TAD: AUDIENCE OF ONE Review
[Audience of One screens Sunday, October 21st as part of the Toronto After Dark festival.]
Is San Francisco pastor Richard Gazowsky delusional, a compulsive liar or merely staggeringly naive? Frankly, the chances of anyone being able to answer that question are slim to none. What we do know for certain about him is this: in 1994, at the age of forty, Gazowsky saw the very first film of his very sheltered life. It was The Lion King. Shortly thereafter Gazowsky claims that he received word from God that he was called to create the greatest film ever seen, a sci-fi epic titled Gravity based on the biblical life of Joseph. Ten years later Gazowsky is ready to begin production and documentarian Mark Jacobs is there with his camera to witness it all.
Audience of One is the story of a man consumed by a vision, the story of a man in in so far over his head that it's a miracle he can breath at all, the story of a man completely convinced of his calling to do something he is completely incapable of doing - who, in fact, views his own lack of ability as a sign of his divine calling. In the early going Gazowsky seems simply to be the slightly eccentric leader of a regular church, a man as enthusiastic about his new found love for film as any fourteen year old fanboy living in his parent's basement and it's impossible not to be swept up by his goofy charm and sheer enthusiasm for his chosen project. The man wants this so bad and is so sweetly naive about what it will take to accomplish that you can't help but root for him and want to see it come to fruition.
But things go badly wrong for Gazowski. Where most budding film makers start small Gazowsky is convinced that it is his calling to make the biggest film ever despite the fact that he simply has no resources. His daughter serves as art director. An obvious drug victim from his congregation fills a key acting role. Other positions are filled via ads for free labor posted on Craigslist. The budget is immediately inflated by Gazowsky's insistence of shooting on a hugely pricey and very rare 60mm film stock at a ridiculously high frame rate. And that budget ... what starts as fifty million quickly becomes a hundred quickly becomes double that but it's all phantom money, none of it actually in hand, Gazowsky spending like mad throughout on the belief that funds will simply appear when needed, burning through church resources and his own mortgage in the process and racking up huge bills he has no hope of paying.
The problems come early and often. Gazowsky leaves himself only a day for casting prior to an expensive five day shoot in Italy. The day before that same shoot he realizes that his costume department - just two women from the church volunteering their time - haven't been able to finish the costuming required. They bring American equipment to Italy not realizing the power standards are different and their US equipment is useless in Europe. Three of their five days shooting in Italy are wasted when nobody realizes that the camera is running out of synch. Overhead cable rigs snap, cranes don't work, manual laborers walk off the set for being underpaid, but though it all Gazowsky simply basks in the glow that comes from actually shooting his film, completely blinded to the disaster slowly unfolding around him by his belief that God will somehow make everything happen.
It's hard to pinpoint where exactly it happens but at some point Gazowsky's seperation from reality stops being charming and becomes something more than a little disturbing and irresponsible. Relationships between church members and outside hires who simply can't believe what is unfolding around them fray quickly. Gazowsky quickly earns the ire of the local industry for giving what should be union jobs to unpaid volunteers and racking up huge bills all around town. The supposed funding never appears. The power is cut off in their studio for non payment. The financial well runs completely dry. Gazowski's response? He steps to the podium of his church and delivers an eight point "vision" for their future, telling the congregation that if they'll just believe the studio will produce forty seven films per year, they'll found theme parks and TV networks, they'll own resort islands and an airline and, oh yes, they'll colonize space. The most bizarre thing of all? Never once does anyone in the congregation - not even Gazowski's sad-eyed mother who founded the church and presumably kept her son from watching films till he was forty int he first place - ever step up and simply tell the man that he's lost touch with reality. Not once.
Three years after production began, with several hundred thousand dollars spent all Gazowsky has to show for it is two scenes shot and a lawsuit filed against him for not paying the rent on his studio space. Audience of One takes its title from Gazowsky's insistence that the only audience that matters for this film is God himself but ultimately it seems that the only audience that matters here is Gazowsky himself. The film is a document of a man brought down by a bizarre combination of naivite, child like excitement, hubris and delusion, the chronicle of a man who simply refuses to acknowledge the plain truths around him.And it proves, once again, that truth can be far, far stranger than fiction.
