This was the second year that the Sundance Film Festival featured the NEXT program, a category for extremely low-budget films, intended to give burgeoning filmmakers an opportunity to shine the spotlight on their labors of love. One of the films I saw at this year's festival in the NEXT program was ""Bellflower."" The movie didn't win any awards, and I wouldn't say it was one of the best films at the festival, but it was one of the most memorable. It was incredibly innovative and intriguing and helped its rag-tag group of creators garner some much-deserved attention.
Written, directed, edited by and starring Evan Glodell, ""Bellflower"" is the story of two tough-guy gear-head buddies, Woodrow (Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson), who dream about starting their own gang to rule the wasteland when Armageddon finally comes. The two are life-long best friends from Wisconsin who moved out to California and spend their spare time building flamethrowers and working on outfitting their end-of-the-world muscle car, the Mother Medusa. Woodrow goes on a romantic journey with bohemian Milly (Jessie Wiseman) only to get his heart ripped out. That's when things take a turn for the dark and disturbing.
The film defies categorization into any one genre in a way no film has in recent memory. It evolves from a mumblecore romance, to a gritty drama, and finally into a disturbing horror-esque tragedy that would put ""Titus Andronicus"" to shame. And to top it all off, the film has the genuinely warm heart of a bromance flick subtly beating throughout its entirety.
Like ""(500) Days of Summer"" director Marc Webb, one of the breakout talents of Sundance 2009, Evan Glodell is also a Wisconsinite and former Madison resident. Originally from Baraboo, Glodell studied engineering at UW-Platteville for a semester, and studied filmmaking at UW-Milwaukee before moving to Madison. Ultimately he moved to California because, as he explained in the post-screening Q&A, ""that's what people from Wisconsin do.""
At the Q&A after the screening, the first question came from a guy who said, ""I just wanted to let you guys know that this is my second time seeing this movie. I passed up seeing other movies to see this again. That's how badass it is.""
Indeed, ‘badass' seemed to be the word of the evening to describe the film. Although I witnessed several people walk out of the theater and never come back, a large portion of the midnight-audience was absolutely enamored with the film. I don't necessarily think it is a totally polarizing film where you either love it or you hate it. I myself occupy a middle ground in which I appreciate the film for what it does right and where it innovates, but I also think it has some flaws. However, it did seem to push viewers to one extreme or the other.
While Glodell wouldn't reveal the film's exact budget, he did note that it was ""not even close"" to the $50,000 limit for films in the NEXT category. One of the most innovative aspects of the film was the camera it was shot on. Glodell designed it himself and co-star and producer Vince Grashaw likes to call him ""an engineering madman"" because of it. Glodell has dubbed the camera the ""Coatwolf Model II"" after his production company, Coatwolf Productions. The camera is a custom amalgamation of vintage camera parts, bellows and Russian lenses with the internal guts of an Si-2K Mini. In order to reposition the camera on set, four people were required to move in tandem, as the camera was also connected to a MacBook Pro, a deep-cycle battery, and a car inverter at all times. Glodell describes the process he went through to create the Coatwolf II as a bit like ""camera hacking.""
The footage produced by the Coatwolf II has a style totally its own. As one film blogger pointed out, it is a bit reminiscent of something that could come out of the popular Hipstermatic iPhone app—except that it's high-definition digital video. The shots often seem like faux-vintage photographs that have come to life. The film's distinct visual style and unconventional storytelling coalesce into something that can be simultaneously stunningly beautiful and absolutely horrifying.
""Bellflower"" has its fair share of problems, especially as the story debatably falls apart in the last act, and I would be hard-pressed to argue with anyone who genuinely disliked it. But it's the type of movie you won't soon forget after you see it, regardless of how you felt. And it will be quite a while before something else comes a long like it.
The film was picked up for distribution by Oscilloscope, a relatively small indie-film distribution company that was founded by Adam Yauch, better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys. Oscilloscope is planning a limited release of ""Bellflower"" in theaters this summer. I highly suggest you go experience it for yourself.
If you want to help David create his own version of the ""Coatwolf Model II,"" email him at dcottrell@wisc.edu.
