“Innocent Bystanders.” This is a 16mm film I made in college (Glassboro State College, now known as Rowan University). Shot in 1991. This is simply a VHS video camcorder pointed at a flat-bed steenbeck film editing screen. I re-edited the VHS on an Amiga Toaster around 1992.
I recently (2021) transferred the VHS to digital. I am hoping to do a 4K restoration soon.
Music by Kahlil Gunther
Written, produced, directed and edited by Matthew Kordelski.
Starring:
Laura Fonseca, Matt Reece, Dan Greenspan and George Jordan.
Production Assistants: Randall Deckard, John Perupchuck, Adam Paul, Jennifer Wiggleworth, R.J. Chester, Fred Feltz.
Film Advisor: Dr Joseph Bierman
Thanks to:
Dr Richard Grupenhoff, Cinema Workshop, Chris McDonough, Amy Donchey, Dennis Courtney, RITZ AT THE BOURSE Parking Garage, Ned Eckhardt, Rohn Wenner, Christopher Kuberiet.
This is an independent film/student film produced and directed by Laura Jean Carney in 1992.
I had a very small part of the crew in some scenes and I did the end credits on this amazing new invention called a Macintosh Computer.
Actors: Patty Gilson and Andrew Nelson,
Musical score by Andrew Nelson. Written and directed by Laura Carney.
Director of Photography: Maylon Price.
1st Assistant Camera: John Donaldson
2nd Assistant Camera: Bob Haines and Bill Paulino
Sound: Scott Hennely and April Carty
Production Manager: Christie Mahon
Teacher/Advisor: Joe Bierman
Title Graphics: Matt Kordelski
SPECIAL THANKS: Dennis Courtney, Sean O Leary, Mario Giorno, Blake Johnson, Joseph Marcello, Stephen Kwasnik, Amy Alexander, Ken Mandel, Walter Thomas IV, Dawn Cerruto, H. Sid Narulto, Dr. Richard Grupenhoff-PHD, NFL Films, Glassboro State College Cinema Workshop.
Good movie, a little too similar in structure to ” Ed Wood” (same writers) and Eddie Murphy is great, but doesn’t really “become” Rudy Ray Moore like I thought he would.
You could barely tell it was the same actor playing all the Klumps in ( The Nutty Professor. The RRM character in this movie sounds like…. Eddie Murphy doing Rudy Ray Moore routines… instead of it sounding like …. Rudy Ray Moore routines.
Eddie Murphy talks really fast while Moore had a very rehearsed feel to his speech pattern.
It doesn’t shy away from the fact that Dolemite was trash.. Uproariously entertaining and exploitative trash….
(Spoilers) Was Durville Martin really that much of a snob? If so, why was he brought back for the sequels?
Did Moore really not catch on that most of his film was being laughed AT in the wrong way? Sure its ok for the audience to laugh at the deliberate jokes, but seeing “Dolemite” movies both on VHS and midnight screenings at the original Alamo Drafthouse ( in the late 90s) the films gets laughed at when its supposed to be serious… the god awfully fake kung fu scenes…. etc..
I can remember reading how some Black writers were annoyed at how popular many blaxploitation flicks became on VHS in the late 90s. Someone wrote ( “its a voyeuristic look at the absolute worst aspects of Black culture”). Maybe it bothered them that once again white kids found “their” hidden treasure.
Ive often heard that when the Rudy Ray Moore movies were, the whole plan was to see them stoned…. they just weren’t that good straight…
For those of you who didn’t know, Rudy Ray Moore was like the Black Ed Wood of the 70s’, or… later on… Tommy Wiseau.
Moore’s movies weren’t as technically incompetent as Ed Woods, but they were just as cluelessly self indulgent.
He was a guy who wanted to be the star of a movie so he made his own way in. He wanted to be a sex symbol in a movie, so he wrote himself as one… ( even though he is quite up to that level).
He wanted to be an action star…. but his fighting skills were laughably/atrociously feeble. BUT, it must be said, Rudy Ray Moores movies were NEVER ever boring. At their worst, that are goofily laughable and never reach the train wreck heights ( depths) of say… The Rooms tuxedo football scene.
I’ll have to watch it again. I suspect there are Easter eggs and cameos I didn’t catch? Who played the wino and his trash can campfire crew?
I wonder if they were tied to the real Dolemite? Did the owner of the white Cadillac really not know they were going to blow it up? And I highly suspect the “ passing of the cane” at the end never happened ( or.. did it? who knows.. I suspect someone is going to call me out on it)
I just readan article in MOVIE MAKER magazine that has my head spinning.
Theres an interview with Steve Bellamy, President of Kodak Film.Bellamy gave a bunch of reasons as to why independent filmmakers should be shooting on film, not digital.
Well, I don’t know any “filmmaker” today who wouldn’t WANT to be shooting on true film. But its too expensive.
Bellamy said “ No one ever said ‘lets make this film look more like digital’“
Well thats true, I do EVERYTHING I can to make my digital footage look “cinematic” Filters, de saturation…..I’ve gotten pretty good at making color digital look like high contrast Black and White, but Im not satisfied with making digital look like color film.
Bellamy said “Film is LESS expensive than digital, no ifs ands or buts”
Well I could give him dozens, if not hundreds of no ifs ands or buts…
He said “camera packages are cheaper with film. Your shooting ratios are lower, your performances are better. People prepare better and storyboard with film— in video they don’t.Film doesn’t have a video village”
He is SO wrongon that.I prep as if it were film. I storyboard. I don’t have a “video village” anyway, my DSLR is used just like a film camera.
He said “When you edit digital, you have four times as much footage to soft through than if you shot film”
He may be right about that, but if I’m editing something I shot myself, I can sift through the footage really fast. In fact some “bad” footage” might capture something I didn’t notice at first.
But of course, his business is selling film.. so of course he’s biased.
It starts off as a cute curiosity, a college freshman finds out that he has a twin. The human interest story hits the papers and the twins find out there was a THIRD brother. And I thought ” Ok this is an amusing story, but how can it full up a feature documentary? I dont wanna ruin it, but holy cow the story gets GOOD! Its one of theses stories that, if it was a drama, you wouldn’t believe it. Ya can’t make this s–t up!
Disney is being greedy and rushing out too many Star Wars films too soon. The old ones, even the prequels, were EVENTS that took a long time to make. 2 a year if even takes the “special ness” out of it. And Hollywood should learn WHY certain things succeed or fail. The dark and gritty Batmans were big hits so…. lets make Superman dark and gritty. SLAP! Bad logic!
I really enjoyed watching this 6o’s documentary on a street gang. Well photographed and edited.
A great time capsule, great recording of the fashions young men wore and the buildings and cars of the era.
BUT!
This stretches the definition of “documentary.” The camera is RIGHT IN THEIR FACES. They knew they were being filmed.
The fights are obviously the boys playing for the camera.
And the shootings, at 16.50. Puh LEASE…. SOOOOO obviously staged. Especially the gang frozen in place and staring as the camera moves across them.. No one poses for the camera in the middle of a crime scene. And no cameraman can get shots THAT good in the middle of a shoot out.
and…. now that I think about it, the boys clearly got especially dressed up and well groomed when they knew they’d be filmed.
They clearly dressed sharp and got their hair groomed especially well when they knew they were being filmed. I doubt they dressed up that well all the time. So sharply dressed to get into a street fight? I am sure the fights were staged, and the shootings seem SO fake and staged.
Not that they weren’t re enacting things they HADN’T already done….. I’m sure they DID get into fights…
Theres not much about this film on the web.
Wikipedia says it was produced by a Temple University film teacher ( Harold Haskins). Presumably this was self produced by him, shot earlier than 1967 ( youtube commenters noted that the boys are wearing fashions and hairstyles from the early to mid 60s, not the late sixties.
Youtube says it was made in 1969, but wikipedia says it was made in 1967. Lets assume it was shot in the mid 60s, finished in the late sixties.
I’d love to hear THIS story:
“Schwartz shared the story of the mighty rise and devastating fall of the gang’s film company as they took the film world by storm for a brief, shining moment before a shocking murder, in-fighting, and drugs dissolved the union. ”
When I was a boy in the early to mid 70s mainstream blacks were never proud to be associated with the street gangs; they were looked upon with pity at best and at worst, they were despised. Now, ironically, they are deified by the mainstream as representing “pure blackness.” Strange”
I replied:
I liked your response and was interested in what you said. As a white man who loves both filmmaking and Black people…. I’ve never understood the glorification of “gangsta” culture that started in the 90s. Most Italians I know get frustrated that ( it seems like) every Italian in movies and TV is some kind of gangster. And many white people dont get that….if the N word is so horrible for us to say why are so many Black folks calling THEMSELVES that?!?!? ( I think I get, its a black peoples word NOW and they’ve reversed it… when black folks say it they mean ” friend”). But so many rappers promoting the gangsta lifestyle, cash, jewelry fancy cars. I see young white men wearing “prison fashion” it baffles me. If a white guy dressed up in “sambo” make up he’d get arrested for inciting a riot. In the later 80s Black leaders were praising the increasing number of TV shows showing healthy successful Black families. There is a conspiracy theory that a bunch of wealthy white media people wanted to invest in private prisons, so they promoted “gangsta” values in the media to keep their prisons full. Sounds like tin foil hat UFO nuttiness….. but maybe not.
mattkprovideo 