Let's say you want to make a movie and you didn't go to NYU film school. You don't have a trust fund. You're not a video-store clerk who can recite all the trivia on IMDb. You don't have Hollywood family connections. And, though your heart is set on getting into SIFF, your feature idea doesn't include violence, sex, snark, or whining hipsters. So you should just stop right there, right, because you haven't got a chance?
Peter Mumford
Teen director Nicholas Terry, with Senior Prom actresses Lynsey Lorraine (left) and Megan Gisler.
Peter Mumford
Life into art: Perfect 10 directors Kris and Lindy Boustedt.
Details
Perfect 10 SIFF Cinema, 321 Mercer St., 324-9996, siff.net. $11. 9:15 p.m. Mon., June 7 and 4 p.m. Tues., June 8.
Senior Prom SIFF Cinema. $11. 7 p.m. Fri., May 28 and 4:30 p.m. Tues., June 1.
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Each year, SIFF sets aside an undetermined number of slots in its massive schedule for locals. (This year's Northwest Connections sidebar lists 11 titles.) Is there a quota? Is it a matter of pity or pandering? I have no idea. But it's always fascinating to see which Seattle-area filmmakers make the cut. Not because their works are masterpieces, not because SIFF programmers—let alone film critics—are so discerning. Rather, because an untutored love for film shines through their efforts—the enthusiasm, the persistence, the determination to make their movie so far from Hollywood with such remote chances of ever getting a theatrical release. The festival is the goal, and since SIFF is the largest film festival in the U.S., it's a worthy one.
To get noticed, Seattle directors have made movies about sex with horses (Zoo, SIFF '07) or non-gay homosexual stunt sex (Humpday, SIFF '09), but what about that ultimate taboo—ordinary polite white suburbanites who keep their pants on?
Those characters have stories, too—like the teenagers at Mountlake Terrace High School nervously preparing for the prom in Senior Prom, a mockumentary improvised and performed by students at that same school, directed by 17-year-old Nicholas Terry. Or the two women nervously preparing to go back to their central Washington high school for a 10-year class reunion in Perfect 10, written and directed by husband-and-wife filmmakers Kris and Lindy Boustedt. There are no horses or hipsters in sight. The results may not be career-making Spielbergian cinema, but there's a pleasingly positive spirit to both endeavors. They're not aiming to shock, not aiming for Hollywood, not trying to be trendy. These first-timers just have simple stories to tell.
"I've never been to SIFF," says Nicholas Terry in a cupcake shop on Capitol Hill. (His father, joining us for coffee, says they've never even been to Capitol Hill before.) The shy, slim Shoreline teenager has just emerged from a SIFF meet-and-greet at Boom Noodle, and one's first impulse is to force some cupcakes on the kid. He's so young! So skinny! So polite and soft-spoken—where is the Tarantino-sized ego? Eat, son, eat! Terry is like a decaffeinated, non-obnoxious version of Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club: reddish hair, gangly, pimply, eyes darting regularly to the floor. But he's clearly smart, observant, taking it all in—waiting for the cool kids to slip and reveal themselves.
Terry's first film got him into a festival to which he's never even bought a ticket, but it was movies that inspired him. Specifically, those of Christopher Guest—Terry is upfront about his love for the mockumentary auteur of Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind. And he also has the background, performing with his school drama department (currently in The Diary of Anne Frank) and in an award-winning school improv team that comprises his cast.
"I got the idea [about senior prom], and they were all on board immediately," he explains. A few juniors had already been to prom with older dates when the project began last August. And a few actors graduated last year. But the acute pressure of prom is universally understood.
Terry's comedy follows 10 teens planning the prom and procuring dates. Terry is sometimes heard behind the camera, but mainly Senior Prom lets its foolish protagonists speak for themselves. There's overbearing Brittany, like Tracy Flick in Election, determined to impose her theme on the party, which gradually slides from barnyard to outer space. ("Proms are supposed to be perfect!" she insists.) Happy couple Shelly and Shawn make everyone sick with their lovey-dovey devotion. Nerdy loner Zach is crushing on outspoken Lynsey, who despises prom mania. With his dimwit wingman Kyle, delusional Miles believes every girl in school is waiting to be his date, waiting to give him the secret "look."
Everyone is bound to be disappointed in some fashion, yet the comedown is gentle and observational. You could call it Guffman-lite. F-bombs are bleeped out, there's no sexting, and no one is horribly humiliated. Cell phones ring at inconvenient times and Facebook pages are updated in the sad middle of the night. Prom becomes more and less important than its epic buildup. "We can never go back," says one kid ruefully. "We'll miss it."
Terry's own prom lies ahead (yes, he has a date lined up), and Senior Prom actually began at school. "You have to create a senior project to graduate," he explains. Since he'd previously learned to shoot, edit, and compose a score while assisting his father on a short film, he already had "all the equipment that my dad bought for his film"—chiefly, a mini-DV camera he packed with him daily to shoot after classes. For a final cut of 80 minutes, he edited down the footage on a home computer. Total budget for the project: about $300.
