MISFITS Video Picks for August 1, 2000
"Five years in the making... Five days in the theaters! So see it
while you can and TELL YOUR FRIENDS! You've got to be off to see
the Wizard! Speeding to a theater near you..."
-from the movie trailer (included on some copies of the VHS)
If there was a low-budget film about fandom, this would probably be
it. It has a charming quality that isn't sappy and tells a story
about a man with an imagination and bucketloads of determination to
bring his idea for a film to life. It's set against the backdrop of
Hollywood's movie system and shows what determination and fantasy can
do. Mike Jitlov is the mastermind behind the film, who wrote,
directed and starred as the title character. If you ever felt like
you could never finish a real novel, write a movie script or share
your fantasies with others, this film is not only fun, it's inspriational.
Perhaps because I can see my own 30th birthday coming up in the not too terribly distant future,
it was easy for me to really enjoy this film. Obviously a bit of both self-biography and wishful
thinking on the part of writers Mark Altman and Robert Meyer Burnett (the characters share the
same first names). It covers some of the same ground as something like High Fidelity, in that it's about how
men's fannish enthuiasm is sometimes a symptom of arrested development. (High Fidelity is a more mature look at the subject, however)
William Shatner is great in this, taking himself apart in a way that I'd
never expect from someone who has a reputation of sometimes taking himself too seriously. It's sort of sad since his wife died at roughly the same time
this movie came out to see him going on about his love life though in the
film though.
If you find yourself forced to make Star Wars quotes at the most inappropriate moments, this is a film for you.
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The Wizard of Speed and Time
