Staying On Script

Life is strange, and wonderful, and mostly strange. 

Allow me to regale you with a tale. 

So a couple weeks ago I reviewed a found-footage movie about an influencer couple disappearing after they bought some property in the boonies. The movie covers their story as well as that of someone investigating what happened to them. It’s pretty fun and well done. After the review went live I got an email from an email address that had the same name as the investigator in the film’s social media account. 

Hmm. 

The person thanked me for the review and they said they’d be interested in being on my podcast. Oh, I’m game. I am just getting into interviewing folks and am learning how to do it but it’s neat to get that offer. I accepted and asked if they wanted to get into the production of the movie. They replied that they had only had that one case to really talk about. 

Ohhh…

So they were handling this as if really happened. 

And presumably, this was the investigator. 

Interesting. 

OK. 

So I said sure and wrote up questions for the person and was like – this is pretty fun. It could go great or flop but it will be weird, which is something. The day of the interview I got an email from that same account from “someone else” saying they were not sure how the other person had been contacting me. (If you watch the movie – #MissingCouple – this will make more sense and…kinda give you a chill). OH, OK, so I ask if this is the director and figure that I can ask broader questions. They tell me they’d rather not say but can answer that question on the podcast. I say, hey, anonymous is fine with me. Again though, they stress that this is a documentary. 

Er…uh… 

Here’s the thing, this film blends the real with the fantastical in an interesting way that, unless you are clued in, you prolly won’t notice. I didn’t. 

OK. 

So we do the interview and it’s very guarded as he is keeping his cards close to his chest, but it’s super interesting and I think entertaining. I would like to have talked about the promotion of the film (including this stuff) but get the idea of what he’s doing. 

And I like it. 

In an era where films can feel so disposable and when actors and filmmakers will sometimes roll their eyes when asked about their films I admire this. I admire being this dedicated to the project. I have seen folks online mention how it’s sorta like BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and in an abstract way that’s true, but it’s a little different, too. The film does mix the real and the fictional and there’s a place where they connect and blur. It’s clear what is fiction, but it’s an interesting idea. As are some of the theories about the film – which he gets into at the end of the podcast. 

It’s a really interesting idea, to blend the truth with a lie, and to let the audience decide what the truth is. It’s interesting because for years we have gotten documentaries that we accept as truth, as the whole story, without realizing that the facts we are seeing are gathered, filtered, and told by the people who lived that history and the filmmakers presenting it. Truth is rarely absolute and even the most monstrous people in history often saw themselves as heroes and saviors at one point. #MissingCouple is an interesting way to say something about the stories we tell (aren’t influencers and vloggers always curating their own truth for the masses?) and the slippery nature of truth. 

Was the person I spoke with just the director? Were they also the investigator? Were they another passerby that happened on an interesting story? Were they you and me? 

So often we want movies to say something, to mean something, and in all of that we have a film, and filmmakers that are saying things between the frames of film and after the credits have rolled and that’s an interesting idea. It’s an interesting way of making art and in the smallest, tiniest, most microcosmic way I was part of that, and that’s pretty cool. 

Listen to the podcast here – https://spookychris.com/2024/10/21/the-spooky-chris-podcast-a-discussion-about-the-film-missingcouple/

…c..