USA,
2000, 65 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
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Chris Smith
- prod
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Barbara Joy Laffey, Susanne Preissler
- cam
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Hubert Taczanowski
- editor
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Jun Diaz
- source
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Independent Media Inc., 3000 West Olympic, Santa Monica, CA 90404. TEL: 310-659-3520
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COMMENTS
Screened with The Ceiling. Chris Smith in person.
OTHER
Chris Smith is quickly challenging Errol Morris as the foremost documenter of an American way happily outside the mainstream. American Job and American Movie are a bemused screw-you to this country’s increasingly corporatized, all-success aesthetic, showcasing individuals who refuse to work the “correct” way. His new Home Movie embraces eccentrics whose rebellion in how to live takes the form of where they live. Cajun alligator farmer Bill Tregle resides on a bayou houseboat in Louisiana, while Ed and Diana Pedan dwell underground in an abandoned Cold War missile silo. Ben Skora and his girlfriend Darlene fill their home with Bill’s futuristic homemade gadgets, including Arok the nine-foot robot, while Bob Walker and Francis Mooney have fashioned individual theme rooms for their 11 cats. And there’s Linda Beech (once “Japan’s leading blond American sitcom star”), who lives in a remote Hawaiian tree house powered by waterfall. More than a real estate tour, however, Home Movie concentrates on the extraordinary personalities, and on why people choose a way rarely taken and never sold. In an America becoming increasingly chained to a chain-store aesthetic, Smith’s work is becoming essential for its embrace of the ways seemingly ordinary people refuse to live dull, ordinary lives.
—Jason Sanders
FACTOID #111
Both parents of TV star Mariska Hargitay attended the Festival, but not at the same time. Actress Jayne Mansfield attended in 1966 on a lark, and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay attended in 1989, having appeared as himself in György Szomjas’s film Mr. Universe.
