Dir. Christopher Guest, US, 2003, 91 mins
Cast: Bob Balaban, Ed Begley Jr, Jennifer Coolidge, Paul Dooley, Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean
Better known for turning his amp up to "eleven" as theatrical lead guitarist Nigel Tuffnel in the legendary This Is Spinal Tap, Christopher Guest is the unrecognized genius of the modern mocumentary genre. He has teamed up again with co-star and writing partner Eugene Levy (his individual acting style will be more familiar from his role as the awkward father in the American Pie movies) to make A Mighty Wind, an irreverent and funny look at the world of American folk music. Since the woefully underexposed Waiting For Guffman in 1996 they have been honing their unique style of improvisational comedy leading to the critically acclaimed Best In Show in 2000. This style of filmmaking is both demanding and liberating for the actors, and many of the faces in A Mighty Wind are familiar from their two previous films.
Folk Music legend Irving Steinbloom has passed away and his tone-deaf son Jonathan (Bob Balaban) is putting together a memorial concert at New York City's Town Hall reuniting some of the best-loved artists that Steinbloom promoted in the sixties. The line up consists of classic folk threesome The Folksmen (Guest is joined by Spinal Tap cohorts Harry Shearer and Michael McKean), one time sweet hearts of the folk world Mitch & Mickey (Levy and Catherine O'Hara), and finally squeaky-clean "neuftet" The New Main Street Singers (featuring John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch and Parker Posey). The now follicly challenged Folksmen haven't played together in thirty years, Mitch has been in and out of mental hospitals and The New Main Street Singers have gone through various reincarnations, always with a smile, to emerge as a colour based cult. In recreating the period material for all the groups, from the sixties album covers to the costumes, sets, and lighting, the attention to detail is stunning.
The story and characters are developed meticulously by Guest and Levy, as Guest explains, "Eugene and I work for a period of months to work out the story and the back histories for all the characters, and every scene is structured so we know what happens, but there is no dialogue written at all and there's no rehearsal, so what you see is what's happening". Guest has limited options when it comes to casting, "The parts are generally conceived with those actors in mind, they're not terribly interchangeable and there aren't that many actors that can do this kind of work and that's why so many of the actors have been in these last three films; all the parts are basically made for these people to do". Input is welcomed from the actors, as Shearer points out; "As an actor you have a great deal of involvement in the look of your character from start to finish unlike a normal movie where you arrive in your trailer and there's your wardrobe, then you slap your makeup on. you're involved in the choices your character makes. Long before you start acting you're thinking about how your character thinks". It appears that this approach pays off and the actors revel in the opportunities it offers. This is a true ensemble performance and the entire cast is superb.
All the actors sing and play their instruments in the film. Levy had some experience singing in the sixties, but A Mighty Wind was still an exciting and scary experience, "At the end of the movie we do the concert. We were told it would be filmed basically live, we're not pre recording the music and lip-synching to it, we're actually going to be shooting the concert live, it puts a little added pressure on what you thought was a relatively good singing voice". Guest thinks Eugene is being modest, "He has a wonderful singing voice and is a talented musician, and I couldn't of gone into this film just arbitrarily assigning people these roles if I knew they weren't musical." Guest discovered their hidden musical talent by chance whilst working on Best In Show, "When we were editing at the end of one of the reels, there were people singing, just a left over thing, and it was Catherine, Eugene, Jane Lynch and Higgins. and it turned out that during a break they were singing this amazing arrangement and I found out that Michael Higgins had arranged it". As well as playing one of The New Main Street Singers, Higgins arranged all their harmonies in the film.
Guest himself has a background in this kind of music, "I played folk music as a kid", he recalls, "but it wasn't this kind of folk music, it was real folk music as opposed to the commercialised version. I still play what's called folk music, but it bears no resemblance to what you see in the movie". The songs in the film are accomplished, infectious and the humour is subtle, "The idea was not to write bad music", says Shearer, "Both in the performance of the characters and the performance of the songs we're trying to make you feel these people are real... What we share with our characters is a passion for playing music, so we wanted to write music that we would enjoy playing, and we do enjoy playing it, we've been doing a concert tour in the states based on these characters in this movie and we love playing the music, the people who come to see the shows love, by their reaction, to hear us play the music". Based on the strength of the performances in the film they would be able to sell out here as well.
Eighty hours of footage was shot on 16mm over 26 days with an average of three takes for each scene. The actors improvise all the dialogue but are still restricted by the script and cannot change something on the spot. As a result there is an extra hour of material on the DVD from whole scenes that, although funny, didn't fit with the story told in the movie. When directing, Guest gives commands via a microphone to the headset worn by his female cinematographer, "In an interview scene I'm directing where the zooms go from a two shot to one person, so it's almost more like doing a live television show. If I'm in a scene, I tell her what the parameters are, but this is a group effort and people know how to navigate their way through what has to be accomplished in a scene." Catherine O'hara has her own personal take on Guest's directing; "I think Chris is like a good parent who lets a child fly free, but guides them so you feel like you've come up with everything yourself, even though you're being guided by this script. The finished movie is the script, but the dialogue is all improvised and you have so much freedom in developing your character and Chris basically never says no. The beautiful thing that Chris does, I feel, from my point of view is that he makes you feel like you can do no wrong."
A Mighty Wind is extremely funny in parts, but the humour feels subdued compared to Best In Show or the outrageous Spinal Tap and at times the accomplishments of the actors and production design can be more compelling than the story. The songs are unnervingly catchy, and offer a wry and sophisticated humour that can only be appreciated to its fullest by viewers already familiar with this kind of music. Fans of Guest's last two films will have been pining for this theatrical release (it has been available on DVD in the US since September!) and for anyone new to his films; it is unlikely they will see a more accomplished comedy all year.
Gavin Bush
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