Title: Movies Taking Place in or Supposedly Set at Least Partly in Wisconsin

Originally posted 22 November 19999

Movies: American Movie and Dogma

Now that my Very Fancy Website is just about ready to launch, I feel compelled to attend movies at an unusual clip. (Content! We need content around here!) Thus, my neighbor Rich (of the flexible schedule) accompanied me to see American Movie and Dogma earlier this week.

On Monday night, we headed downtown and caught American Movie at the Film Forum. The Film Forum is a non-profit membership organization, and if you live anywhere in the area, you really ought to be a member. Not only do you get half-price tickets to all screenings, but you can also take a tax deduction for supporting one of the very few serious revival and true indie theaters in the region:
www.filmforum.com.

When I go to the Film Forum, I often eat at Aggie's, which is down the street on Houston, and which has wildly variable diner-type food, a pleasant atmosphere and cats. Rich and I went to Aggie's before American Movie. I had the veggie burger (a loser; made note to self to get the v. good potato pancakes next time), and Rich had the meatloaf (I don't know how it was, but he ate the whole
thing). If you ever find yourself at Aggie's, make sure to skip the desserts; they are all terrible and the Film Forum sells very decent cake and cookies and the best movie popcorn in the city.

American Movie is a modest documentary about a very small-time filmmaker, Mark Borchardt, who lives and works in a suburb of Milwaukee. The movie has been lauded from here to eternity--it won the 1999 Grand Jury Award for documentaries at Sundance--and I had seen a preview for it that was very promising. As it turns out, nearly all of the funny bits were in the preview, and the movie was
neither as humorous nor as thought-provoking as I had expected. It wasn't bad, though, and it did provide a long look at Borchardt, a curious and interesting guy. It also gives a peek into lower middle-class life rarely seen on the big screen. As a city viewer, I sometimes found it hard to tell whether the movie was sympathizing with or poking fun at its subjects, but either way, I didn't find the tone to be mean-spirited or exploitative.

Here's how American Movie scored on a scale of 1 - 10 in my categories of analysis:

*Gender: 5. The movie was fairly neutral on this point, although I give points to Borchardt for having a decidedly older girlfriend.

*Race: 0. There were no people of color in the movie that I recall. Probably, Borchardt's world is mostly white.

*Shoes: 2. Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin doesn't appear to be at the forefront of the creative footwear movement. Borchardt mostly wears beat-up tan work boots.

*Dogs: 0. You'd think somebody in the film would have had a nice shepherd or some kind of a large mutt or something, but no such luck.

*Do things blow up? 0. There's a pretty amusing scene that witnesses the destruction of a kitchen cabinet door, but nothing explodes during the movie.

Weirdly, the coverage of American Movie and the promotions for the film itself elide the distinction between the documentary and its filmmaking subject. For instance, under "Bios" at the Website for American Movie, Borchardt and his friend Mike Schank are prominently listed with large pictures.
But the crew of American Movie--including Chris Smith and Sarah Price, American Movie's director and producer--are listed with much smaller photos in a sub-link that you could easily miss. More along these lines, a New York Times article on American Movie quoted Robert Redford, founder of the Sundance festival, as saying, "It's basically a story that fits most indie films, which is one of ambition, obsession and the question of the American dream...[American Movie is] a confirmation of our purpose of supporting people who would not get a chance. I looked at this film and said, 'This feels like everything we're here for.' Its originality and true spirit really epitomize the heart of indie filmmaking. And it captures the sort of relentless drive of the independent director." Besides the fact that it's clear from this quote that Sundance loves nothing so much as itself, it raises a real question as to whether Redford thinks it's Borchardt or Price who "would not get a chance" without the vaunted festival.

Go see American Movie, but proceed with caution.

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On Tuesday afternoon, Rich and I went to see Dogma at the 68th Street Sony Theater. The movie was surprisingly full for a 4pm show (don't all these people have jobs?), and I noted today that Dogma is listed under the tops-at-the-box-office category on the Internet Movie Database site (www.imdb.com). The movie has been protested by the Catholic League, and has received loads of attention for getting the righteous up in arms.

Why all the fuss? Having seen Dogma, I can't tell you. It's not a very good movie, and I honestly didn't see where anyone but the most fundamentalist Christian might be offended by its religious content. My friend Amy L. tells me that the director, Kevin Smith, who has a prominent role in Dogma (as Silent Bob), attended a protest against the movie earlier this week. Because nobody at the protest had bothered to see Dogma, Smith, carrying anti-Dogma signs, went unrecognized and was even interviewed by local television reporters, saying things like, "Dogma is terrible...but that director is kind of cute." Unfortunately, this is a much smarter and funnier move by Smith than the film itself.

Generally speaking, I like Smith's movies, and I think he has a lot of potential. And while I was watching Dogma, I didn't think, "Oh, this just sucks," (although Rich did). But afterwards, I couldn't say that had I liked it, and since Tuesday, the movie has really grown off me. At this point, I have a litany of gripes about Dogma.

First, I am so over Ben Affleck, and the combination of Affleck and Matt Damon is well past its sell-by date. Second, the team of Jay and Silent Bob, who have appeared in all of Smith's films, are also teetering on the brink of verexposure generally, and they are used far too liberally in Dogma. They work as small, supporting characters, but neither can sustain the large roles they're given in Dogma. Third, the movie is rife with unnecessarily juvenile humor (a demon made of poo, for instance). Fourth, the fact that Wisconsin is supposed to be a purgatory for fallen angels was a little too smug, even for me. Finally, Dogma is far too long, too talky and too dogmatic. Smith could have done a lot better.

Here's how Dogma scored on a scale of 1 - 10 in my categories of analysis:

*Gender: 4. One of the central characters in Dogma is a woman, played by Linda Fiorentino, who is charged with saving the world. Good start. The fact that her character realizes great happiness not when she's accomplished a huge task but when she's been made pregnant by the no-fun method of immaculate conception struck me as a bad ending. Also in this category, Salma Hayek, in an otherwise decent role, is first seen as a stripper. I'll admit that she looks good, but is it possible for Hayek to get cast in a role that doesn't involve miles of flesh?

*Race: -3. I could not be more annoyed by Smith's failing in this category. On the one hand, by casting Chris Rock as a lost apostle who argues that he was left out of the bible because of his race and that Jesus was black, Smith would like us to know that he thinks about race. On the other hand, Smith thoroughly undermines any provocative message about race he might convey when the only other black characters he casts in the movie are a bunch of gun-toting gang members. As a filmmaker (Smith wrote and directed Dogma), one of his main tools in challenging racial stereotypes is to *not* create and cast stereotyped characters. In addition, while the issue of whether Jesus was black has merit, it's a stale question and can hardly be the most challenging question Smith could have asked about the church and race.

Not to quibble, but while I'm on the topic: Rock falls out of the sky naked (although everyone else who appears from heaven manages to dress for the event), and he inexplicably winds up clothed in ripped, dirty, homeless-style clothing. I may be getting carried away, but I did wonder why the black guy is the only Dogma character from heaven who winds up looking like hell.

*Shoes: 2. God wears orange rubber flip-flops, which are kind of cute. But Ben Affleck as an angel wears black Hush Puppies that seem rather out of place with his sweatshirt and jeans; he should have been wearing sneakers. Chris Rock winds up in scuffed white basketball sneakers, adding to his derelict appearance, and tries to use one as a pillow in one scene. Salma Hayek, in her stripper scene, wears black stripper pumps.

*Dogs: 0. Despite the movie's title, there is a disappointing dearth of canine activity in the film (and Affleck's Hush Puppies don't count). I guess Disney, the original distributor of the film, decided to dump Dogma when the company realized the film wasn't about the parents of those 101 Dalmatians.

*Do things blow up? 1. Yes, but in a deeply uninteresting way.

Well, I seem to have trashed Dogma.

If you're still planning to see it, I would suggest that you proceed with devoutly low expectations. Meantime, stay tuned for the glorious launch of www.sarahsmo.com, coming in a few days (or so).