Sherman's March

It counts as a movie, but it's basically him just talking with some photos in the background.

Or Sherman's March.

Sort of a more experimental type film would be one way to approach that.

Okay, so my thought was, what if you...

... style docs.

Um, you know, R- Ross McElwee's Sherman's March comes to mind, right? But this is the next level because I think John Wilson has come around at the perfect moment for his career, which is he's a filmmaker who makes very clear movies, but he's also a television maker because he follows a similar structure in most of his projects, and that's his aesthetic, and those two seem to have combined in a way that's really effective.

In three, you could watch a three-minute clip of this movie on Instagram and feel like you got a fully-

Yeah

And my name is Frank.

And coming up on this week's episode, we've got the influential, ahead of its time perhaps, 1986 documentary Sherman's March, a.k.a. Sherman's March, a mediation on the possibility of romantic love in the South during an era of nuclear weapons proliferation.

So we're going to be getting into it in just a couple minutes.

But how are you guys doing this week?

Anything else we need to mention before we get into this review? Nope.

Nope.

Okay, so Sherman's March, directed by Ross, what did you say, Jay? McElwee?

Yes, I believe so.

Well, it is so individual to you as this kind of filmmaking is.

I was thinking, you know, I recently interviewed Ross McElwee, of course, of the terrific series of films, including Sherman's March.

And no one else could make his films as I think no one else could make your movies.

They are singular to you.

He- this was new to me, but I'm sure you'd come across his work before.

Oh, I was one of those people who saw Sherman's March, the film that he made his bones on-

Yeah.

Yeah

Right.

Starting in the '70s, he produced films that were very self-conscious, self-referential.

Sherman's March, as you mentioned, is sort of this would-be Civil War doc that actually ends up being about the pressure he is, himself is facing to find someone and settle down.

Mm-hmm.

McElwee spends years assembling his films.

Here we see him go through a divorce, recover from a brain tumor, fall in love and remarry, and look on as an attempt to turn his breakout film Sherman's March into a sitcom falls apart.

And then McElwee's son Adrian dies at 27 of a drug overdose.

Adrian is a constant presence in McElwee's earlier work.

It's an exquisite meditation on time and fate and all of these.

You know what it is, Larry? It's Sherman's March.

That's what it is.

It's Sherman's March.

And all of that, when we meet him at the top of the movie 2015, he literally stands there with his card, the young guy, you know, 2015.

And he's going to stand there with that card a couple of times over that 10 years, and we're going to see him again.

And he is, because he's talking to us all the way through this movie, he keeps connecting these things and sewing them back together.

He's going to have a son.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, but we should say, uh, so we, we have discussed Sherman's March, which is one of his other films, and that's going to be an upcoming episode of Film Junk.

Uh, Remake kind of refers to that film a bit, so it's a little weird 'cause people are probably gonna be hearing this before they hear the Sherman's March review.

But just FYI, you might wanna check out Sherman's March first if you were thinking of checking that out along with Remake.

Um, so, but w- we'll get into that w- I'm sure when we talk about the movie.

Um, but how are you, how are you guys doing this week?

Um, but yeah, it's, it's, uh...

I, I liked all of the stuff with him just kind of documenting his own struggles, even if some of it is a little...

Is it fair to say that not only was it a breakthrough film for yours, but also a film that really set the tone for a generation of filmmakers and audience.

That's Sherman's March, which I believe was the grand jury prize winner at Sundance in about 86 or 87.

And it's also the 40th anniversary and it's been re-released in theaters.

Congratulations on that.

I would encourage folks to see it.

But let's, if we may, can we start there and just talk a little bit about Sherman's March for people who haven't seen it.

And then if you can talk about the day Hollywood comes knocking.

I want to do a remake of Sherman's March, and I think we all know when Hollywood comes knocking, only good things happen.