Watching Letterboxd’s Most Obscure Film

I feel we’ve all gone through this scenario. You watch a movie or a show or read a book and when you try to talk about it with someone else they haven’t seen it. Eventually, there is an extreme point where you exhaust your list of friends and you just have to settle on the idea that the media you’ve consumed is at least somewhat obscure. 

But how obscure can you get with this? I posed this question to two people very familiar with the world of film.

KYLE HENRY: There’s a Ken Russell film called The Devils, based upon an Albus Huxley book that a big studio paid for, and ended up getting in the early days of the rating system, like an X rating, in the early 70s.

That’s Kyle Henry, an Associate Professor of Radio Television and Film at Northwestern. As for the other person’s most underground film:

RANDAZZO: Probably this French film called Cosmos. There’s six vignettes. One of them is about this filmmaker who was really bad at, like, interviews and everything, and he, like, can’t get his words out about what his films are about or anything. And it’s just, like, his little plot.

That’s Angelina Randazzo, a first year RTVF major at Northwestern.

Now while Randazzo and Henry both have their opinions, a question arises: how do you measure obscurity? Unfortunately there’s no universal tool, however a good metric can be found in the view counting feature on the film review site Letterboxd. While it’s not a perfect estimator, the site hosts around 10 million users so it’s a decent sample size. 

On the site, The Devils has a decent 60,000 views while Cosmos has a smaller 2,500 views. Now depending on your definition of obscurity, you may find these films to fit under that category.

But what about obscurity to the highest degree? A film with no views on Letterboxd?

Such a film exists in a little place called Jackson County with the 2015 movie Weaver’s Crossing. 

The movie is directed and written by James Ian Mair, who owns the small production company Moonlight Films which distributed this project. The story is billed as a dramedy about recently retired Sheriff Henry Turner and his estranged son Jason who returns home to take his father’s job, while an intrepid journalist chronicles their relationship for her newspaper.

It’s got comedy, it’s got drama, it’s got good journalism representation, and it was available on YouTube. So on a Monday night, Angelina Randazzo and I sat down to become the inaugural Letterboxd viewers of Weavers Crossing.

I’ll play a clip of our reactions to a scene where Henry has his second heart attack in the 63 minute movie. 

[RECORDING OF WEAVERS CROSSING WATCHING]

CASA: NO!

Weaver Crossing  RUTH: Oh no, Henry are you alright?

Weaver Crossing HENRY: Well I’m on the floor so I don’t think I’m alright 

RANDAZZO: Bro

RUTH: Ok, I’ll get your pills

RANDAZZO: It’s not gonna work this time…

CASA: Chekhov’s– Chekhov’s heart attack 

RUTH: Onto your tongue. Take it easy, take it easy. Take a deep breath honey

RANDAZZO: How about you call a hospital? Dude, he’s actually gonna die this time

RUTH: Now are you feeling a little bit better  

HENRY: Yeah I think I can sit up a little bit maybe

CASA: you’re joking. 

To put it briefly, it was an experience. Randazzo had her own thoughts

RANDAZZO: There was a lot of chances for it to be profound, there were a lot of chances for it to be emotional, that they ruined

Now while Randazzo didn’t care for some of the plot choices, she did appreciate some of the editing

RANDAZZO: I mean like the audio was always clear, you could always hear what they were saying, I mean there were weird cuts and everything but I mean nothing insanely weird.

So it’s safe to say Weaver’s Crossing got a mixed review from Randazzo. But she also raised a valid question: 

RANDAZZO: I want to know how this was promoted though.

So how does a film like Weaver’s Crossing get distributed and end up on a site like Letterboxd? Kyle Henry, the RTVF professor we heard from earlier, also happens to dabble in self-production and distribution, and he has some answers.

HENRY: You don’t need a lot of money right now to make a film anymore,digital cameras are so cheap. You know, you can get editing software that’s really cheap for your laptop. Making the work can be a friends and family affair.

And this seems to be the case for Weaver’s Crossing. The editing lines up with that of most in-computer programs like IMovie and when looking at the cast list, there are a lot of recurring last names. The director, James Ian Mair acts in the film too. As for cameras, a lot of technical advancements have made films easier to make.

HENRY: I feel that since the means of production have gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, like, listen, you can shoot a good film on your iPhone.  The lenses, the 4K media processing, everything that comes with a newer iPhone, those are more powerful cameras sometimes than what we’re even shooting with within the radio, TV, film department.

Now while Weaver’s Crossing was made back in 2015 and therefore likely didn’t have things like 4K media processing, it still looks decent. So if filmmaking is easier and more accessible than ever and more people are making movies, then why don’t we see that reflected in our cultural landscape? 

HENRY: Netflix, Amazon, Warner Brothers, Comcast have really bought up, gobbled up, swallowed up the competition.  And they own huge swaths of the media marketplace.  And so, it’s very difficult to find work that’s made by independents or about, by independent artists outside of places like the Block Museum, or the Gene Siskel Center, or maybe Criterion Channel.

As well as Youtube in the case of Weaver’s Crossing. 

So we find ourselves trapped in a cinematic paradox: more movies are being made than ever before, yet fewer and fewer are getting seen. Which is why we have swaths of movies on sites like Letterboxd with 100, 10, 5, or even 0 views. Which is unfortunate, because we still need the Weaver’s Crossings of the World. Kyle Henry agrees

HENRY: Just because a film is obscure doesn’t mean it’s not good.

And after watching the film, even though the plot may have been ridiculous at times, Angelina Randazzo found some things to appreciate about it. 

RANDAZZO:It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, production-wise it was ok for something that probably didn’t have a budget at all, just chipping out of their own money

As for my personal take? Weaver’s Crossing isn’t Citizen Kane but it doesn’t need to be. Obviously there was a lot of passion that went into this and I think at the end of the day, that deserves a lot of appreciation and I’m glad I could find this film and experience that cause while Randazzo and I may have been the first two viewers of Weaver’s Crossing for Letterboxd, hopefully we won’t be the last.

Now to take us out, I’m gonna play our reaction to the truly shocking ending of Weaver’s Crossing, so if you’re thinking of watching this movie, which I think you should, you might want to plug your ears

[RECORDING OF WEAVERS CROSSING WATCHING]

RANDAZZO: He just gets hit by a car?

CASA: I think that’s the end, yeah

RANDAZZO: Well lesson learned.

CASA: Yeah look both ways when you drive. Wow. Weavers…

RANDAZZO: Yeah, Weaver was crossed

CASA: Yeah Weaver was crossed.

For WNUR News, Sophia Casa