George King's 1991 documentary "Ten Thousand Points of Light" may not sound like much in summary: It's a breezy 30-minute profile of the Townsends, a suburban Atlanta family who for decades loaded their house with Christmas lights and decorations (with a heaping side of Elvis paraphernalia) and then conducted free public tours of it. But King’s prescience for the wacky personalities and extreme behavior we’d come to glorify through reality TV is astounding. Matriarch Margaret’s QVC habit, her son Raymond’s gun that he keeps close to him during the tours (so Christmasy!), his daughter Gloria’s open flirting with her houseguests and the spectators’ reactions (“The Santa toilet seat cover!”) make “Light” a gift that keeps on giving.
King directed, shot (on VHS, no less) and edited the film himself, Russ Meyer-style. Screened sporadically for two decades, “Light” finally was released on DVD by movie and music reissuers Dust-to-Digital last year.
The Daily talked to King about “Light” by phone, and he ended up detailing his formula for making a cult film. Pointers follow.
Tip 1: Choose your medium wisely. Or let it choose you, and make sure you come off as wise.
“Unfortunately, it was shot on a VHS camera, which isn’t exactly the high point of Western technology,” said King. “It looks like s***, especially when you’re trying to shoot Christmas lights, but it does add a surreal touch sometimes that I like. It was a function of necessity of the time. Armed with this VHS camera, I thought the thing to do would be to appropriate the aesthetics of home video. The camera movements are not very slick, but it is edited rather tightly. And so [when watching] you might think, ‘Is this amateur footage? Did they find this somewhere?’ That was always kind of part of the concept, that it would have a little mystery to it.”
Tip 2: Create a demand.
King used unlicensed music, which made distribution tricky. Though he’d send out screening copies occasionally (opening the door for bootlegs) and host showings in theaters, he wouldn’t allow the film to play to the public without his presence (he figured he’d have to be there to pose an argument regarding the film’s legality). This meant denying interested parties like PBS. “At some stage in the process I decided this should be a cult movie, if you can designate a cult movie,” he explained. “It sounds extremely pretentious to do that. I figured that a cult movie was a movie that more people knew about than had seen, and if you control the marketing, you control the supply, then that’s the answer. The more you say no, the more people want it. It turned into this thing — someone told me there was a Facebook page and a MySpace for this movie, and I had no idea. I knew it had kind of a cult following just based on letters, but you could never predict where it was available, if it was available, where you could see it, if you could see it. None of that had any kind of logic that anyone could trace.”
Tip 3: Make like the Townsends and pack delights in every corner of your work.
“I used to claim to audiences that you have to see this film more than once, because there’s a lot of stuff going on,” said King. “A whole subtext of cigarettes and themes that float underneath the obvious.”
Tip 4: Convey your subjects’ eccentricity without mocking them.
“I thought the Townsends were great people and they had done something amazing,” he said of his subjects. “It used to irk me that there was an audience for this film that would get liquored up on a Saturday night, come to these screenings and just be doubled up laughing derisively. I think one of my strengths as a filmmaker is that I have a lot of respect for people’s personal dignity. I think there are points where maybe it crossed a line or where I wished I pulled back a little. But the idea was that it rode that edge, and whenever it was tipping over one way, it would right the ship, so to speak. Bring it back or challenge that little thought you were just nurturing that these people are obviously bonkers. I read a review fairly recently that said they’re all kind of in on the joke, and I thought, ‘You’ve got it.’ In a way, arguably, they’re laughing at us. Certainly, they are an entertaining bunch and they know it. They would dial it up a bit to add a little bit to the comedy when necessary. In a way, they’re performing.”
Tip 5: Since Tip 4 is such a tough one to pull off, hope for the best.
“I sent [the Townsends] a copy,” said King. “I had some trepidation in my heart because there’s no question that the film does have some rim shots in it. I said, ‘So what do you think?’ There was this moment of silence and Raymond said, ‘We think it’s the best television program we’ve ever seen.’ ”
King directed, shot (on VHS, no less) and edited the film himself, Russ Meyer-style. Screened sporadically for two decades, “Light” finally was released on DVD by movie and music reissuers Dust-to-Digital last year.
The Daily talked to King about “Light” by phone, and he ended up detailing his formula for making a cult film. Pointers follow.
Tip 1: Choose your medium wisely. Or let it choose you, and make sure you come off as wise.
“Unfortunately, it was shot on a VHS camera, which isn’t exactly the high point of Western technology,” said King. “It looks like s***, especially when you’re trying to shoot Christmas lights, but it does add a surreal touch sometimes that I like. It was a function of necessity of the time. Armed with this VHS camera, I thought the thing to do would be to appropriate the aesthetics of home video. The camera movements are not very slick, but it is edited rather tightly. And so [when watching] you might think, ‘Is this amateur footage? Did they find this somewhere?’ That was always kind of part of the concept, that it would have a little mystery to it.”
Tip 2: Create a demand.
King used unlicensed music, which made distribution tricky. Though he’d send out screening copies occasionally (opening the door for bootlegs) and host showings in theaters, he wouldn’t allow the film to play to the public without his presence (he figured he’d have to be there to pose an argument regarding the film’s legality). This meant denying interested parties like PBS. “At some stage in the process I decided this should be a cult movie, if you can designate a cult movie,” he explained. “It sounds extremely pretentious to do that. I figured that a cult movie was a movie that more people knew about than had seen, and if you control the marketing, you control the supply, then that’s the answer. The more you say no, the more people want it. It turned into this thing — someone told me there was a Facebook page and a MySpace for this movie, and I had no idea. I knew it had kind of a cult following just based on letters, but you could never predict where it was available, if it was available, where you could see it, if you could see it. None of that had any kind of logic that anyone could trace.”
Tip 3: Make like the Townsends and pack delights in every corner of your work.
“I used to claim to audiences that you have to see this film more than once, because there’s a lot of stuff going on,” said King. “A whole subtext of cigarettes and themes that float underneath the obvious.”
Tip 4: Convey your subjects’ eccentricity without mocking them.
“I thought the Townsends were great people and they had done something amazing,” he said of his subjects. “It used to irk me that there was an audience for this film that would get liquored up on a Saturday night, come to these screenings and just be doubled up laughing derisively. I think one of my strengths as a filmmaker is that I have a lot of respect for people’s personal dignity. I think there are points where maybe it crossed a line or where I wished I pulled back a little. But the idea was that it rode that edge, and whenever it was tipping over one way, it would right the ship, so to speak. Bring it back or challenge that little thought you were just nurturing that these people are obviously bonkers. I read a review fairly recently that said they’re all kind of in on the joke, and I thought, ‘You’ve got it.’ In a way, arguably, they’re laughing at us. Certainly, they are an entertaining bunch and they know it. They would dial it up a bit to add a little bit to the comedy when necessary. In a way, they’re performing.”
Tip 5: Since Tip 4 is such a tough one to pull off, hope for the best.
“I sent [the Townsends] a copy,” said King. “I had some trepidation in my heart because there’s no question that the film does have some rim shots in it. I said, ‘So what do you think?’ There was this moment of silence and Raymond said, ‘We think it’s the best television program we’ve ever seen.’ ”
