After watching American Movie with my cult film workshop tonight, I finally got a chance to watch the full-length version of Coven, which is the project Mark Borchardt slaves over for most of the documentary. The first thing I noticed was how little of the film’s tone and content is actually telegraphed into Chris Smith and Sarah Price’s mostly effective documentary. Coven is clearly not as good a film as American Movie, which is about as good an investigation of independent filmmaking as there is out there. But seeing it in full, I began to be a bit suspicious of Price and Smith’s methods and wondered what ended up on the cutting room floor of their Sundance smash hit film.
There are a lot of folks who accuse Smith and Price of mocking Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank through selective editing. Honestly, I can’t imagine what kind of material the ridiculous filmmaker and his even more ridiculous friend could provide for the documentarians that wouldn’t make them look like psychotic hicks on a fool’s errand. But I tend to think that Smith and Price do their best with Borchardt, and portray him as warmly as possible, given the person they were dealing with. Yes, he spends a ton of money on what appears to be a dead-end slasher project, and yes, he is clearly shown to be a loner and an alcoholic. But there is also some great footage of him doing the heavy lifting, both literally and figuratively, on his project — getting glass smashed all over him, being dragged through the mud, and camping out in the University of Wisconsin film editing suite with family and friends who love him enough to help him splice for hours and hours and hours.
What surprised me upon watching Coven, though, was that it bears little resemblance to the film we think Borchardt is making while watching American Movie. Coven is predictably awful, but Borchardt makes use of a shockingly immersive and inventive visual vocabulary. Many of the iconic shots from the short film end up in the documentary, but a lot is left out, namely the entire plot about Borchardt’s character joining a self-help group which, according to him, “isn’t very helpful.” Looking back on American Movie, I appreciate that Smith and Price go to great lengths to humanize the process of DIY fimmaking, giving shape to Borchardt’s personal life through several scenes, for example, where he’s watching the Packers on TV. But the documentary ultimately misses the forest for the trees; I would rather have a more in-depth look at the location shooting for Coven than a charming, holistic look at the filmmaker’s home life. Ultimately, the documentary falls extremely short of giving us a complete idea behind the motivations for making Coven and the actual process of creating it. The fact that several of the main actors and actresses in Borchardt’s film, including female lead Miriam Frost, are completely left out of the documentary is very telling. Smith and Price may have set out to make a film about filmmaking, but the tangents far outflank the good intentions.
Below the cut, I’ve posted some excellent frames from Coven. If the film was tidied up a bit, it would look positively gorgeous in 16mm black and white. As it is, the stock is generally muddy, but it’s not hard to get the sense that Borchardt actually does know what he’s doing. It’s too bad that Northwestern was never finished.
Filed under: Commentary
[Eitan]
After watching American Movie with my cult film workshop tonight, I finally got a chance to watch the full-length version of Coven, which is the project Mark Borchardt slaves over for most of the documentary. The first thing I noticed was how little of the film’s tone and content is actually telegraphed into Chris Smith and Sarah Price’s mostly effective documentary. Coven is clearly not as good a film as American Movie, which is about as good an investigation of independent filmmaking as there is out there. But seeing it in full, I began to be a bit suspicious of Price and Smith’s methods and wondered what ended up on the cutting room floor of their Sundance smash hit film.
There are a lot of folks who accuse Smith and Price of mocking Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank through selective editing. Honestly, I can’t imagine what kind of material the ridiculous filmmaker and his even more ridiculous friend could provide for the documentarians that wouldn’t make them look like psychotic hicks on a fool’s errand. But I tend to think that Smith and Price do their best with Borchardt, and portray him as warmly as possible, given the person they were dealing with. Yes, he spends a ton of money on what appears to be a dead-end slasher project, and yes, he is clearly shown to be a loner and an alcoholic. But there is also some great footage of him doing the heavy lifting, both literally and figuratively, on his project — getting glass smashed all over him, being dragged through the mud, and camping out in the University of Wisconsin film editing suite with family and friends who love him enough to help him splice for hours and hours and hours.
What surprised me upon watching Coven, though, was that it bears little resemblance to the film we think Borchardt is making while watching American Movie. Coven is predictably awful, but Borchardt makes use of a shockingly immersive and inventive visual vocabulary. Many of the iconic shots from the short film end up in the documentary, but a lot is left out, namely the entire plot about Borchardt’s character joining a self-help group which, according to him, “isn’t very helpful.” Looking back on American Movie, I appreciate that Smith and Price go to great lengths to humanize the process of DIY fimmaking, giving shape to Borchardt’s personal life through several scenes, for example, where he’s watching the Packers on TV. But the documentary ultimately misses the forest for the trees; I would rather have a more in-depth look at the location shooting for Coven than a charming, holistic look at the filmmaker’s home life. Ultimately, the documentary falls extremely short of giving us a complete idea behind the motivations for making Coven and the actual process of creating it. The fact that several of the main actors and actresses in Borchardt’s film, including female lead Miriam Frost, are completely left out of the documentary is very telling. Smith and Price may have set out to make a film about filmmaking, but the tangents far outflank the good intentions.
Below the cut, I’ve posted some excellent frames from Coven. If the film was tidied up a bit, it would look positively gorgeous in 16mm black and white. As it is, the stock is generally muddy, but it’s not hard to get the sense that Borchardt actually does know what he’s doing. It’s too bad that Northwestern was never finished.
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