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Crap Shoot - The Documentary
Why does Hollywood release so many lousy movies? Screen writer William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride) says that the process is so complex and that there are so many variables that even while making a movie it's impossible to tell if it's going to be any good. Basically it a gamble. Retired Army office Ken Close isn't so sure that's the case and sets off to Hollywood to find out why so many movies are bad in this part documentary, part mocumentary, part self-promotional direct to DVD film: Crap Shoot. It's an interesting topic for a film, but Close doesn't have a single vision for the movie and it ends up being an odd mixture of low-brow humor, political rants, self-promotion, and interviews with people on the fringe of movie-making.
Ken Close introduces himself as being a life-long member of Mensa with a 152 IQ, an Army officer, a certified financial planner and a research scientist. (A "top-notch" research scientist according to his text bio, though he isn't associated with any university or research center. He doesn't mention which scientific discipline he works in either. Apparently a tireless worker, he had the time to qualify for his CFP certificate while also pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.) He's written a series of related screenplays, and after having a few film buffs testify at how powerful and amazing these potential films about a man looking for true love are, he shocks the audience by announcing that they haven't been optioned yet.
To find out why that is and just what's wrong with Hollywood, Ken takes the films narrator and longtime friend Jim Horton to Las Vegas where they rent a car and drive to LA. There they interview a number of people associated with the film industry. There's a 'reader' for a studio who evaluates scripts, a couple of actresses who have had some minor roles and a caterer among other people. He asks most of them the same questions soft ball questions, (which is more important talent or connections, what makes a good movie, etc.) and gets some similar answers. In between (and sometimes during the interviews) Ken adds some staged 'comic' moments to lighten the mood make the film less dry. He also includes scenes from his own home-made movies as well as an entire short he did, "Risk-ee."
The problem with the film is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a mockumentary? The straight interviews suggest not, but it's not a documentary since the terribly unfunny scripted scenes make sure that no one will take the movie seriously. With fart jokes (Awwww geeze crack a window why don't ya! I think I already did) and lame sexual innuendo the movie appears to want to emulate one of the lesser National Lampoon films, the same movies that Close is deriding.
I became nervous in the opening minutes of this film when the camera started showing off the writer/director/stars collection of painted military miniatures and guns. It seemed totally out of place and strange, but that seems to be the film's mantra. There are a lot of really odd moments. It feels like any idea Close had, he through into the script. At one point he spends three minutes deriding Bush's economic polices. What does that have to do with making movies??? The film shows him at Giley's riding the bull, has a couple of card tricks by a Vegas magician, and even features a walk-on by two naked ladies (in masks no less.) None of this has anything to do with his premise and should have ended up on the cutting room floor. Close also makes sure to insult both Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock the two people he's trying hardest to emulate. A little jealous maybe?
While the acting is bad (Close is extremely wooden as he reads all of his interview questions and most of his lines) and the narrative disjointed (to put it mildly) I had a big problem with the point that Close was trying to make. His main premise is that it should be possible to scientifically determine whether a film is going to be good or not. (He talks about using MRIs to do brain scans while people are watching a movie and using that data to judge a film's merit.) Setting aside the facts that a bad director or cast can ruin a good script, and that this technique would only be useful after the film was made, and therefore totally unless in creating a good film, the whole premise is ludicrous. Movies are art. You can use science to design a plane or a nuclear reactor, but not to create the works of Mozart or Rembrandt. Likewise you can't get a computer to write a book, and having a scientific protocol to create a great film is a ludicrous idea. If Close used his method on this film (which I believe he did seeing how he mixed documentary-style interviews with supposedly comic interludes), I can think of no better argument against the theory than this DVD.
The DVD:
Audio:
The stereo soundtrack was adequate and about what I was expecting for a micro-budget documentary. Some of the dialog was a little hard to hear, but generally it sounded fine. There are no subtitles.
Video:
The 1.78:1 widescreen image was not anamorphically enhanced, which is a big strike going in. The image quality was okay, with fair amount of detail and colors that were okay but not incredibly intense. There were a couple of instances where whites bloomed but these weren't significant, and there was grain in several places. Overall this is a nice looking film given the budget. In the text bios it's implied that this film looks "better than any of Michael Moore's multi-million dollar productions." That's not the case.
Extras:
The only extras are some text crew bios and two excerpts from the film, the economics lecture (where Close incorrectly states that Reagan's tax cuts were aimed at the middle class) and the opera song.
Final Thoughts:
Thinking back on this film, it's more of an hour and a half of Ken Close promoting himself than anything else. With his needless on-screen resume (ending with the narrator announcing "he's smart". Don't tell me you're smart, show me!) the too frequent clips from his own amateur home movies, and the video tour of his house, and his whining that his fantastic series of screen plays have been ignored by Hollywood it certainly feels that Close wanted to be the center of his movie. Had he made a mocumentary about trying to get his movies made it might have been funny, or a straight documentary about how movies are made in Hollywood may have been interesting, but this mixture of the two with a healthy does of other random scenes is neither. Pass this one by.
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