Over the several decades that I've been doing this blog, I've occasionally talked about comics and even reviewed a couple. I actually used to do quite a bit of that, and I'm thinking of doing more of it in the future. I'll be contributing to the newly-revived GraphicNovels.info, a site dedicated to information about graphic novels and similar beasties.
Just thought you and the search engines might like to know about it.
I saw the world premiere of Sushi Saki Hot tonight at the Wealthy Theatre, which was a lot of fun. It's a no-budget, locally-produced movie, 45 minutes long, about a highly motivated but inept cable advertising director/producer/salesman who manages to get a local sushi restaurant to let him make a TV commercial for them, featuring a third-rate country blues musician. I enjoyed it on three levels:
The movie was entertaining on the basic level of it being funny, well-presented material. The concept is lovably absurd, and the resulting advert (shown at the end of the movie) is perfectly terrible... that is, it's terrible and that's perfect. The actor who plays B.T. Donovan (the salesman) pretty much steals the show, with his largely-improvised monologues (mostly in the first half) giving a real challenge to the actually scripted material. His performance is a bit like the un-self-aware boss in the U.S. version of the sitcom The Office... but without being so monotonously unlikeable. He's a joke, and doesn't realise it, but he's mostly harmless. The other major character is Jumpin' Johnny Blues, who's well-portrayed but not as inherently funny and not as convincingly believable. The rest of the cast are mostly bit parts, including a few local business owners.
That "local businesses" angle made the movie entertaining on another level. The opening shot is instantly recognisable as downtown South Division (the sidewalk sign for Vertigo Music helps), followed by a scene in the (unidentified) My Video Shoppe. The bar where Jumpin' Johnny performed had to be Billy's, I'm sure I've driven past that hardware store, and even the non-descript strip mall where the sushi restaurant is located looked familiar. It had "Made In Grand Rapids" all over it... even more so than Hardcore (the 1979 George C. Scott film which had scenes filmed here). And definitely more so than American Pie, which was set in a clone of Grand Rapids, but didn't look like it.
Finally, I got a boost out of seeing that these guys had pulled this off. They wanted to make a movie, and despite having no money and being stuck in Grand Rapids, Michigan, they did it. One of the team tossed out the number $100,000 as the "cost" of making it, but they got all the services donated by local talent. That puts my own ambitions into perspective, which entail perhaps a few thousand dollars worth of labor to produce a short comic book. That seems to me like a lot of money for a rather small end product, but compared to a hundred grand for a DVD about the same size, which takes maybe 2-3 times to experience... it's not so bad. Comics may be far more labor-intensive than prose, but compared to movies... they're obviously a bargain. Which gives me a little more reassurance that I'm working in the right medium.
For me, at least. These guys have movies in their blood. That's obvious. Apparently most of them do this kind of stuff toward less creative ends (such as making TV commercials) for a living, and they worked on this as A) a favor for guys who'd given them paying work in the past, and B) a chance to use their abilities for fun, rather than finances. That's definitely an example worth following.
More information about the film can be found at SakiHot.com.
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