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Unfilmable 42: American Movie
🕑 Added 2022-08-25 21:49:43 +0000 UTCWe're stretching definitions here a bit, but it's for a purpose. "American Movie" is a documentary about the amateur production of a short horror film called "Coven". It tells the story of its long and troubled process, all centered around its inept but persuasive director Mark Borchardt.
We've talked about indie horror movies here, but American Movie documents one of the last times when a production like this could have happened, before filmmaking was fully democratized by digital video technology.
And after we talk about the documentary, we watch and react to the film "Coven" itself, which, uhh, is very bad. And we should have realized that it might be.
Comments
Isaiah John
I hope, when Stipe agreed to finance this, he said, "YEA-ah, YEA-ah, YEA-ah"
Duckfeed.tv
This is a reference to Davey Wredin, creator of the excellent game The Beginner's Guide. A must play, but if it's not to your taste, we have an episode on it. -GB
Martin King
Hello, excellent podcast :) A few times you guys reference someone named "Davey Reed" or something like that, as in, "pulling a Davy Reed," meaning something like bringing in knowledge of real-life aspects of a creator in order to evaluate their work of fiction. Please help me, I don't understand this reference and can't track it down. Thank you!
Billiam
American Movie is a horror film about the collaborative process. Total. Degradation. By comparison the dude in The VVitch only eats dirt once.
Duckfeed.tv
Did not know about it! -GB
Brewster
I for sure thought you guys would talk about the 2002 Coven movie about college witches.
Isaac Hoff
So glad you guys did this one. I watched it a few months ago and had all the same jarring feelings that you did, seeing Mark's behavior through modern eyes. It was really refreshing to hear you have the sames thoughts I did. It's so bizarre how this seemingly inconsequential, tiny documentary about a nothing production ended up being one of the most fascinating character studies of our time.
Robin Enrico
Thanks for the little bit of classic Just Funnin' in this one. Gave me a lot to chew on. As someone who both works in a creative field and very much had a dad like Mark, I really think there is something to the democatization of creative pursuits that has slowly done away with the blow hard artist "genius" who terrorizes everyone around them. Starting the episode off with the time capsule framing was just the perfect lens.
Fromaginator
In line with you two willing things into being; there's a bluray release of American movie, on October 18th, that was announced literally yesterday! (of course my luck being what it is my DVD copy, which I realized I didn't own when I went to rewatch it in anticipation of this episode, arrives tomorrow 😂)
