Big Sky Film: “Big Dreamers”

By Andy Smetanka, 2-16-07

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.

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.

Mike Schank, for example, Borchardt’s touchingly acid-damaged sidekick and soundtrack artist: He clearly idolizes Borchardt, who loves having Schank as a captive audience, someone to show off to, someone he thinks he can push around, but who he needs more than he knows.

Or how about all those guys who follow Hurtubise into the wilds of Alberta to help him find a bear he’s obsessed with fighting?

They obviously love just being around him, basking in that strobing weirdo energy. 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.”

The weird valences between the three stubborn, testy boot-backers--artist Newell, the head of the Tully Rotarians, and a hyperactive “frogologist"--and their various supporters and detractors are, for me, the beating heart of this doc.

The Golden Gumboot, as Tully residents refer to their hotly-debated civic project, was conceived by members of a local service organization as a way to economically reinvigorate their once-prosperous town, whose sugar industry was crippled when Brazil dumped its sugar on the world market in the ‘90s. The reason it’s a gumboot is that Tully claims the distinction of being the wettest place in Australia, drenched by a record 7.9 meters in 1950. Certain members of the community think the boot will attract tourists, as other outsized concrete and fiberglass sculptures have done for other struggling Australian towns: the big orange (much cooler than the big pineapple up the road, claims its owner), the big potato, the big abalone, and so forth. Others are convinced the Golden Gumboot is a prize boondoggle, a massive waste of money they no longer have, and, as one resident astutely points out, how is it going to help tourism to broadcast the fact that it rains there more than anywhere else on the continent?

Obviously, if you’re on the proper ironic wavelength to appreciate a controversial giant boot (oh, I almost forgot--with a giant frog climbing up the side: a whole ‘nother drama, there), you’re going to love Big Dreamers, produced and directed by Camille Hardman. Heck, mate, the testimonials of other giant-thing builders alone make it worthwhile: There’s a real-life Spinal Tap twist to the big lobster, which was designed in meters right as Australia was adopting the metric system but mistakenly executed in yards; it ended up being too big to fit on top of the restaurant it was built for. Priceless.