Most young men (and let's face it, men are the trailblazers on this path) will eventually give in to reality and get that hated desk job, once it becomes clear that they're not among the chosen few. But Mark Borchardt, the protagonist of American Movie, is not most men. His story is inspiring, in a twisted way, because he has nothing but his art to give, and he persists in his efforts to give it despite continuous, overwhelming evidence that nobody wants it. Chris Smith, whose previous film efforts include the documentary-style American Job and cinematography on Michael Moore's The Big One, follows Borchardt and his long-suffering band of actors, crew, and family financiers for two years while Borchardt works on an autobiographical feature called Northwestern.

Or doesn't work on it, as it turns out. While waiting for the stars to align on that project, Borchardt returns to an unfinished horror movie called Coven (idiosyncratically pronounced with a long "o"). It's partly a strategy for financing Northwestern, but more poignantly, it's also the desperate act of a truly driven man, an artist who can't stand not to be working. Most of American Movie, despite its subtitle "The Making of Northwestern," is about the completion of Coven.

Coven is a film aficionado's worst nightmare of a low-budget horror film--exactly like all the post-Night of the Living Dead dreck teenagers staged in their backyards in the '70s. To film, process, edit, and transfer it to tape, Borchardt badgers and bullies everyone he knows for their money and time. The fact that, against all odds, he seems to retain some friends appears to result only from the blissfully drugged-out state of his closest compatriots. As Borchardt's Technicolor visions get boiled down to compromised best-we-could-do scenes, he's revealed as an insufferable idealist, constantly disappointed and disillusioned. His foil in Smith's documentary is his uncle, a crotchety oldster whose cynicism about his investment comes across as level-headed pragmatism. Nevertheless, the would-be auteur persuades him not only to throw money down the black hole of art, but also, in the film's funniest scene, to record some nonsense dialogue for Coven's opening.