Features: DVD
Home Movie is Chris Smith's loving look at five extraordinary homes and the charming, bizarre people who inhabit them. Smith (American Movie) interweaves their stories in a way that makes the audience think about the meaning of home and the place of the individual in society. Smith delights in the eccentricities of these unique characters in much the same way that he did in American Movie, and connects their stories into a mosaic of American ingenuity and architectural possibility.A missile silo near Topeka, Kansas becomes a New Age refuge for a very soft-spoken couple; Bob Walker and Frances Mooney's cats are given the ultimate playground in America's largest litter box, a creation of rat effigies and cat freeways; Cajun Bill Tregle instructs us on the"do's and don'ts" of alligator upkeep from his bayou houseboat; Japanese cult actress Linda Beech takes us into her "tree house" nestled in the Hawaiian rain forest with water cascading around her; Ben Skora's electronic home in suburban Chicago, where even the most mundane household items take on a life of their own, becomes a minefield for owner and filmmaker alike.
"Home, sweet home, was never like this!" David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor
"Great individuals who did great things to their homes." San Francisco Bay Guardian
Editor's Note
Chris Smith (director of 1999's award-winning AMERICAN MOVIE) continues with his documentation of quirky American characters in HOME MOVIE, an affectionate look at five unique homes and the eccentric personalities of the people who inhabit them. Gaining trust from his odd yet engaging subjects, Smith enters their lovingly designed habitats and lets them casually and warmly open up their worlds to the camera. His subjects include Linda Beech, a former Japanese sitcom star who resides in a tree house nestled in a remote Hawaiian national park; Diana and Ed Peden, gentle hippies who have converted an abandoned missile silo into a serene underground retreat; Bob Walker and Francis Mooney, a couple who have reconstructed their home to cater to their dozen cats; Cajun alligator farmer Bill Tregle, who treasures his isolated life on a bayou houseboat; and new age futurist Ben Skora, a wacky inventor whose self-designed, 100 percent electric home can be operated entirely by remote control. With expert editing, Smith seamlessly cuts between the stories of these seven American originals, making a subtle yet weighty point about domesticity and peoples' relationships to their surroundings. Hilarious and often moving, HOME MOVIE is a successful addition to an oeuvre that marks the director as one of America's most talented and important cultural observers.
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