American Movie

The small-time filmmaker hoping to go big-time needs three things: drive, luck, and talent. Mark Borchardt has plenty of drive, but little luck and even less talent.

Mark Borchardt is trying to get his new no-budget horror movie, Coven, off the ground in order to fund a more ambitious project. Unfortunately, the thirty-year old slacker filmmaker - a cross between Wayne and a modern-day Ed Wood - isn't having much luck.

Typical of Mark's way of working is the scene involving a collision between an actor's head and a cabinet. Too late the actor realises that there are no special effects or trick photography involved, and on the first take his head just bounces off the cabinet while Mark's mum, who he's recruited as camera operator, complains that she has shopping to do.

The people involved with the film aren't very helpful either. Mark's semi-senile Uncle Bill, who is also financing the film, fluffs a single line more than thirty times; Mark howls at him "Say it like you believe it!" "But I don't believe it!" comes the response. Neither is the film's composer Mike Schank much use; permanently spaced-out, he wanders through the film - and life, you begin to suspect - with a sweetly out-of-it air.

You might be thinking of the film as the Spinal Tap of amateur filmmakers, but it's certainly not mockumentary. There are lots of very funny scenes, but the film shies away from caricaturing the people it shows. Mark emerges as a flawed character, who drinks too much and who argues with his children's mother, but he holds on to his dream of becoming a famous acclaimed director so hard that you almost want to cheer on this underdog.

American Movie is often hilarious, but there's no happy ending, and it seems that Borchardt's dogged determination is all that he'll ever have. The sad truth is that American Movie, having been bought for $1 million and having gathered a clutch of trophies, is probably more successful than anything Mark Borchardt will ever do.

Katherine Shaw