Most comic book fans have been to a convention and know that any small industry has its own share of traditions, personalities, drama, and subgroups. That's what filmmaker Marshall Cook set out to look at in Film Fest, a comedy about an indie film that's working the festival circuit, and all the weird personalities that comprise that circuit. Cook's movie, which debuted last year at the Austin Film Festival last October, hit Amazon for sale and rental in March. It might be fair to compare the film to Christopher Guest's niche-y mockumentaries like A Mighty Wind and Best in Show, in which the filmmaker lovingly parodies those communities, but stops short of actually making fun of them.
Cook's movie has received rave reviews. Maybe it helps that people are feeling pretty nostalgic for festivals now that we have had more than a year of almost every big gathering being done virtually, but beyond that, the movie has a great cast that elevates a strong script and fills the quiet moments of the movie with improvised humor.
"The elevator pitch, very simply, is struggling independent filmmakers traveling to an obscure film festival to sell their film -- representing the 99% of filmmakers in 'Hollywood,'" Cook explained. "So it's an inside baseball movie, but I think it's relatable to the masses, in terms of people trying to break through a brick wall of impossible roadblocks. But also, there's a lot of stuff that filmmakers will relate to, that'll hit them right in the stomach, where they're either laughing or cringing."
That sense of "inside baseball" also creates a sense of intimacy among the characters and invites the audience into what feels like a sacred space on some level. That feeling makes the comedy even more effective, as it feels a little like you're questioning the "sacredness" of it all.
"I've been going to film festivals since I was 23, starting with short films and all kinds of festivals all over the country," Cook told ComicBook. "So, I took memories and experiences from some of those. And then recently, I acted in an indie film that did a little bit of a festival run -- called Hunting Lands -- and that jogged my memory of what an interesting world this is. I just hadn't seen it represented in the way that I particularly wanted to. So, obviously this isn't everyone's experience, this is one experience, and we have art types, and we have definitely some specific, that I think everyone experiences, but I can't say that this is the film festival experience. This is a certain type of film festival experience. And a lot of people do relate to it, I've found so far. But in the specifics, it's just like with any movie, especially now, we are more niche. So if you're watching a comic book movie, there's going to be so much stuff that people who didn't read the comics don't get, but the people who did read it are going to love it. So you've got people that really love it, and you've got people that can still enjoy it and then get it explained to them later."
The other side of that coin, though, is that Cook didn't want to make it about what's going on at this moment.
"In some ways, we tried to make it timeless. If you think about it, this movie could have been made 20 years ago," Cook said. "And in festivals, existing now are silly in the digital age, and they'll be silly 20 years from now, in a sense. But there's still a purpose for them because there's less and less places to screen your movie with an audience of people who like movies. So there's a lot of messages within the movie, and I think that those will carry."
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