Common

I admire these guys for making a road trip movie that takes place in the Midwest. It seems like so many road trip films have a city on the West or East Coast as a destination. 

The filmmakers talk about giving the movie a Midwestern perspective, and I wonder if they succeeded too well in this respect? (This Midwesterner is undecided about the film.) It's strange to me that the eye-contact monologue didn't hook me, since I've had that exact same experience. And the actors are very likeable, like friends I have. 

Is that it--do I not want to watch a movie that's so close to my own life? Can anyone who doesn't relate to this movie give me a different persepctive? 

Re:Common

Hey SkyPilot

Thanks for wanting to discuss the flick! I'm Jordan Gray, one of the filmmakers of Common, and if you or any others on this thread have any more questions for me fire away.

First I guess I should fully disclose that technically the destination of the movie is a west coast state - California - but it's only glimpsed at. We wanted to make a road movie that actually spans multiple terrains, rather than the 2 or 3 states usually covered in road movies. Despite our double digit budget we wanted rivers, plains, mountains, desserts, oceans, you name it. Common treks across Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California. All shot on location, we wanted to catch a little bit of the flavor of each of those states. The most time spent in the movie is spent in the midwest states though, especially our home state of Kansas. When we said we wanted to give a midwest perspective, we were mainly thinking in terms of not just where it's physically set, but how average midwesterners perceive the other states that sprawl around them. 

I think you raise some really interesting questions about the film and it's accessibility to those who don't have an inherent similarity to the characters. That question is more or less at the heart of the films concept. In many ways the plan was not to have it necessarily be relatable to as wide an audience as possibly, but be familiar. Much of the movie is intended to be simultaneously an embrace and send-up of the typical road movie, and the characters are in lots of ways archetypes. While trying to avoid blandness, we wanted characters that make it easy for the audience to project themselves onto. A lot of this familiarity - pleasant or unpleasant - is where the title and concept is pulled from. I'm a big fan of loaded-words-as-titles and it's been enjoyable seeing what aspect the audiences most associate with the title.

When we went to Halifax, Canada with the film, we were reviewed by the local webzine, and later met the critic who was probably mid 40s and (obviously) not a midwesterner. If you would like his perspective on the film as an outsider opinion you can check it out here.

Ok, sorry for writing a novella. I tried to be brief, to no avail. 

Don't forget to vote for us at FHTA!

-Jordan Gray

Re:Common

JordanGray:

While trying to avoid blandness, we wanted characters that make it easy for the audience to project themselves onto. A lot of this familiarity - pleasant or unpleasant - is where the title and concept is pulled from. I'm a big fan of loaded-words-as-titles and it's been enjoyable seeing what aspect the audiences most associate with the title.

I'm a big fan of that, as well.  Some films have completely relatable characters, but doesn't do enough to say "its okay" for you to project yourself onto them.  It seems like a quality road movie almost needs this commonality - we watch these films, in part, because we want to escape, to pursue a dream, to be spontaneous and carefree, but the closest most people will ever get is the cinema.  I suppose there's a cathartic element, there.

I can't wait to see Common!