by Jeremy Van Doren

The Scenesters opens with a trailer for Wallace Cotten’s new film. It’s about three hipsters who sit in a kiddie pool in their backyard and discuss their lives, and its trailer touts the film’s accolades from mainstream media. Like its mumblecore brethren it captures the sentiments of a generation, or at least one facet of a generation–white, middle class twenty-somethings who tend to film, star in, and appreciate often ponderous, naval gazing masterpieces of lofi cinema.

I thought it interesting that Cotten was simultaneously releasing a mumblecore masterpiece while exhibiting The Scenesters, a film with far greater ambition. Scenesters draws from varying influences to weave a complex tale about the lengths some might go for a taste of cinematic success, even as it pokes fun at a certain type of hipster-savant oft portrayed in the so-called mumblecore films.

Of course, within minutes of Scenester’s beginning, I had already been drawn into the multifaceted story by Todd Berger and members of the Vacationeers, a comedy troupe out of Los Angeles. The Scenester’s clever opening joke was so believable in the context of the Austin Film Festival, its ambition and its success was all the more apparent.

Scenesters weaves equal parts mystery, noir, courtroom drama, and faux-documentary into a cohesive and perfectly paced film. It works on multiple levels, and is both satirical and self-aware. It pits the horror of a very modern serial killer–one who is as elusive as he is aware of the hysteria he is capable of generating–against a believably pretentious group of young creatives who find themselves uniquely positioned to craft a memorable film.





If mumblecore could be said to reject cinematic form and replace it with the pure desire to express a personal experience, The Scenesters is a clever look at what might occur if, in the process of stumbling and mumbling through life, one happened to find themselves in the middle of a historic, or at least memorable, event. In a world where media streams nonstop and cameras are ubiquitous, it’s not unusual to want to be a part of such experience by capturing it on video. Scenesters carries this idea to its humorous conclusion by showing us how far this one group will go to achieve a cinematic feat.

For this reason, it asks us to consider why it is so glamorous a pursuit to document one’s life in film and video. It asks why we mumble on camera, edit the resulting footage, and submit it to film festivals. It asks us to think about our position in a media-saturated society, and points to the blurring lines between entertainment producers and consumers. Even more, to the ever blurring line between entertainment and (often violent) life. It speaks to the power of the camera in society, how the man with the movie camera is often telling a story, not just showing life, and what this means when our entertainment and information comes from the same source. Even though Scenesters is focused through the lens of a certain subset of people–the same as the mumblecore films it parodies–it is a clever clever comedy and a well-done thriller with a wider appeal, even to those who speak clearly.