Few studio directors can get away with making a movie about how movie studios are completely unnecessary. To do so, you’d have to be charming, whimsical, and possibly French.
Enter Michel Gondry, the fanciful director of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. His newest movie, Be Kind Rewind is about a down-on-its-luck video store in Passiac, NJ. When all of the tapes in the store get accidentally erased, the two leads (played by Mos Def an Jack Black) try to re-create all the movies themselves, using ultra-low-budget techniques and homemade sets. Football pads and hairdryers become Robocop costumes, the pair reenacts Ghostbusters with tin-foil suits and plastic garbage bags. The customers don’t buy it, but they like the films anyway, and soon the whole town gets into the act of cheaply replenishing the world’s last supply of VHS rentals.
Even before Be Kind Rewind came out, the idea of making ten-minute, no-budget remakes of Hollywood blockbusters became popular on the Internet. For some reason, which is only half-explained even in the film, these became known as “sweded” movies. (Ah, Sweden. First you give us Abba. Then you give us Ace of Base. Now, unbeknownst to you, you’ve given us homemade movie parodies.)
If you go to the In the film, Jack Black argues that the sweded films are better than the originals. I don’t know about that—but it might be fun to try. So, have at it. Hollywood is your oyster. Your backyard is your backlot. Cardboard is your friend. What big-budget film do you think could benefit from being sweded? Any ideas for how to build sets, props, and costumes? Have you sweded a film already? Let me know in the comments.