"MONSTERS": Low Budget, Big Payoff

I've been a small-time film maker and television writer, back in the day, and I've worked with student filmmakers at various levels of their projects. I really love what comes out of the limitations of small film budgets and minimal film crews. Regular readers will recall that one of my favorite films of all time is Shane Carruth's Primer, a film shot on 16mm for just over $7,000. Another favorite is Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi, another hella enjoyable film made for well under ten grand.

So I haven't yet seen the whole movie version of Gareth Edwards's new film Monsters, but from the trailers and clips I've seen, I'm getting pretty excited. Reportedly shot on a budget of just $15,000 (yes, that's thousand, not million), the film seems to deliver on the things that get you hooked into a narrative: good characters, good story, and leaving a good deal to the imagination.

Here's a little behind-the-scenes clip about doing all this on such a low budget:



Monsters is available for download at Amazon, and it hits the theaters in limited release on October 29th.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Trust me. I have dropped a name or two in my day.

Like many academics, I suffer from an almost indescribable inferiority complex. If the world's economies aren't enough to make you feel irrelevant in your life's work, your students are always there to seal the deal. The fear that no one, but no one, will care that I am breathing has, on occasion, driven me to some gauche behavior. And, I mean, come on. I have some really interesting friends. Lots of them are quite accomplished in their fields. Several of them are famous. A handful are really famous (and one, admittedly, is infamous).

So, on those occasions when I am weak from my fears of irrelevance, I have dropped a name or two, or stretched my own importance, thanks to the borrowed importance of my more accomplished friends and acquaintances.

I am reminding you of this, dear Reader, not because I am particularly proud of this behavior, but rather to establish my bona fides for the invective that is to follow.

Some of my friends and acquaintances are in the military, or loosely associated therewith. Thinking back to the build up to the most recent Iraq war, I recall many of those acquaintances and friends taking me to task for my hesitancy about, you know, invading. What I recall hearing, more than once, was a strange form of name dropping that, I think, is akin to what I was describing in myself above.

When I would argue against invading from the evidence I had (the evidence that was available in the media and through my researches beyond the limitations of the American media), these jolly ol' Jingoes would get a knowing look on their face and a sage twinkle in their eyes. These old Hawks, mind you, are ancillary. They are factotums. They are sideliners now, and armchair warriors at best. Yet they wanted me to know that they were in the know. And they knew something I didn't.

"Well, I can't say much now. But I've been talking to [fill in the blank], and he's close to Colin Powell, you know, and he said...."

The upshot of what "he" said, in these cases, was that there was a whole lot of intelligence that was simply too sensitive to leak to the media, but if we (us common folk) ever knew the full extent of it, we'd be demanding ol' Saddam's head on a pike and thanking Dubya and Co. for invading when they did. The implication, in other words, was that the evidence I had was irrelevant, in light of the evidence that I didn't have.

Now, of course, it turns out they actually didn't know something I didn't, after all. They wanted to feel important and in the know. They (and lots of other folks) bought into a culture that was fed off equal parts fear and self-aggrandizement. That latter factor, I think, was what gave these Hawks (some of them quite well placed and influential - hey, I told you I know important people, didn't I?) the impetus to take the little crumbs of rumor they had and talk like they had fat seed cakes of certainty.

Let them eat cake, indeed. And we did. And why not? After all, "they knew something we didn't." A-yup. And we should have known better. Take it from one old name dropper to another.

But if you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe one of the knowiest in the know fellas in the game, Tony Blair, himself. Yesterday he pretty much admitted that the whole WMD justification was a pretense, and that he would "still have thought it right to remove" Hussein regardless of whether there were WMD's or not.

This has led a prominent international lawyer, Phillipe Sands, to remark that Blair may now be open to war crimes prosecution, given that he joined into the war, and the justificatory posturing that preceded it, "irrespective of the facts on the ground, and irrespective of the legality" of invasion in light of the lack of positive evidence.

There's a full story on this developing fiasco here.

Tony Blair, however, is not our problem. He merely is a good, close friend to our problem. He had tea with our problem just last week, in fact, and they had such a fine time, and...

Let me venture this: there is a deep inferiority complex at the heart of this nation. It has been endemic for generations, and it became epidemic in the last ten years. From Enron to the housing bubble to the credit crunch, we as a nation are running amok, from one fiction to the next, trying our best to feel relevant and important without the substance of fact or character to bolster us. The names we are dropping now, however, are names like "patriotism," "freedom," "security," "opportunity," and, yes, "hope."

These are the names of acquaintances whom these days we barely know. However, if we drop the names often enough, and broadly enough, everyone will assume we're still all old chums, won't they? And if those listening to us are convinced by our associations, then that's close enough to being real, isn't it, to fill the hole?

Sure it is, chum. That's the ticket. Take it from one old name dropper to another.

Movie review: Paranormal Activity

"Horror" is such a broad genre that I feel uncomfortable, generally, admitting how much I really and truly enjoy horror movies - mostly because this admission immediately conjures up images of Jason and Freddy and Chucky and all those things that I actually don't like about horror movies.

When I lived in Atlanta, a regular ritual each Fall was to walk up the street to the Haunted House at Agnes Scott College. This was a kid-friendly affair, short on gore and long on spooky atmosphere. I preferred this sort of Halloween affair because it allowed me to get the adrenaline rush without dangerously spiking my post-traumatic stress disorder - the best of all worlds.

A little chill up the spine and lots of spooky atmosphere is what I enjoy. I like it when the experience gets into my head and not just my gut. These days, though, that's a rare find. M. Night Shyamalan's early films definitely qualified - I couldn't sleep for several nights after my first viewing of Signs - and there have been others. For the most part, however, I have pretty much given up on Hollywood feeding my enjoyment of the horror genre.

And, it turns out, Hollywood didn't - at least this time. A couple nights ago Kira and I went to the local theater to see Paranormal Activity, an extraordinarily effective film shot on the lowest of budgets (under $20,000) and the smallest of crews (including cast, it was about seven people). What the film lacked in production budget, however, it more than compensated for in imagination, story and overall chills. This movie gets into your head.

The movie presents itself as a simple assemblage of footage found in a camera after an "event," that took place in the house and the lives of a young couple, Katy and Micah. There is no narration, and no narrative (at least on the surface). Instead, the editing of the movie follows the mere "documentation" of these events through the lens of the video camera Micah purchased to get to the bottom of the noises waking them up in the middle of the night.

As the footage unfolds, we learn, piece by piece, that there is a lot more at work (and at stake) in these events than merely a creaking and settling house. There is an entity at work, and it is not friendly.

It is clear from the start that the movie borrows from the "found footage" trope of movies like The Blair Witch Project. To simply dismiss this as a copycat, however, is to miss the creepy effectiveness of this technique across decades of the genre. Blair Witch did not invent the "found footage" trope. Though the movie used it to terrifying effectiveness, you can find precursors in such gems as John Carpenter's The Prince of Darkness, and the little-known but very suspenseful and creepy nuclear-nightmare TV movie from 1983 called Special Bulletin. There is something about grainy video and point-of-view filming that gears our brains to feel like we are right in the thick of the action.

Being in the thick of it results in exactly the sort of seriously creepy spine-tingles I was talking about earlier. To be merely scary is pretty easy. BOO!, and your hiccups are gone. Done. However, to be eerie and chilling is a trickier demand. Paranormal Activity pulls it off in spades, however. It succeeds by taking everyday activities and objects - sleeping, domestic life in a suburban condominium, and young love - and rendering it uncanny.

The performances are perfectly understated. Both the Katy and Micah characters are played by relatively unknown actors who seem very natural and real. This, coupled with the "found footage" approach, lends heavily to the "this is really happening" vibe. Both the characters are even more believable for the traits each reveals as the events get weirder. Katy becomes more bitchy and whiny, and Micah tries hard to "alpha male" his way through the haunting. Neither approach works, but both add an air of truthfulness to the documentation. We are seeing people under stress and unguarded; the makeup is off. It does not make them more sympathetic characters, but it does get us even more involved as viewers in the immediacy of the moment.

What I found most interesting were the questions raised about the act of observation itself. As the film progresses, you get the subtle indication that this entity, whatever it is, knows that it is being filmed. Whether Micah's camera provokes anger or exhibitionism on the part of the intruder, it is arguable that things got a lot worse once the camera got involved. There's a media studies thesis in there somewhere, for your grad students reading this. For the rest of us, it makes for one hell of an effective movie.

Thanks to a well-handled viral marketing campaign, this film is now in theaters nationwide. I recommend going to see it on the big screen - it is worth it. Moreover, the experience of being around other folks getting creeped outta their gourds is kinda neat. So yeah, go see it in the theater, definitely.

But I also recommend going earlier in the day. This is one film you don't want hanging over your head when you go home to turn out the lights.

Zyklon-Barbie

Here's what worries me about America.

See, it's like this. Say that you're an ugly, mule-toothed skinhead race-baiting neo-Nazi. You are also a musician, and your career has been built on writing and playing songs that denigrate all the "mud peoples" and praises Aryan sensibilities and family values. Then, let's say, for example, you die in a tragic automobile accident. Very few people are going to notice, or care. Some might even cheer. After all, you were ugly. In our country, bad racists are ugly (natch).

But what, oh what, America, if your racists are beautiful?

The ugly racist of my example is, of course, Ian Donaldson of the white power band Skrewdriver. Outside of fringe circles of the right wing, Donaldson never garnered much notice. The songs Skrewdriver sang were not examples of high art - far from it. Humorless paens to the likes of Rudolph Hoess and testosterone pumped swastika waving were mostly the order of the day. Easy to dismiss these guys as kooks (because, um, they are kooks).

But what about Prussian Blue, my friends. What about Prussian Blue?

Prussian Blue, you see, are a folk duo made up of the teenage Gaede twins, Lynx and Lamb. They have delicate features, straight blonde hair, and winsome looks to give the camera. In its original incarnation, Lynx played violin and Lamb played guitar, though now they have graduated to a more robust, band sound. They look sweet - innocent, even.

Oh, and they sing Skrewdriver songs. Did I mention that they sing Skrewdriver songs?

The Gaede twins, y'see - in fact, the entire Gaede family - are virulent racists. Consider, for example, this selection of lyrics, penned by Lynx, for the song "What Must Be Done":

ALL the mud races must be banished,
For look at the world they have damaged.
Look around and what do I see?
Ugly brown faces staring at me.

Our people must look like my mom and dad.
They don't now and that makes me mad.
We don't want to be mongrelized,
We want to be Nature's Finest down deep inside.

Now here's what worries me. In America we seem quite eager to accept any lame or even hateful idea that comes down the flagpole, so long as the one handing it to us is attractive. We idolize the uncouth and the ill-mannered so long as they have a Hollywood address or a Prada pedigree. We obsess about JonBenet to the neglect of our own children and crave our own fifteen minute alotment of attention.

In such a milieu, it is not hard for me to see the possibility that Lynx and Lamb would get a sympathetic ear for their tripe. "After all," I can hear the voices saying, " they're so cute, their politics can't be all that bad..." At the very least, their "angelic good looks" are garnering the twins a rather high media profile - even when the media attention is less than charitable.

The media outlets in this country are notoriously fickle. In a constant craving for a new angle, I fear it is only a matter of time before some major news organization decides to give Prussian Blue a "fair hearing," in the name of some distorted notion of "equal time" or "free speech." If that comes to pass, we may find ourselves coming face to face with what America really values, as liberty and justice for all crumbles against the brute force of our national narcissism.

I mean, after all, they're only kids. And they're so cute...