How Not to Make a Movie

Wish it was longer because it's a nice look at a first attempt to try something big and how it collapsed yet still gave insight and started something that grew. Having also gone through a similar terrible first feature experience, this resonated and made me wish I'd done behind the scenes stuff at the time. It was neat to see the RLM guys so young too!

For many, the dreams of directing a feature film usually are never put to video. Chronicling the ambitious spirit of Jay Bauman and Mike Stoklasa in their first project together gives the retrospective interviews weight into the failure and acceptance of making their no-budget film Gorilla, Interrupted. With other "failed movie" documentaries, the viewer response to the film carries the majority of the film and the ironic counter-culture that makes Troll 2 a success. How Not to Make a Movie doesn't have an audience. Jay, Mike, and Rich contain the interviews to them and their closest friends because... nobody saw the movie. All their hard work and adversity produced a 68-minute waste of tape. They became like the other wanna-be filmmakers who unlike them didn't have potential. the tone of resentment in Stoklasa voice when illustrating Garrett Gilchrist's involvement when matched with the bittersweet optimism of their film-making benchmark inevitably spring boarding a decades-long friendship between the three exemplifies the struggles of life and our attempts to edit failures. Easily the best work RLM has ever done. Hopefully, they'll make doc's like this with their other feature length films.