My Page: Andy Smetanka

New West Pick: Documentary Film Festival

You'd think the likelihood of things ending badly would deter more people from joining cults with lots of stockpiled weapons and compounds situated in barren, windswept wildernesses perfectly suited for breeding religious psychosis.

You'd think cult women would see through cheesy pickup lines like "To lie with me is to lie with God" or, "To bear a child with me is the greatest gift a woman could give her God." And, you'd think their God-fearing menfolk would be wise to religious leaders who drive black Camaros and claim that God doesn't want them to sleep with their wives -- they should hand them over to him instead. That, in a nutshell, is why it's tempting to suggest that maybe the Branch Davidians -- the grown-ups, that is -- maybe kinda sorta weren't the sharpest tools in the shed.

And that's why the spectacular, strawberry-flavored demise of Jonestown is way more tragic: The 900-odd people who died by cyanide-laced soft drink had actually come close to a working version of the sort of earthly paradise promised by every compound-building, hellfire-preaching nut job with lots of land in the middle of nowhere. Son of a Klansman, Jim Jones preached a gospel of radical racial integration at a time when few others dared, appealing particularly to African-Americans, establishing the first so-called Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in the late 1950s. Watching Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (playing this coming Monday at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival), you're struck not by Jones's legendary charisma, but by the fervor and diversity of his followers and the seemingly guileless simplicity of their aspirations: peace on earth. [more]

New West Pick: Documentary Film Festival

A common feature of my favorite "crackpot scheme" documentaries -- practically a genre unto itself--is the, ahem, culture of enablement in which these crazy dreamers thrive. Look behind a Mark Borchardt or a Troy Hurtubise, subjects of American Movie and Project Grizzly, respectively, and you'll notice at least one neighborhood dude hovering around that crazy dreamer like a moth.

In Big Dreamers, the story of a small Australian town's oddball mission to build a giant statue of a rubber boot, one of the men helping boot artist Bryan Newell cut the fiberglass panels and weld the steel armature is credited simply as "neighbor." He doesn't say a word in the film, but you just know he and artist Newell have formed one of those man-bonds that accrete around man-things like potato cannons, pumpkin catapults, bear-fighting suits and DIY slasher movies. And by "man" in this case, of course, I mean "overgrown kid."

Editor's Note: "Big Dreamers" is one of NewWest.Net's top picks for the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which opens Feb. 15 at the Wilma Theater. "Big Dreamers," which will see its world premiere at the festival, shows on Monday, Feb. 19 at 5:30 p.m. in the Wilma. Check back to www.newwest.net/bsdff for more NewWest.Net picks this week and coverage of the festival. [more]

New West Pick: Documentary Film Festival

I like to tell my composition students that the narration on "The Wonder Years” strikes the sort of nostalgic, reflective, humorous tone they should aspire to as they think about the 750-word memoir unit. You know: "As I watched my sister drive off in her VW bus, I felt a little piece of my innocence slip away ... turn, turn, turn..."

On the other hand, too many made-for-TV documentaries about drugs and the counterculture in the late '60s aspire to much the same thing: that "Wonder Years” tone -- too tidy, too compact, too sentimental, too simplified. If you weren't there, you grow up thinking about flower power, the Haight-Ashbury, the First Human Be-In and so forth in rose-tinted terms because they're so often presented that way. Everyone wants a piece of Woodstock; no one wants to claim Altamont.

The Drug Years, a four-part co-production between Perry Films, VH1 and the Sundance Channel, goes some distance toward, if not a radical re-imagining of the decade, then at least the inclusion of some younger, fresher voices.

Editor's Note: "The Drug Years" is one of NewWest.Net's top picks for the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which opens Feb. 15 at the Wilma Theater. "The Drug Years," part of the special presentations program at the festival, shows on Saturday, Feb. 17 at 1:40 p.m. in Wilma 2. Check back to www.newwest.net/bsdff for more NewWest.Net picks this week and coverage of the festival. [more]

In Praise of the Piss-in-Bed

A friend of mine recently remarked that she can't stand dandelions now that she owns her own house. Before that she didn't care about them one way or the other. Dandelions, like siding and septic systems, are the kind of thing you simply never think about until you stop renting, because now you're supposed to be in charge of doing something about them.

For many people, the first appearance of dandelions in spring signals the start of renewed hostilities in a seasonal war, and they respond by mustering every chemical and mechanical armament they can get their hands on. I've never really understood this enmity. I like the pushy little bastards, myself: The first round yellow head I notice blooming in an alleyway or along a sunny wall every year wakes me from winter like a smelling salt. [more]