The thing about "bad" movies

Okay, okay, I'll admit, I like a lot of them. The Replacements, a football film that is so badly edited even eight-year-old me thought "I could do better." Plan 9 from Outer Space, the quintessential bad 50s B-movie, Ed Wood at his best, Bela Lugosi at his worst. Ice Princess, the cheesiest - and least-factually accurate - movie about figure skating that was ever or will ever be made. Reefer Madness, the best thing to come out of the production code era and the only time that a film's portrayal of drug addiction was actually funny. Make the Yuletide Gay, a coming-out story set at Christmastime and featuring the most idiotic parents since the Griswolds. Pixel Perfect - yes, God help me, I'll actually admit to loving this movie, and all the other idiotic DCOMs from that era. The Cheetah Girls. Cow Belles. High School Musical.

Yep, guilty pleasures are called that for a reason. You feel guilty loving something so bad so much. After all, what self-respecting filmmaker will proudly admit that Pixel Perfect is one of the films that most influenced their early attempts at scriptwriting? Only someone who obviously and intentionally does not want to be taken seriously. I take enough crap from some of my fellow film nerds for loving Tim Burton, especially when that little tidbit is discovered after I've calmly explained my reasons for thinking that Lars Von Trier, James Cameron, and Francis Ford Coppola are thoroughly overrated. Can you imagine if, when asked what my favorite film of all-time is, I reply, "Well, it's this movie that came out in the early 2000s, starring Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman. It's called The Replacements and I think the editors were going for the broken record of how many times they could totally fuck up the 180 and 30-degree rules?" I'd never live it down.

But here's the thing about "bad" movies. They're actually really, really good.

No, really. Hear me out.

I get it, I really do. Titanic deserved all the awards it won back in the 90s. Groundbreaking, exciting, tearjerking, historical, blah blah blah. Okay, Titanic had its day in the sun, and well-deserved. Much as I can't stand that movie, I can still admit that it is a technical wonder. I hate the love story, I think it's thoroughly overwrought and about as cliche as it can possibly get. But I'll concede that objectively, Titanic is a well-done movie that took years of effort and the input and talent of thousands of people, most of whom will never get an ounce of recognition (except maybe from potential employers - can you imagine having that on your resume?).

But what people don't seem to realize is that all those "bad" movies - all those cult movies that were slammed by critics, all those independent movies that are so obviously low-budget it hurts to even look at them, all those generically obvious grabs for tweenage allowance money, all of those bad scripts and terrible editing jobs, all that awful cinematography, all the popular movies that intellectuals denounce as "trash for the masses," all those Labyrinths and Ice Princesses and Troll 2s and Replacements and Plan 9 From Outer Spaces - all of those movies, they took time and hard work and talent, too.

I know the knee-jerk reaction to this is either "Yeah, right!" or "so what, that doesn't make them GOOD." But it does, though. It does, and I'll tell you why.

I can tell you from experience what a bitch it is, trying to shoot a low-budget film. I've improvised dollies out of rolling plastic filing cabinets, shot hand-held with a Sony camcorder that made a noise like a broken washing machine every time you pressed "record," tried to make the basement of a boarding-school cafeteria look like an emergency room entrance, enlisted my roommate to do make-up for a late-night shoot, shot a documentary about Detroit on a Samsung Galaxy SII, bribed actors with Cheez-Its, thrown my dad into a film at the last minute, used a flashlight and a handful of gravel to imply a car crash, and--at a particularly low point--used a plastic, baby-toy steering wheel for a camera rig and a broken clap-n-laugh microphone as a boom pole. I have thrown together equipment from trash bags, SAD lamps, toy telephones, skateboards, LEGO pieces, rubber ducks, shower curtains. I have used crepe paper as a lens filter. I have used Playmobil characters to make stop-motion. I've shot in rain, in snow, in scorching sun, and under assault from some very persistent caterpillars. And, Jesus Christ, I'm not even out of college. I have yet to even attempt a feature. And if you think the above list is in any way extreme, just ask me what some of my classmates have done. Yes, technology has made it so that just about anybody can make a movie, but that sure as hell doesn't mean that anyone can make a movie easily or well.

But one of the reasons I love independent films is because they don't meet the typically agreed-upon standards for "talent." They don't hit all of the How To Make A Good Film marks, or check off all the boxes. And whether it's a micro-budget mumblecore like Funny Ha Ha or a better-known one with higher-profile actors, like Thumbsucker or Only Lovers left Alive - or something in-between, like Life After Beth or Elephant - you can bet that whoever made that film wasn't in it for the money. They were in it because they damn well wanted to be.

Now I'll grant you, some low-budget films are just plain bad. I loved it, but I'll be first to admit that Funny Ha Ha was about as pointless a film as was ever made. Same goes for cult films; it's hilarious in all the wrong ways and it has a hell of a following, but even fans of Troll 2 can see why that one didn't get the attention of the Academy. And God knows that even professionals can miss the mark with the best of them. Tim Burton, you are my hero, but I don't know if I can ever forgive you for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or - shoot me now - Dark Shadows.

But even in all of those bad movies there are stories. There are "remember when we had to shoot at two AM" stories, "I broke the boom pole and had to use a broomstick instead" stories, "the animatronic puppet we spent half our budget on didn't work and we had to MacGyver that shit at the last minute" stories. If you ever have any doubt that bad movies take every bit as much effort as good movies, go and look at the behind-the-scenes material. I hate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but after reading the chapter dedicated to the movie in Burton on Burton I can at least understand the artistic choices that Burton made while he was directing it.

I guess what annoys me so much about all the criticism of "bad" movies is that so much of it, in my circle at least, comes from people who have actually made films before and should know better. Furthermore, every time I hear a discussion about a "bad" movie I can't help but think that people don't understand the difference between a film not being to your taste and being "bad." I've heard many a Jim Henson fan trash Labyrinth because they disliked Jennifer Connelly's performance or disapproved of the casting of David Bowie, somehow managing to completely forget that the film was made before CGI was a fully-developed thing and disregarding the incredible amount of effort that went into the special effects and the puppets. Can we really call Labyrinth a bad movie when Henson, whom most would call a genius, put so much work into it? Or can we agree that maybe David Bowie's acting is not to your standard but the rest of the movie was brilliant - or even can we just agree that Jim Henson and his team put a metric shit-ton of work into that movie and for that reason alone it deserves some damn respect - and just move on?

No, not every movie deserves a turn at the Oscars. Yes, art is and always has been subjective. And that's precisely why bad movies deserve respect too. As the old saying goes, one person's trash is another's treasure. I don't care if your favorite movie is Titanic, that's your opinion. Just don't give me the sideways, call-the-men-in-white-coats look when I try to explain to you why The Replacements is mine.