Santa Fe Satirist Tackles Feature-Length “Mockumentary” Form 

As Santa Fe satirist, actor and video producer Jim Terr nears half a million views on his YouTube channel (“hymiehymie”), he is striking into feature-length territory with a parody of a big-studio feature scheduled for release in October.

Columbia Pictures plans to release “The Social Network,” a $49 million adaptation of a 2009 book about the founding of Facebook, directed by David Fincher and co-starring Justin Timberlake.

Terr’s satirical chord was touched by the idea of this “tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal” (from the source book’s subtitle), describing the founding of Facebook, and he sketched out a parallel mockumentary about the founding of an a imaginary social network based not on faces, but on another, almost-equally popular part of the human anatomy.

Terr’s film, to consist largely of staged “interviews” with key players, social scientists and commentators about the history and impact of the imaginary social networking website, is called “The Beginning” ( www.BeginningFilm.com ).

Unlike “This is Spinal Tap,” the 1984 prototype for the mockumentary form, Terr says his feature will avoid obvious comedy. “I want to make it so realistic that the viewer might wonder if there actually is such a website they somehow never heard about,” Terr says. “We certainly have enough good actors around here to pull this off, given a few ‘talking points’ for them to hit in their interviews.”

In addition to “This is Spinal Tap”, Terr points to other examples of the mockumentary form, such as Orson Welles’ panic-inducing 1938 radio drama “War of the Worlds,” 2009’s acclaimed feature “Distict 9,” Woody Allen’s “Zelig,” “Borat”, and, Terr says, one of the most “realistically” misleading, Peter Jackson’s “Forgotten Silver,” the story of fictional New Zealand film pioneer Colin McKenzie.

In addition to a fascination with the almost-true in several short films and videos, Terr has scored with several more conventional works, including his 2001 first runner up in the Flicks on 66 competition, “The Wrong Guy” (http://www.bluecanyonproductions.com/video/WrongGuy_2.wmv ) and a feature-length script, “The Home of Katie Archer,” recorded as a radio drama with a cast of 40 actors at KUNM-FM in Albuquerque (http://www.bluecanyonproductions.com/video/SAG_readings.wmv ).

Among the “promo” angles Terr anticipates as being useful when the “The Beginning” is completed and released, is the fact that the project’s “micro” budget will be one-ten-thousandth of the Columbia release which it parodies. As Terr seeks completion funding, he is proceeding with interviews and with background shots in Los Alamos, home of the atomic bomb and of the fictional website referred to in the film.

Information: Jim Terr  505-989-9298  bluecanyon2@newmexico.com