The Top 20 Movies About Movies (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

LIVING IN OBLIVION (1995)

Despite one of the cheesiest posters in cinema history (which, come to think of it, may itself be some kind of meta parody of the habitual cheesiness of zero-budget indiewood marketing campaigns), writer/director Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion more than earns its place on this list through its flawless depiction of the cast and crew of every single dentist-financed independent film of the ‘90s, from the taciturn sound guy in the hipster glasses (“Speeeed”) and the creepy, addled production assistant to the catty make-up girl and, yes, the ubiquitous dream sequence dwarf (played with simmering, hilarious contempt by Peter Dinklage in a breakthrough performance). The project, allegedly inspired by DiCillo’s enervating experience directing Brad Pitt in the indie misfire Johnny Suede, is a hilarious cautionary tale starring Steve Buscemi as a harried director afraid to admit his passion project might just be a colossal waste of time and money, James Le Gros as an insanely arrogant would-be movie star and Catherine Keener as an insecure actress whose slow disintegration over the course of multiple takes of an emotional scene is like a graduate course in on-camera acting.

DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY (1967)

Jim McBride's debut feature stars L. M. Kit Carson as a young aspiring filmmaker who begins compulsively shooting a documentary record of his life, a life that soon disappears under the weight of all that celluloid. A special kind of modern horror comedy, sort of like watching a mirror eat the world it's supposed to be reflecting. The inevitable remake, David Holzman's Blog, is still out there waiting to be made.

BAADASSSSS! (2003)

Mario Van Peebles makes some kind of history by playing his own father, Melvin, in the stirring tale of how dad managed to somehow pull together the pioneering X-rated art-blaxsploitation independent film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Wearing a '70s 'stache and chomping on his father's trademark stogie, Van Peebles actually gives a more exciting performance than he'd ever managed before (and a more appealing one than his dad had ever managed) while mining the chaos of no-budget filmmaking for some ripe comedy. (He also makes time to document the time that dad, having enlisted young Mario to appear in the film, ordered someone to shave ringworm scars in the sensitive lad's head.) Plus: Rainn Wilson's worst hair day ever! Adam West declares himself lustful! And Seinfeld's Uncle Leo in stereo!

DEMON LOVER DIARY (1980)

This lost classic (never officially released on home video in any form) is American Movie's evil twin. In 1975, MIT grad student and cinematographer Jeff Kreins agreed to shoot the horror flick Demon Lover for a pair of Midwestern factory workers looking to make a splash in the film world. (Financing for the film came in the form of insurance payments when one of the would-be Cravens cut off his finger on the job.) One of Kreins' conditions in agreeing to take on this task was that he be able to bring along his gal pal Joel DeMott so that she could film a cinema verite documentary on the making of Demon Lover. She couldn't have known at the time that she would be chronicling a harrowing descent into madness that literally ends with Kreins and DeMott fleeing in panic while gunshots are fired. The two would-be filmmakers at the documentary's center are bizarro dopplegangers of American Movie's Borchardt and Schank, but proving once again that life is stranger than fiction, co-director Donald G. Jackson went on to have a long if not distinguished directorial career, with credits including Lingerie Kickboxer and Hell Comes to Frogtown.

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Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "Confessions of an Ex-Doofus-Itchy-Footed Mutha"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Melvin Van Peebles has been well-established as a maverick independent filmmaker and provocateur since at least 1971's Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song. His new film, Confessions of an Ex-Doofus-Itchy-Footed Mutha, confirms that he's also still got a way with titles. He also still has an admirable willingness to make a public jackass of himself and an impressive ability to coax other people into coming along for the ride. Aside from that, though, there isn't a lot else to say about this smeared-looking video fantasy, spun off from one of his old stage shows, Waltz of the Stork. There might have been a few things that should have been said to Van Peebles before he made it, but I don't know who would have been deputized to say them. When the man's own son, Mario, has signed off for a cameo appearance as a pirate, it's hard to say who might have been best qualified to stage an intervention.

Confessions makes full use of the quality that has always been Van Peebles's secret weapon and that has outweighted everything else he's ever brought to the table, which is his absolute and fearless shamelessness. The seventy-five-year-old auteur plays the vagabond hero from the time he's fourteen through his mid-forties. This conceit might have been fun if Van Peebles were an actor, but he's usually gotten by on being a presence, and aside from the occasional outbreak of eye-popping, face-pulling hamminess, he doesn't have any idea what to do with himself here except stand around looking slack, sad-eyed, and grizzled. (As for costuming, Van Peebles tends to favor either one of two looks, the funeral director and the rodeo clown.) It's less amusing that embarrassing to watch him stealing apples as if he were in an Our Gang comedy or acting out his character's sexual initiation and confirming that, however long ago Sweetback was, once a stud, always a stud. (Yes, there are sex scenes. Yes, you do get to see Melvin with his shirt off and snuggling with the ladies, though a body double arrives in the nick of time when things get steamy. And no, none of this is as bad as the scene with the apple: Van Peebles has to be one of the movies' least photogenic eaters this side of Mr. Creosote.) I understand that Van Peebles is so taken with himself and his legend that he thinks the last thing in the world he needs is some distance and perspective in relation to himself, but the fact remains that Mario Van Peebles's swaggering performance as his dad in his own movie BAADASSSSS! from a few years back was both the best work Mario's ever done in movies and the smartest performance ever given by someone purporting to play Melvin Van Peebles. It is indeed a tribute to Melvin Van Peebles's spirit that, at seventy-five, he's still getting movies made and trying to use them to raise hell. But anyone who cares about him ought to pay him the soundest tribute they can by pretending that his latest movie doesn't exist.

The Screengrab : baadasssss!

The Top 20 Movies About Movies (Part Four)

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "Confessions of an Ex-Doofus-Itchy-Footed Mutha"