There was something great about coming
of age and becoming a movie nerd in the 90s. There was the rite of
passage working for a movie retailer, and there was the thrill of the
hunt at mom and pop video stores. More importantly, there was the
indie boom of the 90s--when Sundance was for obscure gems rather than
an early launchpad for prestige releases, when that slew of new films
and filmmakers seemed adventurous and fresh, when "indie"
(or "indy") still meant something as magical as a phrase
like "college radio."
In Whitney Ransick's documentary
Misfire: The Rise and Fall of The Shooting Gallery, it's as if
the whole of the 90s is condensed into the 10-year history of the
production company. We get the boom of indie film and the boom of the
internet, and the twin stories of the decade careen out of control
and crash--the tech bubble bursts and takes The Shooting Gallery with
it while the indie bubble goes through an irreversible metamorphosis.
Misfire is the sign of the times, and yet there's a common
tension that recurs in all stories of artistic endeavor: the creative
people vs. the money people.
Started in 1991 by a group of film
students from SUNY Purchase, The Shooting Gallery is probably best
known for three films: 1992's Laws of Gravity, 1996's Sling
Blade, and 2000's You Can Count On Me. It was the premiere
New York arm of 90s indie filmmaking. The primary mover on the
creative side was Bob Gosse; the primary money mover was CEO Larry
Meistrich. Ransick was also part of The Shooting Gallery when it
began, though he'd leave the group after a few years.
Misfire goes through interviews
and old footage of The Shooting Gallery, and we get to see the
players speak then and now. Well, most everyone's there except for
Meistrich and his friend/CFO Steve Carlis. It's a given why they
declined to be interviewed for the film once you find out how The
Shooting Gallery went kaput. I wouldn't want to talk about it either,
though it's a shame we don't get to hear from them.
In some ways Meistrich is the de facto
villain of Misfire. Rather than focus on filmmaking, he tried
to turn The Shooting Gallery into some nebulous media conglomerate.
It was the 90s, and "dot com" had a far more mystical
allure than "indie" and "college radio," even
though no one knew for sure what The Shooting Gallery's media wing
was really up to.
As someone pointed out in the Q & A
after the screening, Meistrich was a little different than some money
men involved with production companies. He never tried to tamper with
certain movies directly and allowed the filmmakers a lot of creative
freedom. But to that, Meistrich greenlit some less-than-stellar films
as attempted money grabs. Ultimately, it was his attempt at expansion
that grounded numerous film projects that The Shooting Gallery could
have gotten off the ground.
There's a genuine sense of nostalgia
for the 90s in Misfire, which makes sense given that The
Shooting Gallery is where and how Ransick, Gosse, and many others in
the film got to where they are today. The incidental music in the doc
reminded me of stuff I'd hear in a Starbucks back then--a bright and
inoffensive acoustic pop rock. Hal Hartley gets noted and appreciated
(as he deserves to be). Gosse was living with Parker Posey at the
time (a fellow SUNY Purchase alum). While she isn't an interview
subject in the film, she's on screen for a few moments, and Posey may
be the Platonic form of the 90s indie It girl.
I couldn't help but sense that The
Shooting Gallery was a kind of club house and a posse for its core
group, even at the end of its life. It was a scrappy gang who did it
and blew it and are now able to look back fondly at the decade. Maybe
its that nostalgia that allowed me to find weird patterns and
correspondences in the story of The Shooting Gallery and the decade
as a whole; maybe personal stories can't help but reflect the
over-arching story of the period in which they occurred. Misfire
is like the high school year books of the 90s indie boom.
No comments:
Post a Comment