I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW (2008)For years, my dad made a living as a documentary filmmaker, producing and directing segments for a local Salt Lake newsmagazine show called Extra. And not to brag, but a lot of the old man’s work was—to my mind—reminiscent of the very best of Werner Herzog’s nonfiction films, emphasizing the lives of a variety of lonely eccentrics given to esoteric, far-flung pursuits. In Extra’s case, this meant everything from experimental racecar drivers to colonies of subterranean atom miners. Dad was fond of saying that a great story’s got nothing compared to great characters, a refrain I was reminded of as I watched I Think We’re Alone Now, which features not one, but two, of the most intriguing nonfiction film weirdoes since American Movie’s Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank. They are: Jeff Turner, a 50-year-old autistic man and avid conspiracy theorist from Santa Cruz, and Denver’s Kelly McCormick, a 35-year-old alcoholic intersex person and amateur fitness enthusiast. What links them is their love for 1980s teeny bop singer Tiffany, on whom both harbor longstanding, unrequited crushes. And by “harbor crushes” I mean “are creepily, unhealthily obsessed with.” We’re talking eyes-cut-out-of-photographs-type shit. But even though no one who watches this film will be surprised if Tiffany is eventually murdered by one of these people, Turner and McCormick always come off as, at heart, just two lonely, troubled people suffering from a debilitating lack of self-awareness approaching the dimensions of Greek Tragedy. They’re the kind of characters that, if you brought them to your writers’ workshop, you’d either be hailed as King Shit of Fuck Mountain, or shouted out of the room for trying way, way too hard. Not bad for a film that spans barely 60 minutes and looks like it was shot on someone’s cell phone. I Think We’re Alone Now is on Netflix Watch Instant right now, so take a long lunch tomorrow and bang it out. You’ll thank me later.
I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW (2008)For years, my dad made a living as a documentary filmmaker, producing and directing segments for a local Salt Lake newsmagazine show called Extra. And not to brag, but a lot of the old man’s work was—to my mind—reminiscent of the very best of Werner Herzog’s nonfiction films, emphasizing the lives of a variety of lonely eccentrics given to esoteric, far-flung pursuits. In Extra’s case, this meant everything from experimental racecar drivers to colonies of subterranean atom miners. Dad was fond of saying that a great story’s got nothing compared to great characters, a refrain I was reminded of as I watched I Think We’re Alone Now, which features not one, but two, of the most intriguing nonfiction film weirdoes since American Movie’s Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank. They are: Jeff Turner, a 50-year-old autistic man and avid conspiracy theorist from Santa Cruz, and Denver’s Kelly McCormick, a 35-year-old alcoholic intersex person and amateur fitness enthusiast. What links them is their love for 1980s teeny bop singer Tiffany, on whom both harbor longstanding, unrequited crushes. And by “harbor crushes” I mean “are creepily, unhealthily obsessed with.” We’re talking eyes-cut-out-of-photographs-type shit. But even though no one who watches this film will be surprised if Tiffany is eventually murdered by one of these people, Turner and McCormick always come off as, at heart, just two lonely, troubled people suffering from a debilitating lack of self-awareness approaching the dimensions of Greek Tragedy. They’re the kind of characters that, if you brought them to your writers’ workshop, you’d either be hailed as King Shit of Fuck Mountain, or shouted out of the room for trying way, way too hard. Not bad for a film that spans barely 60 minutes and looks like it was shot on someone’s cell phone. I Think We’re Alone Now is on Netflix Watch Instant right now, so take a long lunch tomorrow and bang it out. You’ll thank me later.
