American Movie
I wrote this blog entry a long time ago but forgot to post it. I was
doing some housecleaning on my “Drafts” folder and found this.
My father and I just finished watching “American Movie” a film about
the making of a low budget horror film in Wisconsin.
After the movie ended we briefly and excitedly exchanged opinions
about whether the film were a documentary or instead a “fake-
documentary” (fakeumentary?).
The movie was funny at times, pathetic at others and the title of the
film “American Movie” may very well be a political statement as well.
Initially, I balked, then Dad reminded me of “The Blair Witch
Project.” At that the idea went from improbable, to an incredible
stroke of genius, that the characters, who seemed so real and
archetypically American could be acto
Not unlike the beginning of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, when
Mark Twain (whose real name is Samuel Clemens) writes: “Persons
attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons
attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
PER G.G, CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.”
Of course this is not true, an empty, unenforceable threat made by an
author writing under a nome de plume.
This of course is follwed witht this: “YOU don’t know about me
without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark
Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he
stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never
seen anybody but lied one time or another…”
This, of course, is another lie, and very subtle, since in my opinion
the entire book is a con, involving con artists and the tricks they
play.
This movie, as well, might be have one of the most American leit
motifs, that of the con.