Director’s have never been shy about using dramatic analogies to describe the filmmaking process, or at least they haven’t been to me. Childbirth, war and trauma are some of the popular ones. In Kyrgyzstan director Amanbek Azhymat’s black comedy Backstage Madness, the main character, a 70-year-old nameless screenplay writer, who is likely experiencing a constant throbbing pain because of the demands of the job, might well concur with these analogies.
The veteran writer is at the beck and call of the producer, who just so happens to be his nephew. Rejecting the latest screenplay, the producer tells uncle that crime stories with punch ups are the hot thing. Uncle questions whether he still has that creative spark or he’s too old and he has simply burned out. Not taking no for an answer, the producer instructs him to write a crime story, which can even include a bed scene. What he goes on to create is a saga about a gigilo and a pimp, postmen with pistols and a carnival of dishonour.
The title infers that the film will be an addition to a canon of films about filmmaking that includes François Truffaut’s Day for Night (La Nuit américaine, 1973), Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1992) and Frank Oz’s Bowfinger (1999). This, however, is not what we get. Instead, Azhymat crafts a film that takes us inside the mind of the nameless writer as he concocts his wild B-movie. Characters are introduced and the story takes shape, which is interspersed with some amusing sequences. A crowd of characters gather around watching him write, including a clown, Freddy Krueger, and a priest. In another scene, we see him procrastinating in different positions around his office, and in one he sits playing the lute. Then, there’s the amusing suicide attempt, when he uses the typewriter as a dead weight to drown himself in the local swimming pool. Azhymat’s comedy still takes us behind-the-scenes of the creative process, but it’s focused exclusively on the writer churning out the screenplay, rather than the filmmakers at work on set.
French director and enfant terrible Jean-Luc Godard said, “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl”. Well, those are two things Backstage Madness has, but it’s not enough to pull together its story. Azhymat sources colourful and exaggerated villains, the main boss of who could rival Rusty’s (Brad Pitt) appetite in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven (2001), a gigilo and his girl, fights, and the all important bed scene. To use a kitchen term in an affectionate context, Backstage Madness is “slop”, where genre clichés are thrown together in order to cook up a romantic crime story. But then, storytelling is the art of throwing tropes, themes and ideas together.
Beyond its silliness, Azhymat’s film uses comedy to comment on familiar ideas about the conflict between commerce and art. While Uncle values artistic integrity, his producer is solely focused on the bottom line, and not having to pay back their investor’s money. It’s a minor thing, but it’s a counterpoint to the overall silliness, as are the moments that frame the writer as a figure in crisis, whose work is valued according to market trends.
Through a certain lens, the story looks to the silliness of the creative process. It frames it as fantasy fulfilment, and how storytelling, at least in the case of the nameless writer and his producer, is an act of nourishing their inner child, and staying young at heart.
At 80-minutes, Backstage Madness sustains its charm and is a the perfect late night watch. Delivering on silliness, it might just strike a nostalgic chord for a certain type of action film that is becoming rarer these days, if it’s not already extinct.
Backstage Madness just premiered in the First Feature Competition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
