I’m so used to seeing screenshots of Netflix fails that I assumed the attached image was one of them – Dolf Lundgren in Electric Boogaloo, the 80s breakdancing flick (which, of course, would be awesome). But it’s actually a documentary on erstwhile B-film studio Cannon Films (producers of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and Lundgren’s turn as He-Man in Masters of the Universe). Amiably directed by Mark Hartley, not only will Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films stoke your Gen X nostalgia for what is now vintage schlock, it might also inspire you to launch your own low-budget film studio.
I know – I have a tendency to go big and go bad at the same time, like mushroom cloud footage shoehorned into a cheap dystopian road pic, but watch the film and see if you can resist the desire to become a B-movie mogul.
I can’t. I’m drawing up one-sheets now (in my mind) for films I’ll script into my phone whilst waiting for the train and probably shoot on my phone as well. In fact, I’m not starting a B-film studio so much as a bPhone studio, which is when one makes iPhone movies with a surfeit of blood, boobs and banter (so, yeah, basically Godard’s Pierrot La Fou). Until there’s an app for that, I’ll have to scratch that niche myself. I’ll borrow my studio’s ethos from MGM’s motto: Ars Gratia Artis – art for art’s sake. Except, there’s no Latin for “Artsploitation,” so my studio motto will have to be something like Ars Abusionem Gratia Ars Abusionem, which is basically “Abusing Art for the Hell of It.” Or maybe that should be self-abusing art? Wait, I feel a film coming on…
Read this artsploitation sci-fi flick I wrote.
