaker making a horror short in Milwaukee...").
Amazingly, some critics have charged Smith and Price with
exploiting their subjects, putting them up on screen so
that audiences can ridicule their idiosyncrasies. Both filmmakers
laugh at the idea, but it's Smith who offers the strongest
argument against such stupidity.
"We could have made a movie to laugh at them in about two
months," he starts. "These people who say that are the same
people who would never give Mark the time of day or shake
his hand, and [who think] that these people and their lives
aren't worthy of having a film made about them."
In many respects, the film closest to American Movie
is not other docs but Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Like
Ed Wood, Borchardt is someone who wants to be Orson Welles
but is stuck making B-pictures using strange methods. But
more importantly, both filmmakers have colorful family and
friends who support them. Smith said he noticed the same
thing, but only after seeing the final product. Others also
saw this comparison between Wood and Borchardt when the
film played Toronto last year.
"Someone brought up Wood, and Mark talked very intelligently
about it and answered the guy's question politely," Smith
says. "But then he said, 'I know what you're alluding to,
man.' It was hilarious. But even better, the last thing
Mark said was 'Wait until the next film,' which is a variation
on Ed Wood's famous line--'The next one will be better.'"
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 2,
2000
|
