With all my hub-bubbing about Sundance this week, I somehow completely forgot about the existence of Slamdance. This is particularly shameful on my part, since it was Slamdance (along with SXSW) that deigned to screen What I Like About You, my sole produced screenwriting credit to date. True, I may have wanted to forget that particular screening, which took place in a stuffy, uncomfortable room ill-suited to facilitating the gales of hearty laughter the film so richly deserved. (That’s my theory anyway, and I’m sticking to it). But that’s neither here nor there. I’m not sure Slamdance still has the alterna-buzz it once did, but clearly it’s still going strong – and while it’s much harder to predict what might be worth seeing with so much unknown talent involved, why should that stop me? So here we go with five movies to check out in a stuffy little room in the Treasure Mountain Inn:
OH MY GOD, IT’S HARROD BLANK
Who is Harrod Blank? He’s an “eccentric art car artist, film-maker, and entrepreneur.” This documentary by his friend David Silberberg follows him “from his youth growing up in the woods with chickens and working as a camera assistant for his father - the venerable film-maker Les Blank - to the creation of his first attention-getting art car, to his current multi-faceted career as creator and head of a nationwide art car movement.” I like to think I have an art car. I just wish people would stop trying to steal it.
PUNCHING THE CLOWN
Who among us could resist a film entitled Punching the Clown? Slamdance programmer Evie Peck describes it as “the story of Henry Phillips, a very real singer/comedian, facing numerous ridiculous and off-putting hurdles in his career; all the more amusing as he himself is humorously inoffensive. This film is a hilarious, crazy journey of a comedy career that blurs the lines between funny and inappropriate... like spiked punch at the junior prom.” Phillips may be real, but this is not a documentary; writer-director Gregori Viens’ feature debut is part of the narrative competition.
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE UNDEAD
Just as we suspected all along, Hamlet was actually written by a vampire. “After casting his best friend and his ex-girlfriend in the show, Julian finds himself in the middle of a two thousand year old conspiracy involving Shakespeare, the Holy Grail and some very hungry vampires.” I was going to make a joke about a zombie Romeo and Juliet movie, but it turns out that already exists. Of course.
SMILE TIL IT HURTS: THE UP WITH PEOPLE STORY
At last, the mysteries of Up with People, “a clean-cut singing youth group who believed they could change the world,” will be cleared up. (Now that I know what happened to the John 3:16 guy, all my childhood questions will be answered.) “Smile Til It Hurts weaves together members’ heartfelt perspectives and private secrets with 40 years of Up With People’s vast archive of footage, photos and news clips into a smile-drenched, entertaining and thought-provoking romp through the underside of politics, cults and money.”
YOU MIGHT AS WELL LIVE
Here’s an offbeat comedy that “delivers big belly laughs from the very beginning to the wickedly outrageous end.” Is that the sort of thing that might interest you? “Robert R. Mutt has never had it easy. His family thinks he’s a moron, the neighbors think he’s a pervert, and almost everyone else thinks he’s a total douche bag. He’s failed at everything he’s ever tried to accomplish, including his own suicide.” Somehow this loser finds himself “on a madcap adventure involving a drug racket, a roller-skating transvestite, a bar-mitzvah and an air hockey tournament which leads to heartbreak and unexpected triumph.” Hey, we’ve all been there.
