R2PC: Road to Park City Reviews

A how-to manual for aspiring filmmakers in the form of a broadly comic mockumentary, inspired by writer/director Bret Stern's book How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000 (and Not Go to Jail). Stern's gimmicky conceit is to follow aspiring auteur John (N.Y.-based comic John Viener) as he stumbles through the filmmaking process, guided only by a determination to take a film to the Sundance festival in Park City, Utah. That John has no idea how to make a movie — or even what movie he wants to make — hardly matters. After all, who hasn't read about successful filmmakers ("successful" meaning they finished a film and got it shown somewhere) who dove right in, figuring filmmaking is no bigger a deal than slapping together a set of bookshelves from milk crates and boards? So John starts asking questions ("I feel like an idiot," he laughs, and sounds like one too), mostly of real people who don't quite seem to be in on the joke. They include representatives of SAG and the DGA, screenwriters, lab guys, producers, equipment rental managers, New York City's film commissioner, various crew members and a couple of pals, including one who suggests making a B&W film so pretentious and confusing people will say it's great just to avoid feeling dumb. In between, John does an execrable stand-up routine about his travails, and a priss who calls himself "Mr. Film" (Eric Leffler) explains some key concepts. Though the film contains solid information about the complicated mix of technical know-how, business savvy and dogged determination needed to finish a film, it's hugely smug and annoying. Stern (son of photographer Bert Stern and ballerina Allegra Kent) has told interviewers he originally envisioned a more straightforward instructional film; the frat-boy yuks crept in as they were shooting. And though it didn't go to Sundance, the film opened the competing Slamdance Festival in 2000.