Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
The Independent Weekly has a story-review on Anywhere USA:
The first and third sections are played mostly for laughs, concerning, respectively, a convoluted love triangle involving masochism, Internet dating, a suspected Arab terrorist and a bigoted redneck dwarf; and a family melodrama involving spiritual awakenings, dildos, racial politics and buried secrets.
These episodes are less effective dramatically — a reviewer for Variety used words like “tiresome” and “wildly misfiring” — but Haney-Jardine livens them up with novel filmic devices, like subtitles for the slurred speech of a weeping drunken hippie, and a wry running commentary of superimposed Helvetica text. These touches give the film a hip, modern feel, and first-rate cinematography by LA-based Patrick Rousseau gives it polish.
Haney-Jardine edited the film himself, in his garage, a huge task for a two-hour feature. When the acceptance call came from Sundance, “I literally dropped to the floor and cried. I’d been spending 20-hour days sitting in a chair editing, so my wife thought I was having an embolism,” he recalled. More good news was to come: At the festival, Anywhere won a Spirit of Independence Special Jury Prize for its originality and willingness to take risks on a limited budget.
Just making the cut from 3,624 feature-length submissions down to the 121 films selected is a major victory for any independent filmmaker. But the biggest prize—distribution—is a more elusive goal. Sundance is as much marketplace as movie venue, and by the end of the festival fewer than 20 films had been picked up. Those that are hard to categorize are even harder to sell; Anywhere’s cultural signifiers (retro mustaches, thrift-store clothes, tacky Americana) seem targeted to the young hipster crowd, but it balances irony and trendiness with sincerity and genuine affection for its characters. It’s a difficult movie to pigeonhole. “The word ‘weird’ comes up a lot [in reference to the film],” says Haney-Jardine. “But what’s normal? I don’t know anybody who’s normal.”
Time will tell whether Anywhere, USA finds a larger audience than the 3,000 or so who saw it at the festival. In any case, with a tiny crew, no-name local actors and plenty of persistence, Haney-Jardine’s inventiveness and artistic vision have certainly paid off, as he’s now a Sundance prize-winning filmmaker.
More links:
Cinematical has this.
ScreenDaily.com has this.
Here’s the indieWIRE take.
Here’s the Hollywood Reporter’s take.
Here’s Variety’s review.
Here’s a Washington Post story on the movie and the movie-maker.
