'Blockbuster," as applied to film, denotes a kind of big-budget movie product with dependable elements -- action and special effects on a large story-telling canvas, a box-office star or a connection to something from popular culture (famous sunken ocean liners, web-spinning comic-book heroes etc.).
"Sleeper," as applied to film, is defined as a movie introduced with little fanfare but which turns out to be successful -- yet the elements that make it so are not so easily spelled out.
While "sleeper" is too easy a word for the long-running annual National Spelling Bee in Washington, it probably would be correct usage to apply it to Spellbound. Who would have thought a documentary feature about eight kids preparing for and competing in the venerable bee would be turning people away from its sold-out opening weekend at Manhattan's Film Forum cinema? Well, me, for one, but more on that later.
Financed on credit cards and a true labour (with a "u") of love, Spellbound has given sold-out film-festival audiences across North America a warm, fuzzy, cheering-at-the-end feeling (a hallmark of many sleepers) for more than a year. An Oscar nomination for best documentary saw Spellbound director Jeff Blitz and his fellow nominees hit the stage at the invitation of winning director Michael Moore. But that bizarre evening was only one leg of what Blitz calls a "completely surreal journey" that began in March, 2002, in Austin, Tex., at the annual SXSW film festival.
That's where the buzz began and where I had the good fortune to stumble upon Spellbound, although perhaps "stumble" isn't the right word. I was covering the festival for this newspaper, cooling my heels at a packed party at Stubb's BBQ where I struck up a conversation with Toronto native Ronnie Eisen. He had been working in Los Angeles as an agent at a large firm but had left and become involved with Spellbound as an additional producer. He was still reeling from the world premiere. "Speller" Angela Arenivar -- the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in the Texas panhandle, and whose whole family made the 14-hour drive -- received a standing ovation and engaged with the audience at Spellbound's first question-and-answer session.
Two days later, at the SXSW film closing-night ceremony -- where Spellbound picked up the first of 15 best-documentary awards it has won at a string of festivals -- I was introduced to Blitz and Spellbound producer Sean Welch. The two met several years ago in L.A. when Blitz was completing graduate studies at the USC film school, where he won the prestigious Presidential Fellowship, and Welch was working in production on features and commercials; Welch later produced Blitz's award-winning student short, Wonderland, starring George Segal.
Blitz, Welch and Eisen left to celebrate; I sheepishly checked the schedule. There was one screening left. The next morning at the Alamo, a beer-serving rep cinema, I experienced the warmth and humour, universal appeal and downright nail-biting suspense of Spellbound in a packed house. It was one of those rare experiences in an entertainment writer's saturated life when you just know you're watching something magical that mainstream audiences would love if they only got a chance to see it.
By the time Spellbound hit the Toronto International Film Festival last September, the buzz had grown to a roar. During the festival I ran into Blitz and Welch on the street a few times, always heading to meetings. If SXSW was about buzz, then Toronto was business. The Oscar nomination was icing on the cake.
"We were told nominated films would be posted on the Oscar Web site starting at 5 a.m.," Blitz said on the phone from L.A. last week. "As soon as it was posted, Sean and I tried calling each other at the same time. Our joke is that everything with Spellbound has gone according to plan. When you finance a doc on MasterCard and Visa, on a subject that doesn't strike any grant organization as being a potent story, then everything good that happens comes as a surprise."
Of course, the film about the bee started before the buzz. "I first became acquainted with the [National Spelling Bee]in 1997 when it followed a sporting event I was watching on ESPN," Blitz recalled. "I was struck by the realization it wasn't this quaint old-fashioned thing, but it was modern, vibrant and full of drama."
He started making charts of 1998 contestants who had a good chance of returning, contacted their families and hit up "coaches" for tips on rising spelling stars. The eventual shortlist of kids spanned the country and the spectrum of American society.
"It was important to tell the kids' stories in a way that felt true to them, rather than impose my own adult take," he continued. "We always imagined the bee itself was a way to tell these much richer stories. We didn't try to force the multicultural angle, but the bee itself became this unforced American melting pot of cultures."
One early cut of Spellbound had 12 spellers, another had five. "It was trial and error. Spellbound was really made in the editing room, my living room," he explained. "Our editor Yana Gorskaya worked tirelessly, bringing her own intelligence and sensibility to the project. She's an immigrant -- Russian by birth -- and I think many of the stories resonated deeply with her."
Blitz explained his personal connection to the subject of the film when we chatted in Austin last year. He grew up in New Jersey with a stuttering problem he overcame by becoming involved in public speaking; in high school he was president of a championship-winning debate team. The accomplishment of Spellbound couldn't have happened without Blitz's heart, ingenuity and, of course, his "day job" researching blacklisted writers of the forties and fifties for the Writers Guild of America, a project which concluded in 2001.
"It was amazing work," he recalled. "I was sent around the world to dig through peoples' basements and attics. We discovered that Dalton Trumbo wrote literally dozens of films that were produced while he was blacklisted, including Roman Holiday and The Brave One, both of which won Oscars."
Unsung heroes may turn out to be a theme for Blitz as he searches for his next feature project, but for now he's still on the surreal journey of Spellbound, the kind of sleeper we all hope to discover in a season dominated by blockbusters.
Spellbound, which opened in Toronto on Friday , comes to Vancouver this Friday , and Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Montreal at the end of June.