“It was a Black and blackly night…”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as a lifelong lover of satire, I was annoyed at missing American Fiction when it played the Heartland Film Festival months ahead of the current Oscar season, but its one and only showtime and location were lousy for me. The drive would’ve been a nearly-hourlong construction-zone slog to Central Indiana’s most upscale area, arguably a breeding ground for the very crowd that the film’s most withering commentary targets.

The original work was a 2001 novel by Percival Elliott called Erasure that I hadn’t heard of but have now added to my want-list, adapted here by first-time director Cord Jefferson, whose choice TV-writing credits include Succession, HBO’s Watchmen, and The Good Place. Our hero is Jeffrey Wright as college professor Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, whose writings and temperament are more Harlan than Ralph. His most self-cherished works appear to be modern reboots of the ancient playwrights, Aeschylus and Aristophanes and the like. Somehow his proud efforts that “don’t see color” (his own exact words!) aren’t burning up the literary sales charts. He has no interest in capitalizing on The Black Experience and flies off the handle when he finds his hoity-toity non-starters shelved in a bookshop’s single “African-American Literature” bookcase even though there’s nothing Black inside them. He huffs and puffs because of course his babies are great art and it’s the children who are wrong.

When he sees other Black authors getting recognized for their ghetto memoirs – some of whom are in upper-crust academia, same as him – he has had it and decides to write his own to mock them. His well-to-do Boston upbringing, in a family that was once rich enough to afford a separate vacation house but not enough to purchase LTC insurance, gives him exactly zero personal anecdotes to use, in a world where a TV channel’s Black History Month celebration slate ranges from slavery dramas to Boyz N The Hood…and that’s it, that’s their whole marathon. So he fakes it till he makes it, by setting out to write the worst Black memoir of all times.

Monk not only creates a crappy pseudonym, but has to fabricate an entire persona to prop it up — a tough-mewling faux-fugitive on the lam, about as convincing in person as Michael Scott’s “Prison Mike” character, or Eddie Murphy as prison-poet Tyrone Green in that one classic SNL sketch that’s totally a forefather to all of this. (“Kill my landlord! Kill my landlord!”) But over a conference call with a prospective publisher on the high end of the Sherwin-Williams white spectrum, he’s plenty “real”, at least as “real” as Vanilla Ice. A multi-million-dollar deal is struck and he’s on his way to bestselling flash-in-the-pan-dom, to his abject disgust. Every time he tries to sabotage the deal by doing something even stupider or more offensive, that only makes his “brand” even more “real”. And in today’s world, “real” outsells real, even if the literati can’t tell or care which is which.

But the film isn’t just its satire, which covers half the runtime at most. Among its best, most unsung strengths is its ensemble, the family that Monk sucks at acknowledging. Monk’s sister Lisa (Black-ish‘s Tracee Ellis Ross) is everyone’s witty bedrock who does not put up with his nonsense. His brother Cliff (This Is Us‘ Sterling K. Brown) has split from his wife and kids after being caught with another man. His elderly mom (Tony Award Winner Leslie Uggams, from the stage and Deadpool) is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and bringing the entire family to a major decision point. Others come and go as Monk’s story continues, but a lot of character setup (far more than you’d normally get in a film that’s only a satire) pays off in more sincere ways as each of the main cast is allowed their own personal story. Some are much longer than others, but none of them are compelled to pose as the ne plus ultra of The Black Experience. They’re large, they contain multitudes, etc.

It’s amid Mom’s crisis that Monk has to deal with his dilemma. He’s become the very thing he hates, but he could really use the money to help his mom. As if things couldn’t get more complicated and sitcom-eriffic, then Monk — the professor himself, not his 2 Black 2 Strong cosplay — is asked to join the judges’ panel of a Major Book Award. The selection-committee head (J.C. MacKenzie, a veteran of five Scorsese films and The Trial of the Chicago 7) doesn’t even hide the fact that they’re looking for nonwhite faces to look less racist, and sweetens the pot by offering a stipend and, unambiguously, the chance to judge fellow authors “not just figuratively”. Here all this time Monk’s been giving away his Frasier Crane-ish judgments for free, like a chump. We sit back, check our watches, and see how many minutes till he’s faced with the prospect of judging his own book.

American Fiction‘s terrain is uncommon yet familiar to anyone who loved Get Out or made time for Radha Blank’s 2020 Netflix film The 40-Year-Old Version: puncturing the pretensions of a hermetic circle in which white authorities “listen” to unheard Black voices that all sound alike to them, signal-boost the ones that feel most “authentic” by their flawed criteria, and keep clutching the bandwagon reins as they reap the rewards and congratulate each other for defeating racism and getting rich, not necessarily in that order. (And yes, I’m well aware of the ironic danger in maybe whitely doing the same thing, so you needn’t point it out. I promise I’m neither getting rich nor preening for cliques here.)

A few choice barbs are also directed at such spotlighted authors, some of whom may be motivated less by true-trauma confessions and more by a book-buying audience hooked on “poverty porn”. That’s a critical yet secondary objective alongside the main commentary track, which maxes out at a pivotal scene in which the white lady who heads the judges’ panel lets its two Black voices have their say for as long as they need, right before the white majority overrules them. Such is American Fiction life.

…

Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: That other Black-lit judge in the room is Issa Rae (Barbie, Across the Spider-Verse), a fellow intellectual and market-minded author of the latest sensation We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. Other players in the lit-biz include John Ortiz (the fifth and sixth Fast/Furious, Kong: Skull Island) as Monk’s agent, who does not miss his client’s low-selling days; Miriam Shor (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, et al) as the publisher who thinks the book is peak Black; and Michael Cyril Creighton (Spotlight, Game Night), who considers do-rags a must-have accessory for every Black memoirist’s book-flap photo.

Erika Alexander (Get Out, The Cosby Show) is a lawyer named Caroline, who leans into that beloved trope from every rom-com about a failed writer, The Romantic Interest Who’s Actually Read His Books That No One Else Has. Adam Brody (The OC, Shazam!) is a Hollywood producer interested in adapting his book into Black Movie gold. Myra Lucretia Taylor (The Big Sick, Changing Lanes) is Lorraine, Mom’s longtime caretaker, who has to figure out what comes next for herself. The always recognizable character actor Patrick Fischler (Mad Men! Angel! Barry! More more more!) is a hypersensitive collegiate colleague.

Alas, only a single scene is given to special guests Keith David (insert, like, hundreds of credits here) and Okieriete Onaodowan (from the original cast of Hamilton), appearing as the imaginary leads of Monk’s fake book. Each man gives their all to the undignified stereotypes he’s sketching, but they have to keep stopping and waiting for Monk to churn out their atrocious dialogue. It takes him time to think outside his box.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the American Fiction end credits, but once it’s done, you can move on to the exact polar opposite Best Picture nominee — a massively budgeted, A-List-bejeweled, historical drama about horrors perpetrated against an entire nonwhite community that pointedly keeps The White Experience front and center: Killers of the Flower Moon. Catch it now as part of your personal Oscar Quest or save it to watch with the whole family next October on Indigenous Peoples’ Day!

Imagine if Don’t Look Up were made with nearly no money and its only agenda were “make ALL the money!” Now imagine the behind-the-scenes featurettes about that.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! Since 1992 my hometown of Indianapolis has presented the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater celebration of cinema held every October. Local moviegoers have the opportunity see over a hundred new works in the realms of documentaries, narrative features, shorts, and animation made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience. Some participants stop in Indy on their grand tour of Hollywood’s festival circuit; some are local productions on shoestring budgets; and a wide spectrum of claims are staked in the innumerable niches between, projects with well-known actors screening alongside indies with enormous hearts.

Heartland’s 33rd edition runs October 10-20, for which I’ve made plans to catch at least eight films in all (Lord willing). Longtime MCC readers know the rule: every film I see in theaters gets its own entry…

Next up on our to-do list is Micro Budget, an uproarious film-about-filmmaking, which of course means it’s legally guaranteed a Best Picture nomination. The uproarious satire’s skewering of indie movie production might seem offensive to other Heartland participants if they, like its witless fictional auteur, lacked any measurable integrity, artistry, or intent to at least watch a few “How to Make a Movie” YouTube tutorials, let alone see some actual movies while they’re at it.

Heartland’s catalog description touted some of its biggest names first: Bobby Moynihan! Chris Parnell! Maria Bamford! As I correctly suspected before going in, none of these three pros are the main characters. I might’ve been irritated at the mild bait-and-switch if I hadn’t called it and if it weren’t bang-on meta and retroactively funnier for it. Director Morgan Evans (Teen Titans Go!, Netflix’s The Fix) co-wrote the screenplay with Patrick Noth (Netflix’s The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show), who stars as the hapless Terry, a no-talent schmuck from Iowa who mistakes the rags-to-riches making of Paranormal Activity for a get-rich-quick scheme and goes forth to do likewise. He moves to L.A. with his nine-months-pregnant wife Erica (Emilea Wilson, Noth’s real-life wife), hires a crew, lures in an unsuspecting cast, and attempts to shoot an ostensible disaster flick entirely inside a swanky Airbnb with hopes of selling the end result to whichever streaming service is run by the biggest free-spending suckers. What’s the worst that could happen?

Not everyone shares Terry’s strain of cluelessness, but cluelessness takes many forms. Witness his young stars played by Brandon Micheal Hall (God Friended Me, Search Party), Nichole Sakura (Cheyenne from Superstore), and Jordan Rock (brother of Chris, from Netflix’s Love), all of whom signed on in exchange for back-end points in lieu of a real paycheck. Or crewman Mike (Mike Mitchell, also of Love), who keeps making adjustments to the house for the sake of camera movements, often by sawing through walls. In one of the funniest scenes, Neil Casey (Big Mouth, the 2016 Ghostbusters) is an intimacy coordinator who’s hired for only one day and proves perhaps the position should have qualifications that deny applicants who come off like Larry the Cable Guy’s kid brother.

Meanwhile, poor Erica supports her husband in his greedy dreams as she does all the cleaning, sometimes the cooking, and acts in the film as its fourth costar (performing, on her husband’s whim, in maternity PJs out of the Ingalls family collection), all while waiting for the baby to arrive any second now. And just as every real-life project has at least one rational participant, a single crewman (Jon Gabrus from Younger) is the one begging everyone to actually, like, make the film.

Evans’ influences are cheerfully blatant as he fully embraces the handheld-cam mockumentary format, and pulls extra duties in-film as Terry’s friend Devin who’s concurrently shooting the film’s making-of DVD extras, which Terry is also directing. A few punchlines seem perhaps a bit too borrowed from The Office (one of its costars is among the cameos), but the temptation to keep drawing comparisons to Michael Scott soon fades as we recall Threat Level Midnight had at least one or two whole production values, possibly even three of them, compared to the relentless vacuity of Terry’s “Untitled Meteor Movie”.

In less than 90 minutes Micro Budget covers a gamut of Terry’s jaw-dropping missteps and the incredulous responses — patting his own back for diversity hiring in front of the entire cast and crew; the compromises to keep shooting after the Airbnb rental has run out; Moynihan’s hilarious turn as the “visual effects supervisor” (if you thought The Flash was bad…); Terry’s unsurprising involvement in crypto (Dunder Mifflin is so lucky that wasn’t around in Michael’s day); and the epilogue that doesn’t let streamers off the hook as Terry’s intended marks.

It’s evident Evans has been hurt or at least flabbergasted within that world; perhaps his best possible catharsis really was to make an authentically micro-budget film about micro-budget films, instead of selling out to a major studio that would spend tens of millions on a micro-budget simulation. But after the abundant laughter fades, I’m scared to ask how many of Terry’s self-inflicted calamities were based on true stories.

…

Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Other crew members include Don Fanelli (Prime Video’s A League of Their Own) as the cinematographer and Carla Jimenez (The Mick) as the head of “craft services”, which sometimes means leftovers. Among still more cameos, Matt McCoy (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) is much older now and harder to spot in his Zoom call as a concerned parent. And TV’s Barney Miller himself, Hal Linden (still acting at 93!) is an agent from another era.

How about those end credits? I couldn’t tell you if there’s a scene after the Micro Budget end credits because they were stopped halfway through as the house lights were raised for a special post-screening Q&A with Morgan Evans himself.

Morgan Evans and our host Julie Landrum, Film Programmer for the Heartland Film Festival.

My phone loves low-light conditions but not across long distances. But I’d feel wrong bringing an actual camera into a movie theater.

The audience had quite a few questions before time ran out. Evans confirmed Micro Budget took 11 days to shoot. All cast members (including cameos) were paid the exact same rate quoted by one character in the film. The “Airbnb” was a house once owned by the late Peter Marshall, who passed away in August and who connected Evans with the aforementioned Mr. Linden. A scene shot on an outside balcony was not planned to include a deafening helicopter overhead, but they merrily improv’d through it. He begged us not to spoil one cameo in particular, whose walk-on got a huge response from previous audiences (and ours!) and is all the wilder for their randomness.

Evans spoke at length about the number of people who succeed in Hollywood by “failing up” — i.e., by getting increasingly better gigs despite being terrible at what they do. He declined to name names but pointed toward the general demographic of first-time directors who eke out a single indie flick only to be handed a major merchandising franchise as their second-ever job.

As of this writing Micro Budget has yet to find a distributor, but Evans merits at least as much real-world consideration as Terry did in his. Might Peacock have enough extra RAM to hold it on their server? Is Crackle maybe still a thing?