Mar

Vernon, FL

Posted by: richard in Movies

On the strength of the good word of Gaines and Allison, we rented this documentary. We started it the other night, but only got about half way through. I intend to finish it this weekend.

For now, just this one comment: I laugh heartily at these simple, strange people.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 31st, 2006 at 1252 and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 comments so far

Gaines

YES!

March 31st, 2006 at 1318

richard

We finished watching it last night. And, honestly, I don’t think I’ve got much more to add. My one comment from yesterday pretty much sums it up.

This is one of those films that are reallly great to talk about afterwards with other people who have seen it. Sort of along the same lines as Napoleon Dynamite.

April 1st, 2006 at 1302

Allison

Did I ever mention I grew up 20 minutes from the actual town of Vernon, FL? It looks much the same (except there’s now a winery!?!?!), and I’m sure SOME of those people in the film are still around and alive somewhere. At least, they remind me of actual people from MY hometown, so it’s often a bit sad to laugh at them, but I suppose we’re all eccentric in our own little ways and they are just a bit more extreme. (You can go to the extreme on ANYTHING.)

Trivia: Did you know that the reason Morris originally picked Vernon for the documentary was because it had the highest rate of people in the US who cut off their own limbs to claim insurance money? My dad is an attorney in AL/FL and knows the folks who handled some of the cases back in the 80’s. Crazy, I tell ya. Apparently, Morris had to cut all that out because when the Vernon folks found out they were up in arms against him. So he just strung together some of the other wacky footage he had. One day, I’d like to find out how to get my hands on some of those original interviews…

April 3rd, 2006 at 0024