GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN (2004) "Mumblecore"
It was a spiritual choice. You were either open to the new weird thing, or you weren’t.
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In 2003, I moved in with my girlfriend in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We had both left our individual apartments to rent this bigger apartment together. So our lives were in transition in that way.
For me, living with someone was a big change. I hadn’t done that since my early 20s. It was my return to a “coupled” life. We had a backyard. We had a shared bathroom. We had a lot of music, books, DVDs to integrate.
At some point, in those first months, a bootlegged movie appeared in the apartment. I don’t remember where it came from. It was on a blank DVD disc. It had been copied by someone. I’m pretty sure it was Funny Ha Ha (2002). Someone had written the title with a sharpy on the blank disc. No other credits. Just the DVD in a clear plastic case.
It felt like some form of contraband, which made it exciting. This film has been secretly passed from hand to hand. I thought it would be about street kids. Or have drugs in it. Or some other dark and subterranean theme.
Around this same time, I first heard the term “mumblecore”.
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The mumblecore movement was a bunch of film kids who decided to make super low-budget, hyper-realistic films. Or rather, it was the LATEST group of film kids who decided to do this.
They were maybe doing it a little better or in a slightly different way than the last generation of film kids. The technology had changed slightly. Digital cameras or whatever.
If you were a cultural person over 35 at that time, you were already familiar with this style of film making. It was the obvious thing to do when you were first starting out. It followed in the tradition of the French New Wave, John Cassavetes, John Sayles, Harmony Korine, Richard Linklater.
To make such films, you needed the charisma to muster a volunteer film crew. You had to convince people to lend you equipment or use their houses or apartments for locations. You had to find amateur actors who weren’t terrible. And then hopefully you could eek out something that was semi-watchable.
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