Gerald L'Ecuyer: A Filmmaker's Journey

A Filmmaker's Journey is not quite a mockumentary, nor is it fiction, nor is it a film-memoir. Rather it is an experiment with the nature of representation that manages to avoid any avant-garde aloofness and, when you're watching it, is pure vicarious fun.

The story is this: Gerald L'Eucyer has a script for a film, he pitches it, gets funding, and proceeds to shoot, and meanwhile his group of documentarians are following him around with a digital camera. But his total incompetence as a director and his depressive narcissism infuriate actors and backers alike. As his film within a film thins to an absurd nothingness the actual film grows in hilarity and dark humor. Near the end of the film Gerald has lost almost all hope and is saved from the brink of total failure by the encouragement of a grinning boy who shouts at him, "I think you're a good person." Gerald shouts back, "You think I'm a good person?" And with this affirmation he is yet again saved. There is something both morbid and tender, something perverse and authentic at play here, and it's a totally enthralling energy once you get into it.

Also, there are some really great performances here: a fantastic stream of well-known people like Christopher Durang, Dan Futterman, Bob Balaban, Ann Magnuson, and Lothaire Bluteau along with great newcomers like Katherine Creel, John L. Haber, and James Pinkowski.