American Movie

American Movie (1999) is a documentary that successfully navigates two perils associated with the genre. The movie presents us with a cast of eccentric figures, almost human oddities, and poses the question whether our fascination with these people is valid, authentic, and empathetic or, more on the order, of a trip to a zoo, or worse, a freak show.  The other question raised by this sort of movie is whether the film maker's stance toward his hapless protagonists is condescending, or, even, predatory.  With respect to both issues, American Movie and its director Chris Smith acquit themselves nobly --although the people in the film's lower middle class landscape are strange, afflicted by various addictions, and obsessions, nonetheless, we perceive them a plausible human beings, even, a bit endearing and, certainly, figures whose motivations (and dreams) are understandable to us.  Furthermore, the film maker's posture with respect to these characters is sympathetic; I didn't detect any admixture of condescension or irony (or sarcasm) with respect to the presentation of the people and situations in the movie -- the director observes his characters with equanimity and the picture doesn't seem exploitational.  I had no sense that the film maker was mocking the people  in this movie -- in fact, the picture suggests (and it is about movie-making) that "there but for the grace of God go I":  a person committed to making films might easily slip into the sort of folly shown on screen in American Movie.  

In American Movie, a man named Mark Borchardt, is assembling resources to make a movie called Northwestern.  This picture will be an autobiographical account of his struggles with alcoholism and other addictions in suburban Milwaukee.  Borchardt has shot a few reels of film, apparently mostly at a salvage yard -- he views the junked cars as symbols for wrecked dreams.  The movie will be in black-and-white "like Manhattan," he says, "or Night of the Living Dead" with stark leafless trees and empty roads."  The problem is that Borchardt is a 30 year-old High School drop-out. a fan of gore-fest horror movies, and has no money, no actors, no editing equipment, and lots and lots of unpaid debt.  After exploring financing options, none of which are viable, he borrows three-thousand dollar from an old man ("Uncle Bill"); this is insufficient for Northwestern, so Borchardt uses the funds to complete a 35 minute horror film called Coven (a project that also foundered for lack of resources.)  Borchardt is extremely bright, aggressive, and driven -- he's highly articulate and has attracted to his enterprises a core of loyal supporters, people who are willing to work (sometimes for long hours) for free.  These people are the supporting cast in the documentary:  they include the puzzled, inarticulate Uncle Bill, who seems on death's door, Borchardt's taciturn father and his handsome Swedish mother who speaks with a definite accent -- Borchardt's parents don't seem to have much to do with one another.  He has several actors, the sort of folks you see in small town community theater, including a runty but very eloquent thespian, a good-looking leading man except that the guy looks to be about four-and-a-half feet tall. Borchardt's best friend is burned-out case named Mike Schank, an endearing chubby little guy with angelic locks of long hair, a mild-mannered head-banger who is now straight and sober, but too late -- it seems like the damage to his brain has already been done.  Schank plays guitar and is reasonably accomplished -- at one point, we hear him playing a Bach fugue on his guitar and he contributes American Movie's soundtrack, mostly pensive variations on the song "Mr. Bojangles."  Borchardt has a loyal girlfriend and an ex-girlfriend who despises him as shiftless and threatens to take awat his parental rights with respect to Borchardt's three children.  (He amuses the children by taking them to Apocalypse Now and having them bed down in the editing studio at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee where he is trying to prepare a final cut of Coven.)  Borchardt's business model is that he will sell copies of Coven straight to the viewers for $14.95 a pop and, in that way, recoup Uncle Bill's investment.  We see various examples of Borchardt's work which doesn't seem half-bad -- he has a good eye for black and white composition and seems a pretty facile script-writer.  His pictures are carefully storyboarded and assembled with real and loving diligence.  But, of course, the entire enterprise is doomed.  Nonetheless, through enthusiasm and with the assistance of his loyal friends, Borchardt persists in his efforts, a heroic endeavor.  (We see startling scenes of Borchardt who stars in his films being dragged head-first through a mucky Wisconsin swamp in late Autumn, an ordeal that is the subject of take after take.  In another sequence, Borchardt tries to smash another actor's head through a cabinet, ramming the guy against the cabinet door again and again -- it's hilarious and, also, palpably disturbing.)  Borchardt is like Ed Wood -- he's an ambitious filmmaker and his pictures address serious questions of self-destructiveness and addiction, but his reach obviously greatly exceeds his grasp.  At the end of the movie, Borchardt finishes Coven and is able to show the short picture to a reasonably good crowd in a theater somewhere in Waukesha County in the west suburbs of Milwaukee.  It seems that Coven never made any money and that the successful completion of the film didn't really open any doors for Borchardt.  (Borchardt did become modestly famous, as did Mike Schank, as a result of American Movie -- he appeared a few times on the David Letterman show and has a pod-cast.  Schank died a few years ago of a rare form of cancer.)

The labors that we see in the movie remind me of the "rude mechanicals" rehearsing the "most tragical story of Pyramus and Thisbe" in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Shakespeare also walks the tightrope between compassion and mockery.  Theseus, the ruler for whom the masque is being presented says about the blundering "mechanicals" that "for never anything can be amiss / where simpleness and duty tender it."  And, later, Theseus says about the poor acting in the little skit:  "The best in this kind are but shadows and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them."  There's clearly a kinship between Hollywood with its treasure and professionalism and Borchardt's desperate attempts to complete his movie.  "The best in this kind are but shadows..."  This movie is beautiful, inspiring in a way, and desperately sad -- you can see the picture on Amazon Prime and I highly recommend it.