# Budget of movie is lowest of the low



## Revelation_old (Aug 9, 2004)

*Budget of movie is lowest of the low*
Larry Ratliff
San Antonio Express-News
Nov. 2, 2004 12:00 AM

SAN ANTONIO - A revolution is about to erupt in American filmmaking - not in the glamorous, mega-budget studios of Hollywood, but in bedrooms and dens across the United States.

For $218.32, Jonathan Caouette - a Texan transplanted to New York - poured his tortured heart and tarnished soul into the psychedelic documentary "Tarnation."

Using Apple's iMovie home computer movie editing software, Caouette turned 20 years of home movies, family photos and Hollywood film clips into a riveting, frantic rant of tremendous imagination. Although it's a jarring film experience, this is a movie of tremendous power.
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On the telephone recently, Caouette, 31, said "Tarnation" came from an open window in his mind and represents a chapter in his life.

"At the very beginning, it was definitely starting off as more of a private cathartic thing that I was doing for myself," he said.

Caouette, who works as a doorman at a Fifth Avenue jewelry store, has been capturing much of his life on film since he was 11. He holds nothing back. His mother Renee's shock treatments and mental illness. His own mental challenges. The grandparents who raised him. His gay lifestyle. It's all there.

"I always knew there would be possibly a handful of people that this film could be accessible to," he said.

That handful of interested people would probably gather at some hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, he figured. Instead, "Tarnation" exploded into a sensation, first at New York's Mix Film Festival, then at Sundance and beyond.

Critics are falling over each other to heap on the praise. A.O. Scott, the New York Times called the film "an amazing debut."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times dubbed it "a triumph. A film of remarkable power."

Caouette said that he "could have never in a billion years anticipated this. This is something of a miracle. And I was scared before I put the movie out there. There was a huge sense of reluctance to put this out. I was definitely questioning what it was that I was doing. Am I exploiting my mother? Am I exploiting my family, myself? All of that came into question."

Caouette eventually decided it was "a very poignant and beautiful thing that my mother agreed was poignant and beautiful. We came to a big peace about it. It's more of an advocate window that reeled out of my heart to just get my mother's story out there."

Beginning on screen with his mother's lithium overdose a few years ago, "Tarnation" takes to task what Caouette refers to as "the archaic Texas mental health system" of the 1960s and '70s.

A one-time child model, the filmmaker's mother was subjected to a long series of shock treatments that began during her teen years.

Jonathan was born out of a brief marriage to a man he never knew growing up. It took years for Caouette to locate his father. Now that he has (a tense reunion is in the film), Caouette said they've shared some phone calls and sent a few e-mails back and forth, but are worlds apart in their thinking.

"I haven't decided on that one yet," he said.

Things are more positive in other areas of his life, though. That should come as a relief to anyone who sees this blistering family portrait and leaves wondering about Caouette's current state of mind (he suffers from depersonalization disorder), his mother's condition and how his elderly grandfather is doing.

Caouette said his disorder - which causes sufferers to feel like outside observers of their own lives, detached from their own mind or body - has eased off.

"That's something that's actually subsided over the years," he said. "It's either subsided or I'm so acclimated to it that I don't even notice it anymore."

His mother, whom Jonathan calls Renee and never Mom, is on a much more even keel now, too.

"She's as well as well can be expected," Caouette said. "I just drove her back from New York to Houston recently just to get her reinstated with her Medicaid and get her on some new medication.

"I couldn't keep her in New York any longer. It wasn't her habitat.

It's hard for any normal person, especially from the South, to take a jaunt to New York City. It's overwhelming ennough, let alone for somebodywho has mental problems."

Jonathan, who grew up mentally tortured by his dysfunctional family, has become quite the levelheaded nurturer. He's already found an apartment for Renee. In March, he's relocating back to Houston to live - temporarily in his grandfather's house.

"I'm going to help him fix up his place and just take care of him a little bit."

That doesn't mean Caouette's filmmaking days are over, though.

"I'm going to multitask and kill two birds with one stone," he said. "I'm setting up an editing bay in my grandfather's house in my old bedroom."

In fact, two future projects are cooking in Caouette's head these days.

One might just be a sort of continuation of "Tarnation."

"I was thinking about doing a hybrid sequel," he said. "Utilizing the rest of the footage that exists and actually getting my para-psychological fictitious narrative horror film out of the way at the same time by augmenting the footage into a fictional thing.

"It would denote the fact that my family could possibly be a government experiment. It would be like 'Adaptation Meets Eraserhead.' "

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News Source: http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/art ... ion02.html

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