I’m not rich and never have been. If everything you know about America was learned from our movies you might think otherwise. I am after all, white. In Hollywood’s America all white people are wealthy, corrupt, and either work in the movie business or are doctors, lawyers, superheroes, and if you’re lucky, maybe investment bankers. Non-white people are generally criminals or Will Smith. Or perhaps you get your view of America from our journalists, most of whom went to expensive, top flight colleges on their parents’ dime, and then got jobs on either the country’s East or West coasts, the only parts of the United States that matters. Or maybe you know what you know based on the internet’s current crop of movie bloggers, who spend their days smoking pot and bragging about all the toys their well-to-do parents bought for them as kids, living in a never ending fantasy of infinite presents under an infinite Christmas tree.
That’s not America, it’s just a small part of it, and it’s not just the Michael Bay’s of this world that are to blame for ignoring reality. Yes his movies are full of supermodels with perfect teeth out to save the planet, but more often than not our supposedly more realistic indie movies do little better. This year’s top Oscar bait films tell the stories of a gay politican, a professional wrestler, and oh yeah, the president of the United States of America.
America is a lot of very different things, it’s just rare that any of them are reflected in our entertainment. Most of the people I know and grew up knowing live in a country where they spend out their existences engaged in menial labor. An existence where money isn’t easy and simple things like going to the doctor when you’re sick are a pipe dream. My Dad is and was a mechanic. Worked and continues to work hard every single day of his life, yet still there were more than a few summers spent living off food stamps and eating government cheese. Lavish presents and geeky toy collections were a fantasy, cable television was something other people had. I played with sticks in the back yard, until after a year of saving my allowance I managed to buy a single Transformer. It was a Dino-bot, and while other kids played with armies of Autobots my single, lonely Transformers fought pitched battles against Decepticons… who just happened to be disguised as household appliances. I never minded.
That’s America. Real people working hard for what sometimes is very little, and yet being happy, living, cursing, talking with uncensored glee. Real people with real jobs. Carpenters and brick layers, janitors and McDonalds cashiers and miserable saps hidden behind the four walls of an unforgiving, never ending, corporate cubicle. You’ll almost never see that in our culture’s movies, where every character is an artist or a writer or a Hollywood agent. Our movies tell the stories of politicians, doctors, and police detectives who drive around in Lamborghinis.
After a weekend in which a movie about unrealistic teenagers moaning about vampires was number one at the box office, maybe it’s time to take a minute to remember and appreciate those filmmakers who are out there, fighting to show us the little guy. The average guy. The average kid. The average girl. The 70s are long gone, and that type of filmmaker is a vanishing breed.
The number of directors I considered and disqualified before putting together this list is both shocking and depressing. Consider for instance Judd Apatow, a guy known for making comedies about the average guy every man. Or is he? His first movie told the story of a bunch of dudes working at an electronics store, and we related. Apatow, having made it big, instantly went Hollywood. His second movie told the story of a guy having a baby with a glamorous entertainment reporter. Her brother in-law? A big time rock promoter with a lavish California mansion. And for his next flick, Apatow is making a movie about stand up comics. Sorry Judd, you’re off the list.
There are so few everyman filmmakers left, that it’s important to credit those who are still out there making the effort. This is a week all about being thankful, so let’s be thankful for those few, brave directors willing to step outside the Hollywood comfort zone to tell stories about me and you. Give us movies about the guy in the next cubicle over. Celebrate existence of the average dude with these consistently salt of the earth movie makers.
Kevin Smith’s characters are all cut from the same, humble cloth. Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you’ll make it big, and even though Smith’s characters may be brilliant people, more often than not they’re found behind the counters of convenience stores, coffee shops, and roving the hallways of strip malls. They talk without an FCC filter, flinging curse words with reckless abandon in the way that any guy in a bar might do, talking about the same stuff you’ve probably said yourself after a beer or two. They fall in love, they fight, they make friends, they break up, and they do it without Hollywood shine. They’re too broke to afford glamour. Not that they let that stop them. Broke doesn’t mean broken and with or without money Smith’s avatars have smart things to say and lives to live. They live those lives not in LA or New York, but in nowhere towns in New Jersey or in the frozen, bitterly cold suburbs of Pittsburgh. Even thrust into the weirdest of situations, Kevin Smith’s characters are still mostly just dudes. They hang out in bars, wander around comic book shops, and work in video stores. They’re pot smoking, porno making, lesbian courting dudes.
Clip from Zack And Miri Make a Porno:
Sure he made a movie set in space, but set aside Sunshine for a minute and look at the rest of Boyle’s work. His current movie, Slumdog Milionaire is getting Oscar buzz for telling the story of a kid from the Indian slums. Trainspotting was about nobody drug users looking for their next fix. Millions took a nobody kid and dropped a bag of money on his head. 28 Days Later? Sure it’s a zombie flick, but one told entirely from the perspective of lower-middle class city dwellers. Boyle is one of the most creative, innovative filmmakers out there with a camera, but nearly everything he does remains grounded in the lives of people who could easily be living next door to me and you.
Clip From Slumdog Millionaire:
Mike Judge got his start telling the story of two, average, incredibly brain-dead American teenagers. Beavis & Butthead were a cultural phenomenon not just because they were stupid, be because more often than not their stupidity hit pretty close to home. From there he went on to make a movie about tortured office workers, and set it not in New York (Hollywood’s location default), but shockingly, in a generic Dallas industrial park. Frustrated corporate cogs stuck in dead in jobs and living in tiny apartments has never been done better, but Hollywood’s studios rejected Office Space, kicked it to the curb, and left it lying in the gutter where it quickly became a cult sensation. As if in response to Hollywood’s refusal to accept a comedy about the real working world, Judge made Idiocracy, the story of the most average person available thrust into his prediction of where mankind’s increased stupidity is sending us. Repeatedly burned and spurned by the studio system, Judge keeps plugging right along in the world of the normal dude. His next movie is Extract, a comedy set in the exciting world of a factory worker. Mike Judge doesn’t just get the common man, he’s out to save us.
Clips from Office Space:
If you haven’t heard of Mike Leigh, it’s probably because you don’t spend a lot of time hanging out in British arthouses. He’s gotten some attention this year for the happy little indie movie Happy-Go-Lucky, about the life of a cheerful, elementary school teacher. In 2004 he got Oscar buzz for Vera Drake, a film which not only tackles the abortion issue, but does so from the perspective of a humble, working-class family. Leigh’s entire career has been spent devoted to working class folk, telling the stories of caring, loving, people finding happiness and doing the right thing, irregardless of their social status. Perhaps more importantly, unlike most indie filmmakers he does it without being pretentious. As payment for daring to be normal, Mike Leigh’s reward has been working in relative obscurity. Strike a blow for the common man, and seek out Mike Leigh’s films.
Clip from Happy-Go-Lucky:
To grant Joel and Ethan their spot on this list, you’re going to have to overlook The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. Hey, everyone is allowed to indulge in a little wacky fantasy from time to time. For the most part though, the Coens have made their mark by putting average, real people into strange circumstances and simply seeing how they’ll react. What’s really great about the Coens’ work is that just because their characters may more often than not be Joe Schmoes… they aren’t idiots. They live in the snow and the heat, in Fargo and in rural Texas, their characters are almost a part of the places where they live. They talk with thick accents and fight with their wives, they struggle with car payments and sometimes get in over their heads. In No Country for Old Men Josh Brolin plays a run of the mill trailer park redneck, but he’s not dumb and he knows trouble when he sees it. The Coen Brothers not only make movie about real people in real places, they make movies about real, smart people living ordinary lives and occasionally thrust into out of the ordinary circumstances.
Clip from No Country For Old Men:
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