After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the Soviets ran propaganda trains across the breadth of their territory showing motion pictures to the people and filming the glories of modern communism. These films used the new technology to illustrate the irrepressible life force at work in the growing communist state, from the cities to the towns to the far-flung backwaters scattered across central Asia. Dziga Vertov's Man With The Movie Camera remains the unquestioned masterpiece of the era, a kinetic portrait of the people and powers at work in Marxist Moscow during the go-go twentieth century. That film and others like it were meant to assure the people that the Soviet Union was a modern marvel of energy, industry, and organization. During the 1950's and 60's, as cameras became smaller and films became cheaper to produce, the Marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere saw a future where every member of the proletariat might have access to the means of film production, where every voice might be heard, where every event could be witnessed by one and shown to many. The motion picture (and the social documentary in particular) was a vibrant, ever-changing portrait of real life, and film was the brush and paintpot of artists and revolutionaries alike.Fast-forward to our twenty-first century. Digital technology has put the tools of cinema within everyone's reach, to the extent that the term "film" has almost become an anachronism. You can shoot, edit, and present your work on a (frayed, flimsy) shoestring without the millions once required to get your movie seen. Websites like AtomFilms cater to amateur filmmakers across the globe, amateur porn has evolved into an art form in its own (sticky) right, and movies like The Blair Witch Project can do staggering business without being crippled by a lack of startup capital. With the advent of DV technology, the home movie has come out of the basement and into the mainstream. Every voice now has a megaphone, every dream has an outlet.
The Beastie Boys' new concert movie Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! is a prime example of how amateur lensers can work within the once-restrictive confines of motion picture production. During a 2004 concert in Madison Square Garden, the B-Boys handed out fifty DV camcorders to audience members and encouraged them to shoot whatever they liked during the concert. The footage was spliced with professional coverage, resulting in a film created--at least in part--from the grassroots up. The title itself is an expression of a new kind of cinematic experience, a film constructed via audience participation at the creative level, not merely the reactive.
On the narrative flipside of that concert-doc coin lies the advance popularity and current ubiquity of the Samuel L. Jackson vehicle Snakes on a Plane. There is no shortage of sites that can explain this phenomenon in its entirety, so for the sake of brevity I'll just give a sketch here. It's a genre flick, Die Hard meets Executive Decision meets every venomous snake pic ever made, and the cast and crew just reconvened for five days of reshoots meant to take the film further into R-rated territory. But in addition to shooting more tits, ass, and snake-related gore, there were several lines of dialogue added to the film that came from suggestions posted online by ordinary Joes like you and me. Among them is the instant-classic catchphrase (and just imagine Sam Jackson saying this in all his glorious Pulp Fiction-era intensity) "I want these motherfuckin' snakes off this motherfuckin' plane!" Schlocky? Yes. Campy? Sure. An entirely novel moment in the history of mainstream film? You bet your ass. Filmmaking by committee has always taken the form of focus groups and test screenings and eventual retooling before wide release, but this is the first instance of actual lines of dialogue being suggested and incorporated in a narrative motion picture during production.The fact that a movie with such a boneheadedly brilliant title can exploit its advance word of mouth should lead to some interesting first-weekend observations come August 18th. Let's be clear on one thing: SoaP will probably suck. Hard. But this movie began life as a cult classic, its status as a perennial Midnight Movie virtually guaranteed. It's a fan-club flick before anyone's even seen it. It's an underdog without the distraction of competition, and doesn't everybody love rooting for the underdog? There'll be lines around the block for this one, people in queue mentioning offhandedly to each other that "You know the scene where Sam pulls the snake off the woman's face, shoots it twice and says 'Venom ain't no match for a brother with a .45?' I totally fuckin' wrote that."*
Instead of Hollywood giving the public what they think we want (and usually completely missing the mark), this might usher in a whole new era--for better or worse. Imagine a cinema driven by audience participation from pre- to post-production. Imagine being able to blame ourselves when a movie sucks monkey. Imagine refusing to see a certain flick because that asshole down the street wrote a few lines and he still hasn't returned your leafblower. My, how far we've come. It's a brave new world, folks, and the dream is within reach.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm working on an unsolicited draft of Basic Instinct 3: Syphillitic Septuagenarians. Ciao for now, baby. I'm goin' Hollywood.
*: BTW, I totally fuckin' wrote that. -NG
