Part of the appeal of B-movies is that the production of most of ’em packs more drama than a hospital mental ward. Mainstream movies have the bigger budgets, but B-movies have the better behind-the-scenes stories. Hollywood movies are slick circus tricks performed above a secure safety net made of money. Independent B-flicks are life-and-death struggles at the edge of a cliff that overlooks a 100-foot drop to the cold, hard ground.
The lack of money makes the low-budget filmmaker crazy, makes their (unpaid) actors frustrated, makes their family wish they’d give it up, makes their shots clumsy, and makes their special effects look terrible. But they do it anyway.
That’s why I like B-movies and that’s why I like mullet-headed Mark Borchardt, the subject of this great documentary. He’s struggled for YEARS to make movies with almost no support from anyone beyond a few friends who have nothing else to do. Everything that surrounds Borchardt in his drab corner of Wisconsin—the kind of place that sucks out your soul and then pisses it out in the snow—says to give up his dream, but he just can’t. He’s got an energy that the others don’t have.
So, he’s trying to make a feature film called Northwestern, but to get the money for it he first needs to complete a 25-minute horror short called Coven and then somehow sell enough videotape copies of it to rake in almost $50,000.
It’s an insane plan, doomed to fail, but it beats sitting around, drinking beer and waiting to die.
Borchardt’s a great talker, the kind of guy who’s funny without always knowing it and a perfect documentary subject, but just as memorable is his best friend, Mike Schank. Schank’s a casualty of too much acid and PCP-laced hard-partying and he’s a man of few words, but is the provider of most of the film’s biggest laughs (nobody’s ever made the word “no” funnier).
Despite the success of this film, Mark Borchardt’s directing career somehow hasn’t taken off. A few acting jobs in low budget movies and talking head appearances in other documentaries are all we’ve gotten. What gives? Somebody needs to go back to Milwaukee (or wherever Borchardt’s living now) and make a sequel to this thing.