I really hope Blue Collar Films manages to re-visit “Just About Famous” someday, because there is at least ninety minutes of entertaining material to be tapped from the lives of celebrity impersonators and their confrontations with people who are convinced they’re the iconic celebrities they resemble. However as a fourteen minute feature, “Just About Famous” is a hysterical and absolutely entertaining documentary about the lives of a small group of celebrity impersonators who resemble some of the most famous people in America, for better or for worse.
Tag Archives: Documentary
Lensing with Love: Interview with Documentarians Stephanie Silber & Victor Zimet, Part Two
How has the reaction been toward your documentary “Random Lunacy”?
Stephanie: That’s a good question, and one we’re constantly asked. People tend to be polarized by the extreme life that Poppa lived with his family; they seem either to get it or not. There is often a very angry reaction from people, while others are completely enamored, blown away by the notion of such absolute freedom, which of course comes with its own price.
I do think there is a middle ground – we cannot all live completely outside of the conventions of society as the Neutrinos so successfully did, but we can adapt some of the philosophies to our own lives, and be the better persons for it.
Lensing with Love: Interview with Documentarians Stephanie Silber & Victor Zimet
I was introduced to directors Victor Zimet and Stephanie Silber in 2007 when I reviewed their film “Songs and Stories.” Though I didn’t give it such a glowing review, the professionals I now consider close friends didn’t waver in their persistence on winning me over in their talents and unique subjects for focusing their documentaries on and sent me “Random Lunacy” in 2007. Suffice it to say after watching that film I was won over by the filmmaking duo whose entire filmography has been strictly documentaries.
And after chronicling the legendary Poppa Neutrino and his life as a family man journeying across the world with his band of sons, daughters, and enduring wife, I had to keep seeing what the pair would put out there, and I had to pick their brains. The devoted and fiercely loyal married couple are known Victor Zimet and Stephanie Silber, a twosome of talented and humble filmmakers who love what they do, and they do it with a devotion that is admirable and true to the indie spirit. Also, it helps they’re both loyal classic rock buffs like I am. The two took the time out of their busy schedule to let us pick their brain and here’s what resulted out of random lunacy, the roads less traveled that they traveled for a reason, and some genuine good humor.
Jackass 3D (2010)
“That’s the story of Jackass there! Pissing in the wind!”
Sure, “Jack Ass” May have stumbled with the first film which was just so many layers of pure awful.
Knoxville (pictured) getting mauled. For fun!
But with the sequel, Johnny Knoxville and the guys sort of learned their lesson in spite of its success and turned their antics in to performance art of a sorts. They’ve taken the art of acting like morons and turned it in to a form or pre-orchestrated and carefully planned nihilism that is both very funny and always has something of a point to make.
Take for example the sheer ludicrousness of Knoxville dressed as an old man making out with his under aged (an obviously aged actress pretending to be a teen) grand daughter and no one at all reacting to the display of the two kissing and nearly dropping down to the floor humping. It’s insane how by now Knoxville has figured out that he’s never going to be anything but the man behind “Jackass” so he’s taken that and made it in to a form of art where it’s often a new kind of silent film.
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Seeking Happily Ever After (2010)
I think it’s misleading to tell people that men don’t think about this sort of relationship issue where they want to find the right person because I’ve met many men who are career motivated but also are committed to finding the right woman. Hell, I am currently a man seeking the right woman while also sticking to my guns as a writer, so it’s disparaging for the directors to proclaim women the all feeling all loving animal looking for the right mate while the men are mainly just selfish individuals focused on their jobs. More so, it’s pretty obvious most of the film is scripted, especially in the interviews where the women always seem to have the right anecdote and the correct story that can lead in to an escapade. Beyond that the directors want to blame everyone but themselves.
Aliens, Abductions & Extraordinary Sightings: A Paranormal Documentary Collection (DVD)
“There’s twelve hours of this?” I asked myself while watching what I can only assume are a series of completely disconnected featurettes and “documentaries” about UFO’s and abductions, all of which are about as half baked as I expected them to be.
When I put these DVD’s in my player, I almost expected documentaries in the vein of the 90’s television show “Sightings,” but in reality this is just a compilation of various documentaries and television specials that discuss UFO’s and don’t really try to decipher anything regarding the anomaly of UFOlogy. Unless you’re a die hard fan of this sort of phenomenon and want to soak in twelve hours of documentaries and specials, there really won’t be much to lure audiences in, in the end.
The Tunnel Dwellers of New York (2008)
As a lifelong native of the Bronx and New York, the older you get the more you begin to hear about the city and how there is an entirely different dimension behind the neighborhoods you see on a daily basis. If you look beyond Manhattan where the landmarks have all turned in to Disney attractions, if you look past the subways that create the illusion of sanitary conditions and safety, you’ll discover within the shadows and crevices of every construct that there is a hidden society beneath your feet.