March 13, 2006

A weekend at the South By Southwest film festival reminds you quickly what is wonderful and what is missing from the great second tier festivals if the world. (And that is to say, not Sundance, Cannes or Toronto.) Sometimes, what is good and what is missing can be found in the same things... like the lack of Paris Hilton.

Three films have shown themselves to be ready for prime time (read: a sale) here at the festival. Unfortunately, two of them have virtually no chance to find a theatrical home at all and the second may find itself being birthed by one of the small true-indies with a great deal of press attention, strong reviews, and a financial hope of making an impact in DVD. This is where the independent film movement finds itself. And instead of bashing the studios and thumbing our collective nose at them when big movies aren't Oscar nominated, we better start looking for answers...

But that's another column.

The first of the films is Maxed Out, a film about credit debt and how much trouble each individual "average" American is already in, with little hope of many changes in sight... at least not under a Republican administration. As is often the case, the impulse to Bush Bash turns up at some point, though to be fair to the filmmaker, he gets a Clinton shot in there now and again as well.

Like Kirby Dick has with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, James Scurlock has found an entertaining way of digging into a complex, difficult subject. Scurlock did a better job than Dick of staying on point and not turning it into an attack piece. On the other hand, Dick's film does a better job of entertaining. And there is the commercial rub.

The recurring theme of Maxed Out is that the big money in the credit game is not in turning over good customers, but in sucking whatever life is left out of those who are problem customers. Another fascinated sub-theme is that bigger, well-known banks have gotten into the lower end areas of the business, both through such businesses as check cashing and in selling their bad accounts, after they've been written off, to companies that do nothing but try to collect on old debt, usually with no real paperwork or information of any kind about the old debt.

Really interesting stuff, really well done. Scurlock puts a human face on all of it and as someone who recently got a call from some guy claiming to be collecting a debt for a cell company with whom I never had an account, but which may have bought a company that bought a company that I might have had a delinquent account with a decade ago, I get the joke. The film goes off the rails a little when it presents multiple accounts of suicide caused by credit problems... I mean, a little much, no? But still excellent. And no chance of getting a theatrical release.

Next up is JAM!, one of those wonderful sports documentaries that you didn't know you were missing until you saw it and in regards to its subject you really weren't even sure that the word "sport" was appropriate. But like professional bowling (see: League of Ordinary Gentlemen), roller derby was once hot, hot, hot in America. (Thinking about how it and bowling and other novelty-item sports have disappeared makes the ongoing success of pro wrestling all the more impressive.) And the people who played are still out there. There is still love. There is still hope.

JAM! is a document of mom 'n pop America. It is about the odd things that drive us to greatness, near greatness, or the hope of greatness. It is about false dreams and impossible odds. And it is about the anger that dreaming, perhaps in a silly dream but a dream nonetheless, can bring out in others.

And unless one of the film's young blondes ends up in Playboy - which would still only inspire an HBO premiere sale - you can look forward to seeing the film either at a festival near you or premiering in IFC or Sundance Channel.

If you think that's harsh, consider that two terrific docs of a couple of years ago, one about the guy(s) who caught Barry Bonds' record breaking home run ball and the lawsuit that ensued, and the other (which honestly was not as good, but was awfully entertaining) about competitive eating... neither has gotten even as much play as a promoted IFC or Sundance premiere.

The third doc really worth your time is Summercamp! (those exclamation points are an affectation on the way out, methinks) by Sarah Price and Bradley Beesley. And this is the one thing I have seen so here far that really could stick. It is, as its name suggests, a document of a summer at a summer camp. It is not what you might expect it to be (what I expected to be), a definitive look at going to summer camp. But based on how the filmmakers described the difficulty in getting any camp to allow filming - and this one is at a camp with fewer than 100 campers - I guess that film will never be done.

What you do get is a look at a somewhat Granola-y nature camp with a wide array of kids who seem to be mostly quite bright and often quite verbose. Beesley and Price do a nice job of creating the feel of the day-to-day of the summer camps. They got incredibly lucky in finding one counselor who was very funny, very honest, and sexy in a way that seemed to elude the pubescent boys... or maybe they were just pretending not to like being comforted by her running her fingers through their hair. And they narrowed down to two very good stories with two of the kids, also concentrating in a subtle way on the issue of whether our kids are now terribly overmedicated.

It's an imperfect film, but enormous fun and with really strong emotion streaked throughout. My only complaint is that I was looking forward to having the full Alamo Drafthouse experience and I ended up sitting on a chair on the side of the room with no food and drink service.

The fate of the film will be interesting to see. I suspect that someone, perhaps a Roadside Attractions, will step up and give the film a run for its money. Then again, I can't believe that Thin, the great Sundance entry which has an even more powerful niche draw, still hasn't sold. Tough room.

I have seen three other films. I am not a huge fan of any of them, though there are things to recommend in each, so I will keep it brief.

God Spoke - A doc that follows Al Franken around as he mocks and baits the right. It was a huge audience favorite here and will also be in many other places. It also failed utterly in giving us a whit of insight into Al Franken that anyone who has not seen him on TV recently or heard his radio show doesn't already know. I suspect this film is a part of his run for the Minnesota Senate in the seat vacated by death by Franken's friend (and great guy) Paul Wellstone.

Gretchen - A hybrid of The Dave & Bob Show and Napoleon Dynamite... but it's not as good as either. The film suffers from trying to combine the kitsch of adults playing teens while also trying to create iconic geek touchstones. The thing that was so successful about Napoleon Dynamite is that it came by its stupidity with great sincerity. And what works about something like Strangers With Candy is that it is Grand Guignol.

Tales of The Rat Fink - The latest doc from Ron Mann, whose work I generally love, suffers from a lack of a living subject and almost no moving footage from the period the movie covers. They do a great job creating as much movement and fun as they can under the circumstances. But the sad truth is, after the 15th animation of Rat Fink, it all just feels the same. The film is about an hour and 10 minutes... and the 40 minute version could end up being an Oscar nominee for short film, if Mann decided to go that way. Too much of a good thing, I'm afraid.

And with that, I am off to a midnight screening.

I am not covering this like a normal festival. I am a guest of sorts, doing a panel tomorrow. But I can't stay away when there are new films that might be worth the time just blocks away.

EMe.