Last Stop for Paul
I can't remember exactly how I heard about this movie. Either I was browsing the website for Facets (a cool little theatre / video rental / film school in Chicago) and came across this movie that was playing there and then I decided to look up some info about it. Or I somehow came across this movie while browsing the web and then realized it was playing soon at Facets. Either way around I somehow got it in my head that I really had to see this. I think I just hadn't gone to see an independent movie in a small cool theatre in Chicago in a while. And Chicago has a fair share of them, so I felt like I hadn't been taking advantage of the great city I live in.
The movie is kind of a travelogue. The premise is basically a guy named Charlie who does a lot of traveling has a friend named Cliff who doesn't do a lot of traveling. The Cliff has another friend named Paul who recently and suddenly passed away. Charlie convinces Cliff to take some time off, travel to several places all over the world, and scatter some of Paul's ashes at each of the stops. The trip is to culminate in this wild Full Moon party in an island in Thailand. The way the pair are able to pay for the trip is by conning hotels into thinking they are reviewers for a famous hotel catalogue so they can stay there for free. Along the way they get into all kinds of unusual (for the average American at least) situations.
The filmmaker, Neil Mandt who wrote and directed the movie and also played Charlie, was actually there to talk about the movie afterwards and explained that all of the different stories and situations that the characters experience were based off of real events that happened to either the filmmaker himself or to other trusted sources he knew. The movie was actually made after he had proposed the idea of a television show that would recreate people's wild travel stories each week, but the television show ended up falling through. So he decided to make the film on his own.
It's kind of strange to be watching a movie in a small theatre and then as soon as it is over have the actor who played the main character (knowing it was probably largely based on himself) who is also the director and writer walk right past you and start talking. I don't go to many films where the filmmaker is there, but this one was especially odd after the circumstances. It was like there was no time to really consider what I just saw before the character in the movie was standing in front of me.
At first I wanted to ask him why his character was such a horn dog. Seriously in each country it just seemed like he was trying to get laid in different ways, but then there was this super model type girl that just kept reappearing that he wasn't sure if he was in love with. Turns out this girl was his real life girlfriend and then dumped him when the movie was over. I wanted to kind of judge the guy at first, but then hearing him talk about just his pure love of travel and the way he made this movie out of so much joy, it was hard to think about anything negative (although look at Neil Mandt's filmography. He's directed what look like some real commercial schlock stinkers). One of the coolest things it that most of the people in the movie was that they actually went to all of the real countries they were in, shot the actual locations, and all of the actors were just people he grabbed off the street, told them what lines to say and shot it right then and there. He said there was never a single person he asked to be in the movie who turned him down.
I'm glad I went to this event. Even though some of the dialogue and the story they kind of made up to tie it altogether was sometimes poorly done. It certainly made me want to travel which I know was one of the filmmaker's goals.
Rating: 6/10