smugfilm – Page 26 – Smug Film (1/7/13

The Hollywood Shuffle: Tales From a Showbiz Bigshot (Part One)

sampic

Compared to you, I’m still a Showbiz big shot. Trust me on that. I’ve made a lot of money, I’ve got a shitload of impressive credits, and in a few small circles, I’ve been afforded cult star status—but I won’t bore you with the resume. Look it up for yourself, or just take my word for it. (You ain’t gonna do either, and don’t think I don’t know that.)

However, it’s not much solace that most of my glitzier credits now wave to me from my rearview mirror despite the fact that some of my best work has been done within the last twelve months. (You know, I promised myself a long time ago that if I ever used the phrase, “Some of my best work,” I’d hang myself in a closet and hope the press attributes it to kinky sex gone awry. Hey, it worked for David Carradine, right?)
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An Interview With Mike Jacobs, Director of ‘Audience of One’

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Audience of One (2007)

If you follow my posts at all, you’ve probably noticed that I’m fascinated by cinema vérité. In fact, someone once told me that I used the word ‘vérité’ too many times in one of my pieces. Well fuck that. What else are you supposed to call it? Anyway, the concept is interesting to me: you tell a story by just filming people in their daily lives. How do you know when to stop shooting? Or start, even? How much does your observation have an effect on what’s happening? (I have a theory that Mark Borchardt finished Coven BECAUSE he was being followed by Chris Smith’s camera in American Movie).

Vérité is one of the most naked modes of storytelling. You’re out there without a script or even an outline, you shoot on instinct and rely on your wits and intuition to build the story in your head, only to stitch it together later in your editing suite.

I was fortunate to sit down with Mike Jacobs, whose documentary, Audience of One, is one of the most fluid, interesting, and hilarious examples of cinema vérité ever made. It’s about a pentecostal pastor, Richard Gazowsky, who receives a message from God that he has to make the biggest science fiction epic of all time, telling the story of Joseph. He then embarks on this lofty pursuit with the help of his congregation, and of course, their donations. As one might assume, they run into many, many ups and downs along the way.
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10 Films Every Libertarian Should See

Dogville (2003)

I don’t really get into my political leanings here at Smug Film, for the obvious reason of this being a site about movies, not politics, but also because I hate creating arbitrary ‘dividing lines’ in my work. It’s petty, and I can’t stand when others do it. For instance, I’m a huge Woody Allen fan, I think he’s our greatest American filmmaker, but I cringe whenever he peppers little jabbing jokes against the Right in his films when the story doesn’t even call for it. Those sort of winks to the audience take you out of the film momentarily, whether you agree with them or not. It’s distracting and wholly unnecessary. So rest assured, people who disagree with me politically—there will be no lazy digs, or insults, or other ‘playing to the base’ bullshit in this post whatsoever.

This list will be of particular interest to libertarians, that’s a given, but even if that ain’t your particular alignment, it should at least be a unique window in the the sort of things we, or at least I, care about, both politically and philosophically. And don’t worry, there are no propaganda docs on here; these are simply great movies, many of which (hell, probably all of which) aren’t even made by libertarians. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, they just so happen to contain, within their myriad elements, certain elements that we get a kick out of. Enjoy!
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An Interview with W. Dustin Alligood of Harpodeon.com

The Rounders (1914)

W. Dustin Alligood runs Harpodeon, a treasure trove of early film (think pre-1920s) available for DVD purchase, digital download, or digital rental. He also posts silent film reviews at http://thoseawfulreviews.wordpress.com. Don’t pay any attention to the domain name, his writings are anything but awful and he’s extraordinarily knowledgable, so I asked him some questions about the state of film preservation, the appeal of silent cinema, and the allure of the forgotten.
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The 50/50 Rule: How To Watch Movies

I’ve tried to write this essay a million times. In fact, I was trying to write this essay since before Cody and I even started this site. I’m still not exactly sure why it’s been so hard, but I think it has something to do with the inherent difficulty in explaining paradoxes—in this case, the paradox of knowing a movie is gonna bad before you’ve even seen it, but also knowing that it could, technically, be good, but also knowing that it will be bad.

Every movie is a product on a shelf. And the job of the people selling the movie is to try to convince you that it’ll be good. But they almost always do a terrible job. It’s not their fault, really. I mean, how can one capture the depth and complexity of Big in three minutes? The social security number joke just wouldn’t play in the context of a trailer. So the powers that be are forced to not only tell you the premise, but also give you some universally funny moments that entice you to see it. This is why the least funny scenes are in the trailer, and why stupid people laugh at these scenes like Pavlov’s dogs.
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