I have been preoccupied with art and success lately as documented here and here. Then out of nowhere*, as if sent to me by destiny, comes Matt Farley. His movie Local Legends, shot on a “backyard budget” and starring Farley and his friends, unexpectedly provided the answers I was looking for. Or rather, it provided an answer. This might sound ridiculous given the circumstances of the movie’s origin, but I’m being serious when I proclaim this to be one of the most truly profound movies I’ve ever seen.
Farley is a comedian, actor, filmmaker and musician. He’s gained some notoriety for having written 20,000 novelty songs – none of them are particularly popular, but the volume of his output is enough to provide something close to a living wage in royalties. All of this is explained in Local Legends, which is an autobiographical film about Farley’s life in Manchester, New Hampshire. The movie’s not unlike a Woody Allen dramedy, if you add Farley’s zero-budget aesthetic and dry sense of humor. Just to be clear, Local Legends is not a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. If anything, the pleasure comes from the way the movie destroys any accepted notions of what constitutes “good art.” I could say that by making it impossible to distinguish what is ironic, sincere, or a a simple accident of budget-cutting, Farley has created a totally new and unique art aesthetic**, but the truth is the best way to get my point is to watch the damn movie.***
If Local Legends is a justification for Farley’s lifestyle, it is also a roadmap for an alternate view of creative success in a capitalist society. Like the bus-driver poet protagonist of Paterson (another movie I love), Farley’s character reaches a sort of understated enlightenment about the role of creativity in his life. Unlike Paterson, however, he is not a Romantic idea of a working-class artist concocted by one of the world’s most celebrated auteurs. He’s the real deal. Matt Farley is a real man who spends his life writing novelty songs and making low-budget movies because, as he puts it, “they’re just so much fun.”
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* I say “nowhere,” but the thing that alerted me to Farley’s work was The Important Cinema Club, a truly wonderful movie podcast hosted by Justin Decloux and Will Sloan. In fact, if you wanna know more about Matt Farley, I recommend an excellent essay by Sloan.
** If Farley has, in fact, created a new and unique aesthetic some of the credit is owed to Charles Roxburgh, who has directed most of the horror-comedy movies Farley has starred in. If you’re curious about their work, there’s an upcoming Twitch double-feature of ‘Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You’ and ‘The Paperboy.’
*** You can order a special blu-ray version of ‘Local Legends’ from Gold Ninja Video, or you can do what I did and message Matt Farley directly on Twitter.
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