Beer Pong, Salesmen and British Gangsters: Cinevegas, Day 2

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Wellness, Directed by Jake Mahaffy

Watch the Wellness trailer:


Wellness follows Thomas Lindsay, a door-to-door salesman in the twilight of his career, struggling to make his mark and to make a living.  He's reping a new company that offers a revolutionary new wellness system.  Exactly what that system is, Thomas isn't sure.  But with its distributor model (a.k.a. pyramid scheme), it offers quick and significant wealth.  Thus, he convinces himself it's a great product, even if he can't seem to get his shipment of the product or even marketing materials (he carries around cheap photocopies of a sales document that a 5-year-old could have designed in Notepad).

As Thomas works his way through his new sales territory, he becomes more and more aware of the scam he's a party to while he also becomes more desperate to believe in the product and make sales, especially after he writes a $20,000 check to ensure his place in the company.  We squirm as he goes through increasingly more elaborate mental gymnastics to convince himself and his customers.  His explanations become more and more bizarre.  The system will make bow movements "big and correctly shaped."  It works through thought processes which change your whole electro-chemical balance.  Participation is part of your "national obligation" to help your pocketbook and the economy. At one group presentation, he disappears into the bathroom to cut the tags off a new pair of oversized pants which he presents as proof of his transformation a la Subway's Jared.  At the same meeting, he hangs up ridiculous motivational/sales signs (all simple text on colored paper) such as "Paradigm Shift !!!"

It's a slow-burn tragedy with many cringe-worthy moments that are sadly comic.  The lead actor, Jeff Clark, is extraordinary as Thomas.  He delivers an utterly realistic and sympathetic portrayal of this flawed character.  I was simply blown away with his performance.  Jake Mahaffy, who serves as writer, director, cinematographer and editor, presents this tale in a cinéma vérité style that recalls both Maysles' Salesman and The Office.  M. Ward's music is used to nice effect. There are some technical flaws (the natural lighting is too dark in places and the background sound levels are occasionally too high),  but overall Wellness is a smart and expertly executed character study.

In introducing his filim, Mahaffy described his film as a "festival film" -- the kind of film that you can only catch on the big screen at a festival.  There aren't the explosions, celebrities or drama to attract even the indie studios.  Yet, these films and the festivals that program them are important.  They allow directors to tell unique stories, to hone their craft, to experiment.  And Wellness (which won the Narrative Jury Prize at SXSW) is a prime example of why that's needed.
 

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The End, Directed by Nicola Collins

Watch The End trailer:


In The End, director Nicola Collins tells the story of her father and his friends involved in the violent underworld of the East End of London.  Partially inspired by portrayals of these types of characters in films such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Collins (who played one of the twins in Snatch) wanted to show the real characters of the East End.

The film weaves interview footage with a small amount of archival footage, all in black-and-white until she shows the contrast of her father's rough-and-tumble world with the current immigrant-dominated East End.  The film does provide a valuable, if flawed, portrait of a part of London that has virtually disappeared.  The film is dotted with interesting characters and anecdotes.  While the men own up to the title of gangster, they see themselves more as Robin Hoods or at least victims of circumstance.  Seeing these real-life gangsters talk about their code, while echoing what we see in fictional films, is still fascinating.

However, the film suffers on several counts.  It could benefit from a more structured narrative.  There are a lot of quick edits and Collins does a good job of pulling together themes across the interviews.  But as a whole, the film lacks a sense of movement toward any destination.  The film also suffers from a lack of source material.  Most of what's shown comes from 2-hour blocks of interviews.  We could have a stronger sense of who these men are and what they've done with footage of their everyday lives, interviews with those around them (from family to alleged victims to the police), etc.  The lack of source material perhaps stems from another problem: the lack of perspective.  Collins clearly has affection for these guys, which is why she's able to get the interviews.  However, she doesn't push (they repeatedly decline to get into details of their misdeeds) or provide any other perspective.  A section of humorous bits comes across as something much funnier to friends and family.

The End is not a bad film.  It's enjoyable to watch and a portrait of people we rarely see outside of highly stylized fictional versions.  But it definitely left me wanting both a more journalistic and a more intimate portrait of these men.

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Last Cup: The Road to the World Series of Beer Pong, Directed by Dan Lindsay

Watch the Last Cup trailer:


Last Cup premiered to an enthusiastic crowd at Cinevegas, and it has all the marks of a hit (cult or otherwise).  The film follows players through the 2nd World Series of Beer Pong (WSOBP), held outside of Las Vegas in 2007.  The film has fun explaining the "sport" and introducing the players.  

However, what should have been (and starts out as) a romp with miniature character studies is bogged down by too much play-by-play in the finals.  The directors should have spent more time following the players (and there are some good characters) in their hometowns to invest us more in the drama of the play, and then cut through the many rounds of play which become a bit tedious as shown.  See King of Pong for the counter example of how to do this just right.

Nonetheless, Last Cup is an entertaining look at this growing phenomenon, and it's well worth putting up with a little monotony near the end.

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I also saw the world premiere of Your Name Here, directed by Matthew Wilder and starring Bill Pullman.  However, a little jet lag on a long day induced me to nod off a couple times.  With its bizarre and shifting alternate realities, a brief outage leaves anyone lost.  Even those fully alert seemed to have problems following the jumps.  But while I can't fairly evaluate it, word around the festival combined with what I did catch leave me with no desire to give it a fair screening.