4 MORE Illegal Movies
filmmakers who fought the law
Last week on Unseen Screen, we talked about 6 illegal films that the man doesn’t want you to see. But it turns out, I had underestimated filmmaker’s devotion to breaking the law. Here are four more.
1. 10 Metres
The crime: Guerrilla warfare.
The limits of low-budget filmmaking can sometimes lead to more inventive movies. But there’s no way around it- if you’re shooting an epic action movie, where a man with a bomb strapped to his chest is chased through a bustling metropolis, that’s going to take money. You’re going to have to get permits, shut down locations, build an army of extras good enough to react as though their lives are in danger, dollies, stunt doubles…. unless you’re Rory Noke.
His solution: Have a guy actually run through a bustling streets, malls, universities and neighborhoods pretending to have a bomb strapped to his chest. That’ll get the right reaction from people. And to get the right “I hope I don’t get caught” reaction from his actors? Well, Noke didn’t tell them they were doing it for real until just before the scenes were shot. And The high-tech technique of capturing all this footage? Make your camera guy run backwards and hope he doesn’t die.
The fallout:
Luckily, the Melbourne police had a sense of humor about all of this. Neighbors called to report a crime while they were shooting a scene in a residential neighborhood. The cops showed up to find people pointing guns at one another, surrounded by piles of basil made up to look like drugs and their response was: hey, cool, a movie. Can we watch the next take?
Unfortunately, the next line was “You killed a cop!” which didn’t do much to make the eavesdropping neighbors feel any better.
2. My Brother, Borat
The crime: Unauthorized sequel
Erkin Rakishev dares 20th Century Fox to sue him. He was not happy with how the movie Borat depicted his home country of Kazakhstan. “I think it crossed the line,” he said. “Maybe they just wanted to joke, but they belittled, insulted and mixed us with dirt, they compared us to animals, showed us as barbarians and wild people”. His solution to this was to make his own sequel. Without permission.
The fallout:
Rakishev now finds himself defending the humor of his own pro-Kazakhstan film. A sample response to critics that needs no context: “If it was Borat’s brother who raped the donkey then perhaps it would be considered outrageous, but it is the other way round”
His character Bilo is intended to be Borat’s even dumber little brother. The most important part to him was to show Kazakhstan as a modern, well developed country, with skyscrapers and parks. Rakishev’s idea of fighting stereotypes is to make a movie with the same stereotypes, but have nicer buildings in the background. Lack of interest, legal options and funding mean that the movie has still not been released. Here’s a news report about it.
3. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
The Crime: Unlicensed music.
Superstar is acted out entirely by Barbie dolls. But the legal woes came not from Mattel, but from the Carpenter family. It tells the story of Karen Carpenter’s rise to fame and battle with anorexia.
It’s actually a far darker and more serious look at the disease than you might expect from a film shot in the same manner as Robot Chicken. Todd Haynes interspersed the film with documentary footage and interviews. But unfortunately for his chances of distributing the film, he also interspersed it with Karen Carpenter’s actual music.
The fallout:
Richard Carpenter cease and desisted the film out of existence. He wouldn’t even consider the director’s offer to show his film only in clinics or schools for educational purposes, or donate all of his profits to the Karen Carpenter memorial fund for anorexia research. However, nothing stops the internet and decades later, the film is on YouTube.
Watch the movie here. ★★★☆☆
4. Shut Up, Little Man!
The crimes: Invasion of privacy, unauthorized recording.
Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitchell D. were roommates in the Pepto Bismol Palace whose hobby was sneaking microphones into their neighbor’s windows. Strangely enough, they are not the two roommates this documentary is centered around. See, their neighbors were Peter and Ray. An angry, alcoholic odd couple who would fight and threaten to murder one another at all hours of the night.
Eddie and Mitchell would record their neighbor’s hilarious battles and distribute the tapes to their friends, which was shady, but still within their legal rights. But they didn’t stop there. They started taping microphones to poles and sneaking them into the neighbor’s windows to get better recording. They stalked them in the streets to sneak photographs. They made prank phone calls to get the neighbors even more riled up.
The fallout:
They started selling the recordings. They put out albums. They had a fan club. They put on plays. Cartoonists like Daniel Clowes and Daniel Brunetti made comics about them. Kurt Cobain and Devo wrote songs about them. Several competing motion pictures were in the works before they got wrapped up in legal problems. Peter and Ray didn’t know about any of this.
None of those proposed features ever got made, but this documentary about the attempts did. And instead of casting actors to play the unwitting celebrities, the documentary used the actual audio. This time, they didn’t get into legal problems. Because they waited until Peter and Ray were dead.
Watch the trailer here. ★★★☆☆
Want more? Read the original 6 illegal movies that the man doesn’t want you to see.
Written by Ryan Estrada.
Read more about obscure, international, and independent movies that are new to you every Friday on Unseen Screen. Also available on Tumblr.
10 Metres and My Brother Borat were not watched for review. But oh, man, I really want to see them. I will update the post if copies become available.
