In the past, I have overlooked documentaries and never given them much thought. They didn’t seem to strike a long enough chord to make it through the entire film. Don’t get me wrong; I respect people enough to have a passion and want to get the word out enough to make a film about it. Of course, when I was younger I didn’t pay too much attention to the world’s problems around me, let alone give the time and attention these films deserved.
Lately, I have taken a look around the world and I have seen that these films, for the most part, have an important message that we as a collective should listen to.
Jeff Santo has directed a documentary — written by Santo and Christie Collins — titled “Off The Boulevard.” The film follows seven artists: musicians Nick Nicholson and Keith Jackson; filmmakers Troy Duffy and Jeff Santo; actors David Della Rocco and Sanel Budimlic; and comedian Bob Rubin.
If you follow “The Boondock Saints,” you will see familiar faces. As the film progresses, you see that the group seems to have formed a nice “independent” family.
They all have something in common, though. They have a dream of what they want to do and they are pursuing it to the best of their abilities. Some have part-time jobs in order to keep living the dream but always seem to keep that dream on the horizon. As they go through their trials and tribulations, the film shows that each one has confronted obstacles that could destroy their pursuit if they had been lesser men.
They are honest about the hard work, the potholes of each of their life-choice professions, but they still keep going forward. They are learning to adapt at how to get their work and visions out in an ever-changing world of technology and economic changes.
The film moves along at a steady pace and is edited well. I liked that it didn’t stay on one person until you were tired of looking at them. As it went from person to person, you got to see just how different these men were but all shared that common bond of a life goal.
“Off The Boulevard” also has interviews with other well-known artists such as Peter Fonda, Joe Mantegna, Gibby Clark, Sonny Barger, Dan Haggerty and Eddie Vedder, as well as cameos by other familiar faces.
Santo has shown that all walks of life sharing the creative lifestyle has brought them together and made them friends as well as colleagues and can understand what the others go through. As Della Rocco says, “There’s not a lot of us that can live this life.”
After watching this film, I feel that no matter how high up the ladder of success they feel they have gotten so far, the world is a much better place with these men living their dreams and sharing their visions with us.
“Off The Boulevard” has a running time of 96 minutes and will have an online DVD release date this summer.
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Follow Lynn Tackitt on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pvtgiggles.
I just saw this. Fantastic flick.