This is not really news, but the phrase “independent film” has been co-opted, looted, plundered and pillaged in such a variety of ways by so many different parties that the indie brand has all but supplanted the indie practice in 2006. As such, when a film like Matt Mahurin’s documentary I Like Killing Flies comes along (today at Cinema Village, in fact)–a clever slice-of-life piece shot, recorded, edited and paid for (on a sprawling, mid-four-figure budget) entirely by its filmmaker on days off from his regular gig–the achievement tends to linger in the long shadows thrown by higher-profile indieplex fare like Little Miss Sunshine or Clerks II.

Day labor: Restaurateur Kenny Shopsin at work in Matt Mahurin’s documentary I Like Killing Flies (Photo: ThinkFilm)
At best a paradox and at worst an indignity, this phenomenon might actually find itself reflected in the subject of Mahurin’s film: Kenny Shopsin, the imaginative, profane restaurateur whose Village institution Shopsin’s endured New York’s gentrification shuffle in 2002. After 32 years (and 900 menu items) in his tiny joint on Morton Street, a formidable rent spike drove him and his family to their new digs at Carmine and Bedford streets–forgoing almost two generations of hole-in-the-wall mythos for survival’s sake. Himself a longtime customer and friend of Shopsin’s, esteemed photographer/painter/music video director Mahurin uncapped his video camera and documented the hopes, fears and pesky logisitcs surrounding the transition.
Most important for Mahurin was finding the real Shopsin, whose brusque disposition (“Everybody should get thrown out at least once,” one interviewee tells Mahurin) belies the benevolence behind his enterprise. “In the back of my mind, I always believed that Kenny was worthy of a film,” Mahurin told The Reeler earlier this week. “When you go to Shopsin’s, you think about, ‘Who can I bring here?’ And that was my ultimate film. Maybe they won’t be able to come here and eat the food and that kind of stuff. The food is wonderful, and it’s the heart of the experience in one way, but what Kenny has has to offer transcends what comes out of the kitchen.”

And what Kenny has to offer is philosophy by the pound (including the existential aside that gives the film its title), crude bons mots (a dish with a missing ingredient is like “putting your dick in the wrong hole”) and a wry perspective on community as extended family. With the film rarely leaving the restaurant, Shopsin’s diners are almost as prominent among the displaced as his wife (who passed away during production) and five kids. Indeed, their dependence on Shopsin supersedes anything on a plate or in a bowl; like his own children, they thrive first on his acceptance. “New customers have to prove it to me that they’re OK to feed,” Shopsin tells Mahurin in one of their many stove-front interludes. The sentiment will not achieve any breakthroughs in hospitality theory, but as Shopsin’s regulars are quick to add, sincerity is its own reward.
Which is only part of what makes Killing Flies the authentic success it is. The rest comes from Mahurin himself, who said he swore off directing years ago for art over which he could exert greater aesthetic control. And anyone familiar with the soft-focus chromatics of his music videos for U2, Tracy Chapman and Bush among others will likely be stunned to see these raw, hand-held images, composed on the fly and, in at least few cases, unapologetically exposing a microphone in the corner of the frame or a flicker more reminiscent of Super-8 than any cutting edge DV technology. The results yield a purely self-styled documentary as candid, unpretentious and uncompromising as its subject.
“For me it was a way of starting at the basics,” Mahurin said. “Because when I was doing videos, I had Steadicams and big cranes, and I had million-dollar budgets, and the idea that I could just break myself down to the essentials–the pureness. I couldn’t use any fancy camera angles or filters or techniques or whatver-it was just purely about storytelling and about trying to do a character study of this guy and adapting to his world and his story. … It was a way for me to reassure myself that I still have the capacity to see, hopefully in a direct and honest way that wasn’t clouded by cutting every two seconds or whatever. And to capture this guy and be true to him. That was my great obligation: I didn’t want to betray him.”

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•