Fantasia Review: ‘Clapboard Jungle’ is a Revealing Look at an Industry in Flux
“I’m really not anybody, you’ve probably never even heard of me. I’m one of thousands of people trying to do this.”
-Justin McConnell, director of Clapboard Jungle
It is May 2014 and filmmaker Justin McConnell knows he is not looking for his big break. At least, not the big break he grew up idolizing. The rags to riches independent filmmaking dream of the 90’s that gave us the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh is no more. A sale of an independent film at a major film festival does not necessarily mean success like it once did. Instead, a decentralized and oversaturated film market is where McConnell must stand out if he wants to gain more traction in the filmmaking industry.
McConnell is not short on filmmaking passion. He started cobbling stories together on celluloid when he was young and has ridden that zeal over two decades to the present day. He does not lack experience. Numerous shorts credit him as director and cinematographer (among other positions) and he even helmed a bonafide, worldwide-released horror feature in 2011 called The Collapsed. What Justin McConnell lacks is money, money to make his projects in the way he wants.
“If you’re a shoemaker, you make the fricken’ shoes. If you’re a filmmaker, you dream about the shoes,” says director Larry Fessenden in Clapboard Jungle which is, in part, a document of McConnell trying to obtain that creative freedom for his projects. It is more difficult than ever to find funding on your own. Filmmakers can only dream about “the shoes” if they don’t have the money to make them. The industry has changed and without a roadmap. It now requires more than gear that makes things look cinematic. Good movies are made and go unwatched every year now. Beyond the concrete business skills, filmmaking expertise, and unwavering dedication that is required, it’s unclear what else allows you to stand out. Clapboard Jungle is born from McConnell’s desire to make his experience more transparent and perhaps lay out that roadmap for his peers.
Film financing is a topic that might conjure up images of smoky back rooms with wealthy executives deciding on a whim which scripts from a pile in front of them will be turned into light on the silver screen, but the reality for McConnell is much different. Constant calls with potential backers from his home office give him optimism that any of one of his nearly dozen concurrent projects could be financing. When almost every promising lead does not pan out, month after month and year after year, the doubt starts to creep in. “Opportunity happened for other people way more than for me. I’m always wondering why that is,” McConnell confesses to the audience after what we assumed is a particularly hard turn of events. We see the love of filmmaking unequivocally in him but are left pondering how we maintain that wonder and passion for film during the non-stop treadmill of obstacles it asks us to conquer?
The answer to that question is no doubt an individual one, but we do get the feeling that most filmmakers are familiar with this initial doubt. As McConnell flies around the world taking meetings in the hopes that the next one will be the key to his future, Clapboard Jungle shifts from a ‘pulling-back-the-curtain’ affair to a piece of catharsis. McConnell has laced his own personal story with interviews of filmmakers discussing their same struggles. Some of the talking heads, like Guillermo del Toro, are familiar faces or have recognizable credits, but the vast majority of the expert opinions are folks the audience may not know. These are filmmakers like McConnell, full of passion and drive and expertise in their area, without the creative freedom they strive for. They are still beholden to where the money flows. “You could make a wonderful film and it just doesn’t get seen,” one of them remarks. We get the sense that many of these interviewees have done exactly that.
Clapboard Jungle is at its best zooming out from McConnell’s personal struggles and focusing in on the implications for the rest of the industry. It’s readily apparent that even McConnell’s tumultuous journey isn’t likely to be the toughest in the field. As McConnell concedes, that placement is likely given to underrepresented voices of women and/or people of color who find even more obstacles laid at their feet. And while this movie clearly isn’t their story, it’s a revealing look at the tip of the iceberg in an industry in flux like almost never before.
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