A few words from C.B. Smith

(from the CPF Summer 1996 catalog)

In the last catalog, I discussed the origins of the CPF film Men In Black and the hassles that plagued it from the very beginning. I'm gonna talk about it some more now, so quit reading if you're not interested. Of course, you should never have picked up this cut-and-paste monstrosity if you aren't interested in the sort of shit we do. Put it down and read some Turgenev, you pompous hypothetical snob.

Now, we had just started to get involved in the bulk of principal photography for Part Two of Men In Black when not just one but two of our actors moved to Japan. Well, let's just say we were miffed. I mean, does a real director like Kelly Lynch have to deal with players walking out on a project?

Okay, bad counterexample.

But Men In Black still exercised a sick fascination for us. It was the first heir of our invention, the first thing we had done that could really be called ours; our music, our special effects, our direction, our story. As a year passed after its premature end, we came to a fuller appreciation of it, coddled in our insistently acrid aesthetic rubric, limmed by new tropes and lazed by synthetic trochees. Or something. We decided that the amateur nature of many parts of it was obscuring its essential value as a story well-told. It was a wondrous long shot at a target that had been beyond our grasp.

But our aim was already better, and showed signs of improving farther still. Maybe Men In Black wasn't such a bad thing after all.

But how do you complete a film when you're missing actors? Short answer: you don't. But there were all those amateur bits in the way, anyhow. Who but us was going to see what we had intended? So we decided to clear the lens first.

We reshot some entire scenes and embellished others with new establishing shots, dramatic cutaways, and superimposed imagery meant to highten and extend the bleak mood. We added more special effects everywhere. New titles, new conversations, new shots; all served to strip away the dull encrustations of amateurism and reveal the ideas beneath. We know Men In Black isn't Citizen Kane. But it tries just as hard as that film, even if it fails a lot more often.

It's coming close. We are not done with the extended version, but we are proud of the work we have completed. Utilizing the footage we did shoot for Part Two (restructured with some too-lengthy-to-relate workarounds), as well as newly written scenes and planned bridging material, we will be adding another twenty minutes to the film, extending its length by half. And the new material (and older reworked sections) flows better and moves faster than ever before.

We love film. Much of what we do is goofy because a) it's easier, b) it's fun, and c) it's energizing to be able to create entertainment out of the most nonsensical and off-kilter materials. But our feelings about art we enjoy are bound up with appreciation of the craft of film.

Sure, Men in Black isn't a laugh riot. but we think that strong stories competently produced deserve at least a little credit. It may be slow, it may be difficult, but dammit, it's ours. We'd really enjoy it if you'd enjoy it.

Of course, you may wish to wait until the extended version is done, which will take a while. (With us, maybe a long while.) But that's what we get for doing Hollywood epics on zero budget.