Own the rights?
Written for my high school newspaper my senior year.A few years ago, Lance Weller and Stefan Avalos were sitting around and from their ennui came the idea that they make an inexpensive movie. They had less than a thousand dollars to spend, but they also had advanced digital camera equipment that was sufficient for their film. Eventually the product developed from that idea was an independent, documentary-style horror film with plenty of home-video shots of camp-sites, and people running around the woods at night. Does that sound familiar? It should.While The Last Broadcast was made before the much more famous Blair Witch Project, the difference in their success was the distribution. When distributors approached Avalos and Weller asking for permission to distribute their film, the directors rejected the offers because they wanted to change the movie (either by removing parts of it or changing the title). Instead they opted to distribute it themselves and now it has been all over the world, winning many awards along the way, and even gaining the recognition of being both the first full-length film to be digitally broadcast in a movie theater and over the internet. It had a one week run at the International House in Philadelphia when it was first released, right before it went to Belgium and the Cannes Film Festival among other places.In terms of whether or not the makers of The Blair Witch Project stole their idea, it is known that those directors did see The Last Broadcast in Florida over a year ago. Avalos and Weller, whom I had the chance to speak with when I saw the movie during its special run in Doylestown recently, said they have gotten many calls from lawyers encouraging them to sue but "are working on current projects and in general have better things to do." They were very down-to-earth, and even showed my friend and me the projection room where the small digital projector, which resembled your typical CPU and contained the movie on its hard drive, stood next to the giant movie reels used to show regular films.The basic plot of The Last Broadcast involves four men (two of whom are Avalos and Weller), from a cable access television show called Fact or Fiction, going into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey hoping to catch a glimpse of the infamous Jersey Devil on camera. One of the men gets out of the forest alive, a very eccentric recluse who went on the trip because he claimed to know the whereabouts of the Jersey Devil, and of course he is accused of murdering the other three. The whole film is told in a compelling documentary style that presents the facts of the case, the police investigation into the murders, Suerd's trial, and the documentarian's (David Beard) view of who really committed the murders. All of the interviews and "factual" information are interwoven with "actual" footage that was taken by the four members of the crew before their brutal murders, and all of it flows together seamlessly until the disturbing and astonishing conclusion. Throughout the movie, the familiar Pine Barrens provide a grim backdrop.As opposed to the very simplistic Blair Witch Project, The Last Broadcast is a very complex jigsaw puzzle with finely drawn characters, an excellent and wholly believable mystery, and an equally shocking, if not more satisfying, conclusion. Broadcast is also provocative in that it serves as a mind-opening commentary on the news media's manipulation of the facts (usually to create an agreed upon truth for the public to accept) as well as the ludicrousness of the tabloid media.Destined for cult status with its nine hundred dollar budget, The Last Broadcast is excellent, and certainly one of the most original and well structured films I've seen. Before Thanksgiving the film will be on VHS and DVD at video stores, and it will be shown on HBO several times in the coming months.
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