Mark Borchardt, the lovable lunk who stars in the documentary American Movie, is one of the more memorable embodiments of the midwestern work ethic to penetrate the media in recent years. In the 1999 cult hit, the barely employed Menomonee Falls native struggles with an ailing and unsupportive crank of an uncle, the unwed mother of his children, a tiny talent pool, and an endearing lack of Hollywood savvy to make a direct-to-video horror flick called Coven, which in turn is supposed to finance the completion of Northwestern, the semiautobiographical feature he’s been working on since high school. Director Chris Smith and his frequent collaborator, producer Sarah Price, don’t romanticize or sugarcoat the story, but neither do they mock their subject. It’s obvious that in many ways they identify with Borchardt’s determination.
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American Movie won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics. Since then Smith and Price have completed two more documentaries–Price’s Caesar’s Park, about the pair’s Milwaukee neighborhood, and Smith’s Home Movie, which took him back to Sundance this year. But with their latest endeavor–ZeroTV.com, a compellingly bizarre Web site that presents episodic shows, short films, and interactive music, trivia, and comics–they’re back in Mark Borchardt’s shoes, hatching entertaining schemes for no one’s benefit but their own.
But ZeroTV’s other major franchise is Milwaukee. The plots, which revolve around the fictional Schlaptz Brewery and rarely resolve themselves, are peppered with moments of deadpan brilliance. In one episode, for instance, an off-duty brewery supervisor is traumatized when a stretch limo runs over his remote-control monster truck; in another, the company lawyer’s dissatisfied girlfriend pleads with him at length to just once try…eating fish. At the end of the most recent bit, the entertainment at the local hipster watering hole announces, through layers of reverb, “Once again, I’m local pop star Bradley.”
“Like so many Web sites we had this mind-set where it had to succeed or fail within two months,” says Reeder. “But now it seems like we can go two or even ten years if we can just meet the expenses. We’re doing everything so cheaply. Everybody that works here is trying to figure out a way to scrape by, to have jobs that will allow the most time to do this. It’s like being in a band. It’s really fun and maybe it will turn into something.”
