FLICK'N'BEANS

EP 90: American Movie | An Uneducated Philosopher and His Poor Uncle Bill

• FLICK'N'BEANS

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 15:51

Send us Fan Mail

Good Morning!!!!

Today we visit yet another struggling artist in the wild. The documentary American Movie follows the filmmaking process as we sit back and watch not only the bromance between Mark and Mike but also the cinematic treasure that is Coven. (pronounced like ohhhhhh-ven, not uh-ven mkay?)


Enjoy!!

Love you!!

Bye!!!!!!


Support the show

HEY BEAN FLICKERS!
follow us on all the Socials!!
SUBSCRIBE & find us where
you find all the cool podcasts you listen to. 
and stop listening to them and only listen to us.  

bye! love you!!

Bridget:

Foreign.

Wendy:

Oh hi Mark.

Bridget:

Good morning.

Wendy:

Good morning.

Bridget:

I'm Bridget.

Wendy:

And I'm Wendy.

Bridget:

And this is Flicking beans. Well, seven Brew was super busy. There were also so many cute dogs there. A. I also have to tell you that something bad happened to me. Like really bad.

Wendy:

Okay.

Bridget:

I swear. Swallowed a fly.

Wendy:

I don't know if the mic caught that, but Gus sneezed almost in excitement.

Bridget:

Gus agrees it was awful. Had my mouth open as I was bending down to pet the cat and this random fly flew in, lodged itself all the way back in my throat. I started coughing, gagging. Luckily I had a trash can with a liner nearby and I just started puking and puking and coughing and puking and I swear I felt like it was in there for a while. This is something that I cannot handle.

Wendy:

That sounds terrible.

Bridget:

Yeah, I told you it was bad.

Wendy:

Somebody famous is died by swallowing a bee recently.

Bridget:

Allergic.

Wendy:

They must have been cuz I don't think it would kill you otherwise.

Bridget:

It would kill me if that was lodged in my throat. Oh my God.

Wendy:

Are you allergic to bee stings? No, just. It would be worse than the fly.

Bridget:

You know flies are attracted to gross smelly things and bees to sweet. So unless I put some of that Lumi in my mouth, I probably won't have that issue. But you can suck one up in a straw.

Wendy:

One of our gigs, the one at Union Park, I had shandy in my cup. It must crawl down the straw. Then when I took the lid off, there was like five of them. All those crawled down the straw.

Bridget:

That is that stuff a nightmare? Yeah, worse than any horror movie. Okay, so this week's movie I made you watch American Movie, which is a documentary about making a move. It's not quite the Disaster Artist.

Wendy:

No, but there's definitely some parallels. The main character, Mark, is a philosopher that never got educated. You can tell he's smart and the gears are turning, but he doesn't have common sense.

Bridget:

His brother mentioned that he looked up to him as a youngin because he was so smart.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Then what happened?

Wendy:

Drinking.

Bridget:

Exactly.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

He has this one friend whose name is Mike. Yes, he and Mike drink a lot of vodka. One of my favorite lines is when Mike says something like I don't know if he had some vodka or if I had some vodka. We just drank vodka.

Wendy:

Mike was the best.

Bridget:

He was the best.

Wendy:

He so sweet, burned out.

Bridget:

Right. I couldn't tell if he was slow. But you're right, he was just a burnout.

Wendy:

Well, he tells that story about how he. He basically died and came back from an overdose. His brain didn't have a lot of oxygen during that time, and that's definitely part of it.

Bridget:

Didn't he chuckle after that?

Wendy:

He did. He chuckled after every story.

Bridget:

He was mostly in the background, and he didn't say a whole lot at the end. I thought Mike didn't really have any personality or hobbies other than he likes hanging out with Mark.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

He said Mark makes movies. That's what he does. So I make movies with him.

Wendy:

Yeah. The best. That's friendship.

Bridget:

Exactly. It's his little side.

Wendy:

Yeah. It's the. Oh, he was just so. I don't know if pure is the right word, but wholesome. Obviously burnt out from his past, but he doesn't do drink anymore or do drugs anymore. And he's. Even though at one point, Mark tries to get him to buy beer with his last $20.

Bridget:

The movie that he's making is called Coven.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Not Coven, because it sounds like oven.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

All throughout the movie, people are trying to correct him. Apparently, it is an alternate pronunciation.

Wendy:

Oh, so he was legit.

Bridget:

No, I know. I just don't buy that. That anyone is saying it.

Wendy:

No, I've never heard anyone say it like that. But that's another one of those things where you can tell that he's like, maybe. Well read. But, you know, this happens to me a lot where I've read a word and I've never said it out loud, and then I do, and then people are like, what?

Bridget:

Yeah.

Wendy:

I also thought it took way too long for anybody in the movie to correct him. Like, eventually they start, but he says it for a long time before anybody corrects it.

Bridget:

Right.

Wendy:

And it's interesting. Coven. Coven. Yes, Coven. Coven's the correct one. Then I kept thinking they were saying Covid, even though obviously this is like the 90s. This is sort of towards the beginning, I think that Mark says this. He's talking about his drinking problem, which is a theme. And he was like, it's no longer time to drink and dream. It's time to create and get it. Or something like that. That spoke to me, I guess.

Bridget:

It's yet another struggling artist movie, and the guy has internal struggles regarding his project, except instead of turning inward, he seems to lash out at everybody else.

Wendy:

Yes.

Bridget:

Like blaming them for something he's not very good at. He does finish it. Like, Dave made a maze, and he puts it out there for the world, and he's totally proud of it. The town turns out for the premiere, right there. That's fulfilling his dream. Even though he thinks he's going to be a big shot.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

He can't really act or direct that well. Most of the movie involves him doing the sound overdubs.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

So that's what we're seeing. And that poor old guy, Uncle Bill. Yeah, Uncle Bill. He's basically taking all of Uncle Bill's money.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

In order to make this project. Uncle Bill is just like, whatever, man. Just get what you need and go.

Wendy:

Please.

Bridget:

He's not. He doesn't love it when Mark comes around.

Wendy:

No. And he tortures the poor man by making him be in the movie and do his line 30 plus times.

Bridget:

Yes.

Wendy:

And what? One of the times that Mark does the line, he realizes that he's been recording it in the wrong, like frequency or something for the first like 10 takes. And I was like, dude, murder him.

Bridget:

I mean, he clearly has vision, but not. He's uneducated in that arena too. He wants that so badly. But yeah, he, I. He doesn't have a mentor, so he's learning on the fly. But at first I didn't realize they were just doing the sound takes. And I was like, why is there no camera?

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

And then you've got Mike sitting there in the background just watching. So the poor old guy, they put him in a car because that's what he's doing in the movie. So he can yell his line. Yeah, I noticed that. He. They had him sitting on a big blue tarp. I know that poor old man.

Wendy:

Okay. At one point, Mark gives Uncle Bill a bath. I'm not sure if this is something he does a lot, but it seems like maybe not. He just has decided to give. And his girlfriend comes over and Mark is running around doing other things and she's like, where's Uncle Bill? And he's like, he's in the tub. And they had been drinking, of course, and he's. She's like, he could pass out in there. Go check on him. You can't leave this like 90 year old man in the bathtub alone. And then he's. He's filming taking a bath even if he's not drunk. Right.

Bridget:

Can't leave a 90 year old in the bathroom alone.

Wendy:

I found it really odd that Mark filmed it because this is not the time where we all have our cell phones. He had to set up the camera, waste some tape on it. Like, why is he filming that?

Bridget:

Right. It's a real life experience. It's hard to believe that this is real.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

But it's really real. These people are really real.

Wendy:

We as Midwesterners I think we know these people. These are. They're from Wisconsin and their accent's very thick and it made me. It reminded me of people that I know from Wisconsin. But I think small town Midwest is very much this people's culture.

Bridget:

I guess you can tell by his hair and his child molester classes.

Wendy:

Yes.

Bridget:

That he's very much like Owen Wilson's character from last week in Paint. But he also brought up a lot of Joe Dirt vibes, especially because he's so super forward thinking and Joe Dirt was so upbeat and, you know, moving on despite all these terrible challenges.

Wendy:

That's one thing that people keep saying about Mark when they're interviewing him is they admire his tenacity. Even though he has failed over and over again, he continues to want to make this movie. And that is admirable.

Bridget:

I have a couple reviews that are pretty good.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

The more you watch it, the more you realize there's a little Mark Orchard in all of us. A wild eyed dreamer.

Wendy:

Aww.

Bridget:

While the realities of his life are stark and his relationships with his family and children seem dysfunctional, he's an entertaining figure with idealism that's larger than life.

Wendy:

Absolutely.

Bridget:

That's the Joe Dirt thing.

Wendy:

Yeah. That's a perfect description of him. Makes me think of the point when he's there in the kitchen and he's drunk and he's going on about I'm never going to be one of those schmucks that works a 40 hour week job and that kind of thing. You're like, yeah. That's a sentiment you hear a lot is I don't want to give up myself to work this job. And he's just not willing to compromise on that yet.

Bridget:

And that's pretty cool.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

But slight delusions of grandeur.

Wendy:

Absolutely. He's broken. He's so broke.

Bridget:

Here's another review that ties in with the first one. It said, looking for proof that real life is more entertaining than fiction. You just found it. This superb documentary about an aspiring feature filmmaker, Mark Borchard, who refuses to admit defeat, is the funniest film I've ever seen. Probably because it's one of the most tragic. Oddly enough, the more I watch the film, the more inspired I become.

Wendy:

I have an inkling that I saw this before.

Bridget:

You may have.

Wendy:

The character Mike seemed very familiar to me and I kind of remembered his story, but not the rest of it. So that's weird. I must have just been fixating on Mike because I loved him.

Bridget:

Mike was so sweet.

Wendy:

He's like Groot Yeah, it's like Hodor from Game of Thrones.

Bridget:

One thing I thought would be so fun is to be one of those people recording screams. Wouldn't it be cathartic?

Wendy:

Yeah, absolutely.

Bridget:

Like a smash room would be.

Wendy:

Yeah, I've done the smash room. It's fun. They also had a mattress in there that you could stab. And for some reason, that was very, very cathartic. Mike has the best scream, don't you think?

Bridget:

They were all good.

Wendy:

I just was surprised by Mike's because he's so low key.

Bridget:

It was very high pitched. I thought it was a woman. It was amazing.

Wendy:

He also did four or so screams in a row. Drove it home.

Bridget:

Well, he's a rock star, man.

Wendy:

Oh, that's true. He actually is. Talented musician. They see him, he's playing with a blindfold at one point.

Bridget:

Oh, my God. I have a couple quotes, okay. That made me chuckle at one time. Mark is reading his mail and it says, your AT&T universal card has arrived. He says, oh, God, kick f****** a**. I got a MasterCard. I don't believe it, man. Life is cool sometimes. Life is cool sometimes. Especially when you get a revolving credit card that you can't afford.

Wendy:

Right.

Bridget:

And then Mark's brother's take on Mark as a youngster, he said, honestly, I thought he was going to grow up to be like a stalker or serial killer or do something where he would try to plant someone's death. And unfortunately, sometimes I have the idea it might be mine.

Wendy:

I do want to comment on one of the brothers shirts. Did you notice that one of them was wearing a Hooters shirt?

Bridget:

Okay.

Wendy:

I just thought that was an odd choice because he knew he was going to be filmed.

Bridget:

Probably one of his favorite shirts.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

People who like Hooters restaurants find nothing wrong with going to Hooters restaurants.

Wendy:

I don't think there's anything wrong with going to Hooters restaurants either. I just thought that was an interesting choice because, you know, it was a choice. And you also know the documentary guy noticed, too.

Bridget:

They don't go there for the wings. They go for the breasts and the thighs. Why am I not writing Hooters commercials?

Wendy:

I don't know. You should be a copywriter.

Bridget:

So I have a question. A bit of a thinker.

Wendy:

Okay.

Bridget:

Can a loser also be a winner?

Wendy:

Yes.

Bridget:

I was thinking Napoleon Dynamite.

Wendy:

Sure. I kept thinking about the Garfunkel and Oates song. You are such a loser. Good for you.

Bridget:

Yeah.

Wendy:

Something that a lot of people can't do. Trying is hard. That's why People don't do it.

Bridget:

Yeah. You're such a loser.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

It's okay to fail. Yeah.

Wendy:

He doesn't want to be a failure. It's like his biggest fear is being a failure. But he is being a failure by having that fear because he's doesn't have money and his kids are gonna get taken away. And all this stuff he's obsessed with, but yet he doesn't see it that way. He sees himself as making successful moves.

Bridget:

Do you think other people see him as a loser?

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Wendy:

Even his mom was saying said something to the effect that I don't think he's ever gonna finish this movie. Which, I mean, he'd been working on it for, like, 10 years or something.

Bridget:

He finished it?

Wendy:

Yeah, he did.

Bridget:

Uncle Bill died shortly after this movie, but left him $50,000 to do his next movie. Northwestern.

Wendy:

Yes. Do we know if he ever made it? Because it's not in the documentary.

Bridget:

I did not research it.

Wendy:

I didn't either. They only show Covid scenes from Koven. Like getting his head bashed underneath the sink. Not scoring it enough.

Bridget:

That was. Yeah, a particularly difficult scene. Goodness. Highly recommend.

Wendy:

Yeah, absolutely.

Bridget:

Did we do it?

Wendy:

I think we did it. We flick some. Be okay. Love you.

Bridget:

Bye. Bye. Party all night long.

Head Shot

Bridget

Co-host
Head Shot

Wendy

Co-host