One year ago, I premiered a documentary that I’d spent the previous seven years making, titled The Complete History of Space/Time (Destination Milwaukee). The topic of the movie was the Milwaukee musician Sigmund Snopek III, whose career had spanned more than 50 years and nearly as many genres. The documentary’s approach was a self-aware blend of the epic and the mundane, unabashedly DIY but ambitious, formally audacious, and surreal.
The premiere was held at Linnemann’s Riverwest Inn, a bar and music venue in Milwaukee, because I could not find a single theater in the city that was willing to host a six-and-a-half hour experimental documentary about a local icon who, with each year that passed, was remembered by fewer and fewer people. The event received some local press and promotional help from Snopek’s longtime friends and collaborators the Violent Femmes. I can’t claim that we had lines around the block, but people came, and some even stayed for the whole movie. It was an anticlimax of sorts, but a successful event nonetheless.
That night, I released the entire movie online for free on YouTube and Vimeo, broken into seven episodes.
Two days later, the horror blog Bloody Disgusting posted an article about another movie of mine. My wife (Rachel Kempf) and I had co-directed a microbudget found footage horror feature called It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This that had been playing festivals, winning some awards, and slowly gaining interest. One of the quirks of this movie’s release was that we had decided to only show it theatrically and never release it on streaming (which also precluded a Blu-ray release since that would result in it being immediately pirated).
It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This had been getting press for about six months, but most of the articles had focused on the movie itself. The Bloody Disgusting article changed that, with an increased focus on the fact that we were only releasing it theatrically. This is when the trolls took notice.
I love our trolls.
The trolls who have called our movie garbage sight unseen have done more for us than I could quantify. The internet rewards negativity, and our decision to keep this movie offline has been met with a high amount of negativity. This engagement resulted in articles about us being promoted on Google and Yahoo News, culminating in TIFF’s decision to include us in their Midnight Madness program, a theatrical run in Alamo Drafthouses around the country, a writeup in Variety, and numerous international screenings that never would have otherwise happened.
Thank you, trolls. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Trolls, a Horror Movie and a Documentary
The irony, of course, is that the entire time It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This was being shat upon by angry avatars online, my Sigmund Snopek documentary was freely available for them to watch. One year later, there hasn’t been a single person who has made this connection. So I’m writing this article to make the connection for you.
The Complete History of Space/Time (Destination Milwaukee) may be the best movie I’ve ever made. Yes, it has a stupidly long title. Yes, its length is gratuitous. Yes, it is about someone you’ve never heard of.
But also, yes, the movie does reward your effort. And yes, I do want you to watch it.
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Think of it as a challenge: Do you have what it takes to watch this movie? Can you endure a docuseries that isn’t designed to provide a slow-drip of dopamine like all those equally-long Netflix docuseries that people binge without giving it a second thought?
The past year has been unusual. My experience with these two movies has tested the logic that the widest possible release is also the best release. The movie that we limited access to has gotten exponentially more attention and led to a number of new opportunities. The movie that was made immediately available to anyone with internet access has been seen by maybe 100 people.
Of course there are other factors. Horror is an easier sell than a weird, long doc. Found footage, especially, has a rabid fan base.
Also, existence is random and any sense that can be made of it will break down the longer you look at it. Maybe I just got lucky with the one movie and unlucky with the other. Who knows?
Regardless, now that a year has passed with very few people watching it, I’m redoubling my efforts to get the Snopek doc seen. So watch it! Watch an episode today and then another tomorrow. If you make it through episode three, you’ll be hooked and want to keep going. (It ends with a bang.)
Writing this article is embarrassing because it’s essentially a public declaration of failure at a time when I would probably benefit more from letting people perceive me as a success. Who cares though? Life is complicated and success is fleeting.
This idea—that life is complicated and success is fleeting—was the very thing that drew me to Snopek as a subject to begin with. His career has gone through ups and downs and multiple reinventions. But he’s also always just been Sigmund Snopek III. His documentary asks the question: What does it mean to be a success or a failure? It’s only appropriate that the movie’s release and reception have inadvertently asked that same question.
Main image: Nick Toti while making The Complete History of Space/Time (Destination Milwaukee). Courtesy of the author.