The thing that hit me was that when I first saw AM I thought of it as a
real-life *Waiting for Guffman,* and didn't perceive Mark to be that
talented. On second viewing I felt that he really did have some talent
AND drive, but the problem was alcoholism. And re-watching *Coven* last
night underscored for me the idea that this guy is terribly talented,
but too self-destructive to leverage that talent into success.
The husband informs me that Mark was quite famous on the indy film
curcuit for a while, but just could not slow down on the drinking. He'd
be a featured speaker at film festivals, and show up drunk, proceeding
to berate the audience. After that he fell out of favor (of course).
--J
On May 9, 2005, at 11:50 AM, tschibasch wrote:
> I very much enjoyed American Movie. I could relate to the characters,
> of course! We suffered through the same things when we did our films.
> The budget problems, the difficulties getting folks together...
>
> Murder In Vein (1978-1979) took close to one year as we could only
> film on weekends. Did we learn our lesson? NO! A decade later we made
> Sealed and Delivered (1988-1989) which was also filmed on weekends.
>
> Both films are about the same length and have about the same number of
> actors in them. They are fun to watch, IMHO. This was because we
> followed one important principle in film-making: "Make films where
> people stay to the end of them."
>
>
> John
>
>
>
>
> --- In OliveStarlightOrchestra_at_yahoogroups.com, Joy McCann
> <jmmccann_at_s...> wrote:
> > I'm wondering how many of you have seen American Movie:
> >
> > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181288/
> >
> > http://www.americanmovie.com/
> >
> >
> > It's interesting to me that I've seen this thing three times, and my
> > reactions are always different--both to the documentary and to the
> > movie-within-a-movie that's part of the DVD now: the short horror
> film
> > Coven (not pronounced the normal way, but as if the word "cove" was
> > part of the name).
> >
> > I'd be interested in everyone's take on both (in particular: JJT,
> KG,
> > Carlye and DC, of course).
> >
> > --J
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Received on 2005-05-09 12:16:47