You guessed it. The hybrid parody of both Clerks and Apocalpse Now actually exists!
I don't know about you but I heard of it only because my best friend has a cameo in it (¡viva Sandwich Boy!) and he is the brother of the "auteur" of this small-time opus.
And so, the basic plot of Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness (novel) is translated into the realm of video rental clerks. The parallels that stretch adaptation work pretty well, but its the montage of clips from assorted movies (including the movies this one is based on) that get this off to a bad start (to me).
It's just my own observation that if you have no budget and you're shooting on video and you want your film to go somewhere commercially, don't start off with clips from recognizable movies. It gives off the wrong impression: "amateur."
Even so, it's not insufferably amateur. It's by no means a hasty, incompetent experiment. It demonstrates some degree of undeniable knowledge, but it's problem is that the idea is inherently like a half-hearted student project.
In all fairness it's pretty good, considering the mountain of camcorder flicks I've seen as a film student. It's not the work of a serious pro either. The same talent behind an original, honest idea could really go places.
(I hear his next was a combination of Memento and Mentos commercials -- you know, the ones where shiny, happy white people get clever ideas because of their breathmints... "mementose")
So if you find a copy at some Indy video rental here in CA, don't judge too harshly -- it's worth a look.
For the record, I have no idea how available it is. I found it upstairs at Le Video in San Francisco. I know the filmmaker is in LA these days and lived in SF when he made this...so that doesn't suggest that this film got very far. Good luck finding it!
I don't know about you but I heard of it only because my best friend has a cameo in it (¡viva Sandwich Boy!) and he is the brother of the "auteur" of this small-time opus.
And so, the basic plot of Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness (novel) is translated into the realm of video rental clerks. The parallels that stretch adaptation work pretty well, but its the montage of clips from assorted movies (including the movies this one is based on) that get this off to a bad start (to me).
It's just my own observation that if you have no budget and you're shooting on video and you want your film to go somewhere commercially, don't start off with clips from recognizable movies. It gives off the wrong impression: "amateur."
Even so, it's not insufferably amateur. It's by no means a hasty, incompetent experiment. It demonstrates some degree of undeniable knowledge, but it's problem is that the idea is inherently like a half-hearted student project.
In all fairness it's pretty good, considering the mountain of camcorder flicks I've seen as a film student. It's not the work of a serious pro either. The same talent behind an original, honest idea could really go places.
(I hear his next was a combination of Memento and Mentos commercials -- you know, the ones where shiny, happy white people get clever ideas because of their breathmints... "mementose")
So if you find a copy at some Indy video rental here in CA, don't judge too harshly -- it's worth a look.
For the record, I have no idea how available it is. I found it upstairs at Le Video in San Francisco. I know the filmmaker is in LA these days and lived in SF when he made this...so that doesn't suggest that this film got very far. Good luck finding it!
