The Beaver Trilogy

And as if the Vannin': A Documentary sneak peek screening weren't enough excitement for my teeny little body to contain... the Block Museum and Block Cinema are hosting a one-night-only screening of Trent Harris' The Beaver Trilogy as part of their Revivals and Rediscoveries series this Friday night. This is a HUGE deal, because my cinefiles, this movie almost never screens. For all of you film buffs, trekking out to Evanston to see it will be a ceremonious and joyous activity.

I first heard about the Beaver Trilogy on This American Life years and years ago, on the episode titled Reruns. The movie, quite like the TAL format, is filmed in three parts with three accompanying formats. Documentary, low-budget film short (starring a young Sean Penn), and high budget film short (starring a young Crispin Glover). The story is pretty simple and direct, in which the director, Trent Harris, becomes interested in filming a young man deemed "The Beaver Kid" while practicing shooting with a new camera in the parking lot of a Salt Lake City television station. As the story unfolds, Harris refilms the movie, as a sort of cathartic process to unveil some truth of the experience, or maybe to try to rework the "ending" of the movie to be more inline with how he thought things should have ended in the "documentary" format.

Upon completion of the film(s), the document never really screened, and actually was buried in a closet for decades until it was released a Sundance where it was very well-received. This is first time I have stumbled upon the opportunity to view the films in their singular format, on the big screen, and I am stoked to cross it off of my incredibly nerdy bucket list!