To celebrate KDay I really wanted to watch a doc. about Kansas/the Midwest. The obvious choice was "What's the Matter With Kansas" but I decided against it for two reasons: 1. I'd seen it before. 2. It really didn't paint KS in the best light. They picked a handful of nut jobs, on both sides of the political spectrum, and let them speak for an entire state.
So I continued my search. After some digging I came across this amazing, heartbreaking trailer. The film is called 'Manhattan, KS':
Though not directly about KS it's set there, and looks like it does so with respect.
Well long story short I never found a place to watch it online, but while I was looking I came across 'Wamego'; another doc. made in KS by Kansans. Without watching the trailer I started it. It turned out to be the worst documentary I've watched all year, hands down.
'Wamego' tells (or tries to tell) the story of a family working together to create a feature length film inspired by an actual crime committed in the area of Wamego, KS. The sister acts, the dad is the producer and the son is the brains behind the operation; writer, director, casting agent, and publicist. The rest of the film is just glorified home movies and the wunderkind director tooting his own horn.
As a true Midwestern, I constantly worry about appearing boastful. Kansans are taught from any early age that pride is the ugliest color you could wear, so we've learned to take a good deal of joy in being humble. Kansans are competitively modest.
Any worries that I was a blowhard were erased after watching this guy fly his own flags for 2 hours. He thinks he's God's gift to cinema. Really, it was like something out of a Ricky Gervais series: he went to Cal-Arts for film, dropped out after 'he felt he learned enough' and came back to KS where he produced his first film, a dark comedy about school shootings. He blames the film's poor reception on Columbine, which happened the following year. Yes- surely that was the saddest consequence of a national tragedy, and totally the reason your shitty movie didn't sell.
The boasting reached an incredulous peak as he was casting his new movie. He looked into the camera and with a straight face told us he was debating between Kathy Bates or Jodie Foster for the lead role. Madonna was a 'maybe'.
Here's the trailer for his last film:
This makes "The Room" look like 'Schindler's List', and he thought he was going to get the biggest names in Hollywood to be in his picture. (Ultimately, he decided to cast a bunch of unkowns instead, in order to stay true to his artistic vision. I'm sure Madonna was crushed.)
Honestly after that I checked out. I remember them worrying a lot about funding, and an unbelievably long scene about them painting wagons for props (seriously, like 6 minutes about painting wagons), but other than that I didn't pull anything from it.
After the movie I scanned the web to see what scathing reviews I could find of his work. What I found instead, was a pleasant, even positive review from Roger Ebert, and a list of impressive awards the films had racked up at international film festivals.
Which brings us back to the mindset of the average Midwesterner; the only thing I hate more than a boastful person is a person gaining undeserved attention. Maybe instead of working so hard of eradicating cockiness from our emotional vocabulary, Kansans like myself should focus on pettiness?
You can watch Wamego online. Because I am not completely over being petty, I won't post the link. Consider it me doing you a favor.
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