AIR GUITAR NATION: joyful guitar heroics!

site | trailer
Just got back from seeing AIR GUITAR NATION at the Brattle with my sister, Row, and Dan. Damn! That's one helluva fun movie to watch! It was the late show on a Tuesday night, a very thin crowd, but you could hear the laughs and the gasps and even cheers and applause from every quarter. Maybe my quarter a few more times than any other, but still. =)

Have you seen the trailer? Maybe you snorted or guffawed. Perhaps you laughed out loud. You might have asked yourself, "Why the heck would I want to see a movie about people who take air guitaring seriously?" The answer: Because it's damn entertaining and full of joy.

At times, you will find yourself laughing at the performers, and at others, with them. From either perspective, it's a lot of laughs. =)

Throughout, you may feel that the film hops back and forth over the line between making fun and having fun. Where that line is, exactly, is different for everyone, both in the audience, and in the film. All the while, tho, the film's subjects, these air guitar heroes, are driven by joy, dedication, and more than a little (perhaps otherwise useless) talent.

The film starts with the founding of the U.S. Air Guitar Championship competition ("The guitars are fake... The chops are real!"). The creators of the competition learn that there is an international championship held in Finland every year, but since its inception, the U.S. has never been represented. They take it upon themselves to correct this grievous error. In contests held on the east and west coast, one in a part-time strip club in NYC, another in the Roxy in L.A., they call out the best air guitarists the states have to offer. In the course of the U.S. contests, we meet several gifted air musicians, among them, a samurai-costumed performer and struggling actor who goes by the nom de air of "C-Diddy," and his self-proclaimed nemesis, "Bjorn Turoque" (feckin brilliant, no?), who is *certain* that his destiny lies in Finland at the world championships.

And as the filmmakers take the guitar hero's journey to Oulo, Finland, we learn that C-Diddy and Bjorn are indeed fated to meet again, two among dozens of international air apparents. Who will triumph?

In the course of the film, we meet both U.S. representatives and get a glimpse at how their families perceive their air-brained ambitions. We are introduced to former world air champions, who now teach as masters at the championship air guitar boot camp in Finland. And, we get to hear from many air guitarists their personal philosophies and approaches to their art. Much of it is damn funny, but that doesn't make it any less real, true, and sincere.

At times, there's a martial arts, ENTER THE DRAGON, feel to the scene, with moments of challenge, bravado, trash-talking, confession, recognition, and comraderie among these warriors, who each follow their own schools of airness and perform in unique styles and techniques.

Please, do yourself a great kindness and check this $hit out. It's playing two more nights at the Brattle. Grab a friend or three, musically inclined or not, sharing this experience will definitely enhance it. If you can't make it to the theater, DEFinitely put it on your Netflix list, and watch it with friends. =)
It's kinda nuts. There were two crazy instances of convergence and conjunctions of goodness in this film. First of all, In, Rowan, and I had *just* seen C-Diddy on Monday night. He showed up as Isaac's favorite bicycle courier in HEROES. We all recognized him from SOMEwhere, but In was the one who pegged it. We'd all seen the AIR GUITAR NATION trailer a couple times at the Brattle and C-Diddy's got some memorable moments in it. It's funny. Andrew (I think? Frack, I'm so bad w names) at the Brattle concession stand mentioned it, too. He hadn't been able to see NATION yet, but he thought that if C-Diddy was an actor, maybe the documentary's not so documentary after all. I hadn't thought about it like that, but hellzyeah, that would certainly suck.

Once the film got rolling, and we got to know C-Diddy, it became clear to me that, yes, he's an actor, but he's also an air guitarist, and while his thespian experience no doubt gives him a wider spectrum of flair to bring to the arena, it certainly does not make him a "plant" of any kind.

It's kinda funny, cuz once he makes it onto the international air guitar scene, he *does* actually encounter a "plant." British air guitarist "Red Plectrum" is one of those kooky experiential journalists, y'know? Someone who throws himself into a job or situation or competition to learn what it's about first hand and then report on it, typically in a very entertaining fashion, and sometimes involving quite a bit of pain.

Okay, so there was that random HEROES crossover...

The other bit of convergence involved a song chosen by Bjorn for one of his performances. It turned out to be a great tune by a local Boston band, The Bags. I'd first learned of and enjoyed their hard-rockin and smartly written music in college, thanks to my roommate Ross. His brother's band knew The Bags, and I went to see them a couple times at the Middle East. Damn funny and talented guys. One of them was (and continues to be) responsible for the ingenious bits of comedy and wisdom in THE NOISE, the Boston rock review rag—the comic strip ROCK SCHOOL. I ended up working with the esteemed C. Wood in the dot-com heydey. He was putting his talents toward animation and some interactive programming and I was lucky enough to work on several projects with him at the same company.

So, I gotta say, there were a lot of odd personal layers to sitting in one of my favorite movie theater seats, watching this crazy fun film, and listening to this song connected to multiple odd bits of my life.

Pretty nifty.

Make air, not war!

Keep on keepin on~