‘American Movie’ and ‘Original Cast Album: Company’: a creative marathon vs a sprint

Posted On February 9, 2025February 9, 2025

It has never been harder to get films made, and the current filmmaking climate feels hostile and actively harmful towards creativity and the evolution of an idea. While it has never been a particularly inviting or inclusive business, recent messaging about how ‘the times have changed’ would lead you to believe that anyone with spark, passion and drive has what it takes to bring their vision onto the big screen. However, with the decline of independent filmmaking and the shifting of power between directors and studio executives, the struggle has never been greater, and many artists yearn for a future that feels increasingly distant and far-fetched, silently pining for a life that slips from their reach.  

It is because of this that the creative process now feels like a marathon or brutal endurance test, with relentless obstacles that tear down any shred of self-worth and obliterate any shard of hope until you eventually give up completely. Many people don’t survive this artistic boot camp, while some, despite all the odds, manage to persevere, existing as a magnificent triumph and miraculous exception to the rule in a world that abruptly dismantles our imagination before being given a chance to take flight properly. The business of making now feels like a test of resilience, with an overload of disruptions and doubts that slowly begin to plague your mind – is it really worth sharing? Do I have any talent? What if it’s terrible?  

But, despite the misery and soul-crushing agony of this uphill battle, there is nothing more magical than when it actually pays off, and there are two films that beautifully encapsulate the exquisite madness and mayhem of creation.

Stephen Sondheim is one of the greatest musical theatre composers of all time, largely praised for reinventing the modern musical through his witty lyricism, playful melodies and sometimes existentialist subject matter. He is most known for projects such as Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along and Company, with the latter leading to a wonderfully charged and often quite stressful documentary about creative resilience and the pursuit of perfection.

In 1970, after the staggering premiere of Sondheim’s musical Company, the director gathered the show’s stars and musicians into a studio to take part in a legendary Broadway tradition – to record the original cast album. However, after gathering everyone together, they soon discovered that they only had 19 hours to record, leading to a relentless creative marathon as they pushed themselves to the limit to immortalise a performance and achieve perfection. Original Cast Album: Company is the documentation of this very process, culminating in one of the most stressful all-nighters that has ever been pulled.

The pressure placed on this group of performers is almost unbearable, with strained close-ups of their faces as they belt out another heart-breaking solo at 4am, only to be told by the director that “your voice sounds tired”. The raw frustration and self-criticism of being an artist are painfully palpable, with Elaine Stritch letting out screams of fury as she stumbles over a melody and returns to the beginning, desperate to do justice and bring this impossible vision to life despite the fact that she’s been singing for hours on end during the early hours of the morning.

Dean Jones does an almost inhumane number of takes as he sings about the transformative power of love, with the life slowly draining from his face as he realises he still doesn’t have it, almost resigning himself to the absurdity of this quest entirely. But just as it feels almost too cruel to watch, he pulls something powerful and primal from the depths of his being, which is even more miraculous and soul-crushing when armed with the knowledge that he was going through a divorce in real life. He finishes the solo with a feeling of quiet triumph sweeping over his face as he realises that he has it, with an eerie silence hanging over the studio as we wait for Sondheim’s approval.

It truly is the performance of a lifetime, with everything hanging on this one recording and the task to capture perfection in one track, to represent hours of struggle and sacrifice in one album. It’s one of those beautiful moments of human achievement that will make you weep tears of joy, completely immersed in the suspense, self-loathing and euphoria as these endlessly talented people reach something staggering and seemingly impossible, all united in the one goal of bringing this idea to life.

While this production was a sprint, there are some that are faced with the opposite challenge of their passion project being dragged out over many years and bearing more resemblance to a marathon, but with no discernable end in sight.

The artists behind Original Cast Album: Company needed an abundance of stamina to bring their vision to life, but for the filmmakers in American Movie, the biggest struggle was finding the hope and perseverance to keep going, with no looming reward or promise of success to keep them going. You could argue that the latter is harder because your entire work ethic and sense of validation has to come from yourself, with no one relying on you to make your thing and bring it into the world and no one seeming to care about the end result regardless.

American Movie is a documentary about an independent filmmaker called Mark Borchardt, who fell in love with making movies at a young age and has worked for many years to bring his short film, Coven, to life. The documentary follows him over the course of two long years as he tries to make his film, struggling through financial difficulty, spiritual uncertainty and the decline of his family as he realises his creative dreams. It’s both heart-wrenching and hilarious, with Mark finding creative solutions to the obstacles in his way and blindly pursuing the ambitions that consume him.

You constantly see him in situations in which you assume that he will quit, with a number of personal crises and ludicrous hurdles that would dampen anyone else’s spirit and drive to keep going. But despite this, Mark has an abundance of energy and ambition that never ceases to amaze me, even when his dreams seem increasingly hard to reach. He is a magnificent anomaly within the capitalist machine, with a blind tenacity to make his film despite being dealt a rough hand in life that makes this incredibly hard to achieve.

It’s profound, life-affirming and funny as hell, effortlessly capturing the struggle to make something that is incredibly honest and bittersweet, with a rare insight into the filmmaking process that feels almost too absurd to be true.

Being an artist or maker can often feel like a hill too high to climb, with constant voices of doubt and self-criticism that render it an almost impossible challenge. It can feel easier to resign yourself to inadequacy and accept your fate as someone who appreciates instead of creates, feeling as though the world would not care if your voice was never expressed in the way that most matters to you. But American Movie and Original Cast Album: Company show that regardless of whether it’s a marathon or a sprint, being an artist is never an easy feat, but you just have to keep going.

If an idea takes hold of you, you have to see it to the end and let it absorb you entirely, pushing through the never-ending marathon until that final sigh of relief.

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