SAN ANTONIO FILM FESTIVAL
Usually around Sunday night every week, when I have seemingly taken in all the culture and life opportunities that I can handle in my waking hours, I have a habit of feeling like I should be the CREATOR of art instead of the nitpicky INTAKER. If I don't keep that desire in check (and I don't mean suppression) I can snowball that creative desire into frustration with my own professional and personal life and that's never constructive. I really do find being artistic challenging and overwhelming and whenever I get that bug I usually start thinking all practical-like as far as wondering what I can uniquely offer and how feasible it would be to give up other interests to pursue that path. Anyway, over the past week my creative distractions came about when I noticed how artistic my doodles have always been, especially when they are around the margins of legal pads and notes from occasionally boring business meetings and conferences. I seem to be tapping into something artistic in my subconscious that is both part and separate from the mundane working world that I occupy to "pay the bills", so to speak. Because with those blank yellow spaces on my pad of paper or bulleted points and fragments and contact names those creative scribblings wouldn't stand out as weird or odd. As far as a unique artistic exhibit that I could imagine revolutionizing the art world would be a full-fledged display of this concept. Masterpieces drawn in the margins. Paintings, abstract to a degree, where whole spaces are restricted from any markings whatsoever. This idea that if you have limits you might not have a complete picture of unrealized potential but your passion shows through in the parts you can create.
Which brings me to a movie featuring a baby throwing up on someone's face, and a lady fishing a wad of cash out of a toilet with unwrapped tampons.
I kid, I kid, there is a LOT MORE raunchy stuff in this comedy, set almost entirely around Austin in places even a newbie like me could recognize. This film is also over two hours, which allows for plenty of time with a large cast of different characters as they try to meet and greet people in an age where online communications can be so distracting and create all sorts of misinterpretations. This is a really fun movie. Flawed for sure... it's social commentary was dealed out a little too directly, and not every toilet humor scene seemed necessary or effective. But as the cast and crew were introduced after the film, I had felt that in my filmwatching history I had never seen a movie that looks more like a huge gang of talented people just having a blast in making the best movie they could.
I laughed probably as much at this movie than at most theatrical comedies starring big celebrities. Even the amateurish jokes rang true because these people weren't in it for a big paycheck. The characters also weren't cartoonish (well some of them were a little overblown for even more comic relief)... they talked like people I know, and heck if I hung out in Austin instead of Des Moines in my early twenties (no knock against Drake) I might have done a lot of the things they do. I don't care about technical difficulties or scenes that fell flat, because to make 2 hour plus comedy that flew by takes a lot of skill as a filmmaker.
Imagine the motivation of an Adam Sandler and whoever produces his next movie. Adam Sandler gets millions of dollars, the producers get all the tools they need to make a high quality looking movie, because its guaranteed to make money. What motivation is there, other than pure artistic integrity of those involved, to make a movie that is consistently funny from beginning to end? So many mainstream comedies offer up the laughs you need in order to not feel cheated, but cheapen those laughs with a LOT of padding in order to move the narrative along and make the film last over 70 minutes. It's been disappointing to say the least.
Now imagine the motivation of Erica Marsallis-Lamanna (who friended me on facebook once I gave a positive review, incidentally), who wrote and directed this movie. I can't be in her shoes so I don't know all the budget and scheduling issues that made it at times not look or sound excellent, but you can see how motivated she was to make Generation Me as good as it could be. Star power could not sustain a low-budget movie like this, so she had to create engaging characters, engaging themes, and just make it a whole lot of fun. I'd almost rather see a movie like this that throws so much up there and come up short than to see a movie with a lot of resources behind it that has no heart.
I am happy I had a chance to see Generation Me but also getting more upset as I write this that there are movies like the American Pie series and whatever young adult movie of the day that represent such a shallow version of youth culture. I hope this movie gets a lot of buzz and gives the director a chance to make more films.
Also, another weird thing, this movie marks the second appearance in this festival of an actress named Jamie Teer. She was the female love interest in A Schizoprenic Love Story. This festival gave me an appreciation for filmmakers but also to indie movie actors too, as I had to pay attention carefully before I realized that these two very different characters were played by the same person!
No comments:
Post a Comment