Slasher.

Just leave him alone in the hotel room, Michael Bennett, the slasher, in the grip of all his nerves and fears, and let him work out before the camera his marital hardships, a self-evaluation of professional competence, and an implicit litany of peripheral anxieties (How much is the bottle affecting him? How much do his friends understand and appreciate him?), and you have a movie I'd watch 85 minutes of.

What exactly goes on at the car dealership - the price gorging, the business politics, the orchestration of the slasher event - is interesting as a backdrop, but the substance of Slasher is in the tiny moments. I get really involved in a movie when I think I'm seeing something absolutely genuine and unmotivated and sort of unexplainable. I feel like a vital, intimate aspect of humanity is being communicated through the screen directly to me and I open up to the screen, allow it access to me as it gives of itself. Documentaries are almost always successful at delivering this feeling. Simply the lack of stages sets scripts and actors will accomplish the feeling. What I want though is for the film's role to take shape as the subject develops. You can tell when a documentary is trying to shape its footage and material based on the filmmaker's agenda, and you can tell when the subject doesn't fit into that conceptualized idea. It's horribly boring and painful to watch.

Landis's documentary is about the slasher, Michael Bennett, more than it is about the slashing event. You actually see very little of the pitching and dealing, and what you do see only fortifies the development of Bennett's personality the auxiliary scenes are building. There is also a strong sense of Memphis, and the people of Memphis. As strong as what you would get from a DGG film, and even achieved by similar means: the small activities and decisions of the people are framed just right as to suggest the larger meaning and social structure. It's kind of gloomy, it's kind of destitute, but it's really soulful, organic, and endearing. It's funny too, and a documentary that is funny and sincere can make the humor warm and cheerful.

This was a movie I had heard of back in Ohio. The manager of the theater I was working at had heard of the movie, was a fan of Landis, and had recommended the movie to me. Five years later I finally rented the movie. The next day Stephanie and I went to the theater to see Drag Me to Hell, and before that movie began a trailer played for Neal Brennan's The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. I would almost think Hollywood wasn't small enough for these two movies to coexist without direct influence (The Goods is apparently not based on Slasher, or at least no credit is given, even though a few similarities even in the trailer are startling, including the dj character, although maybe this is common in slashing events I don't really know), if not for time apparently being small enough so that this irony of sequence could occur.