Hacker Cinema
The Wizard of Speed and Time
1989 · Film · 98 min
Directed by Mike Jittlov
A Hollywood filmmaker makes a short for an evil film studio. Unbeknownst to him, the producer has placed a bet of $25,000 that he won't come up with anything with a use. Luckily, our film creator gets the help of his friends.
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2 comments on Hacker News
It’s the work rules that make a lot of American unions distasteful to workers. A lot of people just don’t want to work in a place where people routinely say stuff like, “that’s not my job, union rules.”
The Wizard of Speed and Time is a great film about how difficult it is to be an independent creator in Hollywood due to the costs of getting anything started. The unions make it very hard to bootstrap anything without massive financing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j5a_00YVVkQ
Although as one anecdotal counterpoint, read about some of the experiences Mike Jittlov had making Wizard of Speed and Time. He is playing it for effect in the film but it is at least semi-autobiographical.
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/31/movies/review-film-a-wizard-who-s-hexed-by-hollywood.html
One of the liveliest things about ''The Wizard of Speed and Time,'' aside from the frantic Mr. Jittlov himself, is the film's animosity toward Hollywood in general and the movie unions in particular. Mr. Jittlov, who himself resigned from the Directors' Guild in order to make this film free of union requirements, includes a sequence in which he visits one union office after another, being told in each that he must play by expensive and archaic rules if he expects to play this game at all.
When he tries to rent studio space, he is given a list of costs right down to the fee for a parking space, and winds up shooting in his own garage. And when he films an outdoor sequence in a park, a helicopter appears overhead with a loudspeaker to chastise him for trying to film without a permit. ''Maybe I shouldn't make films for a living,'' he muses dejectedly at one point. ''I've got a bicycle. I could deliver Steve's Pizzas.''