bestmediablog

by Steve Dollar



No less an intrepid globetrotter than Werner Herzog once declared that the most exotic culture in his death-defying travels was to be found in North America. Though I"d trace it back to William Eggleston"s under-the-radar 1973 documentary Stranded in Canton, the genre that critic Jim Hoberman would later coin as "Americanarama" seemingly arose to prove Herzog"s assertion. Between the late "70s of the director"s own Stroszek and into the "80s of Vernon, Florida, Stranger Than Paradise, Blue Velvet and Something Wild, all the hipper auteurs were, to varying degrees, taking detours into Waffle House Nation. Whether the tone was deadpan ironic, sideshow creepy or joyously phenomenological, these films nearly always relied on the perspective of a character in limbo, variously terrorized or liberated by the oddball milieu, even if the character was the filmmaker himself.

Shot during the holiday seasons of 1989-"90 and exhibited a year later, Ten Thousand Points of Light arrived at the end of the wave, its title spinning off of George H.W. Bush"s 1988 speech at the Republican National Convention and its reference to "a thousand points of light." The Reagan Era was in slow fadeout, with President Bubba-Bill Clinton-looming in the wings, still not a contender but soon enough to turn the White House into its own Americanarama set.