Cinema Salvation
Making a film can be the most exhilarating experience ever for an individual. There you are, telling a story, hoping to illicit an emotional reaction out of the audience. Well, the “right” audition; one of the most important things about filmmaking is getting the tone, the energy, and the scenes just right. You miss on that, or if you’re unable to get a word in edgewise with your collaborators, and your movie is gonna go to Hell in a handbasket fast.
Writer/director Mike Cohen’s smart, funny satire “Cinema Salvation” hits all the right notes when it comes to making independent movies. If I were to liken it to a film, I would say it’s the filmmaking equivalent of “This is Spinal Tap” (in structure, if not quality), as a documentary crew follows novice writer/director Greg (Ryan Scott Self) as he tries to get a film made based on his life, and in particular, his breakup with an ex-girlfriend who loved Jesus more than Greg. But as anyone who follows the “business” knows, things will NEVER go as you expect when other people get involved in the process.
Even though I haven’t had to deal with any of the issues Greg does here in my own filmmaking endeavors (yet), “Cinema Salvation” rings true in the absurdities of making movies: investors who want to change the script (making it “edgier”); overworked assistants like Becky (Samantha Cutaran), who has ambitions to get the lead role for herself; casting suggestions such as a well-known porn star (Erica K. Evans) for the role of a virginal Baptist; and trying to find the right location, only to find out that the money may not be there. The situations may not be altogether “fresh” to people who have watched everything from “Bowfinger” and “Ed Wood” to “Get Shorty” and “State and Main,” or pretty much any other movie about trying to get a film off the ground (the great, sad documentary “Lost in La Mancha” also resonates in thinking about this film), but Cohen, like any good filmmaker, knows his subject inside and out. The fact that, like Greg, he was inspired by actual events in the story he tells makes the film resonate with heartbreaking, hilarious honesty. That will always make a film that wins over this reviewer’s heart.
