Who Will Survive and What Festival Will Take Them?: A Review of "Clapboard Jungle"

Think of the worst movie you’ve ever seen…got it yet? Now imagine people breaking their backs to get it made.  Losing sleep to figure out distribution.  Mortgaging their homes to shore up the budget when an investor backs out.  All that and more to make any film, even the biggest piece of trash you can conjure from memory. These are the realities of making movies before the movie has been made.  Patton Oswalt lays it out pretty well as a joke, but Justin McConnell’s “Clapboard Jungle” is a comprehensive documentary of what really goes into making it happen.  It’s like the best episodes of “The Movie Crypt,” with less eye-rolling. 

Is it harder to make a movie or to get a movie made? That could be the rhetorical question of “Clapboard Jungle.”  Along with his own personal recordings, McConnell assembles an intimidating list of talking head interviews. Included are Mick Garris, Guillermo Del Toro, Charles Band, Michael Biehn, Jennifer Blanc-Biehn, Barbara Crampton, Larry Cohen, George A. Romero, Larry Fessenden, Dean Cundey, Frank Henenlotter, Paul Schrader, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Jenn Wexler, and Brian Trenchard-Smith to name a few.  Most of their sound bites are insightful, and while it would have been great to do a deep dive into any one person, there’s more than enough science dropped for a 98-minute film.

It’s not all inside baseball.  McConnell documents his journey from making homemade features in high school to the very start of this documentary in 2014, until his film “Lifechanger” premiered in 2018. Filming yourself talking about the movies you wish you were making for years might sound self-indulgent, but McConnell’s intimate approach leans more towards self-effacing, even empowering.  You want to lean in to experience the story of this “Saw” trap of the life McConnell has chosen for himself, along with so many others.

 McConnell’s diary gets propulsive as he huffs it to film festival after film festival, taking copious meetings in service of his passion projects.  He addresses us on a hotel balcony with a stack of business cards he accumulated, then appears on the same balcony a year later where not much has come to pass.  The background of one of his early confessionals shows the home screen of a Playstation 3.  He films his parents responding to his career choices, both of whom are supportive, if a bit pensive.  You want to cringe at one point when he says he has “high hopes for 2016” (tell me about it, Justin).  It’s enough to make you cry if you didn’t have McConnell’s determination.  

Who needs Pokémon cards when Justin McConnell has business cards?

So how hard is it to get a movie made? Judging by the obstacles that McConnell faces, “Clapboard Jungle” could be retitled “Clapboard Apocalypse.”  If you want to ride shiny and chrome, you first have to learn to survive.  McConnell and company have some very entertaining advice.

“Clapboard Jungle” will be available to rent on VOD on January 19, 2021.

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