Netflix tells me that I received the DVD for Film Geek around August 23rd. I dimly recall popping it into the DVD player a day or so afterwards, and being so mortified by what I saw that I had to watch the rest in chunks, a few minutes at a time, until I finally finished the picture this afternoon. November 18th. It’s not that Film Geek is a bad movie, but its choice of subject matter and the presentation of same strike — well, a little close to home.
Scotty Pelk (Melik Malkasian) is not your average cinephile. He is one of the most obsessive film fans you will ever lay eyes upon, if only in a work of fiction. Managing to pass (for the most part) as a normal human only by occupying a specialized niche in the work force (video store clerk), Scotty can connect any two actors in “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” fashion with robotic precision and speed. His days are spent pestering the store’s customers with film “suggestions” and his nights are spent toiling on his web site, scottysfilmpage.com, which no one. Ever. Visits. (Ouch.)
Eventually Scotty’s social dysfunction catches up with him at work. Though he is the store’s hardest-working employee, the company discards him for “creeping the customers out.” His name tag repossessed and his chances for employment at another video store slim at best, Scotty strikes out into a world looking for a job, love, and above all someone to “talk film with.” The world may be wholly unprepared for this man-child who cannot hold a simple conversation about anything other than movies, but Film Geek dares to spend a merciless 78 minutes following him to find out what happens next.
Malkasian does a credible job of making us believe in Scotty, pitching his voice up into a nasally territory I’d like to call “perfectly dreadful” and generally pulling Scotty’s world into focus around him. It’s a good thing, too — the script is so unabashedly cruel to its protagonist that without the human center that Malkasian provides the film would veer off into mere parody. It’s one thing to present a person violently out of step with the world around him; that happens every week on Saturday Night Live. It’s quite another to show that person to an audience and make them genuinely concerned about his well-being. In that, Film Geek is a success.
The rest of the picture has what might be termed “rustic charm.” The production is obviously a low-budget labor of love but for all that it looks well-made, with a hand-held documentary feel that actually suits the story well. The acting by those in orbit around Malkasian is amateurish but never flat-out bad — certainly nothing approaching the level of awfulness of certain bit players in other indie films set in video stores. (Clerks springs painfully to mind.) The story’s third act will be satisfying to some and simply implausible to others, though the conclusion is left open-ended enough to start a few conversations during the closing credits.
And now the important question: how much of myself did I see in Scotty? Fortunately for me, not that much, and certainly less as I’ve gotten older. Like Scotty I am more comfortable in a movie theater than in a nightclub, but that’s hardly a remarkable condition these days. Scotty is the distilled embodiment of all the social tics of all the film geeks I’ve ever known or even seen at the movies or at sci-fi conventions. In nearly every scene he is so acutely awkward in such an instantly recognizable way that I feel compelled to pause the DVD and make noises like “Arrrrrgh” and “Eeeeugh.” True to life? Yes. Entertainment? Not really. Definitely recommended for those who have ever referred to themselves or to a friend as “a film geek” — if only for the sense of relief and perspective the comparison provides.
