PulpLit.net

The End of Benny in June

Now, I'll be the first to admit that listing 400 or so movie titles is a bad idea, especially when the program we type on here can't handle lists. That said, how bout that list, huh? Shee-it, friends, I've seen some crap sandwich movies in my day. I've also made some stinkers myself, tho I guess mostly all student films are stinkers. It's funny, but mostly all student films (that are stinkers) follow roughly the same handful of formats:

1. Trippy head movies created by reading the instruction manual that comes with the film or video camera, then editing using high-powered editing system software that allows you to play around with effects, ruining any good shots or sequences you might have had and ruining any and all subsequent viewings on wildly out of date DVD players with an audience of your grown children.
2. The tried and true drug-bust-gone-awry film: you or a film-school buddy of yours has a great idea! Why not make your own version of Scarface! Or better yet, a fitting homage to Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese, Brian De Palma, etc. etc. Any way you slice it, it's all crap.
3. The love-gone-awry film: Yeah, I tried this once. Mine had a protagonist that talks to himself (done with gapped dialogue conversing with voice-over that was a pain in the butt to sync in post). Sure, he's a loser, sure, he wins the girl, sure, I was damned proud of it when I made it, sure, the production values are lousy. And that's right, it's all crap. At least I didn't include the requisite 'throwing ring off bridge' scene. My film would have become an all-time student stinkbomb if I'd only made a scene like that the focal point. Maybe I could've tossed in some cheesy inspirational voiceovers...but that might've added to the good things about the film, thus making it less crap.
4. The gritty-tellin-it-like-it-is film: I almost got suckered into working on one of these, but I saw the telltale signs fast and got the hell away from it. Film kids, especially the obnoxious ones, always wanna make something they think no one's ever done before, and I hate to be the one to tell them, but there's a little show starring Jerry 'The Fantasticks' Orbach entitled Law & Order that I think they should view. You see, it's the story of the police and the district attorneys in a city called--get this--New York City, and the cops investigate murders and stuff and then turn the snooping around to Sam Waterson's eyebrows, who take it from there. Most of it is Roscoe Conkling-like posturing and bellowing from Waterson, but on the whole it's a pretty dependable show. Which is exactly the opposite of the gritty-tellin-it-like-it-is film. The GTILIIF (or Get a Life) is always full of choppy dialogue, cardboard acting, bad production values and is almost always based upon a shitscript. And while viewing dailies in class the filmmaker will invariably use the words gritty, real and (my personal favorite) underbelly. Just once I'd like to see someone make a film about the underbelly of a walrus or an overweight parent, or something.

So I guess what I'm saying is, after all the bitching and whining about what student filmmakers waste their parents' money on, I wish I could do it all over again. Do film school over. Make the funny, three minute films I wanted to do, make the Bollywood musical set in Central NY, make the sock puppet cop drama I wanted to do. Because I fell into a trap without realizing it, and only got out just before it was too late.