Monday, August 3, 2009
The Business of a Non-Filmmaker Making a Movie
Sherman Alexie's The Business of Fancydancing is a kind of shaggy dog of an independent film that was released in 2002. It made the rounds and received with interest in the independent film festivals, but unfortunately did not find an audience in in its limited theatrical release. Thank goodness for DVD and its ability to capture brave cinematic undertakings like this so that they are not simply ephemeral moments in one's memory banks. There is much in Fancydancing that is imperfect and a little bit clumsy at times, but there are moments that are as strong and provocative as anything Alexie, a unique and provocative artist has created.
Digital video is a kind of technological miracle. Fancydancing shows what can happen when folks with a lot of talent as well as some solid technical and aesthetic resources come together in an artistic enterprise. This film is said to have been budgeted at $100,000, not a minor sum to be sure, but a surprisingly small sum for the production of a full length film. Again it is another example of how digital resources and technology create opportunities to create, to do things that would otherwise be impossible.
It is unfair to Fancy Dancing to lump it together with Smoke Signals, the 1998 ground breaking and successful feature film that Alexie wrote and was one of the primary creative sources behind. It had a budget twenty times larger and was clearly intended as a kind of mass entertainment. A way to consider the differences: Smoke Signals was an adaptation of Alexie's fiction, Fancy Dancing, which has much of its roots in time Alexie spent with a video collective in Seattle, is filled with his poetry, and poetry will never (nor is intended to) attract a similar level of audience.
In the DVD commentary track, Alexie recounts how the film's art director Jonny Saturen told him during production. "Sherman, this movie is going to be too white for Indians, too Indian for white people and too gay for everybody. Whose going to want to see this? Indians are rednecks. White people are rednecks. I said maybe about 10,000 people, Jonny. And so far that has been about accurate."
Nevertheless, If one is a fan of Alexie as our household is, trying never to miss a book tour or local personal appearance, the DVD is definitely worth checking out. As is the case in most of Alexie's enterprises, it is rooted firmly in his autobiographical experience as a Spokane Indian but with all kinds of twists and turns.
His protagonist Seymour Plotkin is gay and went to school in Seattle. Alexie is married with two children and went to school closer to home in Spokane and and Pullman before moving to Seattle. Probably the most direct biographical link in the film concerns its depiction of how Alexie's fame and public persona was responded to by his fellow tribal members.
There is a lot of emotion and naked honesty in this little film and much to admire despite some ragged edges. I still remember my introduction to Alexie fifteen years ago. I was doing deliveries on my weekend job and encountered an interview on NPR's Weekend Edition just after his first book of fiction, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. This was followed a few weeks later with a reading he did at my college (and now my work home.) The book readings, appearances and readings I've had pleasure to have attended since have always been memorable. But there was an exuberance and energy to those early encounters that is hard to describe, it was kind of like the opening chord of the Beatles' A Hard Days Night. There are moments in Fancydancing that are reminiscent of that time. They reflect the energy and excitement of a creative individual trying his hand, with a little help from his friends, at another medium and bringing the results home for us to see.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:46 PM
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