Hey folks, Harry here with Capone who is telling you about his event in Chi-town with Max Allan Collins as well as filling you in on a great little documentary called HOME MOVIE - the guy with the robot rules in that film! You will be so jealous of his pad... The hippie in the silo is... strange. Very strange. But the gator wrestler... I love him. He owns. Anyways, here's the man with the muscle to tussle...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. Before I dive into the Chris Smith's follow-up to AMERICAN MOVIE, let me remind people that ROAD TO PERDITION creator Max Allan Collins and I will be appearing together at the Evanston Public Library this Sunday, June 30 at 2 p.m. Max will be doing most of the talking and all of the book signing; I'll mainly be on hand to talk about the upcoming release of the film. The event is entirely free; arrive early and come armed with questions for both of us. All of you downtown Chicago dwellers, get your collective asses on the elevated trains and walk the two blocks to the damn library. See you there...
I became obsessed with documentary filmmaking in college (Class of 1990). I seek it out on the smallest screens in rinky-dink theatres all over Chicago. I scan the schedules of all the cable movie channels, seeking out hidden gems of films that will teach me about something or someone I’ve never seen before: a small piece of history or an ongoing social concern or a biography of someone who is incredibly famous or someone who will only become famous because he or she is the subject of a particular documentary. I have my favorite documentary films and filmmakers, to be sure, but often it is the films of a complete unknown that captures my attention. Director Chris Smith had only made one other film before becoming my personal hero by releasing the ultimate film geek visual bible, AMERICAN MOVIE, in 1999. If you haven’t seen this film about would-be independent horror filmmaker Mark Borchardt, you shouldn’t be reading this review, you shouldn’t be allowing to watch another movie again until you’ve seen it.
Chris Smith’s follow-up, HOME MOVIE, isn’t the great film that AMERICAN MOVIE was, but it is very good and worth seeking out. Smith takes a page from the Errol Morris notebook but turning his attention to five extraordinary (but otherwise unconnected) dwellings in America. The residents of these homes are unusual in their own way, but with a running time of about 60 minutes, we don’t get nearly the time with these people that we’d like. Some of the home owners are complete freaks, some are lovely people with slight mental gliches. One man lives in an entirely mechanized house (remember that Daffy Duck cartoon where he sells Elmer the push button house? This is that house!); an aging hippie couple move into a decommissioned missile silo near Topeka, Kansas; a former cult actress builds a tree house is the Hawaiian rain forest; a Louisiana man takes up residence on a house boat and runs a gator wrangling business with his father; and another couple customize their home to what has to be the world’s largest cat playground.
A few of these people (especially the cat couple) annoyed me. I never found their chosen lifestyle very interesting. But others are downright charming and worthy of learning a thing or two about life. I found myself drawn most to Bill, the gator dude. His outlook and lifestyle were simple and exciting. I also loved the guy with the gadget house (although his girlfriend looks like a major gold digger). I wanted very badly to hate the dirty hippies in the missile silo, but their house was so cool I couldn’t begrudge them their smelliness. The woman in the tree house, I just didn’t get. Smith spends more time talking about her life as a Japanese television star than he does her beautiful home. Much like Errol Morris, Smith jumps back and forth between these groups of people and hopes that by simply juxtapositioning them thusly we’ll find their unifying traits (see FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL if you want to see a perfect example of how this is done). There are a lot of laughs in HOME MOVIE, but this isn’t a meant to be funny in the way AMERICAN MOVIE was. Smith is more interested in showing us the weird and eccentric extremes of Americana. Documentaries don’t have to be objective to be great, and Smith clearly wants us to like these people even if some of them haven’t earned it. I know it’s not fair to compare this film to AMERICAN MOVIE, but I will and HOME MOVIE doesn’t provide the in-depth examination that Smith seems to excel at. Still, I was hopelessly entertained, engaged, and informed. Try getting any of those things at SCOOBY DOO.
Since HOME MOVIE is so short, Cowboy Pictures had a stroke of brilliance and paired it with the legendary cut short HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT. This 15-minute masterpiece hit a little too close to home for me (literally) since it was filmed in 1986 (the year I graduated high school) at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland (the venue where I saw my first dozen or so concerts). Although I didn’t see any in this film, I’m sure people I went to high school with were in the parking lot awaiting admittance to this Judas Priest show. If you’ve seen this film, there are people here you will never forget, all of them drunk, horny, and stupid. I could have watched hours of this stuff. I’d guess that this film holds as much meaning to rock stars as THIS IS SPINAL TAP or ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL. In just a few short minutes, the intensity and passion of heavy metal fans in captured perfectly. Directors John Heyn and Jeff Krulik (who went on to make similar films such as NEIL DIAMOND PARKING LOT, HARRY POTTER PARKING LOT, and MONSTER TRUCK PARKING LOT, as well as follow-ups to this film, HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT: THE LOST FOOTAGE, and HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT 15TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR) probably didn’t realize they were putting together a piece of music history, but that’s what HMPL is. I sat directly behind Richard Roeper during this screening, and even he was giggling like a school girl. How bad could it be? Catch these two films if you can. The pairing opens in Chicago at the Landmark Century Centre Theatre on June 28.
Capone
