American Movie
by Chris Smith (II)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alex Borchardt, Chris Borchardt, Mark Borchardt, Monica Borchardt, Tom SchimmelsDirector: Chris Smith (II)
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-05-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of American Movie
Movie Review: Whether Mark Borchardt's dream is worth having or not, it's certainly worth filming
Summary: 5 Stars
AMERICAN MOVIE starts off with a shot of its principle subject, Mark Borchardt, driving on I94, northbound I think. Right away it brings me home and in some respects I'll have a hard time treating this film objectively. Mark and his family and friends hail from southeastern Wisconsin, the Milwaukee suburbs, as does much of my family, and I grew up with and have known people like them all of my life. So excuse me if my review is a little more subjective and biased than usual.
Mark B is a very tall, 30ish working-class guy from Menomenee Falls WI (I think; that's the suburb most referred-to) a town on the outer ring of Milwaukee suburbs. Mark has been trying for years to raise money - and talent - for a full-length low budget horror film production called "Northwestern" but as the film opens in 1995 he's having a hard time getting it together. Part of the problem is that nobody else seems to share Mark's passion - he has a habit of talking in technical film jargon to people who have no comprehension of it, or for that matter of a lot of simpler concepts. Not having money or any kind of film education, Mark is surrounded by amateurs who are mostly family and friends, notably total burnout Mike Schank (who provided the beautiful, low-key accoustic guitar music for the film) and his uncle Bill, who is physically weak, terminally depressed, and possibly senile. Much of Mark's time is spent trying to cadge money out of Uncle Bill, who doesn't understand or care about Mark's project. Early on he realizes that the feature project just isn't going to happen soon, so he decides to finish off a short film he has been sitting on, Coven, and to put his hopes on video sales of this work getting him enough money to get going on "Northwestern."
Most of the rest of the film alternates between Mark filming, editing, and post-dubbing Coven, with many scenes being both funny and rather sad or pathetic - like his attempts to have his uncle Joe, the "executive producer" recite a very simple line - and his generally despondent personal life, including jobs as a paper deliveryman and a groundskeeper/janitor at a cemetery, the same cemetery (I think) that provides him with fond memories of childhood escapes from his ever-fighting parents. It's not a life of "quiet desperation", but rather one of loud, profane and sometimes almost spastic desperation. And Mark is always full of the kind of great lines that could never be made up for a film; when talking about his beliefs for example he says at one point "I'm half and half man, half with the Satanist idea and half with the Christian idea." It comes out so naturally and yet is...so hilarious.
For me this was, as I said, familiar territory; I have a cousin very much like Mark in many respects and I've been around would-be low-budget horror filmmakers quite a bit. The feel of the hopeless rut that Mark feels he's in, both physically (suburban Milwaukee ain't exactly exciting) and mentally (he drinks way too much and has problems with his ex-girlfriend and seeing his 3 kids) are really conveyed well, and yet there's an overriding optimism that always seems to carry him through. A lot of people have commented on his obnoxious, overbearing attitude, and it certainly isn't something that appeals to me - I'd probably hate the guy if I knew him in real life, at least if he kept making condescending statements to me about life and dreams like he does to his family - but somehow it's endearing when you're not right there and you're just seeing how he - somehow - manages to get his project through to completion, over two more years. Much of it is really funny - I couldn't help but find his buddy Mike funny despite his completely wasted, burnt-out life, and Mike too is good-natured about things. It's in a lot of ways a very hopeful and invigorating film about taking chances, and as somebody much like Mark (only older, even) who has frittered away a lot of my life, I can only take heart.
One odd element to the whole thing that I haven't seen anybody mention is the interplay between the filmmakers of AMERICAN MOVIE - themselves working on a very low budget and scrabbling around a bit - and Mark and his family and crew. It's an odd choice that there's never really any back-and-forth between them about the nature of the film-about-the-film, we don't know for example where Chris Smith and his crew are staying while they do this, how they're managing with their budget, etc. Not really a fault, but an interesting artistic choice to leave all of that out. What does Mark think about his life being filmed, for that matter? We don't get much of that either.
Also on this nicely produced DVD is COVEN, the actual short film that is the subject of the doc; like AMERICAN MOVIE I had seen this years ago, probably in a different cut, when or just after the documentary premiered in Chicago in 1999. I'd almost completely forgotten it, not because it's terrible or anything, but because it's so mediocre. It's obviously heartfelt, and it's really not a horror film despite the marketing - or if it is, it's more of a psychological horror film, with only a little bit of real violence at the end. Mark plays...Mark, a drug addict and alcoholic who wants to turn his life around, and gets involved in a 12-step type group that is obviously Christian in some ways (crosses all over) but also seems to be a cult. Or is it? Is Mark hallucinating the strange things that happen to him at the group meetings, and the "coven" (rhymes with "woven" of course) that at one point drags him through the mud in the woods, at another surrounds his car and beats on it with pipes. There's some interesting material here about addiction and delusion, but it's generally poorly acted and the lighting in the indoor scenes is such that things are often very indistinct, dark and ugly. Some of the outdoor sequences, the landscapes in particular, are rather beautiful. Shot on pretty grainy black and white 16mm.
Summary of American Movie
AMERICAN MOVIE - DVD MovieStruggling filmmaker Mark Borchardt is the subject of American Movie, and he may also be the most determined man you'll ever meet. The straggly haired, fast-talking, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, native lists his greatest influences as Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He began making horror movies as a gangly adolescent, and is now set on finishing Coven (which he pronounces like "woven"), the "35-minute direct market thriller" he has worked on for two years. In the process, he steadfastly battles immense debt, the threat of losing his kids, and birds chirping gleefully through scenes set in the dead of winter. His mother would rather do her shopping than be an extra, his brother contends he's best suited for factory work, and his father just wants him to "watch the language."
Standing by him through it all is Mark's childhood buddy, Mike Schank, who is the strongest weapon against drug use a task force could ever hope for, and Uncle Bill, begrudging financier of Coven, who appears to be wasting away before our very eyes. In less perceptive hands these two could easily become caricatures--the burnt-out stoner and the crotchety old coot--but through director Chris Smith's lens we see why Mark loves them, why they love Mark, and why each of these stories is uniquely compelling.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, the film has been compared to Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman--two unquestionably hilarious mock-documentaries--and, indeed, American Movie has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. But in the spoofs, we feel encouraged to point and giggle at the poor slobs trying to get a piece of the action. Smith, however, offers us a funny and overwhelmingly affectionate portrait; you may sit down expecting to laugh at Mark's pie-in-the-sky hopes, but you soon find yourself bursting with admiration. "The American dream stays with me each and every day," Mark says, and by the end, we want nothing more than for it to come true. (The DVD version includes the complete short film "Coven.") --Brangien Davis
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