Engaging, Offbeat Home Pride
Chris Smith’s “Home Movie” is an engaging documentary about people who live in unusual homes. They are decidedly individualists, rather than kooky or bizarre, whose dwellings creatively reflect their lifestyles and passions.
Smith’s two previous documentaries were also distinctive: “American Job” (1995), about what it’s like to do menial work for a living; and, directed with Sarah Price, “American Movie” (1999), about the making of a low-low-budget horror picture in a small town.
Bill Tregle and Linda Beech both live close to nature but in different ways. Tregle is a burly, good-ol’-boy type with a Cajun accent who lives aboard an unpretentious but well-organized, highly functional houseboat in a Louisiana bayou.
A psychologist who in her teen years starred in a Japanese TV show, Beech has long lived in an elegant, contemporary-style home, complete with treehouse and waterfall, deep in a magnificent Hawaiian rain forest. Ed and Diana Peden’s abode represents a pinnacle of recycling. The Pedens transformed an abandoned missile silo outside Topeka, Kan., into a remarkably comfortable home topped by a spacious, sunny room they call a greenhouse that enables them not to spend all their time indoors underground.
These homeowners share a spiritual kinship with their dwellings, and the same could be said for Ben Skora, who over the years has transformed a Sears prefab house in suburban Chicago into a kind of ‘50s Space Age dream house, loaded with electric gadgetry.
Bob Walker and Frances Mooney do not regret having spent $10,000 remodeling their California home to accommodate their beloved 11 cats with special walkways and nooks and crannies. Their modifications are well-designed and the house has an appealing playhouse quality.
There is something reassuring in seeing free-thinking individuals express their personalities so emphatically yet invitingly in the places they live.
Accompanying “Home Movie” is a 17-minute film shot in 1986 by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, now film and TV veterans. “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” was videotaped in the parking lot of the Capital Centre arena in Largo, Md., before a Judas Priest concert. Made as a joke, it has taken on a life of its own over the years. Krulik and Heyn simply allowed the Priest fans to be themselves. They are primarily young, lower-class white males, high on drink or drugs, in a rowdy, high-spirited mood. As a slice of Americana, “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” offers a nifty contrast to “Home Movie.”
Unrated. Times guidelines: “Home Movie” is suitable for all ages; “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” depicts the effects of considerable amounts of alcohol and marijuana, sprinkled with four-letter words.
‘Home Movie’
A Cowboy Pictures release. Director Chris Smith. Producers Barbara Laffey, Susane Preissler. Executive producers Stuart Wolff, John Shirley, Richard Siegel. Cinematographer Hubert Taczanowski. Editor Juan Diaz. Running time: 1 hour.
‘Heavy Metal Parking Lot’
Directors-cinematographers-editors John Heyn, Jeff Krulik. Running time 17 minutes.
Exclusively at Landmark’s Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A., (310) 478-6379; and Edwards’ Park Place 10, 3031 Michelson Drive, Irvine, (949) 440-0880.