Millennial Love
by James Roland
A friend said something interesting to me the other day; he said, “Twenty is the new twelve.”
His comment won him a distracted smile, but while I waited for a showing of Four Eyed Monsters in downtown Los Angeles, I actually did the math and realized he was right. I looked around at the neo L.A. hipsters – a mix of emo and punk and Hollywood beauty that somehow blends into boring – and saw a half-generation, a new wave of youth that isn’t youth at all. Twenty-six is the new eighteen, and with it comes all the angst and unknown of that pre-college summer, filled with first sexual experiences, dwindling friendships, and the faint light of financial responsibility on the distant horizon.
Meet Arin and Susan. They are you and me. They had never made a movie; they had never had a long, healthy relationship; they decided to do both at the same time.
Their film is an unfinished tale of confusion, love, and the search for true art. The story starts when Susan finds Arin on an internet dating service. Rather than accept her invitation to meet, he stalks her while she sleeps on the subway. In a modern plot turn – one that might leave everyone from Baby Boomers on down to Generation X scratching their receding hairlines – instead of calling the police, Susan insists that she and Arin meet for real.
The duo embarks on a series of awkward dates, during which they refuse to speak and communicate only through writing and drawing. When Susan takes off for art school, she and Arin communicate through a series of video diaries – diaries that were made in real life and inspired the couple to make Four Eyed Monsters.
The film blends reality and fiction into a rough and beautiful film that manages to encapsulate exactly what Americans between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-three are experiencing at this precise moment.
Visually, the film adopts an internet motif, with a diary-like feel that includes the clever use of interviews with various characters in little user-profile boxes that look like they were downloaded from MySpace. This style keeps true to the film’s documentary feel, which in turn keeps the content of Four Eyed Monsters in constant flux.
In order to promote the film, Arin and Susan edited vast hours of behind-the-scenes drama into a series of podcasts that became an internet hit. But some of this documentary material finds its way into the actual ‘finished’ film. When this happens, Four Eyed Monsters steps completely out of the realm of fiction.
Because of this ‘live content’ element (after the end credits there was even a disclaimer that the film might be re-edited with supplemental material by the next screening), Four Eyed Monsters is essentially a blog. The constant updates work against the film as a whole, muddying some of the plot turns and hindering the overall pace. There is also a level of amateur acting and sound design.
But what Four Eyed Monsters delivers is a heavy dose of reality that doesn’t seem ugly. Life is beautiful; from sweaty New York sewer rats and STDs to love notes, city sunsets, and independent art.
With all of the internet hype and cliffhanger behind-the-scenes footage, Arin and Susan carried a heavy fan base – mainly their peers – into their first round of screenings.
They have made a movie, a documentary, a journal, a thank-you note to those same peers. In doing so, Four Eyed Monsters achieves, in a brisk eighty minutes, what Hollywood seeks with its big budgets and ten-hour trilogies: true art.
Four Eyed Monsters
85 min.
Created by: Arin Crumley and Susan Buice
Now Playing:
At select screenings in major cities. For specific dates and theatres, go to the website.
Websites:
www.foureyedmonsters.com
www.myspace.com/foureyedmonsters
