American Movie (1999)

Directed by Chris Smith
Produced by Chris Smith and Sarah Price

Mark Borchardt’s a high-school dropout. He lives with his parents at age 30. He makes some small-time money delivering newspapers. He’s got an on-again, off-again relationship with his ladyfriend Alyssa, with whom he’s had three children and to whom he owes back child support. He also owes money to several credit card companies and utilities, as well as the IRS and the Wisconsin State Tax Board. He spends much of his time drinking with his burnout musician friend Mike, drinking and talking. Talking about making movies.

Mark and his buddy Mike. Things don’t get any prettier, folks.

See, Mark’s fancied himself a filmmaker ever since he got his first Super-8 camera in his early teens. He’s made several silent horror shorts with his friends over the years; he’s shot more serious footage for several projects over the years, each of which has been abandoned either for lack of funds or for wandering interest. In 1995, he finally decided to get to work and honestly finish a feature which he had shot some footage for back in 1990 — a midwestern slice-of-life film called Northwestern, based on his life with his friends, doing nothing much but slacking and getting drunk in junkyards and trailer parks. American Movie starts out chronicling Mark’s efforts to get this movie finally made, as he drums up support and crew with his lofty, idealized rambles about achieving the American Dream.

Except that by the fourth production meeting, he’s alone with one other crew hopeful. So Northwestern is again moribund, and Mark instead decides to return to a horror short he similarly began years before, Coven, with the goal of selling copies of it at $14.95 a crack: Only 3000 units sold will give him $44,000, which will finally finance Northwestern.

“Not only that, but if I get fifty people in my downline, I can make up to $3000 per month!”

Our documentary, then, morphs into a chronicle of Mark’s two-year ordeal in getting Coven finished. And let me tell you something:

It’s sad.

Yes, I know that Roger Ebert called it, “Terrific! Funny! Inspiring!” Other quotes on the box also laud its inspiring, refreshing character. I will admit that it is funny at times; Mike the burnout is appealing in a true-life Beavis’n'Butthead fashion, and the scene in which Mark tries repeatedly on camera to heave an actor’s head through a cupboard door (only to find that, even with scoring on the back, it was pretty damned solid) is priceless. But even when it’s funny, it’s still sad. And most of the movie is still sad, without the funny.

Mark’s brother eventually went on to become a part of Milwaukee’s most prestigious Duran Duran tribute band.

Why? Because Mark is a loser. That may seem overly judgmental on my part, but I have to call’em as I see’em. He’s aggressive and enthusiastic, but somehow he doesn’t seem to have cultivated the internal discipline one would expect in a successful entrepreneur or professional artist. I don’t know if that’s a cause or effect of his unfinished high school education, but it’s certainly related. He’s got a massive knowledge of independent filmmaking, but lacks the articulateness to tell exactly why his movies are worth making. He’s got these high-falutin’ aspirations, but somehow he’s spent his whole life not making the connection from his ground-level life to the clouds he dreams about. and like so many unrealistic artistic types, he seems to equate his aspirations with actual achievement, acting as if he merits respect for works he hasn’t gotten around to creating yet. He feels qualified to denigrate those who commit to a 40-hour workweek, complaining about the lifelessness and sterility of those jobs and their attendant lifestyles (and yes, his stolid father is the natural target here), yet he sees no hypocrisy in living off his parents while he dillies and dallies on his 35-minute life’s work.

His new girlfriend Joan, a surprisingly well-spoken women he meets through the shoot, puts a very upbeat spin on his ambitions: “If he’s able to even do twenty-five percent of what he says, it is more than what most people accomplish.” Which sounds really great on the surface, until you start thinking about it: What is her apples-to-apples quantification of accomplishment? If she’s talking about running around shooting film footage, I’ll give her that; even if this project were to go by the wayside like most of Mark’s projects, he still would have shot more footage than most people. But most people don’t have serious ambitions about making movies. Does she mean that Mark, through his artistic dalliances, has somehow achieved more in the great scheme of things than someone whose ambitions include getting a high school diploma and a college education, moving out of his parents’ house before age 30, marrying the mother of his children (maybe even, heaven forbid, before siring three of them), working a consistent job to provide for them, owning a home for them, crafting a secure and comfortable lifestyle? Doesn’t the latter qualify for the “American Dream” just as much as what Mark is constantly yapping about while sitting around on furniture he doesn’t own, drunk to the gills?

Somehow I suspect that this is a more common scene in the life of a film producer than we might expect.

More than a portrait of a filmmaker, this movie becomes a portrait of a sorry life, with other sorry lives as supporting characters: His sensible parents who have spent their marriage in sullen argument with each other (I think they appear in the same frame exactly once). His longtime friends who don’t share his passion for film but are willing to help out when occasion permits. His withered and dejected “executive producer” Uncle Bill from whom he borrows the $3000 for completion of Coven, and who never expects to see anything but a neverending stream of pipedreams out of the investment. His brothers (one a Kevin Sorbo lookalike, the other an apparent New Wave devotee), who express their lack of confidence in his ability to finish any of the things he’s started with varying levels of charity.

Yes, Mark does finally finish Coven, against all the odds. He even has a premiere in their small-town cinema in June of 1997. The quickly-edited clips they show in the documentary are surpisingly good, actually; Mark has managed to absorb quite a bit of visual storytelling technique from his idols. (I watched this on an ex-rental VHS tape I picked up for 50¢ from a video store bin; the DVD edition has the complete Coven film as an extra.) But the saddest thing is, having finally achieved the dream of completing a film, Mark doesn’t seem to realize that it’s still no big whoop to anyone but him. He’s still got nothing. He still has to start hitting old Uncle Bill up for funds for the next one. He’s still working dead-end part-time jobs; he’s still up to his ears in debt. Hollywood’s not beating down his door. The high school football team still has more renown.

“Ow! I feel good!“

Isn’t there a measure of success in all of this? Yes, I suppose. According to the tally on the American Movie website, Coven has sold just over 4800 units to date (available from the Northwest Productions website.) But in all honesty, whatever success Coven has had is not to Mark’s credit. A 35-minute short is a nigh-unmarketable commodity; the only reason Coven has done as well as it has is that American Movie was the 1999 Grand Jury winner at Sundance, and Coven rode in on its coattails. And lets take a look at that success, anyway; at $14.95 a pop, Coven has grossed about $75,000 in five years. Even ignoring copying and packaging costs, that means it’s brought in about $15,000 per year. Not exactly the millionaire-level success that Mark bragged to his brothers about making ever since his high school years.

And what about Northwestern, the movie for which Coven was supposed to provide the capital? Uncle Bill died in September of 1997, a few months after the Coven premiere, and willed Mark $50,000 for Northwestern — more than Mark was hoping to raise with Coven. Yet with that, plus the trickle-in income from the videocassettes, plus the exposure and potential access to investors from American Movie’s success, the Northwest Productions website still lists Northwestern as being a future project for which they’re still seeking cast and crew, five years later.

I can’t say I’m surprised.