Notes from the Boneyard: Unrelated

Mark Borchardt is a filmmaker from Wisconsin. He is probably best-known for being the subject of a documentary called ‘American Movie’, where a camera crew follows him around his small rural town as he painstakingly tries to make a horror movie, his masterpiece, ‘Coven’. The mishaps he encounters along the way, along with the characters and attitudes he faces, make for a very entertaining and often hilarious watch. It’s like ‘Spinal Tap’ for movie makers… only it’s real!

I first saw it on Channel 4 late one night, perhaps 20 years ago. At first I thought it was a sketch. These people can’t be for real? But they are – it is genuine. And as funny as it is at times, it is also balanced out with plenty of heart and human spirit, as his determination and perseverance stares down the barrel of failure at every turn.

I first bonded with Nick Power around the same time, after discovering that he too had seen the same documentary. He was a night owl like me, scouring the late-night TV channels to battle insomnia on his nights off from touring with The Coral. Throughout the years we would always hark back to the film, and quote some of the unintentionally comedic genius lines. When it came to music, we would always reference our tastes to a particular movie… fiOh this song sounds like ‘The Wicker Man’… or this song sounds like ‘Redneck Zombies’fl.

So last year when we made an album together, ‘THROAT’, we thought, fiOh this sounds like American Movie.fl A friend of ours in Wisconsin thought the same, so he sent the music to Mark Borchardt. Next thing is, I get contacted by the legend himself saying how much he enjoyed our ‘haunting and inspiring’ music, and even offered if we’d like him to do a music video for us. To the average reader this is no big deal, but to us it was like a blessing from the gods.

He chose the track from the album ‘Return of Ghillie Man’ – which also features the great Jolie Holland on viola –and two weeks later he sent us a video he put together. The end result looks something like the opening credits of ‘Tales From The Darkside’. I’m not sure what the meaning is here but the universe manoeuvres in mysterious ways; this was a 20-year full-circle moment that was very natural and found its own path. We couldn’t have planned or chosen it… It chose us.

Ah… and now just this moment, Chris Coll has sent me his illustration for this week’s column. A brilliant yet completely unrelated picture of Ben Kiely. That’s what happens when I have no idea what I’ll write about until my thumb starts tapping, and Chris doesn’t know what he’ll draw until pen touches paper. Sometimes it fits. Sometimes we’re way off. Maybe we should do it side-by-side some time and see where we end up. That’d be fun.

But right now I’m faced with the dilemma of scrapping my previous ramblings to suit the picture. But I’ve decided on just letting it roll like this. It’s weirder like this. And weird is good.

Perhaps next week I’ll ramble about Ben Kiely and Chris can do a picture of Mark Borchardt. Or we’ll do something completely different. Who knows. Tune in next week to find out.