New West Pick | Big Sky Doc Film Festival

God and America Through the Eyes of Bob Smith

By Courtney Lowery, 2-13-06

	Photos courtesy of Neil Abramson and Winghead Films. Check out www.bobsmithmovie.com for more.

Editor's Note: This is one of the New West picks from the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
Click here for the hi-resolution trailer.

Click here to hear the interview with the director.

The country looks different than you might think through the eyes of Bob Smith.

The quintessential American man isn't what you would expect. He's a philosophical funny old pervert, an insecure young man looking for boundaries to push, a wounded photographer, an evangelical clown, a Texas Republican candidate for sheriff and a preaching yogi.

Filmmaker Neil Abramson sets out to see the country with seven men named Bob Smith in his latest documentary, Bob Smith U.S.A., a feature selection in the upcoming Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (screening 7:15 p.m. Thursday at the Wilma). What Abramson finds is sometimes disturbing, uplifting, funny and always, surprising.

The notion of following seven men with the same name is novel enough by itself to make a good documentary. Abramson could have stayed on the surface in all of these stories, showing the differences in the men and their lives, but he goes further. He delves into their spirituality, their vices, their insecurities and their failings to show not only deep divisions among the men, but also deep divisions within the men themselves. This makes for a great documentary.

At first, sure, you're surprised to see one Bob Smith dress up as Satan and take to the streets of New York. And sure, it's kind of a shock to see what kind of porn old Bob Smith has plastered on the walls in his basement. And sure, the thought of someone giving workshops on how to clown around with Jesus kind of curls up things in your mind.

But Abramson keeps going. We meet old Bob Smith's wife and hear her talk about the porn in the basement (Elma Smith is totally OK with this.) We meet Satan Bob Smith's family and see perhaps why the young man is pushing so hard on religion and why he's so insecure. We watch clown Bob Smith make a young girl a "helmet of salvation" out of bendy balloons and we hear Texas Republican Bob Smith talk about his son, a ventriloquist, who died too young and watch him sing on a karaoke machine in a senior center.

At this point, as you can imagine, there are still questions left unanswered by the film as it closes, but that's the art in it. It's a hilarious and raw journey into the lives of seven very different men and their beliefs, showcasing that in America, we're all different -- and we're all never quite what we seem.

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