fandomhigh_ooc | Spotlight on Fandoms: Ten Inch Hero

Hello and welcome to your spotlight on Ten Inch Hero! Which, surprisingly enough, totally isn't a movie about G.I. Joes (shut up, I totally only thought it was for, like, five minutes when I first heard the title). I'm your host, Bella, and I'm totally excited to be taking you on this journey.

Or something.

*coughs*

Aaaaaanyway. Let's get on with it! With screenshots (slightly low quality) and everything!

Basics

Ten Inch Hero is an independent romantic comedy written by freshman screenwriter Betsy Morris and directed by indie veteran David Mackay. IMDb dates the movie 2007, but I'll get more into that and the release of the film later.

"Beach City Grill, subs by the inch!"

The film centers around Beach City Grill, a fictional sub shop (though they used a real place by the same name for the location) located by the beach in Santa Cruz, California, and its motley crew of employees, as they search for love and meaning and identity and all that metaphysical hoohaw over the course of (one assumes) a couple weeks in the late fall/early winter. This sucker's all about the dialogue and characters, with occasional slants into "magical realism" territory just for kicks. It tackles issues like teen pregnancy, internet dating, abusive relationships, the effects of war, karma, and social prejudices, without ever quite getting weighed down in the importance of its own statements, which is a pretty nice trick.

But as I said, this sucker's all about the characters, so let's get down to business.

(I will do my best not to spoil people too greatly in the following section, but if any of these will contain spoilers, this'll be it.)

Characters
The Beach City Grill crew
(not in order of appearance or importance, but rather in order of the conversation had in one particular scene, which, I think, does a decent job of giving little introductory soundbites for each character. Yes, it's insane. But I like it.)

Trucker
(John Doe)

Trucker: "Well, the surf sucked. What'd I miss at our staff meeting?"

Trucker is the owner/manager/guy in charge of Beach City Grill. He's about as laid-back and cheerful as they come -- we should all be so lucky to have a boss as accommodating and interesting as Trucker. Seriously. Trucker's a surfer who likes to spend his time reminiscing about Woodstock and the Grateful Dead, doesn't care much about the way things "should" be done (he's prepared to offer Piper a job before he knows anything more about her than that she's "not normal" and when asked if he knows Priestly's first name from his application off-handedly replies "You know, I don't think he ever filled one out"), and generally seems to get along with most people he meets, but don't cross him or his people.

Seriously. Watch the movie to find out why not.

Trucker has a mad mad crush on Zo, the woman who runs the crystal shop across the street. He thinks she's a Wiccan. They're soulmates, she just doesn't know it yet (or does she? As Trucker says, "she knows things"). Unfortunately for Trucker, his glib words, so easy to throw about with his young employees and not-as-young regulars, dissolve into thin air the minute Zo walks in, and he's stuck just kind of gazing at her all doe-eyed until after she's out the door.

Yeah, he's got it bad. Naturally, he's the best guy around to play role model for the rest of the crew.

Eye-candy rating: If you're into the over-fifty set, Trucker isn't bad. And he totally ends up riding around naked on horseback.

Tish
(Danneel Harris)

Jen: "Well, Tish is in love. Or lust, depending on who you're talking to."

Tish is one of the waitresses at the Beach City Grill, and is described by Jen early on in the movie as "the Scorpion Queen". She's hot and she knows it, and she uses it over and over throughout the movie to get guys to take her out on dates and sleep with her, then grades them on their performance. They almost always end up coming out lacking. She says that guys are too easy to manipulate and out-finesse for her not to take advantage of them, and wholeheartedly believes in riding the gravy-train of physical pleasure as far as possible. She does not have a whole lot of respect for the guys around her, as you can probably guess, and spends a lot of her time in the sub shop snarking back and forth with Priestly, especially over her dating habits.

Trucker calls her "angel".

For all that Tish is a use-em-and-lose-em kind of gal, she's still got a lot of heart. She cares a great deal about Jen and Piper especially, and she's not about to let anyone push them, or her, around.

She's kind of like the skanky big sister you never had. Unless you have a skanky big sister. I'm not here to judge.

Eye-candy rating: Can you say gratuitous sex scene? And she's totally on top.

Piper
(Elisabeth Harnois)

Jen: "Piper is digging herself deeper and deeper into the pit of deceit with the Millers."
Trucker: "Good. Nice to see that our company tradition for making the worst possible decision in any situation has been passed on to the next generation of employee."

If any of the characters can be construed as the "protagonist", Piper is it. Elisabeth Harnois gets top billing in the credits, Piper's the first character to show up on the screen, and it's through her introduction to the Beach City Grill and getting hired on to waitress that we meet the rest of the characters. She also has the heaviest and most in-depth plot line.

Piper's an artist, drawing and painting, mostly. When asked, she says she's come to Santa Cruz from Maryland because she has family there. What we don't find out for a couple more scenes is that the family she has -- who own the house she's seen discretely spying on before she even gets to the sub shop -- includes the eight year old girl that she had to give up for adoption when she was fifteen. She managed to stumble upon a picture of a girl the right age who bore a resemblance to her in a magazine article about talented and artistic children, and after a bit of digging discovered that not only did the little girl's first name match the first name she was told her daughter would be getting, but the name of the girl's father matches that of the adoptive father, as well.

Over the course of the movie she manages to meet up with the two and become the girl's art teacher/babysitter, as well as worm her way -- entirely accidentally, it should be noted -- into the affections of the father. Unfortunately, in an effort not to appear like the creepy stalker birth mother, her entire relationship with the two is based on a lie.

As Trucker says in that quote up there, she's not making such great choices. But her heart is in the right place, and for all her flaws, you can't help but empathize with her and cheer for her.

Eye-candy rating: Not much skin here -- seriously, she's usually wearing leggings with her dresses, even. Plus, they put her in some insane outfits. Not quite Claudia Kishi insane, but you can tell the "artist" aesthetic is totally there.

Priestly
(Jensen Ackles)

Jen: "Priestly's gotten in touch with his feminine side."
Priestly: "I love my kilt!"

Priestly is the punked-out chef of the Beach City Grill. Despite being consistently late to work and totally over the top, he's clearly part of the emotional glue of the place, right up there with Trucker in the glib remarks and cheerfulness brigade. He's sarcastic, cute, and charming (I can only hope I'm playing it well), and totally and completely and obviously in love with Tish. And so clueless that he has no idea how to broach the subject with her in anything but a joking manner in response to her rampant flirting and using of the other guys around.

For all his general goofiness and his role as the comic relief of the movie, Priestly is also rather insightful -- one of his lines to Jen later in the movie is perhaps the best thing I've heard from a romantic comedy in years. He's constantly watching the other employees and, when he feels the need for it, stepping in to make sure that they get what they want, even when they're busy sabotaging themselves from getting it. Priestly is sort of a Trucker in training, up to and including how rabidly he'll defend his friends if he feels the need to. He totally looks up to Trucker, listening carefully to every word out of the man's mouth, and wishing aloud that he'd been born in time to enjoy the sixties sensibility that Trucker likes to go on and on about. And he loves his conspiracy theories. Yes, the insistence that Elvis is alive and that Reagan ordered the assassination of John Lennon are both totally canon.

Eye-candy rating: Kilt! Kiiiiiiilt! Okay, so he only actually wears it in, like, two scenes, but still. Also, ARMS! And hair! And piercings! Can you tell that I'm into the punk aesthetic?

Oh, and he totally mimes a blow job. ;D

Jen
(Clea DuVall)

Jen: "And I have reached a decision on meeting Fuzzy."

Jen waitresses at Beach City Grill and runs the shop's website, where customers can place orders online and have them ready to be picked up when they come in. This also puts her in the perfect position to be sitting by the computer when "Fuzzy22" logs on -- that being her internet boyfriend. Well, she hopes he's a boy. There's a great deal of speculation amongst the whole crew as to who Fuzzy might really be, which Jen puts up with with just a minimal amount of embarrassment and denial.

Jen is the computer geek daughter of a minister from back east, and as she puts it, "the worst kind of late bloomer". She's a virgin, has very little confidence in her looks, and is generally shy and retiring in the face of her more boisterous coworkers. She's also got the proverbial heart of gold. When homeless people come into the shop, she offers them food in return for rocks or trinkets, willing to pay for the meals out of her own money (though Trucker refuses to let her). She's the one who questions Tish about her conquests when she gets into work, living vicariously through her and her "romantic" undertakings, and she's completely supportive of Piper's art and Priestly's crazy look.

She also gets one of the best speeches in the entire movie, heartbreaking in its honesty about her lack of confidence in her physical appearance. Seriously, while it might not be as, er, epic as Piper's plotline, Jen's is the one that hits closest to home with me, and I lovelovelove her and her not-as-cliche-as-you-might-think issues.

As a side note, I totally spent about half the movie rooting for her and Priestly to get together, the first time I watched it, despite knowing that Priestly was all about mooning over Tish. They would totally make a super-cute couple.

Eye-candy rating: Pretty much nil, for all that Clea is a lovely looking woman. Jen spends the whole movie in baggy sweatshirts and the occasional skirt.

The others and incidentals
(This one is much more in order of importance)

Noah and Julia
(Sean Patrick Flanery and Adair Tishler)

Jen: "So maybe you'll have a super-talented kid one day."
Piper: "I already do."

The "family" which Piper has in town. Noah is a teacher at a local school (it's never clear what exactly he teaches and at what level, though we do learn that he teaches adult education in addition to whatever else), a single father who's very hesitant about discussing what, exactly, happened to Julia's mother. He's completely devoted to his kid, and very supportive of her hobbies, despite not sharing them himself, and just as glib and intelligent as pretty much all of the rest of the main cast. If this movie has one drawback, it's that it's occasionally just too damned clever. But that just makes it fun.

Julia is Noah's eight year old daughter, who Piper has come to Santa Cruz to track down. She's bouncy, energetic, and completely adorable, and an excellent artist in her own right. She's got her dad -- and pretty soon, Piper -- wrapped around her little finger.

Surprisingly, she's also quite good at darts.

Noah and Julia don't really get to interact much with the rest of the Beach City Grill crew, unfortunately. They're very much in their own Piper-centric plotline.

Eye-candy rating: Get your minds out of the gutter, people, I'm talking about Sean Patrick Flanery, not Adair Tishler. SPF gets to spend his first scene of the movie wearing nothing but khaki shorts. And man, that guy has a nice chest.

Zo
(Alice Krige)

Piper: "Is that the crystal shop lady?"
Jen: "Yup, that's Zo."
Piper: "Zo."
Trucker: "It's short for Zoharet. Means 'she shines' in Hebrew. See, she knows things."

The crystal shop owner who "knows things". She's the one who carries the small amount of magic that shows up in this movie. Trucker's assertion that Zo "knows things" is totally and completely on base, from what we see in the movie. She knows Piper's name before ever being introduced, she can tell when Jen's gotten over her shame about . . . er . . . pleasuring herself, and in an interesting little moment, she seems to fix Trucker's VW van, the Cosmobile, with just a look and a smile from across the street.

She also gets this great line about high school towards the end of the movie.

Zo is really pretty much just there to be Trucker's love interest, but she also manages to be a bit of a role model for the girls in the shop as well. She offers advice that's always of a new-agey, feel-good nature, has conversations with Priestly about vegetarianism, and responds to his teasing with just a small, close-lipped smile and an "I do love you, Priestly". She's pretty awesome.

Eye-candy rating: Yes, the older woman totally gets a nude scene. Complete with Garden-of-Eden, Venus-onna-clamshell hair stylings. How come Priestly's the one who doesn't end up topless?

Tadd and Brad
(Sean Wing and Matt Barr)

Priestly: "Tadd and Brad. Well isn't that . . . gay."

Really, it's mostly just Tadd who gets any kind of personality, but once you see the movie, you'll see why these two totally get lumped together. Tadd and Brad are roommates who come to the Beach City Grill for ten inch spicy Italian subs -- and to flirt with Tish, in the case of Tadd. He's the one who finally registers above ten on Tish's bed-worthiness scale. A full twelve on it, in fact, despite the fact that he brings Brad on most of their dates. He's a playboy about town who sponges off his father's money to afford his fancy car and expensive tips.

You're really not supposed to like Tadd. Or Brad, who gets, like, two lines in the whole movie. Really, really not. You can tell by their second appearance, when Tadd mocks Priestly's hair, and it's only added to with each and every one of their scenes. But they're totally necessary characters, and get played with sleazy aplomb by Sean Wing and Matt Barr.

Eye-candy rating: Both these boys are nicely put together. And both get their naked time. We're talking full on ass shots here, folks. Even if they are sleazy jerks.

Fuzzy22
(AIM instant messenger and Jordan Belfi)

Piper: "What happens when 'it' wants to meet?"
Jen: "Well, we've been emailing for almost a year, and it's never come up."
Piper: "A year? Jen, what do you guys talk about if you don't talk about each other?"
Jen: "Everything else."

Fuzzy22, real name Jeff, most often referred to as "Fuzzy" by the other characters, is Jen's online boyfriend. They've been emailing and chatting back and forth for almost a year, though it's never made clear just how they "met". Fuzzy deciding to ask for a meeting, despite an agreement not to discuss personal details, is the driving force of Jen's arc through the movie, and the catalyst for the two greatest moments that I mention above in the "Priestly" and "Jen" sections, so I can't help but love him, even though he got between the two (who never stood a chance in the movie itself anyway *sigh*). He doesn't get much of a personality of his own, thanks to him only appearing in IM form for much of the movie, and then often only a line or two of typing before we're simply presented with sound-effects and shots of Jen reacting in front of the computer. Still, his identity and the reason for his screenname is greatly speculated upon by the Beach City Grill crew, which makes for some quality entertainment, so he totally gets a full on mention.

Eye-candy rating: He's not bad, once he finally shows up. But like Jen, he never gets to show any skin.

Mr. Julius, Lucille and Bam Bam
(Peter Dennis, Judith Drake and Austin)

Mr. Julius: "Are you a virgin?"
Trucker: "Mr. Julius!"
Piper: "No. But I used to be."

Mr. Julius and Lucille are two regulars at the Beach City Grill, the only two customers who ever seem to be seated in the place, and the only two regulars we get to see. They have their tables that they always sit at, and they even get to weigh in on the "democratic" process of hiring Piper at the start of the movie. Neither of them really get much fleshing out beyond the occasional chipped in comment, but they're fun and cute in their own way, and have the distinction of being the only characters who aren't love interests who appear in more than two scenes. So, hey, go them!

Bam Bam is Lucille's chihuahua, whom she carries around in her purse. And, apparently, doesn't let see her jerk off. Which is good to know.

Eye-candy rating: What? I did it for everyone else. These two don't even register. Though Mr. Julius looks rather dashing in his bowtie at the end of the movie.

Music

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the music in this movie "becomes another character", mostly because I think that's a damned foolish thing to say about music in just about anything, and it's totally cliche to boot. It is, however, rather well chosen, and fun. The music is pretty much all as indie as the film itself, mostly leaning towards the indie pop and folk side of the spectrum. I was convinced for, like, two months that the main theme was by Frightened Rabbit, and later than one of the incidental songs was by Dykehouse. I was wrong on both counts, but those who know indie bands might at least get a sense of what this stuff sounds like.

The original score of the movie is a lot of guitar and some flutes, and interestingly enough, the credits include a mention of Danneel as "Muse". The music won "best soundtrack" at the Santa Cruz Film Festival, and three of the songs were written specifically for the movie, and hearken to the female folk artists of the nineties.

Seriously, it's some pretty good stuff.

Release

This is, IMO, one of the most interesting facets of this film, so it gets its own section. Remember how I referred to it in Priestly's info post as "the little indie rom-com that could"? This is why:

The movie was filmed in three weeks in various locations around southern California. Production was completed in 2007. It was then screened at film festivals, including the above mentioned Santa Cruz Film Festival, the Newport Beach Film Festival, and the Phoenix Film Festival, and at a few private screenings, but it had a great deal of trouble getting any sort of pick-up for distribution, so the crew, banking in no small part on fans of Jensen from Supernatural and John Doe from his punk band, decided to hit the 'net. They set up a website for the movie, periodically releasing production stills and little tidbits, including news of the efforts to get distribution. The movie got its own MySpace for continued updates, and when that still didn't get them enough attention, the crew released one of Jensen's better scenes -- the now-infamous "tampon" scene -- on YouTube, with a request for those who enjoy the scene to comment and tell their friends, so that distributors could see that there was a demand. Petitions were started, vlog posts were made, all asking/demanding that the movie get released in a format that fans who weren't close enough to get to the occasional screenings would get to see it.

It took them more than a year, but their efforts paid off. The movie was screened in London this last September, and released on DVD in Sweden this last fall. It then hit the 'net in .avi form, thanks to some industrious fans, but was subsequently pulled by those same fans after getting comments that with the .avi file, people were planning to skip buying the movie itself. It was finally announced in November that the film had been picked up by Blockbuster Entertainment, and would be released stateside in February of 2009.

I'm a huge supporter of independent media projects as a whole, and seeing this one succeed thanks to the power of fans and the internet is seriously awesome. If you're interested, pleasepleaseplease pick this sucker up when it's finally released. The market might be opening up to independent projects, especially via the internet, but it's still incredibly difficult to get any kind of mainstream attention or mass production. Every little bit helps. </PSA>

That's all well and good, but why should I watch it?

What, supporting an indie movie and seeing Jensen in a kilt and/or naked Danneel isn't enough for you?

Well.

The movie is cute. Like, almost too cute at points. It's clever. See disclaimer about cuteness and apply it to cleverness.

Most importantly, it's fun. And not nearly as cliche as you might think it will be. The movie will surprise you, and it makes some fabulous points about identity, physical appearance, taking chances, and being who you really are. Even if parts of it might make you kinda want to hit something (*coughs*Boaz?!*coughs*). And soon? It'll even actually be properly available in the United States. Score!

And from what I hear, it's totally better than Thomas Kincade's Christmas Cottage (sorry, Jared).

Linkaaaaage

Official website
The MySpace page
The trailer
The "tampon" scene
fan-vid for the movie, including quotes from fans and the announcement of it's USA release on DVD

Spotlight on Fandoms: Ten Inch Hero

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