BEFORE: OK, let's take a minute tonight to talk about documentaries - I didn't use to program so many of them, because I was afraid of them breaking my chain, but then in 2018 I went on a real tear, I watched every doc I could find about rock stars, starting with the Beatles, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and ending with Black Sabbath, Metallica and Rush. In between were docs about Chicago, Janis Joplin, the Stones, Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Doors, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, George Michael, Whitney Houston, the Eagles, Talking Heads, Michael Jackson, the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot. And you know what, there were connections all over the place, I should not have been worried about it. (Half the films had footage of the Beatles, but that's really a cheat...). Now, that year I didn't have a chain that lasted all year, but it was NOT the fault of the documentaries.
Since then, I've programmed at least a month of docs each year, but I expanded the scope of the subject matter to include movie stars, TV stars, authors, sports stars, Presidents and other political figures, last year there was even a mysterious bank robber (D.B. Cooper) and a prison riot (Attica). As long as it doesn't break the chain, it's in the mix. The Doc Block has now become the third annual programmed month on my schedule, though it started as a summer thing last year I found a place for it in April & May, leading up to Mother's Day. How do I do it? Well, I cheat, of course, I study the IMDB lists about who appears in each film, and sometimes I do pre-watch spot checks to see if the IMDB missed anybody, especially talk-show hosts and U.S. Presidents, that really makes my linking job easier. Last year I had 24 docs in a linked chain, and the year before that I had FORTY-SIX docs that were arranged in a giant circle, meaning that someone who appeared in the last doc also appeared in the first one, which meant that I could have entered the chain at ANY point, and moved in either direction. This allowed me to watch a movie on July 4 with a title that had "The American Revolution" in it, a little verbal pun for Independence Day, even if the subject matter had little to do with U.S. history.
For 2024, I've taken the docs that I couldn't get to last year, added in a bunch of new ones that I learned about (I swiped the program from DocFest when it played at the theater where I work, that's always helpful) and organized them as best as I could, so I think I'm ready to go. I've got 28 documentaries arranged in a linked chain, but if needed, I could cut two off of one end and then the last film would circle back to the first, again that would give me the chance to pick ANY film as the starting point, and move either up or down on the list. Now, if I can place "American Symphony" on the schedule for July 4, that would again be ideal, based on the title alone. But I'm not married to watching the docs during the summer, they could just as easily fill the space between, say, Mother's Day (May 12) and Father's Day (June 16) which a little math tells me is 35 days. Damn, that's almost perfect, since I may encounter a few more docs between now and then, and I may want to work them in. But we'll see how the linking plays out - I know that if I see Adolf Hitler unexpectedly in any film, there's an opportunity to quickly change gears and start watching docs.
The one thing I know is that there's not going to be a slot for "The Wolfpack", because there are no real stars appearing in this, just archive appearances of some actors from "Pulp Fiction" are credited. Isabella Rossellini, too, but the documentary about her family, called "The Rossellinis", doesn't seem to be streaming anywhere, so nah, this one's not going to fit into the 2024 doc chain. But it didn't fit into the 2023 doc block or the 2022 one either, so if I don't find another place for it, then I'm simply never going to watch it. So, new plan, stash it between two dramatic films with Tim Roth in them, that will finally clear this off my DVR - so Tim Roth carries over from "Bergman Island", and he'll be here tomorrow too.
THE PLOT: Confined in an apartment in a New York City housing project, the six Angulo brothers learned everything they know about the world through watching films and spend their time reenacting their favorite movies with intricate homemade costumes.
AFTER: Surprisingly, there's a throughline - the first film of the year was about Julie, who (eventually) works as a photographer on a movie set, and "Bergman Island" was about a married pair of screenwriters/directors who, against all sense and reason, work together and bounce ideas off each other. (Sorry, it can't last, from what I've seen. Don't mix your work lives and your personal lives together.). And tonight's film is about a large family of sheltered teens in NYC who make their own knock-off versions of Hollywood movies. That's still filmmaking, right? So I'm on a thematic roll, unintentionally.
AFTER: Surprisingly, there's a throughline - the first film of the year was about Julie, who (eventually) works as a photographer on a movie set, and "Bergman Island" was about a married pair of screenwriters/directors who, against all sense and reason, work together and bounce ideas off each other. (Sorry, it can't last, from what I've seen. Don't mix your work lives and your personal lives together.). And tonight's film is about a large family of sheltered teens in NYC who make their own knock-off versions of Hollywood movies. That's still filmmaking, right? So I'm on a thematic roll, unintentionally.
But man, parts of this are hard to watch, because as hard as these kids try, and as much as they love movies and want to MAKE movies and BE movies, their home movies, well, they're just not good. There's some promise near the end when one brother finally decides to tell his OWN stories instead of just copying the ones that Tarantino and Christopher Nolan already made. OK, that I can get behind, but the production values are so damn low, and I say this as someone who made sophomore (and sophomoric) 16mm films at NYU that I freely admit had zero production values, and essentially zero budgets. I kind of learned the hard way that I would NEVER EVER be a big famous director, not that I didn't want that, I just didn't see a path for me to get there. I just didn't have my own stories to tell, and you kind of need that - plus I'm more of an introvert at the end of the day, and directors need to be the other kind of person. Extrovert, that's it.
So before graduating, I set myself on a new quest, to learn to become a producer or animation coordinator or even P.A. if the industry would let me, and I'd spend my life helping other people make THEIR movies, and maybe get paid in the process. Genius move, I don't regret it, because I get screen credits, I was eventually able to save up and buy some property, I've got 30 years of a reputation in a very niche section of the biz, and loads of great stories to tell. But mostly I'm thinking people would very much love for me to shut up about those three times I went to Sundance, call it a hunch.
The other upside to my lifestyle is that if a film tanks, it's not (usually) my fault. Blame the director or the writer or the publicist or the lack of proper distribution channels, but nobody ever says, "Hey, that film was a total bomb! I bet the office manager was terrible, and didn't do anything right!" or "Can you believe the terrible job that person did, doing voices for that crowd scene? It ruined the whole movie!" See, you never hear that, so I'm totally in the clear. I'm the guy behind the scenes who's depositing the payroll taxes or filling out the festival entry forms, or ordering more toner for the office printer, and so if I screw something up, you're not really going to see that on the big screen. Plus, I still get paid next week, right? Sweet...
My point here is, there's a lot more to making movies than just dressing up and remembering your lines. It's kind of sweet and naive that these teens found paying homage to their favorite movies as a way to pass the time, but it also feels like a big waste to me, because they're just never going to have the same resources as a multi-million dollar production, so then, umm, why do it? Sure, because they LOVE the movies, but ultimately, what does it get them? Look, when I was a kid I was obsessed with "Star Wars", and I remember listening to the radio drama and typing out the whole script because I loved it so much, but other than being good practice for my current job, essentially it was a waste of my time. That script already existed SOMEWHERE in the world, what good did it do me to type it all out myself, except to learn how to flip over a typewriter ribbon so my mother didn't know that I used up all the ink on it.
Sure, Spielberg and Lucas made home movies before they had the resources to make real ones - and don't forget that Spielberg never got hired at Universal, he just walked in off the studio tour one day and set up shop in an empty office. "Fake it till you make it" CAN BE a viable plan, provided that you do, eventually, make it. But until then, you also need to be aware that you are, umm, faking it. The oldest Angulo brother DOES move out on his own near the end of this documentary, and he gets a job working as a production assistant on real movies, at least for a time. I just wonder how long he stayed in the industry once he learned how hard it is to do things the proper way - he's got some credits for writing and directing shorts, but none since 2015.
But also, he missed the family field trip to the apple orchard, which had been a longtime goal of Mrs. Angulo, to get her 9 kids out of this rundown NYC apartment and get them to live (or at least visit) someplace like a farm or a national park or someplace that's green and not all made of concrete. So this makes me wonder about a lot of things, like how the decision was made to raise this family in NYC, one of the more expensive cities to live in, then there's the decision to home-school 9 kids, and before that, the decision to even HAVE 7 kids in the first place. Does anyone really need more than two or three? Were times getting tough feeding 4 kids and then somehow they thought to themselves, "Hey, let's have three more kids, that'll help." No, it won't, it's only going to make things harder with more kids to feed, especially since their father seems to have a problem with having a steady job, or any job.
I don't have ONE kid and maybe I never will, but still I would have trouble making ends meet if I didn't always have two jobs at the same time. True, I do have a steady comic book habit to feed and that also creates a storage-unit expense, and I really should do something about that one of these days, but I'm getting by, and my bank account is finally back to a pre-pandemic level. Oh, jeez, I didn't even think about that, this doc was made in 2015, what happened to this family during COVID? Well, at least they were already used to spending most of their time indoors and only going outside about once a week, so maybe they made it through OK. Or maybe they finally moved out of NYC, which would have been a smart move. Can we get some kind of update on the Angulo family? Parents still together? Did a few more kids grow old enough to move out on their own? Are they still wasting their time making janky home movies?
Sorry, I don't mean to be rude here, I probably just hate the way I was as a young teen who wanted to make movies but then didn't know how to go about it, except to volunteer to video-tape high school musicals for, probably, an audience of one - my mother. OK, maybe a few parents of the cast members. And when I told my father I wanted to make movies, he suggested I make a documentary about the Catholic Church in Boston and all the great charity work they do. Umm, yeah, Dad, that's not really the kind of movie I want to make, have you not seen how much I love "Star Wars"? Can we please keep your religious agenda out of my career fantasy?
Who knows, maybe if I had picked up a camera too early and learned how HARD it is to make good-looking movies, then perhaps I never would have applied to NYU film school in the first place, and then right now I'd be somewhere else, doing something else other than stressing out three days a week trying to keep an animation studio in business and operating legally. Who can really say? But the path isn't linear, I keep telling myself that there's a lot of circling back, so that's why I'm also working at a movie theater, like I did 35 years ago, only in a much more adult capacity, and I don't think any less of myself for returning to something that feels comfortable for me, because I think I'm actually a little good at it, and it's honest work, like being at a bookstore. People come in, they want to be entertained, and for a couple hours they are, unless the movie sucks, then they leave happy, or at least they leave, and I reset the theater and lock up. And the theater's owned by a college, so it's probably never going to close down, so therefore my position is guaranteed, at least as long as my knees hold out. It's another genius move, I don't regret it. If the movie sucks, it's not my fault, plus I still get paid next week, right? Sweet...
NITPICK POINT: If I knew that a documentary crew was coming over to my apartment to interview me, I'd maybe clean up some of the dirty laundry from the floor. Just saying.
Also starring Mukunda Angulo, Narayana Angulo, Susanne Angulo, Bhagavan Angulo, Jagadisa Angulo, Krsna Angulo, Oscar Angulo, Visnu Angulo, Govinda Angulo, Chloe Pecorino, Ned Shatzer, with archive footage of Christian Bale (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Isabella Rossellini (last heard in "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"), Amanda Plummer.
RATING: 5 out of 10 cereal boxes used to make a Batman costume
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