*Blog entry written on February 18, 2020
My life kind of feels like it is a holding pattern. I know I am a big advocate for patience and I seem to have a lot of it, but waiting drives me crazy as much as the next person. Not expressing my frustration with that (publicly) maybe my greatest strength.
It is not so much that I cannot do anything with myself. It is that any decision I make will not have any affect of me in the immediate future. C2E2 is next weekend. How am I going to afford to go to the show and afford a room? This spoiled soon to be 40-something has to wait and see.
Dad wants me to get the non-sports elements of the England trip planned out. How do I do that when I am not around him to review stuff with him? I am sure he would dig a play about the making of "Jaws", but I need to be for sure.
When can I move out and finally be comfortable? The answer is not until May at the earliest, so grin and bear it until then. Do I have the right to get upset at having to account for my better quarter's (Eva the Cat will always get half) absent mindfulness since we will not be living together after the lease? If I do not get hot about it, I will let her think it is cool to go around doing what she does to the next roommate.
Then again, truck drivers and warehouse workers do not seem to mind her. Why am I trying to make myself sound like a catch? They make more money than me. I guess they can afford to let people live more slovenly than my obsessive compulsiveness allows.
This could just all be related to the winter. When things warm up, things will get better. Of course, aside from sporting events, when do I really appreciate the weather?
Studying Lee Demarbre's "Smash Cut" at least made the past week worth noting. I had more fun watching "Knives Out", but aside from storytelling, I am years away from being worthy to study under Rian "Second Best Star Wars Movie" Johnson's learning tree. Canadians paying homage to Herschell Gordon Lewis and trying to get the most out of a nonexperimental performances from adult film stars seems like the right place for my filmmaking aspirations to be.
Able Whitman is a struggling B-movie director whose most recent film, "Terror Toy", debuted to a near total walk out from the audience. This disaster will not run him out of the business because every investor needs tax write offs, but he will never be the artist that he strives to be without proper inspiration.
Outside of the industry, the only person who sees potential in him is a stripper named Gigi. She wants to see him succeed so badly, that she sets out to be his muse and will not even take his money from her performances. Of course everything in Whitman's life turns bad, and she dies in a car accident as he drove her home from work. Whitman initially tries to cover up the incident, but after seeing the wretched gore effects his crew has come up with for "Terror Toy 2", he opens his trunk to find his inspiration, and Gigi makes no complaints about being featured in the picture.
After the latest test reel, his producers believe that he is finally on to something, and if he can keep it up, Whitman will have a blank check. If it is realistic effects that will make him the director he has always dreamt he could be, realism is what he will provide. But with Gigi rotting, where else can he get the viscera for the celluloid? Well, being mocked by critics, local aspiring documentarians, and producers who demand rewrites so that their friends' kids have roles, Able Whitman has a wide menu of options.
My expectations were not very high for "Smash Cut". Sasha Grey was nothing but a name to put on the cover of "The Girl from the Naked Eye" to garner interest while only one scene. Herschell Gordon Lewis did a lot for Grindhouse cinema, but what I have seen from "Blood Feast" and "Wizard of Gore" did not seem worthwhile. But with a disclaimer placed at the beginning to put you in the grindhouse mood followed up by the hilarity of the "Terror Toy" screening, you know that the director implies that he does not want you to take the film seriously at all. This picture is all about Lee Demarbre knowing what people want to see from a bad horror movie. He just needs an audience to cheer on his efforts to deliver it.
I think most fans of no-budget cinema enjoy just witnessing the effort the directors and actors take to tell a story that, financially, they have no business in telling. As long as you can at least laugh at the shortcomings, the director has succeeded in his goal. "Smash Cut" takes the experiences of being a filmmaker in this genre too personally at times, but until the film got to the point where a conclusion was required, the dialogue and shortcuts are amusing enough to keep the viewer involved.
The actors do not take themselves too seriously and most seem to have fun playing a long with the ridiculous story. If Sasha Grey would have gone out and hammed it up, the ensemble would have been stronger, but it was early in traditional acting career, so showing restraint may have been the better career move. Her reading from "Hamlet" was solid and her screams were on point when it came to dealing with the gore effects.
As for the gore, aside from decay effects, it is the best no budget can offer. They work out great after the low bar they demonstrate at the beginning of the film. The best element is that the director shows no respect to the impact they should have on us. Since "Friday the 13th" was all about shock and showing that it could be done instead of should it be done, Demarbre has topped himself effects wise when compared to his classic "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter" from eight years prior.
Unfortunately, Ian Driscoll may have regressed over that time as a screenwriter. When telling a story about the film industry, you do not have to keep driving the point home that the audience should be siding with the mentally unstable artist's message. If we enjoy that kind of plot, you do not need to remind us why we are here. Whitman is no Jesus, so he needs stronger supporting characters to help him out, and they are almost nonexistent.
I came to a point where I wondered why Demarbre was not at the level of the Soska Sisters. "Dead Hooker in a Trunk" lacked a budget, but the characters were strong enough that the minimal gore in comparison was almost unnecessary. It gave you multiple perspective into how crazy the journey was that you forgot that the film had no budget. Demarbre and Driscoll give you fun flicks, but they are not going to make you forget that they pride themselves on missing elements.
"Smash Cut" is an amusing B-movie that takes pride in being a no budget affair. The conclusion is very clunky and it can take itself too seriously, but it lets the audience know that anyone can make a fun movie as long as you have a fun story. For someone who wants to start in film with little resources, I definitely appreciated this film, and with that approach, any smart film goer should too.
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