A man's home is his castle and Milwaukee-based filmmaker Chris Smith -- the man behind "American Movie" and "American Job" -- uncovered some pretty unusual castles for his latest film, "Home Movie."
Bill Tregle lives on a houseboat in the middle of a Louisiana lake. Inventor Ben Skora and his girlfriend Darlene Satrinano share an electronic marvel of a Sears pre-fab house in Illinois that looks like it's straight out of "A Clockwork Orange." Ed and Diana Peden live in an underground bunker that was formerly an Atlas E missile launch site. Bob Walker and Francis Mooney share their unusual abode with their 11 cats, including 25-pound Bernard. Linda Beech found the perfect place for her waterfall-powered treehouse in a remote Hawaiian valley.
They all have unusual jobs, too. Tregle raises alligators for a living, Beech was an American woman who became a sitcom star in Japan, Walker and Mooney photograph their cats for greeting cards, calendars and books and Skora is an eccentric inventor, powerizing everything from toilets to walls to his spinning living room and even created a humanoid robot called AROK.
{INSERT_RELATED}But despite their apparent unusuality, they all have carved out niches in the world that are not just comforting to them but have become important to their existence.
"Why make your house boring just because you're going to sell it in 20 years," asks Mooney.
"Everything here is, in a sense, temporary," muses Beech, who is comforted by her earthy existence. "It soothes my soul, this place. ... (This) is how I define luxury or riches: abundant flowing water."
"That's what people want," says Tregle, "to be self-sufficient."
The Pedens have transformed their abode from a place built for war and destruction, to a comforting, peaceful place.
"This is what feels good to us," they say. "It has defined our lives and become an integral part of our lives."
Smith has a keen eye for the peculiar and the kitschy, but his storytelling also manages to dig deeper, showing us that these folks, who seem eccentric at first glance, are just like all of us.
Also showing with "Home Movie" during its Milwaukee run is "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," a short film by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, who capture the mood in the parking lot outside a 1984 Judas Priest/Dokken concert at the Capital Centre in Largo, Maryland.
Priest and Metallica concert t-shirts abound and there's lots of air guitar, drunken shouting and beer cans held aloft. But the early-to-mid-'80s never seemed so distant as they do in this brief, real-life "Wayne's World."
One especially lucid fan suggests that, "we should make a joint that fits across America and let everyone smoke it." A teenage boy, wearing skin tight black and white tiger-striped pants and shirt, embarks on a tirade about the superiority of metal over punk rock.
When asked what she'd say to Priest lead singer Rob Halford if he were present, a young woman replies, "I'd jump his bones." A shirtless fan with a bandana wrapped around his long hair is asked, "Who are you here to see tonight?" To this he replies, "Your mother."
Hilarious, in retrospect.
"Home Movie" and "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" open Fri., Sept. 27 at Landmark's Oriental Theatre.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
