American Movie

We all have attributes where our dreams and our talents don't line up.  Woody Allen has frequently said that his movies never turn out as good as he imagines them.  These blog posts always sound better in my head; when I go to actually write them, I come out with awkward phrases that I don't know how to correct.  Probably most of us experience this with singing: in our heads, we're all Freddie Mercury, but feedback from others likely suggests otherwise.

This gap between aspirations and skills is the most heartbreaking aspect of "American Movie," a documentary about filmmaker Mark Borchardt.  Borchardt cut his teeth making short horror films, but his dream is to make "Northwestern," which sounds like the movie version of a Replacements album: an indie film about heavy-drinking young men in the Midwest with dead end lives.

Films cost money, though, and Borchardt is hopeless with finances.  He hopes to raise money for "Northwestern" by finishing another short horror film, "Coven."  (Which he hilariously insists must be pronounced "coh-ven."  Otherwise it would sound too much like "oven.")  It's during the making of "Coven" that we see that Borchardt is probably never going to make "Northwestern."  If he does, it won't be anything close to what he's hoping for.

Borchardt has the right idea; from his bookshelf we see that he's studied "Do the Right Thing," "2001," and other classics.  Parts of his film seem like they're going in the right direction: he loves creating atmosphere with stark black-and-white shots of Midwestern tundra, and he's trying to tuck a story about an alcoholic writer into his loopy horror film.  But it somehow takes him three years to make a half-hour horror film which looks like it was banged out in a week.

For me, the saddest moment of "American Movie" is when Borchardt discusses his plans to shoot in a haunted house.  The location looks dull, and he's surely shooting there because he could do it for free, but he compares the footage he wants to shots from "The Seventh Seal" and "Manhattan."  The man's talents and resources just can't measure up to his imagination.  In a way, that's what a lot of pop culture consumption is for the public: watching others do what we can only dream we could.