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[This Mock Review of a mocumentary, THE INDEPENDENT,  appeared originally at Epinions.com.]
Product Rating:Pros: Strong performances by Jerry Stiller, Janeane Garafolo, Anne Meara. Sharp observations. Funny clips and cameos.

Cons: Strives for satire, sometimes lapses into burlesque. Mocumentary may appear to clash with main storyline.

The Bottom Line: THE INDEPENDENT is a little picture. Its kind has been done before. But, compared to more pretentious, praised current work, like THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, it is both hilarious and concise.

macresarf1's Full Review: Independent

Well, you American Indie Film fans know the pioneers of the Movement -- the giants we all recognize. They reside in the Pantheon, above the secondary figures like Orson Welles, John Cassavetes, Stanley Kubrick and Robert Redford. [I will not lower myself to mention John Waters, in any connection with my name.] I'm talking here about the Top Lensers, the guys with guts who never noodled under, the acknowledged front rank: Peter Bogdanovich, Henry Jaglom, Roger Corman, Ron Howard -- and me, Morton L. Fineman. Always controversial, I have been blacklisted by the Big Studios and (let's admit it, people) elements of the Secret Government. (Do you REALLY think it started on September 11? Wise up, schmucks!) The bankers and the spooks have considered me a "terrorist" for years, ever since November 1963, when I rushed my first film into production. 

Who do you think has been the greatest filmic exposer of totalitarianistic trends in America since then? Bryan Carey, you say? Not quite, but close. Think again. 

You got it! Morty Fineman. 

That's why I was delighted when my old friend and collaborator, Macresarf1, asked me to write an appreciation for Steve Kessler's new film, THE INDEPENDENT. Macresarf1 is by far the most distinguished underground critic of his generation. (He and Pauline Kael once shared chocolate sodas at the old Berkeley Rep.) When he asks a favor, standup guys like Morty Fineman are front and center. After all, in a sense, I suppose, without writers like Macresarf1, I would not exist. He and others have championed obscure examples of my 427 film oeuvre -- POINTY, POINTY, POINTY (1973), AMATEUR FACES OF DEATH (1987), CHEERLEADER CAMP MASSACRE (1989), BOY EATS GIRL (1991), etc -- for the masterpieces they are. 

Macresarf1 and Mike Bracken gave 'em all five stars! 

Not many people (talking in the business now) appreciate that I started out in legit theater with Macresarf1 -- at the Cleveland Playhouse -- in a trenchant satire of American business, entitled "Meet a Body," about partners in a funeral home. (Very funny. They held it over for a fourth night.) 

Mac said, "Tell it like it was, Morty." 

No problem, pal. 

Steve Kessler, my director friend, long an admirer of my socially conscious work, approached me several years ago with a screen play about my career. He'd wrote it with his old partner Fred Wilkins. So, because I had lent them $47.23 toward the making of their first movie, a short called "Birch Street Gym" (1991), and recommended Steve to the National Lampoon franchise for his second flick, VEGAS VACATION (1997), I felt enough paternal pride to tell him I'd take a gander at it. I figured it would be a piece of (bleep). Instead, to my surprise, I found it not half bad. I told him so, and for an extra percentage, I did an uncredited re-write to make THE INDEPENDENT, as it is known now, compelling cinema. I added realism and truth to the finished product. Truth, truth, above all -- Truth! 

Besides the flick needed more babes. 

I focused my revision on two movies I was planning to make at the time, NURSE KEVORKIAN and WILLIAM HENRY ELLIS, MASS MURDERER: A ROCK OPERA. [Baz Luhrmann  of MOULIN ROUGE fame was bidding against me on the latter property.] "Send along a camera crew with me," I said to Steve. "You can interview a lot of my old movie friends, people I gave their start, and we'll use lots of cut-aways and flashbacks to nail down the scripted stuff." 

And so, that's just what Steve did. Trouble was, when I was shooting footage of my star, Julie Strain, in a real hospital -- for NURSE KEVORKIAN -- we had a little difficulty. Yeah, these things happen in the movie business. You know Julie from such classics as ARMAGEDDON BOULEVARD, LINGERIE KICK BOXER, and recently her 1999 trendsetter: THE BARE WENCH PROJECT. She's a fine actress, a real professional, and looks good carrying a machine gun while wearing a stylized gold lame nurse's uniform, with bikini top. Unfortunately, in that one set-up, we were using live ammunition, and Julie had trouble with the safety catch on her AK-47. I said, "Give it here, Julie-bunnie-baby. Let Uncle Morty take care of it!" 

Somehow the gun went off and killed a patient. Thank God for my daughter Paloma and my long time cameraman/factotum, Ivan, who said, "You better light the hell outta here, Morty, and lie low, or they're gonna throw your tail into the funny bin with William Henry Ellis!"

That's what I did -- hid out for two years. 

Naturally, Steve had the bigger problem. How do you make a documentary called THE INDEPENDENT without the Old Master, Morton L. Fineman? There was nothing to do but recast it as a theatrical feature. I had him contact my dear friends, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Jerry resembles me in looks and temperament, and Anne is like the fragrant rose my ex-wife was, before her recent demise. (Her death freed up for the picture my old Rolls Royce, in which she'd actually lived in for years, and Steve got Fred Dryer to play her old boyfriend and chauffeur, Jean Claude.) Ivan would not appear as himself, of course, not without me, and so I thought about Max Perlich, who once played a documentarian on a TV show series, Homicide: Life on the Streets, for which I provided a couple of under-the-counter scripts. 

Steve reshot all the footage using the pros, and I set up interviews for him with Roger Corman. (He hired me on my first A.D. assignment: ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, 1957.) Ron Howard. (I adapted for him that play I mentioned, Meet a Body, about the Scotty and Jewish undertakers -- just for him, understand? He called it NIGHTSHIFT [1982], his first feature as a director.) Peter Bogdanovich. (I saved that guy's hash on THE LAST PICTURE SHOW [1971] when his pal Orson Welles couldn't come up with the obvious idea of shooting it in black and white.) Fred Williamson. (I thought of him for a part when my former pupil, Bob Altman, wanted to break out of Television with a little number I was re-writing for him called MASH.) Karen Black. (She has never forgotten how I introduced her to Francis C. when he was casting his first film in New York [YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW, 1966]. I also advised her not to have her eyes straightened.) 

They all told the simple truth. (Truth! God, how I love it.) Peter, for instance, said I would pitch an idea for a movie or TV play (say, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER BLISTER, 1975, or my TV pilot, 12 ANGRY MEN AND A BABY, 1953). I'd invariably be forced, often unsuccessfully, to finance the property myself. "Two years later," Peter remarked, "someone else would win an Oscar [or an Emmy] for it." 

And Ron Howard personally expressed his indebtedness to my BALD JUSTICE (1990) as a main inspiration for his later films. (Ron doesn't say so, but he is really referring to his 2001 picture, A BEAUTIFUL MIND.) 

Unbeknownst to Jerry and Annie, I wrote bits for their son Ben and the entire cast of his old TV show. Ben plays a half whale/half man, who spouts water and speaks whale-talk. (What a good son!) 

Meanwhile, William Henry Ellis ate one of his keepers, and not even his lawyer could negotiate more commercial camera footage for him, so we hired Larry Hankin to stand in for him. My old friend Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols auditioned, lost the role, but we found something for him anyway. 

Scores of actors like Andy Dick, Penelope Pumpkins, and Martin Short heard of our plight and volunteered. We obliged them although, for insurance and contractual reasons, we could not credit a couple of them. 

While I directed (in disguise) certain of the sequences in LA, Steve was up at Colfax, in Placer County, California, recreating my greatest promotional triumph, the retrospective of my work at The 1997 High Desert Film Festival. In THE INDEPENDENT, we set the Festival at a place called Chapparal, southeast of Reno, in Nevada. It's a town which used to draw its revenue from the Army Atomic Testing Grounds nearby, but when that closed down (opens again soon, I understand), the City Fathers and Mothers had to fall back on some way to bring guys out to Chapparal's legalized parlor houses. I sent up Ginger Lynn Allen, with whom I worked before we both went legit, to essay the role of Mayor Kitty Storm of Chapparal Township. 

The high point of the actual event was the World Theatrical Premier of my U.S. Army training film, THE SIMPLEX COMPLEX (long thought lost), a warning against the heartbreak of Herpes, for which I drew inspiration from my idol, Ingmar Bergman, whose SEVENTH SEAL was the first foreign film I ever saw. 

Too bad Steve didn't shoot on the actual location. He and the crew would have had a riot. 

At the same time, Paloma Fineman, my daughter -- played in the film, BTW, by Janeane Garofalo -- negotiated with a Major Studio (which shall remain nameless) for the use of clips of my only big budget, Cinemascope production (never released), THE WHOLE STORY OF AMERICA (1965), in which I also starred. They threw in my trend-setting WORLD WAR III, Part 2 (soon to go into re-release) and my adult TV Art Instruction series, MORTY FINEMAN ON NAKED BODY PAINTING, based on the techniques of Pablo Picasso and Eugenio de Arnal, featuring a nude Julie Strain covered with paints of several primary colors. 

I am particulary proud that I was able to donate to THE INDEPENDENT the Director's Cut for my exposure of "the trial lawyers scam," CHRIST FOR THE DEFENSE (1997). When we couldn't find a distributor to handle it, Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House at the time, said: "The supression of Mr. Fineman's uplifting film is one more example of the destruction of Family Values under the Clinton Administration!" 

Morty Fineman calls 'em as he sees 'em. 

Well, people, that's the story. Steve brought in THE INDEPENDENT at 95 minutes, and under budget. When it was first shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2000, my critic friend Macresarf1 said: "Funnier than NAKED GUN 33 1/3: THE FINAL INSULT!" Later, it won "The Grand Jury Prize for Best Film" at The Slam Dunk Festival. When THE INDEPENDENT premiered in December 2001 (for eligibility in the Oscar Race), it grossed a record $11, 695, in the single theater we were able to book it. 

Once more, the forces which destroyed von Stroheim and Welles stepped in, planning to sabotage the integrity of our film. "Let's not allow a radical like Morty Fineman gain too much influence!" (Get the drift?) They held up its wide release for months, but Steve Kessler hung in there, and THE INDEPENDENT may soon appear at a theater near you. 

Go see it! 

I want to thank Macresarf1 and the fine people at Epinions for allowing me to write this guest review for all of you, who are my fans.

 [I also want to praise cute little Ivory Madison and Heather Goyette; handsome Tom Dotson, Huntington Sharp, and Abraham Mertens, for offering me the job of making THE INDEPENDENT in anime when they get their Red Room Productions Online in operation in what they estimate will be six years or so.  Morty L. Fineman plunges into THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE CINEMATIC FUTURE!] 

Remember: Truth without u makes no sense. 

--Morty Fineman. 

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Editor's Note: Macresarf1 published the following in the New York Times: "I recently saw THE INDEPENDENT again, and it is my considered opinion, that as an amusing satire about a dysfunctional artistic family, Morty Fineman's film outstrips THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. Jerry Stiller as Morty Fineman is every bit as raunchy and devious as Gene Hackman in his acclaimed performance in . . . TENENBAUM. I soon hope to negotiate with Rick Schmidlin (Restoration Producer of TOUCH OF EVIL [1958], GREED [1925], and THIS IS ELVIS [1981], etc) to bring out new editions of Fineman's early masterpieces: *NUCLEAR NUN (1964), SICK GLORIA'S TRANSIT (1964), HE BITES! (1964), TEENIE WEENIE BIKINI BEACH (1965), CHICKS WITH HICKS (1965), HEIL TITLER (1968), CAGEFUL OF WAITRESSES (1969), KENT STATE NURSES (1971), and KUNG-FU CHRISTMAS (1972). Mr. Fineman is currently rushing into production his latest expose: BUSH, DASCHLE, BRITNEY: AGENTS OF OSAMA? (Due for release: December 2002)." 

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*A complete list of Morty Fineman films runs on the End Credits of THE INDEPENDENT.