American Movie (1999)

directed by Chris Smith

Tucker Leighty-Phillips

From the passenger side of an old sedan on a road running through a trailer park, Mark Borchardt, primary subject of the documentary American Movie, asks his Uncle Bill to record a line of dialogue for his film. An important line, the first line. It’s alright, it’s okay, there’s something to live for, Jesus told me so.

For the uninitiated, American Movie is a documentary about filmmaker Borchardt, who, against the odds of poverty and apathy, is trying to make a film. Actually, it goes even further—Mark is trying to make a short film in order to fund his full-length feature. A film about making a film so one may make a film. And in Mark’s short film, Coven, this opening line is said by Uncle Bill’s character from a passing car to Mark’s character. The film is grayscaled, and the moment is meant to be unsettling—the line cryptic coming from a stranger, unprompted. But in the documentary, the line is comical, repeated thirty times as Uncle Bill tries to get it right. Mark, trying to motivate his uncle, says “you have to believe in what you’re saying.” His uncle responds meekly, a whispered response of “You do?” followed by, “Well I don’t, I don’t believe in nothing what you’re doing.”

It’s alright, it’s okay, there’s something to live for, Jesus told me so. I have often been charmed, or mystified, by this moment—how the same line, said by the same person, can be both a mantra of faith and hopelessness.

American Movie opens with Mark talking about failure; driving his car through a Milwaukee night, discussing his own failure, how he had been a failure, how he’s become Mark With A Beer In His Hand, how he no longer wants to drink and dream, but create and complete.

He reminds me of a personality trait I often see online—on Tumblr posts, tweets, Instagram meme pages—of children deemed gifted who become less motivated as they age, succumbing beneath a combination of internal and external pressures, finding themselves later wondering what might have been. I was one of those kids. In elementary school, there was a library wall covered with markers signaling Accelerated Reader point totals. When a student reached a hundred points, they got their name on the wall. When they reached 150, their name moved forward to the next marker, and so on. My fifth-grade year, I was reading so much they had to add a marker for 500 points just to place my name beneath it—the next highest student was still approaching 300. I loved reading, and by proxy, learning. I was placed into specialty Language Arts classes to support my advancement. Just a few years later, I was failing classes, taking summer school to make up required courses, sleeping through my electives. There was a point where I thought I was going to fail my senior year, and nearly dropped out altogether.

I can’t say whether the special attention stunted my motivation. I also can’t say whether I lacked interests or if my interests just weren’t academic. I was a social creature more than anything—I liked making people laugh, an interest often at odds with my studies. My senior year, a close friend, noticing my habit of skipping and slacking, started to tease me. “Tucker, do you think you’re too cool for school?” he would ask, emphasizing the rhyme, making clear the contrast between cool and academic. In reality, I didn’t feel too cool, but the opposite. I felt unworthy of school, especially as senior year progressed and more and more students finalized college plans. I became fully aware of how little I’d thought about my future. I had never attended a college fair, never filled out an application, never even visited a website. My family wasn’t a college family, so maybe I just ruled the option out, glossed over it entirely—but in favor of what? I wasn’t sure.

I had a series of failed interests. In ninth grade, I received a skateboard and a pair of skate shoes for Christmas. I loved to carry my skateboard around the neighborhood, gripping the deck sideways and exposing the graphic underneath so other kids could see the brand and know I wasn’t a poser. I tried to ride it at the end of my street, spending a half-hour mustering a meager ollie or the worst shove-it. I mostly fell over or kicked the board out from under me. I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t any good or if I just didn’t want to put in the effort. When the other skateboarders asked me to hang and skate with them, which had been my real motivation all along, I declined. I told them I was grounded (I wasn’t) for being caught smoking cigarettes (I hadn’t). When nobody was around, I rubbed the bottom of my deck against the ledge of a concrete step to sully the design and make it seem like I could grind. I did the same with my shoes, intentionally tearing the fabric. Pristine shoes were the mark of someone who didn’t skate.

I also took guitar lessons three times across the course of my life. Once from a neighbor, once from a friend, and once from a teacher. I had lied about playing an instrument for so long that I figured I should finally learn, but it didn’t hold. I could play three-second excerpts of five or six songs for about a minute at a time before my fingertips creased and ached and I wanted to give up. But after spending just enough time fiddling with the instrument to consider it an act of practice, I would get on MSN Messenger and message a crush, saying I just finished playing guitar…yeah I play a little… never letting on just how little that was.

After high school, my friends let me join their band. I wanted to sing, but couldn’t sing, and since I couldn’t play an instrument, I was left with few options. They asked if I could play bass. I lied and said I could, but couldn’t afford gear. They told me I could play the keyboard—even offered me the gear so I wouldn’t have to buy it. My friend Michael wrote and recorded all of my parts, three or four notes recurring, and showed me how to play them for live shows. Someone in town called me a trained lab rat—said that what I was doing on stage could’ve been done by a mouse or a trained chimp. I quit the band after a few months. Now, I think about what that guy said about me, and I disagree. With enough practice and positive reinforcement, a lab rat would eventually learn the songs. 

I think my identity crisis burrowed deeper than subculture. I grew up in Appalachia, in a heavily evangelical community. In many small towns, the church is the closest thing to a community center—it is a hub that goes beyond religion. It contains social activity, sports, politics, community organizing (whether I like it or not)—so much beyond sermons and hymns.

I tried to find God, either because my community demanded it or because I wanted to be a part of something larger than myself, but it felt like we were playing phone tag. When I needed God, I couldn’t get ahold of him. If he was reaching out to me, I wasn’t taking calls. I went to Vacation Bible School, youth group, sat through the sermons, but never found myself connecting. In some cases, I was skeptical of what was being said. Even worse, I was skeptical of those saying it—I had a sinking feeling that the preachers and pastors didn’t believe what they were saying either. It was like professional wrestling—we all knew it was a show, but were asked to uphold the suspension of disbelief. Maybe if you tell yourself a thing is real for long enough, it starts to feel true.

In Sunday school, I ate off-brand Oreos and colored in pictures of camels. I was often bored by the lectures and games, but I liked the snacks. One day, a youth minister told me Jesus was the only being capable of unconditional love, and I spoke up, argued with him, said I would love my mother unconditionally, no matter what happened between us. He told me I was wrong, that human love would always be conditional. That even the most compassionate of mothers could stop loving their children, even the most sensitive sons could abandon their mothers. From there, I stopped attending youth group. At some point, belief becomes secondary to process. 

Despite my challenge to his notion, I still hid beneath my pillow that night and cried, soaking the sheets in my tears. How conditional could my love be? What would be my dropping point? I have spent nights crying over this both as a child and adult. That youth minister was probably no older than sixteen. But in my mind, he is massive, a Goliath, the overwhelming counter to the David one makes of themselves in memory—small, defenseless. And in this story, he has won each battle, toppled me each time.

American Movie is a film that is intensely place-based. Wisconsin is a candle burning throughout the film—its scent carries through every scene. It is a film about convincing others that art is a worthwhile endeavor. It is a film about failure, both in the long and short term. The short: I am out of money. The long: All of this was pointless. The short: my actors are struggling with their lines. The long: They all believe I’m a loser. 

On my twentieth birthday, I sought change. I applied for a job at a place that made sub sandwiches. They never called me, so I moved to Pennsylvania. And while living up north, working at a different place that made sub sandwiches, I found that perhaps my identity wasn’t wrapped up in a hobby or niche interest, but maybe it was Kentucky, the place I’d just given up, the pasture I’d abandoned in favor of greener ones. I found myself often defending my home, being a representative of Appalachia in conversations at the bar, yearning for Southern food, the sounds of crickets and bullfrogs on a quiet night, a radio somewhere near playing John Michael Montgomery or Randy Travis. 

In some ways, I feel a kinship with Mark Borchardt. But I also feel in contrast to him. He had direction, or at least an idea of a direction. An ex-partner once said they looked forward to the day I started doing something instead of talking about doing something. We split soon after. They left because they wanted to do something, their own something, and I never blamed them. I had lots of ideas, but was Tucker With A Beer In His Hand, drinking and dreaming, watching professional wrestling on the couch six nights a week.

One of my favorite scenes in American Movie is Mark speaking at a production meeting—between himself and one other person—for his film. “There’s no excuses,” he begins. “No one has ever, ever paid admission to see an excuse. No one has ever faced a black screen that says ‘well, if we had these set of circumstances, we would’ve shot this scene, so please forgive us and use your imagination,’ I’ve been to the movies hundreds of times, that’s never occurred.”

I started writing because I wanted to explore my relationship to Kentucky—a place for which I feel many emotions, some good, some bad, some downright confusing. I also wanted to explore myself, my family dynamics, my fears. I wanted to understand why I rejected God while fearing his possibility so much. It’s strange—I do not consider myself spiritual, but I didn’t realize how much spirituality resonated in my subconscious until I started writing. Perhaps it isn’t God, but some overarching sense of everything needing to matter. Writing narrative is creating reason for every occurring event, which, in a way, is a kind of religion. 

Writing felt different from skateboarding to me, different from music. Even if it sucked, I was doing it. I was stringing notes together with a pen. I was lifting thoughts into the air, making words do all kinds of tricks. And frankly, my writing wasn’t very good—but I was feeling good about the process. It was changing my perspective of my childhood, my upbringing, what I had and didn’t have, what I could and couldn’t do. It was like wearing 3D glasses into my memories, watching them materialize in strange shapes on the page.

In American Movie, Mark drives to the Milwaukee Airport parking lot to work on his script. I come to the airport all the time when I want to work. There’s no phones ringing, there’s no people talking to you, and if you’re hungry, it’s like, tough shit. You can’t stop and justify your inaction by making a pizza. You’ve gotta be in this car. You have no other choice. I had a mentor that once told me he visited a nearby handcart museum when he wanted to work through a piece of writing. He likened it to a sensory deprivation tank—a place where stimuli cease to exist, a place where the only source of neurons firing are from within. I used to fear that—being alone with my thoughts. But since I’ve started writing, I’ve tried it, taking cues from Mark and my mentor. I am writing this from a closet in the back of my home. I am writing this from beneath my pillow in bed. I am writing this from that handcart museum. This is written from all the places where God can find me, where God may be right now, whispering mishaps into my ear. 

It’s really hard to describe American Movie to those who haven’t seen it. The synopsis alone is a hard sell. But it’s a movie that means a tremendous amount to me, in a way that no other movie does. To say it’s a meditation on art would be limiting—there are plenty of meditations on art. It is a meditation on art multiplied by a meditation on place, a meditation on achieving expectations, a meditation on failure and belief. It is not a character study, but a character showcase. It is a meditation on family, in blood and construction. It’s a reminder that there’s something to live for, no matter who you hear it from.

Tucker Leighty-Phillips is the author of Maybe This Is What I Deserve, a short story collection being published by Split/Lip Press in June 2023. His website is TuckerLP.net.