Recently I got back on track with my Boston Independent Film Review writing and looked for a project to write about. I remembered that one of the other BIFR writers had been contacted to write a review of a documentary filmed in western MA and had never gotten around to it, so he sent me all the information on it and before I knew it, I had sitting in my inbox the press screening passes to Help Wanted and Some Assembly Required, a Kevin Smith-esque ultra-low-budget independent film about a down-and-out couple desperate for money and a documentary that the filmmakers behind Help Wanted filmed and produced about how poorly they executed the film, respectively. Excited to watch the documentary, I proceeded to watch it in large chunks over the next few days and I was actually quite impressed. It was shot well, edited well, and was engaging and intriguing, and, most importantly for a documentary targeting the filmmakers themselves, it did not hold back. From the documentary’s tagline, “They Don’t Teach Failure In Film School”, one ought to focus on the word directly in the center: “FAILURE”. Their feature film, Help Wanted, looked and sounded like utter shit, and what is a film but a sequence of visual and auditory stimuli? So their first feature film was a failure, but only relatively speaking; after all, they finished the film, didn’t they? And most wannabe and novice filmmakers cannot say that they actually finish a feature film; most go on to settle down into complete and utter obscurity with their 9-5 jobs that having nothing to do with film or making. So what these guys really failed at was making their first feature film well. The headaches, disasters, and embarrassments that they endured was normal for any feature film production, so it was really just the end result that resembled anything near failure.
I haven’t always been a huge fan of documentaries, primarily because I’m a fiction fanatic and I find the pretentious hyper-zealousness regarding documentaries among some cliques to be obnoxious and their constant insistence that I see this documentary or that documentary summons a fear in me that I’ll concede to their demands and waste two hours of my life on something shitty. So, when I hear that somebody made a documentary and they want me to watch it, I find myself pissing and moaning silently as I prepare to watch it. That being said, I do love most documentaries that I finally end up watching, because I’m very picky with them and I do find new knowledge of all kinds to be fascinating, so when I started Some Assembly Required, I had mixed feelings. However, those mixed feelings soon vanished and were replaced by complete and utter confusion almost as soon as the first scene of the documentary began.
How in the hell, I asked myself, could the creators of this documentary have been responsible for something that is so completely and totally, albeit allegedly, terrible? The documentary was, in fact, fantastic. It was extremely well-done, cohesive, entertaining, intriguing, hilarious, informative, and its production value was of relatively high caliber. The most redeeming quality of the film, though, was the absolutely shameless and uncensored self-criticism that the filmmakers behind Help Wanted and Some Assembly Required bestow ruthlessly upon themselves. Needless to say, I had to see what was so bad about Help Wanted.
As I watched Help Wanted, I couldn’t help but feel pulled into this film as well. It was actually very well-written for something so mercilessly bashed by its own creators. The acting was subpar at best, the cinematography elementary at best, the editing a complete disaster, while the production value, set design, directing, and everything else was an abhorrent mess. Still, it wasn’t a complete waste of 90 minutes or so. Rather, the story was intriguing and entertaining enough and the acting fair enough not to ruin the writing that it actually could have been a half-decent Indie film that one might even find free on IFC’s OnDemand selection one day. So, the nature of the filmmakers’ “failure” was now apparent: they had taken a good script and made a shitty movie out of it… every screenwriter’s worst nightmare. I understood now, and it made the sympathy, pity, comedy, and tragedy of Some Assembly Required all the more real and biting.
Some Assembly Required has been making silent but noteworthy waves in the independent film scene, taking home for Luke Bittel, the co-director, and his crew a win for Best Documentary at the Silk City Flick Fest 2009, as well has receiving a four star review from Film Threat, garnering it a selection as one of the best documentaries of 2011 according to Film Threat.
So, needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed Some Assembly Required and these guys definitely learned A LOT from Help Wanted, which is evidenced in Some Assembly Required, though I suppose one would have to sift through the credits of both films to see which weak links they cut and left in the void between the two projects. Unlike many independent documentaries, where the filmmakers love themselves too much and take themselves too seriously and think every audience member will too, the characters involved in Help Wanted and featured in Some Assembly Required are actually really entertaining, unique, down-to-earth, and/or completely bizarre. Look out for this film, even if the filmmakers never go anywhere in life; it’s definitely worth a watch, especially for those of us who are involved in independent filmmaking!
Paul is an alumnus of the UMASS Amherst and Boston Sociology undergraduate program. While not writing local independent film reviews, Paul is a writer of novels, theater, and the screen, as well as a film director, podcast co-host, entrepreneur, and vacuum cleaner salesperson. Paul can be reached at pmcalarn17@gmail.com.
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